CNN live coverage of Kashmir 2025 massacre.

Since the latest terror attack is a strategic replay of many prior incidents, you may wish to read India Pakistan crisis first. While facts of culpability are hard to come by, general principles apply.

Pakistan is a failed state, captive to the unattainable desire to regain Kashmir, with divided authorities, a weak economy, and severe environmental challenges. The level of civilian corruption is  typified by wholesale theft of land deeds by the elite, going back many years, in Balochistan, backstory of current unrest.

The civilian government, in spite of massive corruption and vigilante sharia law, has some democratic trappings. It also functions to shield the upper 1% in their private Western-style indulgences, which would not sit well with the masses. Blasphemy is punishable by death, often at the hands of the mob.

It is simplistic to state that civil government is subordinate to  the nominal intelligence apparatus, the ISI. The conflict resolution mechanism is of a type unknown in the West, The ISI acts as a hidden hand, usually prevailing, but subject to unpredictable reversals by the civilian realm. Political conflict is sustained by circular processes, bouncing endlessly between court and legislature.

When the military have seized power, results have been variable. In 1999, Pervez Musharraf contrived the Kargil War with India, This led to his removal from power, more for reasons of strategy than objective. Perhaps unwittingly, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq imported Islamic extremism. The rest are at least not so memorable.

Since the founding of Pakistan,  no prime minister save Imran Khan has been removed by legal means. Imprisonment, assassination, or execution are typical. There is a strong analogy in the past history of the Turkish military, whose influence on government was seen either positively, as the ghost of Ataturk, or negatively, as a hidden power structure. Since Zia-ul-Haq, the latter is more relevant.

Pakistan was not originally a very religious country. Quoting the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah,

 “… in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state … “,

This was subject to profound change under Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization, which established state funded religious schools — madrassas– similar in effect to the Wahhabi madrassas funded by Saudi Arabia, with frequent associations with  past acts of terrorism. Zia’s plane was blown up, but his influence remains. Imran Khan  sought to return to Jinnah’s secular conception, but failed.

Until  the 2014 Peshawar school massacre, the ISI was the unquestioned master of the situation,  capable of hiding Osama Bin-Laden for years, 3/4 miles from the Pakistan Military Academy  in Abbottabad. The result has been a crackdown on terrorism. Whether it was selective to domestic threats, allowing Kashmir objectives, is hinted by open source.

We note a general principle. The history of conflict between religion and government, of which we have thoroughly modern knowledge, begins with the subversive Christianization of Rome in the first three hundred years A.D.  Subversion slept for more than a thousand years,  resurfacing in the modern era. Cryptic Islamism, as an underground challenge to secular government, is currently the most problematic form. Even the most progressive Muslim countries deal harshly with the Muslim Brotherhood, because of its ability to  hollow out the secular state.

Zia’s madrassas set the stage. Initially, their waves of youth were useful proxies for the schemes of the ISI. Then extremism, which had been  carefully fostered for controlled objectives, took on a life of its own, the Islamic “infra-state”. The major groups splintered, competing in  goals, dedication, fanaticism. These factors engage:

• The madrassas are still operating. (The Diplomat) Pakistan Debates Madrassa Reform Rollback asserts that the generational injection of radical Islam continues.
• The National Action Plan is a major effort with widespread support to eliminate the domestic basis of terrorism. Can it block subversion?
• Pakistan claims that terror training camps no longer exist on their territory.
• Could terrorists transit Pakistan from somewhere else?
• India claims that Pakistan culpability is established by intelligence.

The 2019 Balakot airstrike offers clues.The Indian Air Force claimed to strike a terror training camp. Quoting Wikipedia,

…Western diplomats in Islamabad stated that they did not believe the Indian Air Force had hit any militant camp, with one stating that it was “common knowledge amongst our intelligence” that the militant training camp in Balakot had been moved some years back.^[75] Western security officials have cast doubt over Indian claims and asserted that there are no longer any such large scale militant camps in Pakistan.

The  article also hints at concealment:

Reporters from Reuters were repeatedly denied access to the madrassa by the military citing security issues but they noted the structure (and its vicinity) to be intact from the back.^[69][71] The press wing of the Pakistan military had twice postponed scheduled visits to the site.

…

The local people varied as to the purpose of the facility.^[66] In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, whilst some claimed of it being an active Jaish training camp, others asserted it to have been a mere school for the local children and that such militant camps used to exist far earlier.^[

from which may be deduced, with moderate confidence:

• There was no training camp of any size.
• There was a small camp.
• Proximity to a madrassa was not a coincidence, but a logistical convenience.
• Indian intelligence and execution was abysmal.
• Pakistan has with some success curbed terrorism, but is limited by the presence of extremism in legitimate political guise.

Terrorism tends not to disappear, but to transform. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2016, there is no real need for large terror bases in Pakistan. Still necessary is transit from Afghanistan through  Pakistan, with small scale logistical support in the general form of safe houses,  unobtrusively blending into urban landscapes. Targeting these structures has high likelihood of civilian casualties, unless specialized weapons, possessed only by the U.S., are used, in conjunction with equally precise intelligence gathering. Although India employed precision strike weapons, the totality of effect is beyond the execution ability of the IAF.

The Indian response was mandated by the horror of the deed, and Narendra Modi’s bristly Hindu nationalism. The Pakistan response will be mandated by civilian casualties, as well as the sense of violation that comes with the targeting of populated areas.

Will this come to an end with the satisfaction of honor, as  in some kind of duel? Not this time. It will happen when both sides have lost enough airplanes.  Military hardware is precious to a small military with aspiration to greatness. Uniform epaulets, regardless of design, cannot take wing. It really hurts to lose your toys.