OPINION | Unmasking Cross-Border Terror: What the Nagrota Attack Revealed About Pakistan’s Long Game

By Ashu Maan

When Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists slipped into the Indian Army’s 166 Field Regiment camp in Nagrota on 29 November 2016, the assault unfolded with the precision of men who had been trained, briefed, and guided long before they crossed into India. They entered in the early hours, wearing police uniforms to mask their approach, and moved with the confidence of a team that understood both the terrain and its objectives. Seven Indian soldiers were killed, including officers who fought through the confusion of a sudden close-quarter encounter to prevent an even larger tragedy.

For many outside the region, Nagrota appeared as another fidayeen attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s long, violent history. For those who track Pakistan-based terror networks, it was something far more significant. Nagrota was a carefully calibrated operation that revealed how Pakistan continues to cultivate and deploy terrorist organizations as instruments of statecraft, allowing it to exert pressure on India without crossing into direct conflict.

Investigations by the National Investigation Agency later reconstructed the chain that brought the three Pakistani terrorists to Nagrota. They did not emerge spontaneously from a local radical network; they traveled through a tested infiltration ecosystem that began deep inside Pakistan and ended inside a residential compound of an Indian Army camp. According to the NIA’s charge sheet filed in 2018, the attack was planned by JeM’s deputy chief, Maulana Abdul Rouf Asgar, the brother of Masood Azhar. His involvement placed the strike squarely within the structure of Pakistan-based command and control. This was not a freelance jihadist mission. It was a directed operation.

The men who executed the attack had crossed into India through the international border belt, not the Line of Control, and were guided through a network of over-ground workers who provided shelter, transport, and reconnaissance. That network—built over years of Pakistan-backed infiltrations—helped them reach Nagrota without attracting early detection. Their behavior inside the camp reflected prior instruction: they headed toward the living quarters, sought to exploit the presence of families, and attempted to prolong the confrontation, a tactic long associated with JeM’s fidayeen style of operations.

The ideological packaging came afterward. JeM-linked publications portrayed the attack as revenge for Afzal Guru, continuing a narrative the group had used in earlier incidents. But the ideological framing served mostly as a cover for what was, at its core, a strategic message. The Nagrota attack took place just weeks after India’s surgical strikes on terrorist launch pads across the LoC—a watershed moment that challenged years of Pakistani assumptions about India’s threshold for retaliation. At a moment when Pakistan’s security establishment was under diplomatic strain, a spectacular strike inside India allowed it to convey that its terror infrastructure remained intact.

This pattern—Pakistan turning to proxy groups during periods of internal or external pressure—repeats across major attacks. The 2001 Parliament attack came at a time of geopolitical isolation for Pakistan. The 2008 Mumbai attacks occurred amid internal political flux and intense scrutiny of Pakistan’s links to extremist networks. Uri in 2016 erupted during a moment of domestic unrest inside Kashmir and diplomatic challenges for Islamabad. The Pulwama bombing in 2019 emerged when Pakistan faced economic distress and renewed international pressure. More recently, the United States formally designated The Resistance Front (TRF), identified by India and the U.S. as a Lashkar-e-Taiba proxy, reaffirming that Pakistan’s proxy ecosystem continues to adapt rather than recede.

Nagrota fits neatly into this long arc. It exposed how infiltration routes remained active despite global attention, how JeM leadership persisted within Pakistan despite repeated proscription orders, and how genuine operational capacity remained available to groups that enjoy sanctuary on Pakistani soil. It also highlighted an uncomfortable truth: many in the international system still prefer to separate Pakistan from the terror groups operating inside its borders, even when evidence demonstrates direct linkage.

This reluctance to confront the proxy problem allows Pakistan’s deep state to maintain ambiguity. Groups like JeM are proscribed on paper but permitted to rebrand, reorganize, and operate under new fronts. Their leadership periodically disappears from public view only to resurface without consequence. Training infrastructure is dispersed but never dismantled. The ecosystem bends, but it does not break.

Nagrota, while far less globally visible than 26/11 or Pulwama, is a crucial case study for understanding how modern state-supported terrorism functions. It reveals a model in which carefully trained terror cells are deployed for limited but high-impact objectives; where deniability is preserved through ideological messaging and cut-outs; and where escalation is kept below the threshold that would force an open confrontation. This is the “long game” that Pakistan has pursued for decades—one that depends on maintaining the fiction of non-state actors while using them for strategic leverage.

For policymakers outside South Asia, Nagrota should matter precisely because it did not become a global headline. It demonstrates how relatively low-casualty attacks can carry significant geopolitical meaning, how cross-border terror infrastructure persists under the radar, and how the absence of sustained international pressure enables the continuation of proxy warfare.

As long as Pakistan maintains its architecture of protected leadership, training ecosystems, and infiltration pipelines, groups like JeM will remain available tools for strategic messaging and calibrated disruption. Nagrota was one expression of that system. It will not be the last.

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About the Author

Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. He is pursuing a PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.