“Our forces are tracking down militants on a daily basis,” he said. “We are constantly upgrading our equipment and have the latest weaponry at our disposal.”
The militant groups JeM and LeT could be buying U.S. weapons from the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the United Nations says both groups have bases, or through smugglers in Pakistan, said Ajai Sahni, an author on counterterrorism who serves as executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, a think tank in New Delhi.
Militants will struggle to get the upper hand, however, without more advanced weapons that have greater firepower but are more difficult to smuggle into the region, Sahni said.
Schroden said that although he had not seen substantial reports of U.S.-made weapons left behind in Afghanistan appearing outside of Kashmir, it would not be surprising if they eventually began turning up farther away in places such as Yemen, Syria and parts of Africa.
“I suspect there hasn’t yet been enough time for these weapons to percolate out that far,” he said. “It’s also possible that the Taliban have held tightly to most of them thus far as part of their efforts to consolidate power and seek legitimization from the international community.”
Beyond weapons, the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan gave an ideological boost to radical militants in Kashmir and elsewhere, said Ahmad Shuja Jamal, a former Afghan civil servant living in exile in Australia.
Such militants, he said, “now see in clear terms the political dividends of long-term violence.”