TOI correspondent from Washington: Pakistan on Thursday suffered the humiliation of having its latest terror avatar, The Resistance Front (TRF), responsible for the Pahalgam massacre that killed 26 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, being designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the US State Department. In a statement announcing the designation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the TRF, whose existence Islamabad denies, a “front and proxy” for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistan-backed terror outfit responsible for numerous terror attacks in India, including the 26/11 Mumbai carnage that killed 159.
The linkage endorsed India’s stand that LeT, also previously designated as a global terror outfit, continues to re-invent itself in Pakistan under new names and stage attacks against India. In a separate notification published in the Federal Register, Rubio said based upon a review of the administrative record assembled in this matter, and in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, he has concluded that “there is a sufficient factual basis to find that Lashkar-e-Tayyiba uses the additional aliases The Resistance Front; TRF; Kashmir Resistance Front; and Kashmir Resistance.”“These actions… demonstrates the Trump Administration’s commitment to protecting our national security interests, countering terrorism, and enforcing President Trump’s call for justice for the Pahalgam attack,” Rubio said in a statement, even as Islamabad is angling for a US presidential visit to Pakistan on the margins of the Quad summit in India later this year.In addition to being designated FTOs, the LeT proxies were also categorized as Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in concurrence with the Department of Treasury. The US designations come as a huge embarrassment for Pakistan and its patron China, which by Islamabad’s own admission, had blocked direct mention of “The Resistance Front” (TRF) in statements issued by the UN Security Council, after the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025 even though India presented evidence linking TRF to Lashkar-e-Taiba.China has a history of blocking India’s attempts to designate Pakistan-based terrorists and terror outfits under the UN Security Council’s 1267 sanctions regime, among several factors inhibiting ties between New Delhi and Beijing.The State Department designations also come at an awkward time for Pakistan, which is trying to worm its way back into US patronage with sketchy business outreach through Trump surrogates. The efforts netted a White House luncheon invitation for Pakistan’s military ruler Asim Munir with the US President last month, with high hopes that Trump would visit Islamabad on his way to the Quad summit in India later this year. Pakistan reacted with its customary denials to the terror designations, insisting it is a “frontline state against terrorism” despite legions of terrorists from Osama bin Laden to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed sheltering there and its nationals conducting numerous terrorist attacks across the world, including in the US. “Investigations into Pahalgam incident…are still inconclusive. Any linkage with LeT, a defunct organization banned in Pakistan belies ground realities,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry maintained in a statement soon after Washington said LeT had spawned proxies such as TRF.While insisting that it has “effectively and comprehensively dismantled concerned outfits, arrested and prosecuted the leadership, and deradicalized its cadres,” Pakistan at the same time invoked its arrest and extradition to the US of Sharifullah, mastermind of the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul that killed 13 US personnel, to claim it remains a “counterterrorism bulwark.”
