Tensions are escalating rapidly in the most dangerous part of the world. No, it’s not Gaza. It’s not Ukraine either. It’s not even Taiwan. The most dangerous part of the world is the Indian subcontinent in South Asia, and specifically Kashmir, a long-disputed territory between India and Pakistan, and especially since Pakistan was partitioned off from the British India Mandate in 1947.
On Tuesday, April 22, Islamic terrorists targeted non-Muslims when they murdered 26 innocent tourists in the same disputed region, after first demanding to know which of the tourists were Muslim. India quickly blamed Pakistan for the atrocity, and in a remarkable statement later in the week, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Kwajalein Asif actually admitted that Pakistan had been supporting such groups for decades. (Source). However, Mr. Asif called the historic support a mistake, and even blamed it on the United States, together with the West as a whole, suggesting that Pakistan was somehow doing America’s bidding by maintaining such support.
Meanwhile, India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons. They also approach this conflict with decades of animosity toward each other, going back even earlier than the original Partition.
Despite not being in the western media as much as the Middle East, the tensions in South Asia, and the historic animosity between India and Pakistan, are at least equally as intense. India, now led by an assertive Hindu government, is majority Hindu, albeit with a large Muslim minority. Pakistan is Muslim, having driven out almost the entirety of its non-Muslim minority over the last century.
Quickly following the recent Kashmir attack, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cancelled the Indus Water Treaty, which had shared water between India and parched Pakistan. Pakistan considers this a direct threat to its national existence, as it is notoriously dry and has insufficient natural water supplies of its own.
While not blessed with water, Pakistan announced last week that it had discovered large deposits of natural gas which might change its future economic prospects. (Source). India, meanwhile, is projected to need a massive influx of energy over the next 25 years, including a tripling of its current natural gas supply. (Source).
As with the Middle East, what all sides need most of all is to work together, as it appears that both India and Pakistan each have supplies of that the other most needs to survive. Unfortunately, the intensity of historic grievances not only makes it difficult for them to recognize the symbiotic nature of their situation, but it also increases the likelihood that they may wind up working at cross purposes with each other.
While following the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, the international press has published innumerable stories of the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948, the reality is that the number of Palestinians actually forced to flee at that time was only a fraction of the numbers of both Hindus and Muslims who were each expelled from their historic homes the year before in order to create Pakistan. Now, the potential casualties from a South Asia conflict threaten to dwarf the number of people killed in Israel and Gaza most recently.
With both energy and water being indispensable commodities for future growth of these two societies, hope springs eternal that cooler, more dispassionate heads will eventually prevail and these two nuclear powers will cooperate for the benefit of the entire region. Unfortunately, it may be more realistic to expect that hope will remain buried under the rubble of historic wrongs, perceived and otherwise, which continue to overpower rational discourse today.
