Pakistan and India, two nuclear-armed rivals in South Asia, are once again on the brink of a catastrophe. On Wednesday, India launched missile strikes in nine different districts across Pakistan, killing at least thirty-one civilians, including an eight-year-old, in one of the most dangerous escalations in decades. The incident also witnessed the largest aerial battle in history between the two neighbors, involving 125 fighter jets. On Thursday, India further escalated the aggression by using Israeli manufactured Harop drones in a number of cities in Pakistan, creating panic and anger across the country. After a series of Indian attacks on military installations and civilian sites, Pakistan retaliated on Saturday by attacking military installations in a number of cities in India, resulting in unprecedented tensions between the neighboring countries.
There is today a fragile cease-fire, with violations reported already. This is a perilous conflict — the product of historical contradictions within South Asia but also the intensifying contradictions undergirding the global order.
The immediate prompt for the latest tensions was an attack in Pahalgam in Indian-occupied Kashmir that killed twenty-six tourists, the deadliest terror incident in India since the Mumbai attack in 2008. The Indian government, beholden to its Hindu nationalist base and a hysterical media frenzy, immediately blamed Pakistan and suspended the Indus Water Treaty, a bilateral water-sharing agreement between the two countries signed in 1960. India also rejected Pakistan’s offer for…
Auteur: Ammar Ali Jan
