Kabul, February 22 – Pakistan’s military establishment is providing operational space to radical Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, enabling support for local terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and seeking backing from Islamic nations regarding Gaza and Kashmir.
However, this convergence increases the risks of "miscalculation, ideological spillover, and proxy entanglement" across two already "volatile" regions of South Asia and the Middle East, a report said on Sunday.
According to a report by the Afghan Diaspora Network, to prevent a new wave of proxy conflicts and armed confrontations in these regions, the international community should treat Pakistan’s pivot to the Middle East as an urgent risk-management challenge.
As the report suggests, Pakistan has long been backing and supporting UN-designated terrorist organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in their anti-India endeavors.
Even when Pakistan banned these groups under international pressure, the report said that they continue to maintain a very active operational space through affiliates and front structures.
“This matters because when Pakistan simultaneously boosts its security footprint in the Middle East, its open support for Islamist terrorist outfits becomes a regional problem, not just a South Asian one,” the report detailed.
“In parallel, Pakistan’s mainstream political and religious platforms have increasingly provided support to Hamas representatives for propaganda purposes. In January 2024, Pakistan’s Senate hosted Hamas representative Khaled Qaddoumi, and senators publicly welcomed him. In February 2025, Qaddoumi participated in an event in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and met Pakistani religious, political, and known terrorist figures,” it added.
The report highlighted that this serves as evidence that Pakistan is hosting Hamas to mobilize local and international terror organizations against Western countries, Israel, and India.
“Hamas is widely designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, among others, and its fundraising and support networks have been a live enforcement issue in Western jurisdictions. When Hamas figures are treated as honoured guests in Pakistan’s political spaces, it creates two downstream risks: first, Pakistan’s domestic Islamist ecosystem becomes a magnet for transnational mobilisation narratives; second, Pakistan further vindicates the global narrative that it is a terror-sponsoring nation,” it noted.
The report further said, “There have been concerns regarding support to Pakistan-based terror groups from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The sheer presence of representatives from these banned Islamist outfits in Pakistan suggests a systematic and operational support for LeT and JeM.”