Frederick Forsyth’s Avenger never enjoyed the cult reverence of The Day of the Jackal. But buried in its pages is a sprawling geopolitical thriller that predicted the unthinkable: the convergence of terror networks, state complicity, and cold American pragmatism. It ends on September 10, 2001 — the day before the world changed forever.
But to understand how we got there, and why it still matters in 2025, rewind a little. To a quiet garrison town called Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden once lounged in his compound, sipping chai not far from Pakistan’s elite military academy. That scene wasn’t fiction — it was a living embodiment of the double game Forsyth wrote about.
And now, more than two decades later, Pakistan is finally saying it out loud. Not just with its nukes or Chinese loans, but with something far more explosive: the admission that, for over thirty years, it has done America’s “dirty work” — by nursing terror groups like a favourite child with rabies.
The Dirty Work Diaries
Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s defence minister and professional foot-in-mouth specialist, recently sat down with Sky News and delivered a bombshell with casual ease. “We’ve been doing the US’s dirty work for decades,” he declared, as if he were confessing to watching reality TV, not running a global terror incubator.
And because Islamabad rarely does subtle, former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari joined the confession chorus. “It’s no secret that Pakistan has a past,” he said, before vaguely hinting that Western powers were also in on it. They always are.
Even Hillary Clinton once warned, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.” The difference now? The snakes have LinkedIn pages, diplomatic immunity, and business class tickets — funded by Western taxpayers.
This isn’t a leak. It’s a megaphone.
Geopolitical Catfish: Always Swiping Right
Let’s not pretend this is breaking news. Pakistan’s love affair with jihadist proxies is older than WhatsApp forwards. The real story isn’t that they did it — it’s that they’re finally admitting it while expecting applause.
Over the decades, Pakistan has gone from Moscow’s sulking ex to Washington’s Cold War darling to Beijing’s “Iron Brother.” A geopolitical catfish — charming, needy, and never quite what it claimed to be. Always on someone’s payroll, always dodging accountability, and always ready to play the victim.
It’s the global version of Tinder diplomacy: swipe right for dollars, swipe left for deniability.
How the Barracks Became the Nation
To understand Pakistan’s present, you have to understand what it never had: a civilian centre of gravity. While India handed power to babus and ballots, Pakistan handed it to the barracks. There’s an old anecdote recalled by historian Anvar Alikhan: in 1957, Prime Minister Nehru visited General Thimayya’s office and noticed a steel cabinet. “What’s inside?” he asked. “Top drawer: defence plans,” replied the general. “Second drawer: files on our top brass. Third drawer: my plans for a military coup against you.”
Nehru laughed. Nervously. But in India, that joke stayed in the drawer. In Pakistan, it became quarterly policy. Over time, the army took over law and order, then the economy, and eventually the national identity. It ran everything from cement factories to cereal brands. By the time it tested nuclear weapons, it wasn’t just defending the country — it was defining it.
And like every empire, it needed loyal foot soldiers. Enter: the jihadis.
Terror as Start-Up Strategy
From the Mujahideen of the 1980s to the Taliban of the 1990s to Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operatives in the 2000s, the ISI became the Silicon Valley of global jihad. If Al-Qaeda had an IPO, Rawalpindi would’ve underwritten it.
Remember the 2008 Mumbai attacks? Nawaz Sharif admitted non-state actors from Pakistan carried them out. General Musharraf confessed to training militants for Kashmir. And bin Laden, of course, was found in Abbottabad — watching TV, browsing jihadist DVDs, and waving at the neighbours.
None of this was shocking. The only shock is that they’ve stopped pretending otherwise.
Pahalgam and the Speech That Preceded It
On April 22, terrorists struck in Pahalgam, Kashmir, killing 26 people, including a Nepali tourist. Just days earlier, Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, stood at the Pakistan Military Academy and delivered a speech soaked in ideology: “Muslims are distinct from Hindus in all aspects… the two-nation theory is the basis of our identity.” “Kashmir is our jugular vein. It was, is, and always will be ours.”
Not even subtle. And soon after, the bloodshed began.
Coincidence? Only if you believe in unicorns.
Zia with a PowerPoint
Munir isn’t just a general. He’s a revival project — a bearded redux of Zia-ul-Haq with better Wi-Fi. A hafiz-e-Quran, ideologically devout, and unapologetically public in his Islamist vision. Bruce Riedel once asked: What if Pakistan is taken over not by a coup, but by a slow-moving theocratic general with nukes and proxies? That’s not a hypothetical anymore. That’s Tuesday.
The Coup That Doesn’t Need a Coup
Today, civilian rule in Pakistan is like Wi-Fi in a moving train: technically present, but don’t count on it. The hybrid regime is dead. The PDM is in shambles. Imran Khan is behind bars. Parliament rubber-stamps what Rawalpindi decides. And the Constitution is more tissue than text.
Yet for all its power, the army can’t fix the mess it created. Because the truth is: even absolute control doesn’t translate to functional governance. You can’t drone-strike your way out of inflation.
A Partition of the Mind
India and Pakistan may have been born from the same womb, but the afterbirths were very different. India inherited British bureaucracy. Pakistan inherited the British army. And terrorism inherited Pakistan.
Today, the army doesn’t just defend the nation. It defines it — through fear, fiction, and fundamentalism. Under Munir, the two-nation theory isn’t a historical artefact. It’s a live policy document with marching orders.
And Kashmir remains the crown jewel of grievance, not diplomacy.
From Confession to Collapse?
So here we are. A defence minister who casually admits to decades of proxy terror. A former foreign minister who shrugs off history like dandruff. An army chief reviving partition-era dogma while Kashmir bleeds. This isn’t a turning point. It’s a point of no return. For decades, the West outsourced its terror management to Pakistan — paying it to fight some terrorists while it bred new ones. The dollars kept flowing. The dead kept piling. And no one asked too many questions. But now the masks are off. The snakes are out. And Pakistan has finally said the quiet part out loud. The real question now isn’t whether Pakistan supports terrorism. It’s what the world plans to do now that Pakistan finally admitted it.
