Probably this is the drama: we will remember the attack in Pahalgam, in the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, under Indian control but claimed by Pakistan, which occurred on April 22nd and cost the lives of 26 people. The Indian side said that the responsibility lay with a shadowy local terrorist group, the Kashmir Liberation Front, an expression of Pakistani intelligence. The Pakistani side only issued denials, and in truth, even in India, not everyone fully believed the accusations of the military and the rulers.
Narendra Modi has been pulling the strings in New Delhi for a lifetime, he has a crisis in parliament to manage, he has divided the country by exacerbating the clash between his Hindu nationalists and the other ethnic and religious components, Muslims first and foremost, not to mention the Sikhs, but for the moment he is also staying afloat because he is a great opportunist, playing all sides: he leans towards the Americans, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, he plays the contrarian within BRICS+ and the Non-Aligned Movement but at the same time sits within them and always reaps all the benefits. It’s practically the same conduct as Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, who while being in BRICS+ to ask for funds goes hand in hand with the USA and Israel and carries out their worst policies in East Africa. Modi and his India, on the other hand, do it in their region, Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific. It is their way of venting their internal tensions towards the outside world, and above all towards their historical rivals.
The fact remains that Pakistan was not seeking this crisis, which is solely an Indian desire, the result of its increasingly exacerbated Hindu chauvinism. In this case too, it is useful to draw a parallel with the other BRICS+ housemate, Ethiopia, which in its history has always moved from one ethnonationalism to another: a dramatic evil for a multi-ethnic country. One day under the dominion of the Amhara, one day of the Tigrayans, one day of the Oromo, each more extreme than the other in carrying forward their own ethnic supremacism, and thus a perpetually unstable country was created, torn apart by many mutual and collective hatreds. And for India too, for better or worse, that is the path. So much so that now, with its Operation Sindoor, India is doing nothing more than responding to its own provocations, but making Pakistan pay for them. It’s a pity, however, that there was no evidence of Pakistani involvement in the terrorist actions in Jammu and Kashmir two weeks ago, so much so that more than one element suggested that this mysterious Liberation Front was a sort of ‘dummy list’ of Indian intelligence. In short, an Indian, ethno-religious version of the good old ‘strategy of tension’ already seen in many other places, not only at home in the past but also today, for not so different reasons, in that Ethiopia already mentioned several times here.
The Pakistanis even tried to calm the waters by inviting the Indian side not to take rash actions, and favored the mediating role of third parties such as the Iranians, who have good business and ties with both countries; but to no avail, New Delhi has a domestic policy objective to achieve at the expense of its neighbor, and at that point twenty-three minutes of missiles and bombings on Pakistani Kashmir can even be tolerated, no matter the many dead and wounded. After all, they are also Muslims and Pakistanis, so from the perspective of Hindu ethnic and religious nationalism, they are worth little or nothing. It’s a pity, though, that these actions also entail possible reactions, consequences that Pakistan will inevitably be forced to take in turn. We will see if the mediations will be enough, but at this point, a factor of Pakistani national prestige, which India has wounded and to which, rightly, Islamabad will and must give some response, also comes into play.
