'We created mujahideens to bleed India. Now they have turned guns on us': Pak PM aide Rana Sanaullah video goes viral amid PoK elections

A clip of Pakistan's political affairs adviser admitting to Islamabad's own militancy playbook is doing the rounds online, and it couldn't have come at a worse moment for Rawalpindi. The adviser to Pakistan's Prime Minister Rana Sanaullah on political affairs was speaking on the unrest in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) when he said something Pakistani officials almost never say out loud: the very fighters Islamabad once trained and sent across as "mujahideen" are now the region's biggest headache.

In his own words, those mujahideens were told to go and fight, and ever since, they've been stuck around Pakistan's neck. He added that these groups are still armed, still active on the ground, and, in his telling, have no genuine political demand or public cause left. He accused them of hiding behind ordinary civilians as a shield and said law enforcement action against them was the only option left to restore order.

Why This Is Blowing Up Right Now

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is currently in the middle of a staggered, three-phase assembly election that has turned violently chaotic. The first phase, held on July 27 in the Mirpur division, descended into gunfire, with security forces opening fire on protesters and reports putting the death toll at close to twenty, with dozens more injured. Videos circulating online showed armed men making off with ballot boxes, voters fleeing polling booths, and clashes breaking out at stations where staff were allegedly held hostage by angry crowds.

The unrest isn't new, it's been building for close to two months. The Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a local rights group, has been leading protests over inflation, electricity bills, and what it calls a rigged system that hands outsized influence to twelve refugee seats in the 53-member assembly, seats reserved for Kashmiris who migrated to Pakistan proper decades ago. Islamabad banned the JAAC ahead of a planned demonstration in June and arrested several of its leaders, which, predictably, only poured fuel on the fire.

Among the dead in the latest round of firing was the brother of a senior JAAC leader. Other JAAC figures have vowed to keep marching toward Muzaffarabad regardless of the crackdown, insisting the movement won't back down until its demands are met. Meanwhile, Pakistan's own defence minister added to the controversy this week by reportedly branding the protesters as being on par with India in terms of hostility to the state, a remark that hasn't exactly helped calm nerves on the ground.

A Pakistan's Confession That Fits An Old Pattern

For Indian security watchers, none of this is exactly breaking news, it's confirmation. Pakistan's use of non-state militant proxies against India, dating back to the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan war, has been documented for decades: training camps, cross-border infiltration, and a strategy widely described as an attempt to weaken India through a slow accumulation of small, deniable attacks rather than open war. What's rare is a serving Pakistani official conceding, however indirectly, that the same machinery has now turned inward.

Sanaullah's statement also lands just weeks after he told Pakistan's Senate that thousands of fighters were being trained across the border in Afghanistan, a claim he tied, without much evidence offered publicly, to funding from India and Israel. Pakistani officials have repeatedly tried to pin the blame for the country's rising militancy problem on outside actors even as the video now circulating suggests a more homegrown origin story.

PoK Elections

The remaining two phases of the PoJK election are scheduled for August 2 (covering the Muzaffarabad division and the contested refugee seats) and August 10 (covering the Poonch division, where tensions along the Line of Control are already running highest). Given how badly phase one went, there's little reason to expect a smoother ride ahead, especially with the JAAC digging in, banks and mobile networks already disrupted in several districts, and now a senior PM aide's own words feeding the narrative that the region's instability is a problem of Pakistan's own making.

India, for its part, has used the unrest to reiterate its long-standing position that the entire Jammu and Kashmir region, PoJK included, is legally and constitutionally part of India, and that the current chaos is the predictable outcome of decades of what New Delhi calls administrative neglect and repression under Pakistani control.

Whether Sanaullah's remarks were a slip or a calculated bit of damage control aimed at justifying a security crackdown, the clip has already done what viral clips do best: it's given both sides of the India-Pakistan discourse fresh ammunition, right as the world watches how the next two rounds of voting in PoK play out.