On the morning of January 2, 2016, 4 heavily armed terrorist breached the perimeter of India’s Pathankot Air Force Base in Punjab. What unfolded over the next five days wasn’t a spontaneous terror strike by a ragtag militant group. It was a meticulously planned military operation, a proxy war attack orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), executed through its revived Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) network.
The timing alone tells the story. Just one week earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a surprise diplomatic visit to Lahore on December 25, 2015 – the first Indian PM visit in 12 years. The thaw was palpable. Peace talks were being scheduled. And then, at 3:30 AM on January 2, gunfire erupted at Pathankot. By the time security forces neutralized all 4 attackers on January 5, seven Indian Air Force personnel and security staff (5 Defence Security Corps personnel 1 IAF Garud commando 1 National Security Guard) made supreme sacrifice and India’s diplomatic overture lay in ruins.
This was no coincidence. This was strategy.
The Operation: Professional, Coordinated, Deadly
The attack bore hallmarks of a professional military operation. The 4 militants didn’t randomly select a target they knew exactly where to go. They carried 50 kilograms of ammunition, 30 kilograms of grenades, grenade launchers, 52mm mortars, AK-47 rifles, and GPS devices. But the equipment wasn’t the most telling detail it was the sophistication of their planning.
They infiltrated along routes used for drug smuggling into India, suggesting coordination with established cross-border networks managed by Pakistani authorities. A nylon rope was found looped over the 3.4-meter perimeter wall apparently used for entry. What’s remarkable is that the specific stretch of wall where they entered had its floodlights switched off that night, a fact that led investigators to suspect inside collaboration within the base itself. One security officer, Punjab Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh was even abducted and released by the terrorists before they reached the airbase, presumably as part of the reconnaissance operation.
Once inside, these weren’t panicked terrorists searching for targets. They moved 400 meters through a forested area toward the aircraft hangars with clear intent. They knew the base layout. They knew where the high-value assets were parked. They knew what to look for and what to destroy. Security forces stopped them roughly 700 meters short of the fighter jets and helicopter bays- a narrow miss that prevented catastrophic damage to India’s air logistics capabilities.
The Phone Calls That Exposed Everything
What ultimately exposed the ISI’s hand were intercepted phone conversations. The militants made calls back to Pakistan specifically to handlers coordinating the operation from the Lahore vicinity. Indian investigators traced these calls to a phone number (+92 3000597212) whose owner was identified in security briefings as “ustaad”, a coded term used in jihadi networks for operational commanders.
But the conversations went deeper than just tactical coordination. One attacker called his mother just before the assault, telling her he was about to become a “shaheed” (martyr). These intimate details combined with phone records, call metadata, and location analysis allowed investigators to build an irrefutable chain linking the attackers directly to JeM’s leadership in Pakistan.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) later filed a chargesheet naming Maulana Masood Azhar (JeM’s chief), his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar, and key handlers including Shahid Latif and Kashif John. The agency collected what it described as “physical, technical, digital, and documentary evidence” against these individuals evidence that proved the conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan.
Years later, in October 2023, Shahid Latif (identified as the mastermind of the attack) would be assassinated by unknown gunmen in a mosque in Daska, Pakistan. The timing and nature of his killing in a place of worship, in broad daylight suggested powerful forces wanted to silence a key operational link to the Pathankot operation.
The Training Ground: Pakistani Military Bases
Where were these attackers trained? That answer is equally damning. According to Indian government sources, the militants received specialized training at Pakistan Air Force bases in Lyallpur (Faisalabad) and Chaklala (near Rawalpindi). These aren’t remote hideouts in tribal areas. These are official Pakistani military installations.
Think about that for a moment. The U.S. military binoculars found with the attackers, the precision of their equipment, their knowledge of airbase layouts, their tactical approach none of this emerges from a madrasah basement. This speaks to institutional training, military-grade preparation, and institutional backing. The terrorist group may have been called Jaish-e-Mohammad, but the ISI was the conductor of the orchestra.
The equipment itself was instructive. Along with the binoculars American military-grade optics that typically circulate through official military channels investigators found materials and explosives that originated in Pakistan. The GPS devices, the precision of the attack timing, the coordination of multiple teams- all of it pointed to resources and knowledge that only a state intelligence agency could provide.
Why Now? Why Pathankot?
The question that haunts Pakistani officials even now is , why would the ISI carry out such an audacious attack right when peace talks were gaining momentum?
The answer reveals the deeper strategic calculus of Pakistan’s military establishment. According to Christine Fair, a leading expert on Pakistan’s military at Georgetown University, the ISI doesn’t view peace with India as an opportunity it views it as an existential threat. For Pakistan’s military, the perpetual conflict with India justifies its own institutional existence, its budgets, its political power, and its grip on the Pakistani state.
When civilian Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif initiated the diplomatic thaw with India, he was effectively challenging military primacy in Pakistan’s foreign policy. The ISI’s response was to sabotage the peace process using JeM as its instrument.
But there’s another layer to this story. By January 2016, the JeM had splintered years earlier (after the 2001 parliament attack), and a faction had turned against Pakistan’s military itself. The ISI needed to revive JeM as an instrument under its control, redirecting terrorists who had defected to fight Pakistan (or had turned toward other ideological pursuits) back toward India as a common enemy. Pathankot was the showcase operation proof that the ISI had successfully reorganized JeM into an effective proxy force.youtube
Pakistan’s Playbook Exposed
What Pathankot reveals is the operational template of Pakistan’s proxy warfare strategy a playbook that has been in use since at least the 1980s:
First, identify a diplomatic thaw or period of normalization that threatens military influence. Second, execute a spectacular terrorist attack blamed on (plausibly deniable) terrorists groups that are technically banned but operationally supported. Third, use the attack to reset the diplomatic clock, derail talks, and justify continued military mobilization. Fourth, deny involvement at the international level while maintaining tactical control of the groups domestically.
The United Jihad Council – a coalition of multiple pakistani terrorists groups initially claimed responsibility for the Pathankot attack. This claim was widely dismissed by Indian intelligence as a cover story. The real perpetrators were JeM operatives acting under ISI command, using the UJC’s name as a shield against direct attribution.
When Pakistan’s Joint Investigation Team (JIT) visited Pathankot in March 2016 notably including an ISI official, Lt. Col Tanvir Ahmed, traveling alongside other investigators their visit was stage-managed theater. The team, led by Punjab’s Counter Terrorism Department, claimed the attack was a “false flag” operation staged by India itself. They shared no substantive findings with Indian investigators. Letters Rogatory (formal legal requests for evidence) sent to Pakistan went unanswered for years. In the end, the JIT served as an information-gathering mission, not a genuine investigation.
The Strategic Failure And the Bigger Point
The Pathankot attack tactically failed. The terrorists didn’t reach the aircraft. They didn’t destroy the fuel depots or ammunition stores. The Indian Air Force’s fighter jets were untouched. But by the metric that mattered to the ISI derailing the peace process the operation succeeded spectacularly. The diplomatic thaw froze. Scheduled talks were postponed. India and Pakistan returned to their familiar posture of mistrust and military mobilization.
And the international community, with typical indifference to South Asian terrorism, said little. The European Union issued a statement condemning “terrorism.” The United States offered platitudes about both countries fighting terror together. Pakistan faced no sanctions, no serious diplomatic isolation, no consequences for its transparent operation. This impunity, Fair and other analysts argue, only encourages the ISI to repeat the playbook.
The Broader Pattern
Pathankot was not an isolated incident. It was one point in a decades-long pattern. The 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war was carried out by JeM. The 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people were executed by another ISI proxy, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The Pulwama attack in 2019, which killed 40 CRPF personnel and triggered the Balakot airstrike, again bore JeM’s fingerprints and Pakistani military coordination.
Each attack followed a similar pattern: a thaw in relations was in progress, diplomatic talks were scheduled, civilian leaders in Pakistan were pushing for normalization. Then a spectacular terror attack would occur, blamed on “terrorists elements” beyond the government’s control, derailing the peace process and resetting the conflict.
Pakistan’s military establishment has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot afford peace with India. Peace would mean reducing defence budgets, civilian oversight of the military, and the loss of an institutional raison d’être. So the ISI maintains an ecosystem of jihadi groups some serving as active instruments of policy, others held in reserve and deploys them when diplomacy threatens the military’s grip on power.
What Happened to the Planners?
Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of JeM and named mastermind of Pathankot, was eventually placed under house arrest in Pakistan a move that satisfied no one. He continues to operate, give sermons, and coordinate operations from a restricted existence in Bahawalpur. The United Nations Security Council added him to its global terrorist list in May 2019, but by then, the ISI had already trained a new generation of operatives and continued operations under his nominal leadership.
Abdul Rauf Asghar, his brother and a key figure in the Pathankot operation, remains at large as of late 2024. Shahid Latif, the operational commander directly responsible for orchestrating Pathankot, was killed in a mosque in Daska in October 2023 by unknown gunmen a killing that Pakistani sources later acknowledged, though they attributed it to some other cause. Whether his death was a settling of accounts within the terrorists ecosystem or a deliberate elimination to destroy evidence remains unclear.
What is clear is that none of the major figures in the ISI’s chain of command faced accountability. No ISI official was named, let alone prosecuted. No documents proving institutional ISI direction were declassified. This is by design. The ISI operates through a carefully constructed wall of deniability using proxy groups, maintaining operational security, and relying on Pakistan’s government to protect the institution from international scrutiny.
The Lesson India Should Learn And Should Teach the World
Pathankot is not ultimately a story about a terror attack. It’s a story about how a state intelligence agency uses terrorism as an instrument of statecraft, and how the international community’s passivity enables that strategy to continue year after year.
If we accept that the ISI orchestrated Pathankot and the evidence marshaled by Indian investigators, the NIA chargesheet, and independent analysts like Christine Fair makes that acceptance unavoidable then we must acknowledge that Pakistan operates a state-sponsored terrorism program. Not as a side effect of its geopolitics. Not as something it “can’t control.” But as a deliberate policy implemented by its military and intelligence establishment.
The Mumbai attacks, the Parliament attack, Pathankot, Pulwama, Gurdaspur, Uri, Nagrota – the list extends for decades. Each one bears the fingerprints of ISI coordination, JeM or LeT execution, and Pakistani military infrastructure. Each one was designed to achieve a political objective, derail peace talks, assert military authority, maintain the conflict narrative that justifies Pakistan’s militarization.
India’s response after Pathankot was measured. It shared intelligence with Pakistan, provided evidence, sought cooperation in investigation. It did everything the international rules-based order asks of victim nations. And it was repaid with denials, false investigations, and continued operations.
The question now is now broader international community will finally acknowledge what Pathankot makes undeniable: that Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus have made proxy terrorism a central plank of their strategic doctrine. And what, if anything, will change because of that acknowledgment.
