For decades, the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir has served as the visible boundary between war and peace, infiltration and prevention, terror and counter-terror. It has also been the default focal point of Indian military strategy and Pakistan’s proxy hybrid war, primarily kinetic. However, in 2025, the paradigm is shifting quite drastically. The LoC, while still active, and the kinetic domain in general, may no longer be the main front in the battle for Kashmir’s stability. Instead, the new war fronts are dispersed, amorphous, and dangerously embedded within the digital, psychological, and ideological landscape. This is the classic grey zone strategy that has been long expected to manifest.
At the heart of this shift lies a question with major implications for India’s internal security calculus: Does Pakistan still hold remote control over Kashmir’s terrorism?
Recent indicators suggest that Pakistan’s ability to infiltrate terrorists across the LoC physically has been severely degraded. Better fencing, aggressive patrolling, a robust counter-infiltration posture, and enhanced surveillance capabilities—both aerial and electronic—have reduced large-scale infiltration to a trickle. The classical model of launching fidayeen squads, guiding them across the Pir Panjal, and sustaining them with local overground workers is not easily feasible in most sectors. Yet, this does not mean that the threat has receded. Instead, the theatre has simply moved.
The Pakistani deep state, ever adaptive, has invested in non-kinetic warfare to offset its reduced kinetic options, fully aware that shifting to a counter-no-kinetic mode is never easy for India. Drone drops of weapons and narcotics in Punjab and Jammu have now become regular events. Encrypted digital communication for recruiting and guiding local youth without the need for physical handlers is on the rise; intercepting this is proving a major challenge in the current cycle of technology infusion. Deepfake videos and AI-generated propaganda blend radical religious messaging with disinformation about the Indian state and its security forces through social media. This shift signifies a new logic: if territory is difficult to breach, minds become the next terrain of war.
One of the most notable post-2019 developments was the emergence of hybrid terrorists—local youth with no prior record, recruited via encrypted apps and trained online to act as lone-wolf attackers. They don’t cross the LoC. They don’t train in Pakistani camps. They rarely operate in groups. Yet their actions serve the same end as those of their predecessors: psychological destabilisation and turbulence.
In many cases, the “handler” is virtual, sitting in a safe house in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Rawalpindi, or sometimes even third countries like the UAE or the UK. Intelligence intercepts suggest that while physical guidance has reduced, ideological remote control remains very much in Pakistan’s hands. However, that control is not absolute. Several factors have diluted Islamabad’s influence.
First, Pakistan’s economic crisis and internal fragmentation have weakened the focus and capacity of its security establishment. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) threat, rising sectarian violence, and civil military friction have forced the Pakistan Army to look inward. The events following Operation Sindoor—India’s massive retaliation after the Pahalgam attack—acted as a sobering moment, exposing the limits of Pakistan’s escalation.
Second, international pressure has mounted. The FATF grey-listing (from which Pakistan only recently emerged), coupled with increased global scrutiny of terror financing and radical clerics, has made the old methods harder to sustain. Third, there is growing resentment within parts of the Kashmiri population—not widespread, but perceptible—about being used as pawns in a conflict that increasingly lacks moral, political, or even theological legitimacy. The local support base for militancy has eroded, particularly as development projects and normalisation measures following the repeal of Article 370 gain traction.
Yet, despite all this, Pakistan retains two dangerous levers: ideological resonance and technological asymmetry, both in the irregular warfare mode. While Pakistan may no longer guide every terrorist operation, it is heavily invested in shaping the narratives.
Its Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) division is no longer just a military mouthpiece—it is an information warfare machine. Videos, social media influencers, digital clerics, and misinformation campaigns often seek to exploit communal fissures within India, frame state action as majoritarian aggression, and portray Kashmir as a Muslim suffering under Hindu rule.
Moreover, deepfakes—AI-generated content mimicking Indian Army officials, Kashmiri leaders, or even fake ‘testimonies’ of human rights violations—are now being used to spread doubt, fear, and anger. These are hard to trace, harder to rebut in real-time, and their impact lingers far longer than a bullet’s damage. Add to this the spread of dark web-based radical content, and you have an ecosystem of psychological warfare that requires a different kind of response: not just security operations but narrative building, civic engagement, and digital literacy.
In 2025, Pakistan’s hold over Kashmiri militancy is neither total nor irrelevant. It is fragmented, adaptive, and strategic. It is no longer about controlling every action; it is about influencing the ecosystem that breeds radicalisation.
This has implications for how India secures Kashmir. Hard power must continue along the LoC, but it cannot be the primary response to an ideologically distributed threat. Counter-radicalisation requires sharper investment—through local clergy, civil society, and cyber-surveillance units. India must continue to expose Pakistan’s duplicity at international forums but also invest in regional partnerships—particularly with moderate Muslim powers like the UAE, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia—to counter Pakistan’s Islamic narrative projection. Technology must be weaponised not just for surveillance but to shape counternarratives. This remains an underdeveloped domain despite the growing urgency.
As we mark a new phase in Jammu and Kashmir, it is clear that while the LoC still matters, the real battleground is now in the minds of the youth, the devices in their hands, and the echo chambers of cyberspace. Pakistan’s role may look diminished, but it is actually enhanced and simpler. Its strategy has progressively evolved—from infiltration to influence and from fedayeen to cognitive feeds.
We must maintain optimum operational force levels to hold the periphery, but the centre of gravity now lies elsewhere, which needs a hybrid approach more than ever before. A comprehensive review of the non-kinetic dimension of counterterrorism and the role of security forces is called for.
(Views are personal)
(atahasnain@gmail.com)
Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd) is a former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps; and the Chancellor of the Central University of Kashmir.