We in Sri Lanka know this grief with an intimacy most nations are spared. We know what it means when a morning that begins with joy — families gathered in pews, tourists savouring a quiet holiday — ends in blood and silence. On April 21, 2019, our Easter Sunday was shattered by coordinated bomb blasts across churches and hotels, killing over 260 innocent souls. The world mourned with us then. Today, we must mourn with India, and more importantly, we must ask the same hard questions we never finished asking ourselves: who arms the hand that pulls the trigger, and who profits from chaos dressed up as ideology?
One year ago, on April 22, 2025, tourists were enjoying the breathtaking meadows of Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir — a place locals call “mini-Switzerland.” At around 2:45 pm, armed militants emerged from the surrounding forests and opened fire on unsuspecting visitors. Twenty-six civilians were killed in what is considered the deadliest attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Eyewitness testimonies revealed that the attackers questioned victims about their religious identity before opening fire, specifically targeting non-Muslims. The savagery was not random. It was calculated, choreographed, and coldly executed.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy of the Pakistan-based, UN-designated terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the attack. TRF is also a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation — an offshoot of LeT, backed and sheltered by Pakistan’s security establishment. The attackers did not arrive from the moon. Their weapons, their training, and their ideological motivation all trace a clear path back across the border.
The timing of the attack was no accident either. It occurred just months after successful assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir and signalled a shift in terror groups’ strategy — to disrupt the region’s growing tourism sector and challenge the narrative of normalcy. When a region begins to stabilise, when investment flows in and hotels fill with families on holiday, terrorism becomes the ultimate spoiler. This is precisely what Pakistan’s deep state has long understood: that the most effective weapon against India’s economic integration of Kashmir is not a conventional army, but a proxy militia with plausible deniability.
The evidence pointing to Pakistan’s direct hand is irrefutable. On July 28, 2025, Indian security forces killed three terrorists involved in the Pahalgam massacre in the Harwan jungles near Srinagar. Their identity cards told the story plainly — one was Habib Tahir, from the village of Koiyan near Khaigala in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The second was Bilal Afzal. These were not stateless rogue actors. These were men from across the border, trained, armed, and deployed by a state apparatus that has refined terrorism into a foreign policy instrument.
Pakistan’s international conduct confirms the pattern. According to documents reviewed for this article, Pakistan currently ranks at the top of the Global Terrorism Index 2026, and a US Congressional Research Service report from March 2026 explicitly identifies Pakistan as a base of operations for numerous long-active terrorist groups. The cases pile up: Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national, was found guilty in March 2026 of plotting to assassinate US politicians. A Pakistani-origin individual, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, pleaded guilty to an ISIS-inspired plot targeting a Jewish centre in New York. A Pakistani LeT member was arrested in South Korea in August 2025 after entering the country illegally. The geography of Pakistan’s terror export spans continents.
Within Pakistan itself, the infrastructure of terrorism is expanding, not contracting. Jaish-e-Mohammad has established a dedicated women’s wing, “Jamaat-ul-Mominat,” while Lashkar-e-Taiba has set up a so-called “Water Wing” to develop maritime assault capabilities. Terror funding has gone digital — encrypted transactions through cryptocurrency now supplement traditional hawala networks. These are not the death throes of a weakened enterprise. These are the evolutionary steps of a state-nurtured industry.
As Sri Lankans, we must sit with an uncomfortable parallel. On April 21, 2019, coordinated suicide bombings struck three churches and three luxury hotels across Colombo and beyond, killing 269 people including at least 45 foreign nationals. Like the Pahalgam attack, it was a strike on soft targets — places of worship, places of leisure — designed to shatter public confidence and cripple the tourism economy. Our Easter tragedy cost us dearly: hotels emptied, foreign arrivals plummeted, and a recovering nation was pushed back into fear. India’s Baisaran Valley meadow, like our Shangri-La and Cinnamon Grand, was chosen precisely because its beauty made it vulnerable.
The lesson from both tragedies is the same: terrorism that targets tourists and pilgrims is not merely an act of violence — it is an act of economic warfare. It is a strategy to keep neighbours weak, unstable, and inward-looking. For India, Pakistan’s campaign in Kashmir is designed to ensure that every time Jammu and Kashmir inches toward normalcy, blood is spilled on its most scenic meadows.
One year on, Pahalgam deserves more than a moment of silence from the international community. It demands that nations — especially those in South Asia who know this grief firsthand — call the architecture of proxy terrorism by its name, and hold its state sponsors to account. The writer is a Sri Lankan journalist covering South Asian affairs.
