While its designation may sound impressive, the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the Security Council's 1267 Sanctions Committee is unfortunately just a 'paper tiger' that bases its reports on feedback from member states without investigating the same or giving any directions.
Its recently released 37th report has linked Pakistan based proscribed terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammad [JeM] to the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam attack, the November 9, 2025 Red Fort suicide car bombing, as well as its formal announcement of a women-only wing named Jamaat-ul-Muminat created for waging global jihad. However, by qualifying that these incidents/developments were what “a member State [implying India] had noted,” the UN report has characteristically not endorsed its own observations on the same.
While New Delhi has hailed this report, with some are even hailing it as vindication of India’s stand on Pakistan sponsored terrorism, others maintain that there’s no reason to celebrate because, by mentioning that “Another Member State [obviously Pakistan] reported that Jaish-i-Mohammad [sic] was defunct,” the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report [like always] is a mere compilation of statements and an open-ended document.
While there’s no doubt that the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team lacks 'teeth' and doesn’t act as an effective deterrent, yet, this report does provide diplomatic leverage. In the instant case, India definitely has an advantage since unlike Islamabad’s palpably false claim of JeM being “defunct,” is a feeble defence- New Delhi’s assertions on JeM’s activities are corroborated by irrefutable hard evidence.
Islamabad’s statement that JeM is “defunct” brings with it a sense of déjà vu. Readers would recall that this is exactly what the Director General [DG] of Pakistan army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations [ISPR] had said seven years ago after Pakistan based JeM took responsibility for Pulwama suicide bomb attack by stating that "Jaish-e-Mohammed does not exist in Pakistan.”
The DG ISPR’s attempt to deny JeM chief’s presence in the country was laughable because just a few days earlier, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had not only confirmed Azhar’s presence in Pakistan but even given his health update by adding “He is very unwell… to the extent that he cannot leave his house.” Yet, DG ISPR expected the world to believe that a person who was so ill that he couldn’t even leave his house had vanished from the country overnight.
The Indian aerial strike on the JeM headquarters at Bahawalpur on May 7 last year that led to its complete destruction evoked widespread protests from several senior JeM leaders. Isn’t this, along with the JeM chief’s own admission that he had lost ten family members in this attack ample proof that despite being a UN proscribed terrorist group, JeM is not only alive and kicking but continues to flourish in Pakistan even today?
In November last year, the discovery of a ‘white collar’ terror module operating from Al Falah University in Faridabad near India’s capital comprising mostly doctors has provided indisputable evidence of JeM’s continuing efforts to orchestrate terrorist activities in India, and the suicide car bomb blast near New Delhi’s Red Fort on November 10 last year by a member of this module is proof of JeM’s sinister designs. A female doctor member of the Al Falah University module has admitted being in contact with JeM chief’s sister Sadia Azhar who is heading this terrorist group’s women wing Jamaat-ul-Maminaat created after Operation Sindoor to wage armed jihad. She has also revealed that being nominated as head of the India chapter of this group and had been tasked to motivate women to join this terrorist organisation.
Islamabad historically follows the “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” stratagem attributed to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and uses every conceivable opportunity to level unsubstantiated allegations blaming India for anything and everything going wrong in Pakistan.
On the other hand, while New Delhi displays diplomatic sagacity by avoiding crying “wolf,” and its responses are civil, fact based, measured, and appropriate, they do give an impression of a reactive approach. While it’s not suggested that New Delhi should get into a verbal duel with Islamabad, there’s definitely a need for India to be more proactive and expose Pakistan’s ongoing use of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy more forcefully by following the 'name and shame' policy.
New Delhi needs to consider undertaking a comprehensive diplomatic exercise to expose Islamabad’s duplicity on the issue of sponsoring terrorism. While issue based responses are necessary, constantly reminding the international community of Islamabad’s past track record of patronising terrorist groups would help them in better understanding of the danger Pakistan’s poses to the world. A few examples of people in high positions in Pakistan revealing how the Pakistan army has institutionalised terrorism:
In 2009, Pakistan’s Daily Times quoted Pakistan’s then President Asif Ali Zardari admitting that “Militancy and extremism emerged on the national scene and challenged the state not because the civil bureaucracy was weakened and demoralised, but because they were deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve some short-term tactical objectives."
In an interview given to Der Spiegel in November 2010, when asked “Why did you form militant underground groups to fight India in Kashmir,” Pakistan’s ex-President and former army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf replied, “They were indeed formed. The government turned a blind eye because they wanted India to discuss Kashmir.
During a panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, in March 2016, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz acknowledged that “We have some influence on them because their leadership is in Pakistan, and they get some medical facilities, their families are here.”
In 2019, chairman of United Jihad Council [a conglomerate of terrorist groups fighting in Kashmir created by Pakistan army’s spy agency Inter Services intelligence] and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin exposed Pakistan army's proxy war by telling Arab News, “We are fighting Pakistan’s war in Kashmir.”
Five years later, in his interview with Pakistan’s Duniya TV, Musharraf boasted, "We introduced 'religious militancy' to flush out [the] Soviets. We brought mujahideens from all over the world.” He also revealed that “We trained [the] Taliban, gave them weapons and sent them for war and they were our heroes-Osama bin Laden and Haqqani were our heroes." He also revealed that “In the 1990s, the freedom struggle began in Kashmir. At that time Lashkar-e-Taiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported them and trained them as they were fighting in Kashmir at the cost of their lives.”
During his 2019 US visit, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan said, “when you talk about militant groups, we still have about 30,000-40,000 armed people who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir."
Pakistan has been getting away with murder thanks to abject apathy displayed by the international community. Nevertheless, New Delhi should continue unmasking Rawalpindi’s nexus with terrorist groups and its proclivity for waging proxy war against its neighbours. Simultaneously, India needs to enhance its anti-terrorism apparatus to effectively tackle the scourge of Pakistan sponsored terrorism single-handedly and in addition to military retribution, also consider non-kinetic measures that impose a prohibitive cost on Islamabad.
And in this regard, holding the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance is a good start!

Email:-------------------nileshkunwar.56@gmail.com