The appearance of a retired Pakistan Army Special Services Group (SSG) havildar at a recent press conference by the Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) has brought renewed attention to a recurring feature of Pakistan’s security history: the involvement of serving and former military personnel in terrorist organisations, assassination plots and terrorism-related conspiracies inside and outside the country. A review of documented cases from December 2003 to October 2026 has identified 32 named serving or former Pakistani military personnel who have been convicted, prosecuted, investigated, designated or otherwise credibly linked to terrorist organisations, terrorism-related conspiracies or militant activity. The cases span nearly 23 years, from the attempts to assassinate then President and Army chief Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 to the current dispute over the identity of a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander killed in Jammu and Kashmir.
The figure should not be read as 32 people judicially proven to have committed terrorism. The cases differ substantially in evidentiary status. Some personnel were convicted by Pakistani military courts, some were convicted or prosecuted abroad, others were named in terrorism investigations or designated by foreign governments, while a smaller number remain the subject of allegations or intelligence assessments. The latest disputed case involves Mohammad Asif alias Hashim Moosa, also known as Asif Fauji. On 30 September, Indian security forces said they had killed a senior LeT commander by that name in Jammu and Kashmir. The Ministry of Home Affairs described Musa as the last surviving member of a four-member LeT commander group operating in the region since 2022.
Indian security sources subsequently identified him as a former Pakistan Army havildar who had served with the SSG. Pakistan rejected the identification on 1 October. DG ISPR Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry produced a retired Havaldar Mohammad Asif before the media in Rawalpindi. Asif said he had joined the Pakistan Army in 2000, entered the SSG in 2005 and retired in 2023. He said he was alive and living with his family. Pakistan’s military described the Indian identification as false. This was not the first time that a Pakistani military official has been linked with the terror ecosystem in the last two decades. The personnel identified in these cases include ranks ranging from lance naik and naik to havildar, captain, major, colonel and brigadier. The earliest cluster in the review dates to the two attempts on Musharraf’s life in December 2003. Pakistani military courts convicted personnel over both conspiracies.
Six Pakistan Air Force personnel, Adnan Rashid, Khalid Mehmood, Karam Din, Nawazish, Niaz Mohammad and Nasrullah, were convicted over the 14 December attempt. Five were sentenced to death and Nasrullah received life imprisonment. Adnan Rashid later escaped from Bannu prison during a Taliban attack in 2012 and subsequently emerged as a commander associated with the Tehrike-Taliban Pakistan. The second December 2003 conspiracy involved Army personnel including SSG Naik Arshad Mahmood, Havaldar Mohammad Younis and Lance Naik Zafar Iqbal Dogar. Mahmood was sentenced to death in absentia, Younis received 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment and Dogar abandoned the operation and became a prosecution witness. Army soldier Abdul Islam Siddiqui was separately tried by a military court and executed in August 2005 after being convicted over his role in the 14 December attack. In 2005, six Pakistani military officers were dealt with by a military court over links with al-Qaeda. Colonel Khalid Abbasi, Colonel Abdul Ghaffar, Major Adil Qudoos, Major Attaullah, Major Rohail Faraz and Captain Usman Zafar were tried. Qudoos was sentenced to 10 years, Ghaffar to three years and Abbasi to six months, while Attaullah, Faraz and Zafar were dismissed from service. Another military-court case that year involved three Pakistan Air Force personnel convicted over links with Jaish-e-Mohammed. Nauman Khattak and Saeed Alam were sentenced to two years each, while Munir Ahmed received nine years. In 2012, a Pakistan Army court martial convicted Brigadier Ali Khan and four majors, Inayat Aziz, Iftikhar, Sohail Akbar and Jawad Baseer, over links with Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Ali Khan received five years’ rigorous imprisonment, Sohail Akbar three years, Jawad Baseer two years, and Inayat Aziz and Iftikhar 18 months each. The largest cluster of cases involving LeT-related activity emerged from investigations into the 2008 Mumbai attacks and associated international plots. India’s National Investigation Agency has identified Major Iqbal and Major Sameer Ali as Pakistani intelligence officers whose roles emerged during its investigation into the Mumbai conspiracy. The NIA also identified retired Pakistan Army Major Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, alias Pasha, as a conspirator and issued non-bailable warrants and sought international assistance in the case. US federal proceedings separately implicated Major Iqbal in the Mumbai conspiracy. A US indictment alleged that Iqbal communicated with David Headley through Tahawwur Rana and subsequently met Headley and received information from him about surveillance conducted in India. Tahawwur Rana was another former Pakistani military officer in the wider network. Rana had served as a captain and general-duty practitioner in the Pakistan Army Medical Corps before leaving the military. A US federal jury convicted him in 2011 of providing material support to LeT and participating in a conspiracy to support a terrorist plot in Denmark. He was sentenced to 14 years in January 2013.
Rana was extradited from the United States to India in April 2025 and is facing charges in India relating to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. His extradition does not alter the scope of his US conviction, which concerned material support to LeT and the Denmark conspiracy. Former Army Major Haroon Ashiq and his younger brother, former Army Captain Khurram Ashiq, form another strand of the record. Pakistani reporting has described Haroon as a former SSG commando who left the Army after 2001 and subsequently joined LeT before becoming associated with al-Qaeda’s network. Khurram was an Army officer and an assault commander in the SSG’s Zarrar Company. Sajid Mir, one of the most important LeT figures associated with the Mumbai attacks, requires a separate qualification. US authorities identify him as a senior LeT member and allege that he was the organisation’s operations manager for the Mumbai attacks. A Paris court convicted him in absentia in 2007 and sentenced him to 10 years. The US Justice Department prosecuted Rana and separately indicted Major Iqbal and retired Major Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed in connection with terrorism conspiracies involving LeT and the Denmark plot. The FBI continues to identify Sajid Mir as wanted for terrorism-related offences. Ilyas Kashmiri is another important but qualified case. The United Nations sanctions material identifies him as a deceased leader of Harakat-ul-Jihad Islami and describes his coordination with the Taliban and alQaeda. US prosecutors also indicted him in connection with the Denmark terrorism plot. Multiple Pakistani and international reports have described Kashmiri as a former Pakistan Army SSG commando.
Many of the cases overlap organisationally. Adnan Rashid later became associated with the TTP, while Haroon Ashiq and Khurram Ashiq were reported to have moved through LeT and alQaeda-linked networks. Kashmiri was associated with HUJI and al-Qaeda, while the Mumbai investigation involved both LeT and HUJI figures.
These developments have also generated a wider academic debate about radicalisation within Pakistan’s security establishment. A 2002 International Crisis Group report examined the relationship between Pakistan’s military, religious networks, madrasa education and Islamist militancy. A 2009 policy paper published by the US National Defense University explicitly examined what its authors called the radicalisation of the Pakistani Army and ISI, arguing that the two institutions had deliberately used Islamist radicalism as part of Pakistan’s security strategy.
There have also been studies that reach more qualified conclusions. Georgetown scholar C. Christine Fair’s 2011 study, “Has the Pakistan Army Islamized? What the Data Suggest”, used districtlevel recruitment and retirement data to examine the backgrounds of Army officers and questioned whether the available evidence supported the proposition that the officer corps as a whole had become Islamised. More recently, a 2020 United States Institute of Peace study examined the Pakistan Army’s own deradicalisation programmes and its experience in dealing with violent extremism. The study was based on fieldwork in Pakistan.
