India-Pakistan: Anatomy of a Crisis

The historical roots of the conflict

The conflict between India and Pakistan has its roots in the imperialist partition of the subcontinent, formalized in 1947 under retreating British imperialism.

Colonial India, unified under British rule, was broken up according to confessional criteria imposed from above, creating bourgeois states on religious lines: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Within this partition, the principalities recognized by the British Empire were given the “freedom” to choose which state to join.

In the case of Kashmir – with a Muslim majority but a Hindu ruler – the decision was forced: India sent troops, sanctioning annexation by military force.

Pakistan responded with war.

Since then, the region has been the epicenter of armed tensions and repression, with the civilian population crushed between two competing national bourgeoisies.

The so-called Line of Control (LoC), which emerged from the 1947-48 war, remains a de facto military frontier, unrecognized by either side.

Bourgeois nationalism was not limited to a single territory.

In 1965, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar, attempting to foment a Muslim uprising in Kashmir.

In 1971, with the Bangladesh War, a new front opened: India supported the secession of East Pakistan, contributing to Pakistan’s defeat and the birth of a new state.

The Durand Line, drawn in 1893 by British imperialists between India and Afghanistan, represents a border that was not based on ethnic or historical grounds, but rather on the reach of British military power, dividing the Pashtun people into two entities.

The Pashtun city of Peshawar was incorporated into colonial territory, while Afghanistan lost a traditional demographic base.

Today, the Pashtun population in Pakistan exceeds that of Afghanistan, generating irredentism that claims Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan; no Afghan government, whether monarchist, republican, or Taliban, has ever accepted the Durand Line as a definitive border.

Pashtuns, Baluchis and regional complexities

Therefore, the current balance between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran is based on a temporary equilibrium, the legacy of artificial colonial borders and bourgeois states incapable of organically unifying their masses.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, is a hotbed of ongoing conflict.

With approximately 35 million inhabitants, mainly Pashtuns, and a poverty rate of 39%, it acts as a strategic buffer between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The socioeconomic indicators are alarming: female literacy stands at 27%, and less than half of the population has access to drinking water.

The Taliban, who returned to power after the collapse of the US occupation, represent a form of Pashtun nationalism in religious guise.

While avoiding explicit statements on ethnic unification, they maintain a structural link with the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), aimed at destabilizing Pakistani authority in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Since 2008, the latter have been classified as “terrorists” by Islamabad, but repression has not stopped the attacks.

India has historically exploited these tensions to weaken Pakistan, its strategic rival.

Since 2002, Delhi has invested more than $3 billion in Afghanistan: the Salma dam in Herat, the parliament in Kabul, and numerous roads connecting Afghanistan directly to Iran, without passing through Pakistan.

Islamabad interpreted these operations as an attempt at “strategic encirclement.”

Delhi also maintained relations with Baloch separatist groups, offering diplomatic and financial support and, according to Pakistani sources, military support as well.

China has introduced further complexity with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of the Belt and Road Initiative, with planned investments of $62 billion.

The port of Gwadar in Balochistan, operated by China Overseas Port Holding Company, has become the hub of the project.

For China, Pakistan’s stability is now a priority; for India, the CPEC represents a threat to its regional sovereignty.

Added to this picture is the issue of the Baloch.

Like the Pashtuns, they are a divided people: the majority live in Pakistan, a minority in Iran, and a marginal group in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Balochistan, the largest and poorest region of the country, is rife with contradictions: it has enormous mineral resources, but 63% of the population lives below the poverty line.

The main Baloch formations include the BLF (Balochistan Liberation Front), the BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army) and Jaish al-Adl on the Iranian front.

In Pakistan, Balochist militants systematically attack Chinese infrastructure and projects: since 2018, they have targeted the Chinese consulate in Karachi, the stock exchange, and convoys of Chinese technicians, forcing Beijing to review the CPEC timetable.

The nuclear threat and the balance of annihilation

The possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan has qualitatively changed the nature of crises in the region, introducing a deterrent factor that transforms the risk of war without eliminating it.

The nuclear tests of 1998 formalized this reality, and since then every military crisis has developed under the shadow of a potential nuclear holocaust.

India has adopted a doctrine of no first use, committing itself to using nuclear weapons only in response to an attack of the same type.

Pakistan, on the other hand, rejects this commitment in order to compensate for its conventional inferiority, keeping open the possibility of preventive use even on the battlefield.

Pakistan’s nuclear program, developed with material support from China, is based on a doctrine of all-out deterrence that includes the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, designed as weapons of war for use in limited operations.

This approach aims to neutralize India’s Cold Start strategy, which relies on rapid military intervention before international diplomacy can intervene.

The illusion of deterrence as a factor of “stability” is an aberration of imperialist propaganda.

In reality, armed capitalism knows no stability, only an unstable equilibrium based on the threat of total destruction.

The evolution of terrorist networks

Recent military operations against jihadist infrastructure in Pakistan have highlighted that the Islamic terrorist apparatus is a stable part of the Pakistani state’s economy and repressive system.

Organizations such as Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operate in a similar way to mafias, combining legal and illegal activities.

Command is in the hands of the Azhar family.

Masood Azhar, released in 1999 after hijacking an Indian civilian aircraft, founded JeM in 2000, establishing links with the Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and sectors of Pakistani intelligence (ISI).

The group does not operate entirely underground.

It owns madrasas, training centers, real estate, front companies, newspapers, and a “humanitarian” network with Al Rahmat Trust, which is formally banned but active.

The Markaz Subhan Allah complex in Bahawalpur is an example: formally a religious school, it is in fact a JeM operational center, which doubled in size after 2022, when Pakistan was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s gray list.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), founded in 1990 with the support of Osama bin Laden, follows a similar pattern.

Under the cover of the charitable organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa, it runs a network of schools, clinics, and assistance centers, strengthening its social roots and continuous recruitment.

Counterinsurgency in India: privatization of repression

While analyses focus on armed groups supported by Pakistan, India has developed its own parastatal apparatus of repression, particularly evident in the fight against Maoist movements in rural and tribal areas.

The “red corridor”—a strip of territory stretching across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh—has become a testing ground for the sophisticated and brutal privatization of state violence carried out by private militias.

Since 2005, with “Operation Green Hunt,” the Indian state has mobilised not only regular units such as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), but has also created and financed “civilian” militias such as the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh.

Recruited from among members of the same tribal communities, often under coercion or in exchange for economic privileges, these groups have carried out “scorched earth” operations in villages suspected of supporting the guerrillas.

Salwa Judum, declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2011, has been replaced by new formations such as the District Reserve Group (DRG) and Battalion 241.

According to reports from human rights organizations, more than 500 villages have been forcibly evacuated and at least 50,000 Adivasis (tribal peoples) displaced.

In Chhattisgarh alone, more than 600 extrajudicial killings were documented between 2018 and 2023.

The operation aims to free up resource-rich territories for multinational mining companies, countering resistance from local peasant movements.

In recent months, there has been an intensification of the armed conflict, which has now been going on for 60 years.

This escalation has manifested itself in a large-scale military operation, which has led to the killing of the secretary general of the Maoist CPI, Nambala Keshav Rao, more than 400 rebels and the surrender of more than 700.

Internationalization of jihadism

In the context of state disintegration and imperialist realignment in Asia, the recent convergence between jihadist groups in the Indian subcontinent and global terrorist organizations reveals the construction of a transnational armed network.

In April 2025, a few days before the attack in Pahalgam, a Hamas delegation was hosted at the Markaz Subhan Allah complex in Bahawalpur, the operational center of Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The meeting was attended by members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the head of the Pakistani government in Kashmir.

Two months earlier, in Rawalkot, a “Conference on Solidarity with Kashmir and Operation Al-Aqsa” had been attended by representatives of Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen, and JeM.

The return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan has given new impetus to cross-border jihadism.

At least three training camps in the provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar are jointly run by Afghan Taliban and Pakistani jihadist groups, welcoming recruits of various nationalities in a sort of Islamist “reactionary international.”

BRICS and the myth of the “multipolar” alternative

The conflict between India and Pakistan exposes the internal contradictions within the BRICS+ bloc, demonstrating the limits of its claim to represent a “multipolar” alternative to the Western imperialist order.

BRICS is not an anti-imperialist front, but an inter-state cartel of imperialist powers with diverging interests.

India, a founding member of BRICS, is in a state of open war with Pakistan, a strategic ally of China, another pillar of the bloc.

This rift paralyzes any possibility of military cooperation within BRICS.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) crosses territories disputed between India and Pakistan, and any escalation puts Chinese investments at risk.

Iran has attempted to act as a mediator, but its position is weakened by China’s loyalty to Pakistan.

Russia, closer to India, maintains an ambiguous stance, calling for “restraint” and denouncing “external forces.”

The BRICS claim to represent more than 40% of the world’s population, but these figures mask the fact that demographic strength does not translate into strategic cohesion.

The Pahalgam attack and escalation

On April 22, 2025, in the tourist town of Pahalgam, in Indian Kashmir, an armed group killed 26 people—25 Indian tourists and one Nepalese citizen—in an operation planned to maximize political and psychological impact.

The attackers demanded that their victims recite the shahada or prove they were circumcised, killing those who refused.

The attack was claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), a group that emerged in 2019 after the repeal of Article 370, which revoked Kashmir’s autonomy.

According to Indian and American sources, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is behind the TRF, supported by the Pakistani military apparatus through the ISI.

The attack showed remarkable sophistication: NATO standard weapons, synchronized movements, and encrypted communications, indicative of advanced military training.

The objective was also economic: to hit tourism, the engine of Kashmir’s capitalist normalization, given that in 2024, more than 1.8 million tourists had visited the region.

After the attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the army “carte blanche,” expelled Pakistani diplomats, closed the Attari border, and unilaterally suspended the Indus Water Treaty.

Pakistan responded with symmetrical measures, convening the National Command Authority, which oversees the nuclear arsenal.

Operation Sindoor and the air battle

On May 7, 2025, India launched “Operation Sindoor”—a series of air and missile strikes against nine sites in Pakistani territory identified as “terrorist infrastructure.”

The name, taken from the red powder used by married Hindu women, aims to sanctify war by merging it with religion and “national honor.”

The targets included the Sawai Nala and Syedna Belal (Muzaffarabad) camps, Gulpur and Abbas (Kotli), Barnala (Bhimber), and the strategic centers Markaz Taiba (Muridke) and Markaz Subhan (Bahawalpur).

According to official sources, the operation resulted in approximately 70 deaths among the “terrorists” and lasted less than half an hour.

Pakistan responded with Operation Bunyan Al Marsoos (“Impenetrable Wall”), claiming to have shot down five Indian fighter jets.

This was followed by the largest air battle in South Asia since the 1971 war, involving approximately 50-60 aircraft.

The Pakistani Air Force used J-10C and F-16 aircraft equipped with PL-15E missiles, capable of striking targets at a range of 145 km.

Debris from an Indian Dassault Rafale was found near Bathinda: this is the first combat loss of a Rafale in history.

The clash highlighted the dominance of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat and the extensive use of electronic warfare, creating what one Pakistani source described as “an electromagnetic fog of war.”

Truce and misinformation

On May 10, 2025, a ceasefire was announced with US mediation.

Donald Trump claimed credit, while Secretary of State Rubio confirmed Washington’s direct involvement, citing “credible information” about an imminent escalation.

The conflict has triggered an unprecedented disinformation war.

Footage from video games such as Arma 3 has been circulated as evidence of attacks.

Pakistan has recycled images from military exercises; India has used videos of bombings in Syria, passing them off as operations in Pakistan.

On social media, millions of users have shared manipulated content, making it impossible to distinguish fact from fiction.

Current outlook

The ceasefire has halted the acute phase of the conflict, but the underlying contradictions remain unresolved.

Kashmir, strategic corridors, ethnic-religious tensions, and regional instability continue to fuel the potential for war.

The area remains a complex theater, where jihadist militias, separatism, and arms trafficking intertwine with competing states.

The BRICS, unable to stop the conflict between two of its leading members and paralyzed by internal contradictions, has not offered a concrete alternative.

The American intervention has provided a useful pause to reorganize forces.

The proletariat, in India as in Pakistan, has no interest in these wars between national bourgeoisies.

The enemy is not the people across the border, but the ruling class at home.

The international class struggle remains the only alternative to the spiral of war and domination.