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Pakistan’s proxy wars changing disguise with extraordinary speed: Report
In Short
“In fashion, black has one invaluable quality: it goes with everything. And in Pakistan’s proxy wars, Islamic State Khorasan Province seems to have acquired much the same function
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Pakistan’s proxy wars are changing disguise with extraordinary speed
Islamabad: Pakistan’s proxy wars are changing disguise with extraordinary speed, with Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) acquiring an invaluable quality of going with everything, like the colour black in fashion, a report said.
“In fashion, black has one invaluable quality: it goes with everything. And in Pakistan’s proxy wars, Islamic State Khorasan Province seems to have acquired much the same function: it goes with everything. It can be invoked in Afghanistan, deployed against the Baloch, attached to sectarian violence and also, according to recent reports, used to conceal future operations by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Jammu and Kashmir. Ideologically elastic, internationally recognisable and sufficiently terrifying to discourage too many questions, ISKP has become the new black of regional terrorism,” said Italian journalist Francesca Marino, writing in Parrhesia News.
Marino said that the allegation that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may be preparing to have Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives conduct attacks in Kashmir under an ISKP label is currently circulating among Indian security and open-source intelligence circles.
She said that LeT was among the Pakistani security establishment’s most reliable instruments for decades, but the name has now become unusable with its being listed by the United Nations, the United States, Britain, the European Union and several other governments as a terrorist organisation.
The report called ‘The Resistance Front’ (TRF) the most successful of LeT’s recent costumes, while “the fighters could remain the same, the handlers could remain where they were, and the strategic objective could remain unchanged. Only the packaging required modernisation.”
According to the report, a proxy no longer needs a headquarters, an identifiable command structure or even a durable name. “It requires a Telegram channel, a few graphics, a statement written in the correct idiom and enough amplification on X to enter the news cycle. The name can be abandoned once it becomes compromised and replaced before governments, journalists or international organisations have completed the paperwork required to identify it. Terrorism has discovered fast fashion.”
Citing recent reports, Marino said that LeT and ISKP networks may already have cooperated in Balochistan.
“A photograph circulated in 2025 appeared to show Shafiq Mengal, described as an ISKP coordinator in the province, presenting a pistol to senior Lashkar commander Rana Mohammad Ashfaq. The image has been cited as evidence of an arrangement facilitated by the ISI, although the exact organisational relationship remains difficult to verify independently,” she noted.
According to her, LeT remains important not because it is returning but ‘it never went away’.
“Pakistan’s proxy wars have always depended on disguise. The difference is that the disguise is now changed with extraordinary speed. Lashkar provides the men, the history and the infrastructure. TRF provides a Kashmiri identity. ISKP provides global terror branding and an all-purpose explanation,” Marino highlighted.
