Originally published at: https://sundayguardianlive.com/investigation/exporting-extremism-why-pakistani-nationals-frequent-europes-security-files
“Europe long viewed the Pakistan terror problem as a distant by-product of subcontinental rivalries. That illusion is now cracking.“
From shadowy jihadist cells in Barcelona to child grooming rings in Rochdale, sham marriages in Cyprus to mass drownings off the coast of Greece–the common link is no longer invisible. Pakistani nationals are turning up with increasing frequency in European security files, not as victims of circumstance but as architects of civil disruption. According to Justice Project Pakistan, over 22,000 Pakistanis are currently imprisoned abroad, with a steadily growing footprint in Europe. The nature of their offences is no longer confined to minor immigration infractions. In case after case, the charges now include terrorist conspiracy, human trafficking, sexual violence, and cyber incitement. The world can no longer pretend this is a regional anomaly and afford to ignore what India has long contended: Pakistan-sponsored extremism is not South Asia’s concern alone, it is a global threat.
A Multilayered Pattern, Not a Problem of Strays
Spain offers perhaps the most chilling example in recent times. In March 2025, 11 Pakistanis were arrested for allegedly operating under the banner of a “radical Pakistani organisation”. Authorities described a “hierarchical network” using encrypted channels for indoctrination, glorifying beheadings, and targeting individuals across Europe. More disturbingly, women within the group reportedly selected potential victims, an evolution of gendered radicalisation rarely documented in Western intelligence circles. Yet, this wasn’t Spain’s first encounter. Just five months earlier, in November 2023, 14 more Pakistani nationals were detained across Spanish provinces in connection with a jihadist propaganda ring. According to Spanish authorities, the group was actively radicalising young men online, creating “highly ideologically charged communities” in multiple regions.
Perhaps no other issue illustrates the complexity and controversy of Pakistan-linked criminality in Europe more than the grooming gang scandals that have haunted towns across the United Kingdom. As The Spectator put it in a 2025 exposé:
“The perpetrators of three of the most gruesome child abuse scandals in modern British history…were overwhelmingly of Pakistani origin.”
In Rochdale, the epicentre of one of the most notorious cases, two convicted offenders–Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf–are finally set to be deported to Pakistan, after exhausting a seven-year legal battle to remain in the UK. But these two are merely the most recent names in a scandal far larger than one trial or town. Operation Doublet, the police investigation that unravelled the Rochdale network, led to over 100 arrests, with the vast majority of suspects having ties to the local Pakistani community. This pattern was echoed in similar abuse scandals in Rotherham and Telford, where hundreds of vulnerable white British girls, many of them in care homes, were systematically groomed, drugged, raped, and trafficked over the years.
In the digital theatre, the lines blur further. In August 2024, a Pakistani web developer, Farhan Asif, was arrested by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore after fake news he published fuelled violent race riots in Southport, Britain. His post, originating from Channel3Now, falsely claimed that the suspect in a triple stabbing was a “Muslim asylum seeker on an MI6 watchlist.” Even though he confessed to spreading unverified claims, the case was later dropped due to ‘lack of evidence’. Nonetheless, the damage was done, and illustrated a powerful new truth: instability can now be outsourced digitally, at low cost, across borders. This episode also encapsulates a troubling pattern: Pakistan publicly signals cooperation with Western partners, offering arrests and bilateral assurances, but consistently fails to prosecute or meaningfully punish those involved. Behind the façade of action lies a legal system either unwilling or incapable of holding its own citizens accountable for the chaos they incite abroad. Foreign instability can be manufactured online in Pakistan, exported at the speed of an upload, and met with impunity.
In the 2020 Charlie Hebdo case in France, Zaheer Mahmood, a Pakistani national, arrived in France illegally, lied about his age, spoke no French, and lived entirely within a Pakistani diaspora bubble, culturally and socially disconnected from French society. His ideological compass pointed to Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a radical Pakistani cleric whose sermons Mahmood followed online. Armed with a meat cleaver, Mahmood attacked and severely wounded two journalists outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices. In January 2025, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy. His case exemplifies how radicalisation pipelines that begin in Pakistan now extend directly into Europe, often via digital platforms that indoctrinate isolated migrants who have slipped through immigration systems.
Europe’s Borders as Criminal Superhighways
The broader issue isn’t just about who commits an act of terror, but how they reach European shores. Mahmood’s case was a warning that illegal immigration, when left unchecked, can become a gateway for imported extremism. In April 2024, Europol and Romanian police dismantled a human trafficking network made up of Romanian and Pakistani members, which exploited the EU work visa system to smuggle migrants, primarily from Pakistan, Egypt, and Bangladesh, into the Schengen zone. Investigations revealed that the network filed as many as 509 fake work permit applications and generated over €1 million in illicit profits through this elaborate trafficking pipeline. Pakistani recruiters managed operations from the home country, while the European leg arranged transportation across the Romanian-Hungarian border, often via green routes on foot or hidden inside vehicles.
The sea has become another border breached. The June 2023 shipwreck off Pylos, Greece, which killed over 500 migrants, was one of the deadliest maritime disasters in recent history. In its aftermath, seven key smugglers were arrested in Pakistan, and three others were later detained in Italy for extradition on charges of facilitating illegal migration and procuring fraudulent work visas. This wasn’t a rogue operation. According to Pakistani authorities, each migrant paid $5,000-$8,000 and more than 30 individuals were involved in this single trafficking pipeline. Pakistan’s name has now become tragically synonymous not just with radicalism, but with mass exploitation of economic desperation, feeding an illegal migration industry that puts thousands of lives at risk.
Conclusion: Not Just India’s Problem
For decades, Indian intelligence and policy voices have stood almost alone in calling out Pakistan’s complicity in fostering terrorist groups. Europe, however, long viewed this problem as a distant by-product of subcontinental rivalries. That illusion is now cracking. According to the European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT) 2024, in 2023, jihadist terrorism was the deadliest threat to Europe. While the report primarily highlights Islamic State, the ideological convergence with terror groups and the radicalisation pipelines from Pakistan warrant urgent examination.
But it is no longer just about acts of terror. It is about how Europe is being destabilised from within, in slow and corrosive ways. Pakistani nationals are now appearing with alarming frequency across the spectrum of Europe’s civil disorder, from sham marriages and smuggling syndicates to grooming gangs and cyber-operations. And yet, in the face of this hard evidence, the global response defies logic. While European institutions scramble to contain the damage, the world continues to reward the very state at the centre of the crisis. Recently, the Asian Development Bank approved an $800 million bailout package for Pakistan, a month after IMF’s $1 billion payout. Worse still, the very country that nurtures extremism is now being handed the steering wheel to fight it: Pakistan has been appointed to several key counter-terrorism bodies at the UNSC, including chair of the Taliban sanctions committee, vice-chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, and a working group on sanctions enforcement. This is not just contradictory. It is dangerous. The global community cannot outsource the dismantling of terrorism to the country where it is being manufactured.
Pakistan’s government often invokes the welfare of overseas Pakistanis as a priority. But when overseas Pakistanis are arrested for trafficking, terrorism, or cyber warfare, Islamabad’s silence is deafening. In most cases, official statements are absent. In others, denials and acquittals are quietly issued. If Pakistan cannot, or will not, act meaningfully against its nationals who destabilise foreign societies, then it is time for the international community to stop treating these as isolated lapses, and start treating them as part of a systemic pattern of soft impunity. In short, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism is no longer a bilateral issue between New Delhi and Islamabad. What is needed now is not just counterterrorism, but a new doctrine of prevention, cooperation, and political will. For the sake of Europe’s future security, these efforts need to be loud, resolute, and unafraid to call the threat by its name. Because terror doesn’t carry a passport, but too often, it carries a pattern. And Europe is finally beginning to see it.
