appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Tom Hussain

Sarmad Iqbal

Tensions are again mounting in South Asia after suspected terrorist attacks in Pakistan and India triggered a furious exchange of accusations, including claims of proxy warfare conducted through Afghanistan.
Analysts are cautiously optimistic that renewed conflict can be averted, following deadly clashes between Pakistan and India in May and skirmishes between Pakistani forces and the Afghan Taliban in October. The hope is that restraint and international diplomatic pressure may yet stave off escalation.
But the hardline stances of Islamabad, Kabul and New Delhi leave little room for optimism.
Farwa Aamer, director of South Asia initiatives at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, described the regional security environment as dangerously unstable.
“On one hand, you have cross-border conflicts and fragile ceasefires, and on the other, there is a wave of terror attacks and militant insurgencies, which are all contributing to the growing insecurity that we are witnessing,” she told This Week in Asia.
Addressing parliament on Wednesday, a day after a suicide bombing at a court in Islamabad killed 12 people – the first such attack in Pakistan’s capital since 2022 – Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accused both Kabul and Delhi of working with Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants. His remarks also followed a foiled assault at a cadet college near the Afghan border.
“To these terrorist elements and enemies of Pakistan … we are fully aware of your actions,” Sharif said. “We have given you a befitting response before and will do so again.”


Islamabad’s Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammed Asif alleged in a television interview on Tuesday that some of the attackers were linked to India and others “have their strings being pulled from elsewhere”.
He added that both incidents could serve as “a prelude to a coming [act of] aggression” from Afghan territory on India’s behalf.
India’s foreign ministry dismissed the charges as “baseless and unfounded”.
A day earlier, a car had exploded in Delhi, killing 12 people. Officials condemned the blast as a “terrorist incident” by “antinational forces”.
While Indian investigators have yet to assign blame, their inquiries are focusing on doctors from Kashmir and their alleged links to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) – a Pakistan-based group accused of a suicide bombing in 2019 that killed 40 Indian security personnel.
That attack prompted India to launch unprecedented air strikes inside Pakistan on a JeM seminary, briefly bringing the two nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.
Another deadly assault in Kashmir earlier this year, in which 26 civilians were executed, triggered four days of aerial clashes between India and Pakistan in May, before Saudi and US diplomacy helped bring a halt to hostilities.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for forcing both sides to back down from the brink, threatening to cut off American trade should either escalate further.


Aamer said she did not expect the latest violence to spiral into conflict similar to May’s clashes but warned that “all countries involved, including Afghanistan, should ensure we don’t get into that kind of confrontation”.
The heavy toll of earlier conflicts would likely constrain escalation, said Fahd Humayun, an assistant professor of political science at Tufts University in the US.
Yet “neither the India-Pakistan nor the Pakistan-Afghanistan dyads [relationships] are stable enough to rule out the possibility of inadvertent escalation,” he told This Week in Asia.
He said Pakistan’s “tolerance for continued cross-border militancy is likely to be very low, given the strain it places on the state”.
Mediation by third parties such as Turkey or Qatar could only be considered effective if it led to a halt in cross-border attacks, Humayun added.
On Friday, Pakistan announced it had arrested four members of a cell led from Afghanistan over the suicide bombing in Islamabad. “The network was handled and guided at every step by the … high command based in Afghanistan,” the government said in a statement.
Despite growing threats on two fronts, analysts say Pakistan does not view itself as besieged.
“Pakistan is cognisant of how to proceed in tackling these threats, but a siege mentality hasn’t been adopted,” said Rizwan Zeb, a professor of international relations and strategic studies at the Pakistan Air Force’s Air War College Institute in Karachi.
He said Islamabad had shown “immense patience” with the Afghan Taliban’s failure to curb the TTP and Baloch separatists, who operate from sanctuaries inside Afghanistan.
Islamabad’s demand was “very simple”, Zeb said: stop protecting those groups that strike Pakistan from Afghan soil only to return “across the border to safety”.
“If Kabul makes the passage more difficult for these groups, then there will be no problem with Islamabad,” he said.
According to Zeb, the Taliban’s reluctance to take action stems from its deep ethnic, religious and familial ties to the Pakistani militants, as well as the complexity of balancing internal factions while consolidating power, which it is still trying to do after regaining control of Afghanistan in 2021.

Asfandyar Mir, a senior South Asia fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said Pakistan had the military and economic wherewithal to withstand continued terrorist attacks.
“In any counter-insurgency, the more important variables are security force cohesion and political resolve to fight on,” Mir told This Week in Asia.
“Pakistan has plenty of political resolve now to take on the Taliban, and security force cohesion remains strong despite high casualties in the last few years.”
He added that the economy was resilient enough to support military operations in the medium term.
Analysts say that averting all-out war between Pakistan and Afghanistan will require regional cooperation and awareness of the shared economic stakes.
Zeb urged neighbouring powers – including Iran, China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey – to integrate Afghanistan economically through projects such as hydrocarbon pipelines and Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“This is a regional issue, not just a Pakistani one, and without participation of all, we will keep returning to instability.”
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse


The world is not so much embracing China as recoiling from Trump’s US

Has a Chinese DF missile been used for the first time in the Middle East?

Thais stage rare Israel protest; Singapore ministers get pay rise: 7 Asia highlights

Southeast Asia weighs energy transition amid LNG supply crunch

Pakistan

India-Pakistan conflict risks surge amid terror attacks, Afghan proxy war claims

Pakistani counterterrorism commandos stand guard at the site of a suicide blast outside a court in Islamabad on Tuesday. Photo: Getty Images/TNS/AFP

Pakistani soldiers stand guard at the cadet college that was attacked by suspected militants near the Afghan border in Wana, South Waziristan, Pakistan, on Thursday. Photo: EPA

India’s Tejas fighter jet gets US engines to battle Pakistan’s Chinese air power

A man walks past a poster of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s Tejas Mark 1A light combat aircraft ahead of its maiden flight at HAL in Nashik, India, on October 17. Photo: Reuters

A Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Tejas Mark 1A is seen after its maiden flight at HAL Nashik, India, on October 17. Photo: Reuters

An Indian soldier stands amid the debris of a MiG-21 aircraft of the Indian Air Force that crashed south of Srinagar in 2014. Photo: Reuters

A policeman walks past a poster of a HAL Tejas Mark 1A at HAL Nashik, India, on October 17. Photo: Reuters

Pakistan Air Force J-10C fighter jets perform at a parade rehearsal in Islamabad last year. Photo: AFP

India, Pakistan enter new missile race after deadly border clash

A Pakistani short-range surface to surface missile is test launched in 2014. Photo: Inter-Services Public Relations Office / Xinhua

Missile launchers and other air defence systems are seen on display at a military exhibition in Islamabad on Thursday during Independence Day celebrations. Photo: AFP

Indian Air Force personnel stand in front of a Rafale fighter jet during a military aviation exhibition in Bengaluru earlier this year. Photo: AFP

India’s longest-range missile, the Agni-V, is test launched in 2015. Photo: Defence Research and Development Organisation / AFP

India’s US$8.7 billion defence splurge sparks calls for clarity

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) during a visit to Adampur Airforce Base in Punjab. Photo: Indian Press Information Bureau / AFP

A naval officer walks past the BrahMos weapon systems during a rehearsal for the Republic Day parade in New Delhi in January. BrahMos is a joint venture with Russia and is currently manufactured in India. Photo: Reuters

An Indian Air Force’s Tejas fighter jet performs during an air show in Bangalore in 2021. Analysts say self-reliance in defence has become a strategic necessity in light of recent friction with the US. Photo: AFP

This Week in Asia

Politics

News

Asia

South Asia

With bombs tearing through capitals and leaders trading accusations, South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbours are again approaching the brink


With bombs tearing through capitals and leaders trading accusations, South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbours are again approaching the brink.


India-Pakistan conflict risks surge amid terror attacks, Afghan proxy war claims

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With bombs tearing through capitals and leaders trading accusations, South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbours are again approaching the brink

With bombs tearing through capitals and leaders trading accusations, South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbours are again approaching the brink