Lashkar-e-Taiba in the context of "Jaish-e-Mohammed"

The 2025 India–Pakistan conflict was a brief armed conflict between India and Pakistan that began on 7 May 2025, after India launched missile strikes on Pakistan, in a military campaign codenamed Operation Sindoor. India said that the operation was in response to the Pahalgam terrorist attack in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir on 22 April 2025 in which 26 civilians were killed. India accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism, which Pakistan denied.

On 7 May, India launched Operation Sindoor with missile strikes on terrorism-related infrastructure facilities of Pakistan-based militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir, and said that no Pakistani military or civilian facilities were targeted. According to Pakistan, the Indian strikes hit civilian areas, including mosques, and resulted in civilian casualties. Following these strikes, there were border skirmishes and drone strikes between the two countries. Pakistan's army retaliated on 7 May, by launching a blitz of mortar shells on Jammu, particularly Poonch, killing civilians, and damaging homes and religious sites. This conflict marked the first drone battle between the two nuclear-armed nations.

The 2001–2002 India–Pakistan standoff was a military standoff between India and Pakistan that resulted in the massing of troops on both sides of the border and along the Line of Control (LoC) in the region of Kashmir. This was the second major military standoff between India and Pakistan following the successful detonation of nuclear devices by both countries in 1998, after the Kargil War of 1999.

The military buildup was initiated by India responding to a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on 13 December 2001 (during which twelve people, including the five terrorists who attacked the building, were killed) and the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly on 1 October 2001 in which 38 people were killed. India claimed that the attacks were carried out by two Pakistan-based terror groups fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir—Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both of whom India has said are backed by Pakistan's ISI–a charge that Pakistan has denied. Farooq Abdullah the then chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state urged India to launch a war against militant training camps across the border in Pakistan.

The 2025 Pahalgam attack, also referred to as the 2025 Pahalgam massacre, was an Islamist terrorist attack on tourists by at least three armed terrorists near Pahalgam in India's Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed on 22 April 2025. The militants targeted Hindu tourists, though a Christian tourist and a local Muslim pony ride operator were also killed. The attackers, armed with M4 carbines and AK-47s, entered the Baisaran Valley, a famous tourist spot, through the surrounding forests. This incident is considered the deadliest attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy of the Pakistan-based Islamist UN-designated terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), initially claimed responsibility for the attack twice, on both the day of the attack and the next day. TRF released a statement that the attack was in opposition to non-local settlement in the region resulting from the abolition of the special status of Kashmir. After a few days, TRF denied its involvement in the attack. Previously, TRF has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir targeting religious minorities.

Pakistan and state-sponsored terrorism refers to the involvement of Pakistan in terrorism through the backing of various designated terrorist organisations. Pakistan has been frequently accused by various countries, including its neighbours Afghanistan, Iran, and India, as well as by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, of involvement in a variety of terrorist activities in both its local region of South Asia and beyond. Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border have been described as an effective safe haven for terrorists by Western media and the United States Secretary of Defense, while India has accused Pakistan of perpetuating the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir by providing financial support and armaments to militant groups, as well as by sending state-trained terrorists across the Line of Control and de facto India–Pakistan border to launch attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir and India proper, respectively. According to an analysis published by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in 2008, Pakistan was reportedly, with the possible exception of Iran, perhaps the world's most active sponsor of terrorist groups; aiding these groups that pose a direct threat to the United States. Pakistan's active participation has caused thousands of deaths in the region; all these years Pakistan has been supportive to several terrorist groups despite several stern warnings from the international community. Daniel Byman, a professor and senior analyst of terrorism and security at the Center For Middle East Policy, also wrote that Pakistan is probably 2008's most active sponsor of terrorism. In 2018, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, suggested that the Pakistani government (see The Establishment) played a role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group. In July 2019, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, on an official visit to the United States, acknowledged the presence of some 30,000–40,000 armed terrorists operating on Pakistani soil. He further stated that previous administrations were hiding this truth, particularly from the United States, for the last 15 years during the war on terror.

The United States' State Sponsors of Terrorism designation list describes Pakistan as a terrorist safe haven where individual terrorists and terrorist groups are able to organise, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit, train, transit, and operate in relative security because of inadequate/supportive governance, political will, or both. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda and mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs during Operation Neptune Spear at his compound near the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.