Editor’s Note: The following column is based on excerpts from the latest issue of the CTC Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
The massacre that unfolded in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, is already being remembered as one of the darkest chapters in the modern history of Jammu and Kashmir. On that day, twenty-six Hindu men were profiled, separated from others, and executed in front of their women relatives, marking a departure even within the long and brutal trajectory of militant violence in the Valley. While the targeting of Kashmiri Pandits and Hindu pilgrims has deep precedents dating back to the early 1990s, the Pahalgam killings stood out in their cold deliberateness. They were not the outcome of crossfire, or indiscriminate bombing, or even a symbolic attack on outsiders to disrupt tourism or scare away migrants. They represented a strategy of religious profiling and communal slaughter, meant to send an unmistakable message of intimidation: that Hindus who remain in, or attempt to resettle in, Kashmir will be hunted. In doing so, the perpetrators reaffirmed a pattern of militant rhetoric that has steadily evolved since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019—an ideology that frames demographic change in the Valley as an existential threat and treats settlers, workers, and pilgrims as instruments of a larger state design to “colonize” Kashmir.
The massacre was not a spontaneous act of rogue gunmen. Indian investigators have drawn direct links between the events at Pahalgam and a rally held only days earlier at Khaigala in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. On April 18, 2024, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and their proxies—the Resistance Front (TRF) and the People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF)—gathered to honor slain militants Akif Haleem and Abdul Wahab. The gathering became a theater for open incitement to jihad, with LeT commander Abu Musa issuing explicit threats of beheadings and executions of non-Muslims in Kashmir. The rhetoric was not merely symbolic. By glorifying previous acts of violence and framing the Hindu presence in Kashmir as a demographic conspiracy, militant leaders provided both justification and instruction for targeted violence. The Khaigala rally, in hindsight, appears less as a commemorative exercise and more as an operational prelude to the massacre at Pahalgam, a public signaling of intent that would soon be carried out with precision.
What made Pahalgam stand apart was not simply the scale of brutality but its carefully profiled nature. Earlier attacks on pilgrims—such as the 2022 sticky bomb blast on Vaishno Devi pilgrims in Katra or the 2024 ambush on a bus returning from the Shiv Khori shrine in Reasi—were bloody and tragic, yet they often struck indiscriminately. Pilgrims were targeted because they represented outsiders and a soft symbol of Hindu religiosity in Kashmir, but the violence was not executed with the ritualistic separation and elimination seen in April 2025. The Pahalgam attackers selected Hindus from a mixed group, sparing others, and then executed them in front of their female relatives. That act transformed terrorism into communal theater, designed not only to kill but to terrify an entire community by dramatizing their vulnerability. It harkened back to the 1990s exodus of Kashmiri Pandits but updated the violence with a new ideological framing: to resist settlement and demographic “engineering” post-Article 370 abrogation.
Article 370, once the constitutional pillar of Kashmir’s autonomy, had long been the reference point for separatist politics. Its revocation in August 2019—through presidential orders and subsequent legislation—was a watershed moment. By stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and bifurcating it into two union territories, the Indian government asserted that Kashmir’s constitutional exceptionalism was no longer tenable. The Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict in 2023 further cemented this change, leaving no legal ambiguity about the article’s status. Yet in militant narratives, the abrogation became a rallying cry. Groups like TRF and PAFF framed the new domicile rules and land laws as tools of settler colonialism, comparing them explicitly to Israeli settlement policies in Palestinian territories. Propaganda videos from 2020 onwards carried threats against “RSS agents” and “outsiders” who sought to establish residence or economic footholds in Kashmir. By targeting civilians labeled as collaborators or settlers—be it the Srinagar jeweler Satpal Nischal in December 2020, or migrant workers from Bihar and West Bengal in later years—these groups built a campaign of intimidation that culminated in the mass killings at Pahalgam.
The militant ecosystem responsible for such acts cannot be understood without tracing its organizational evolution. LeT, JeM, and Hizbul Mujahideen have long dominated the Valley’s insurgent landscape, with leadership figures like Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, and Syed Salahuddin shaping strategy. Over the years, however, these groups began splintering into hybrid outfits like TRF, PAFF, and later the Kashmir Freedom Fighters (KFF). These entities often adopted non-religious symbolism, crafted anti-Hindutva and anti-colonial narratives, and distanced themselves rhetorically from global jihadist iconography, even as they remained operationally tied to their parent organizations. TRF, for instance, used the Kashmir map and militaristic imagery in its logos while carrying out assassinations of BJP workers and grenade attacks in crowded markets. PAFF explicitly threatened RSS cadres while denouncing Indian democracy as fascist. KFF, active in 2023, directly vowed to kill Kashmiri Pandits and “non-local Hindus,” making the ideological and communal underpinnings of their campaign explicit. These hybrid groups were not only branding exercises but tactical innovations, giving Pakistan-backed networks plausible deniability while sustaining a steady drumbeat of targeted violence.
By 2021, TRF alone claimed responsibility for seventy-two incidents, ranging from IED attacks to targeted shootings. Migrant laborers, political workers, police officers, and suspected informants were all in the crosshairs. At the same time, India’s counterinsurgency operations killed dozens of militants, including several mid-level commanders. The persistence of violence, despite these losses, reflected the resilience of the Over Ground Worker (OGW) networks that served as silent enablers—providing safe houses, financing, logistics, and human intelligence. It was only after a systematic crackdown under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Public Safety Act, combined with property seizures and pre-emptive detentions, that the OGW ecosystem began to weaken by early 2025. Yet even as their local infrastructure was eroded, Pakistan-based leadership continued to direct strategy from safe havens in Muridke and Bahawalpur, sustaining cross-border communication nodes that were later uncovered in the Pahalgam probe.
The massacre also unfolded against the backdrop of shifting Indian counterterror doctrine. Since the 2016 Uri attack and the subsequent surgical strikes across the Line of Control, New Delhi has embraced a more proactive military stance. The 2019 Balakot airstrikes, conducted deep inside Pakistan, set a precedent for aerial punitive action, while the 2025 Operation Sindoor represented the latest escalation. Named after the vermilion symbolizing married Hindu women, the operation explicitly linked the military offensive to avenging the Pahalgam killings, which had targeted Hindu men before their wives. For the first time, the symbolism of a counterstrike was tethered directly to the cultural trauma inflicted on civilian families. Reports suggested that the strikes not only dismantled launch pads but also eliminated high-profile militant leaders, triggering public mourning ceremonies attended by Pakistani Army personnel. The circulation of photographs purportedly showing uniformed officers at funerals for militants like Abdul Rauf Azhar underscored the enduring nexus between Pakistan’s military establishment and jihadist proxies, despite decades of denials.
The domestic political backdrop added further complexity. Prime Minister Modi, only months before the massacre, had declared in Parliament that terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir was in its “last stage.” He pointed to rising tourism and investment as evidence that peace and normalcy were taking root. While such optimism was not unfounded—security incidents had decreased in volume, and civilian participation in elections had shown signs of resilience—the events of April 2025 underscored the perils of premature triumphalism. Far from being eradicated, militant groups had recalibrated, focusing on fewer but more symbolic and communally charged acts of violence. By executing Hindus in Pahalgam, they punctured the narrative of normalcy and exposed the continuing vulnerabilities of India’s counterinsurgency framework.
The massacre also reignited questions about the role of foreign militants. Although Kashmir’s insurgency has historically featured fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and occasionally beyond, the past two decades saw a relative decline in such foreign participation. Most attacks were locally executed, often by young Kashmiri recruits. Yet in the run-up to Pahalgam, infiltration attempts in Udhampur, Poonch, and Kupwara hinted at renewed cross-border involvement. Encounters in July 2024, which claimed the lives of soldiers during forward-area engagements, revealed the persistence of infiltration routes despite heavy militarization of the Line of Control. The fact that Pahalgam attackers were linked through communication nodes to handlers in Pakistan suggests that the assault was not a purely local initiative but part of a broader strategy, masterminded by leaders like TRF’s Sheikh Sajjad Gul and LeT’s Saifullah Kasuri, both operating from across the border.
The ideological justification for such violence draws on a potent mix of religion, nationalism, and anti-colonial rhetoric. The projection of India as a “fascist” occupier, of Hindu settlers as agents of demographic change, and of violence as resistance, has allowed groups like PAFF and KFF to cloak sectarian killings in the language of liberation. Yet the deliberate targeting of Hindus in Pahalgam revealed the thinness of this rhetoric. Whatever political veneer the militants claimed, the act was one of communal extermination, designed to terrorize families and drive communities out. In this sense, the massacre stripped away the pretenses of ideological sophistication, exposing the raw sectarian animus that has underpinned much of the violence since the 1990s.
For India, the road ahead involves not only dismantling the infrastructure of militancy but also addressing the psychological and communal scars left by events like Pahalgam. Military responses, however precise, cannot substitute for political reconciliation or economic integration. Yet the persistence of Pakistan-based sanctuaries and the enduring patronage of outfits like LeT and JeM mean that counterterrorism will remain an enduring necessity. At the same time, the narrative battle—against the framing of settlement as colonization, or of Kashmiri Hindus as outsiders—will demand as much attention as the military fight. Without challenging the ideological foundations that legitimize such massacres, security victories will remain vulnerable to reversal.
The Pahalgam massacre, then, was not an isolated tragedy but a culmination of decades of militancy, ideological hardening, and cross-border complicity. It was also a grim reminder that even amid claims of progress and normalcy, the embers of violence remain alive in Kashmir. By separating and executing Hindu men, militants sought to demonstrate that the Valley remains inhospitable to pluralism, and that demographic resistance will be enforced with blood. For India, the challenge is not only to avenge such acts but to ensure that the families who witnessed this horror, and the community it targeted, do not once again feel abandoned. In that lies the true test of whether Pahalgam becomes a turning point in Kashmir’s story—or just another entry in its long and painful ledger of violence.
