Repeat after me -
Pakistan is not Ukraine
Pakistan is not Palestine
Pakistan is not standing between the world and terrorism
Pakistan is the reason for terrorism
This made me cry inside the Briefing Room of National Media Centre, New Delhi. As a victim of Islamist terror sponsored by Pakistan in Kashmir myself, there is only so much one can control emotions. Rememberour 26 civilians who we lost in Pahalgam. Never forget. Never forgive. 💔
#GeneralUpendraDwivedi, #COAS and All Ranks of the #IndianArmy salute the supreme sacrifice of Lance Naik Dinesh Kumar, who laid down his life on 07 May 2025 during ceasefire violations by the Pakistan Army along the Line of Control.
#IndianArmy stands in solidarity with the innocent civilians who are victims of attacks orchestrated through indiscriminate artillery shelling by the adversary in the #Poonch sector.
The nefarious designs of our enemies have been and will continue to be thwarted with resolute and punitive action.
“Bahawalpur.”
I still have chills in my heart from when I first heard that town’s name in late January 2002. For the 23 years since, I have reported on how Pakistani intelligence and military leaders have used that city — Bahawalpur — in the southern province of Punjab as a base for its homegrown domestic terrorists.
When I heard India bombed training camps in Pakistan this week in Operation Sindoor, in response to a Pakistani terrorist rampage in India’s Kashmir state, I had one city’s name on my lips: Bahawalpur.
Did India bomb Bahawalpur?
It did. I knew then India was striking actual hubs for Pakistan’s homegrown domestic terrorism.
Why do I know?
My friend, WSJ reporter Danny Pearl, went to Bahawalpur in December 2001 with a notebook and a pen. Gen. Pervez Musharraf had just promised he was shutting down Pakistan’s militant groups after a strike by Pakistan’s terrorists against the Parliament in India, and Danny reported on the militant offices in Bahawalpur.
He literally knocked on their doors. Dear Dr. @yudapearl, this story is a window into Danny’s reporting enterprise. And because people will wonder: Danny was no cowboy. This was a calculated low-risk reporting trip because no journalist had been targeted for kidnapping in Pakistan. Around that time, Danny sent me an email: “I’m anxious to go to Afghanistan, but I’m not anxious to die.”
What did Danny learn?
The militant training camps were open for business in Bahawalpur.
On Jan. 23, 2002, Danny left a home I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan, for an interview.
I learned Danny’s fixer, Asif Farooqi, had arranged an interview for Danny through a man named “Arif.” Danny didn’t know it but Arif was the PR man for a militant group, Harkutul Mujahadeen. What was Arif’s hometown? Bahawalpur.
The police launched a manhunt to find Arif in Bahawalpur. We learned Arif’s family faked a funeral for Arif. Police found him trying to board a bus in Muzaffarabad, across the country by Pakistan’s border with Kashmir.
It is another town India said it bombed terrorist training facilities.
Arif had handed Danny off to Omar Sheikh,a British-Pakistani dropout from the London School of Economics, radicalized in the 1990s in London mosques. He went to Pakistan to train in these militant training camps. Then he kidnapped tourists in India. He was caught and jailed but on Dec. 31, 1999, he was traded for hostages in the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814.
Omar Sheikh was freed with Pakistani terrorist leader Masood Azhar, whose family was allegedly killed this week by India’s air strike in Bahawalpur.
Did Pakistan jail Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar when they returned to Pakistan with a third terrorist, freed from India’s jails?
No. Pakistan’s military and intelligence gave them safe passage. They used them as weapons against India. But in fact these domestic terrorists have waged war against innocents in Pakistan, like civil society activists, Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, schoolchildren and countless others.
Their extremism has ruined Pakistan, and Pakistanis can’t blame America for creating the mujahideen to fight the Soviets in the 1980s.
Pakistan has had a duty to dismantle those terrorist bases — for even the safety of its own people. What India is doing is a strategic attack on terrorist bases Pakistani military and intelligence should have eliminated but never did in their obsession to take over Kashmir.
You will see parallels in the propaganda messages against India and Israel. Like Hamas, Pakistani terrorists crossed a border to kill. Now, Pakistani propagandists call themselves victims of their “fascist” “colonizer” neighbor.
It’s the Reverse Uno strategy of moral inversion, just like @stoolpresidente got from the Temple student who won’t take responsibility for promoting the “HATE THE JEWS” sign. Don’t fall for it. Nations, communities and people must own up to their extremism, from Bahawalpur to beyond.
#OperationSindoor: Pakistani accounts are peddling old and doctored videos to claim that Indian fighter jets were shot down after Operation Sindoor.
These videos are part of Pakistan's psychological warfare to use fake news to weaken India's morale. @Palkisu fact-checks Pakistan's fake narratives.