India & Pakistan at War? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

there are wonderful too, you know. And needless to say, of course, it's very sad that it has been such a bony contention between India and Pakistan, going back as we talked about to the nineteen forty nine partition. I'm sorry, forty seven partition. I was thinking of the birth of I was thinking of forty eight, forty nine birth of Israel,

forty seven partition between the two countries. So his what I am seeing right now, Dean, I could be absolutely wrong, and there's a lot of speculation in twitter Land, But what I'm saying is this that both countries are actually, despite the usual Bellako statements, both countries are kind of playing according to unwritten rules. All right, Yes, to your point, the tit for tat, the strikes have straight out of

Kashmire into areas of Pakistan. But if you look at what the targets are, and you look at some of the photographs from the media aerial photographs, it does seem as though India is making an effort to avoid collateral damage, and who knows whether the reports of civilians being killed or true or not, But when you look at the photographs, it is individual houses or compounds that have been struck.

And I think probably most of our listeners are aware of the problems that India has had with homegrown Pakistan or Pakistan supporting terrorist organizations, allegedly supporting terrorist organizations like Lashka Our l T, Lashka Our Tayib. Right, hopefully I haven't mispronounced that l T and Jayshl Muhammat and those are two. And Lashka LT is the organization that launched the two thousand and eight Bomboy Mumbai raid that resulted

in several hundred dead civilians. And that was there's actually a movie about that that I talked about. It was a very well planned raid and it was by all accounts commanded and controlled from led by lat in Pakistan. And then you know, India has there's been a number of attacks since then, and there have been a number of clashes since in twenty sixteen and in twenty nineteen and again now and you know, everyone is worried that here are two nuclear powers apparently on the verge of war.

But let's look at a couple of things. Okay, So I talked about the fact that these strikes seemed to be quite limited, and Pakistan, for its part, has hit targets in Kashmir. Pakistan is talking about now is striking into India. Certainly has the capability to do that as quite a missile array, and India of course has the ability to return that. But so far the targeting has

been quite specific. And the other thing is kind of interestingly, so the Pakistani's reported that they've shot down between three to five Indian jets and a Heron drone. The Indians are clearly, I mean not clearly they've they they're admitting they've lost aircraft. Although the photographs that are appearing on Twitter are from they're not recent, they're from last year or back in twenty nineteen. But you safe to say

that the Indians lost aircraft. Those aircraft actually crashed in India, raising speculation that they were you know, these were accidents, but it's entirely possible that Pakistan shot them down. The Indians haven't actually been flying over Pakistani air base. And when I talk about their attempts to limit actions. They've been hoisting, launching, lofting missiles from the Indian side of

the border towards Pakistan. And so they may have been you know, intercepted in the air over but certainly they crashed in Indian territory. So I will pause, Sarah case you have any questions. So maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I don't see this going down the path to war. You know, they're neither country stands to gain from this. It is true that Modi, who's the you know, the

the Indian premiere, he stands to gain. He's got a tremendous he was in the past tremendously popular in India. But there has been some dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction recently with them, not just over ethnic tensions, over a plateauing economy, which may not be entirely his fault, that he's getting blamed for that. And so he does benefit by rattling sabers at Pakistan, which he's happy to do from time to time, but it certainly doesn't benefit him to go to war

and night. And you know, certainly, although the populations of both countries have been brought up in this atmosphere of I would say hatred. That's a strong word, but near enough towards the other country. And although both countries went to war, you know, fifty years goinge a very bloody campaign over what became Bangladesh was then East Pakistan. Again, the you know, the undercarrent of the real undercurrent of feeling.

If you're to look at reflections of India and Pakistan social media, it's not hey, let's go to war, let's bash him. It is a real concern that they will go to war. And I think that the leaders will we'll pay attention to that.

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there is a policy of preemptive strike. In other words, if they suspect that the other country is prepared to or threatening to then they are authorized within their own kind of strategic doctrine to strike first with nuclear weapons, which is obviously concerning sure.

think that's an important distinction. And needless to say, we created a lot of the problems in Afghanistan to my opinion, you know, with with the Taliban, and when when we were always trying to get Pakistan outside, we didn't we didn't recognize two things that the Pakistani security forces themselves were taking heavy casualties from UH from islamisists in in what they called the tribal provinces, you know, the border

adjacent with Afghanistan. That was number one. Number two is that they supported the Taliban as a bulwark against India, and we the United States never really kind of recognized that. We during the Cold War, we wanted we courted both countries. And then of course when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, we were all in on in Afghanistan and we were we with the full collaboration with the ISI, with the Pakistani

intelligence services, were supporting the Mujaheden. Of course, many of whom became most of whom, you know, it was the Pashtun fighters who subsequently became the Taliban, and of course the Arab fighters with the Summer ben Laden were a subset of that and became Al Qaeda. And there was a natural partnership that we that occurred under our noses, and in fact, arguably we helped forge We also were the ones who were supporting, you know, the Pakistanis on

condition that they supported the muja Hiden. So we created that bond between the ISI and the Taliban, and then subsequently turned around and played Pakistan for having that bond, you know, I mean, look the Pakistan is not blameless, of course, but I'm just saying that our own strategy towards Pakistan has been has been at the very least confusing. And so one other thing that is I think really concerning that Pakistan is obviously the threat of nuclear wars

is concerning both countries. But the question of water rights, the the I believe it's called the Indus Indus River Agreement. Someone will correct me, I'm sure in their comments, but the basically they they're you know, both countries were Pakistan is dependent on India to some extent for water supplies, and now India is threatening to dam up its reservoirs and create a huge amount of silt, making the water that reaches Pakistan problematic, difficult to drink, and that is

going to be difficult to use. That that is going

to be a significant issue too. So there are things that both countries or India can do in particular to herd Pakistan that don't necessarily involve firing missiles and just go on generating this tension between them and Yes, Pakistan, you know, I've may sound quite supportive at Pakistan, but there's no doubt about it that there are extremist groups who have safe haven in Pakistan, and I mentioned two of them, Led and On JSHL Muhammad, and both of

those groups have conducted terrorist attacks, not just the Mumbai two thousand and eight attacks, but consistently conducted attacks not just an in Trinegar but in India too, killing Indian civilians. And so when India strikes into Pakistan, this was the same in twenty nineteen, it always claims, and I think with some justification, that it is going after these particular bases.

There were at times when Pakistani soldiers were held hit by US artsery fire, and I know, we're going to get people popping up saying well there was a reason for that, Yes, I know, but the way that it was projected in Pakistan was US aggression and the United States is very, very unpopular among the Pakistani population. A lot of that is due to propaganda. A lot of it is perception of US policy being anti Pakistani or

anti Muslim. I understand that, and a lot of it is propagated not by necessarily by the government, but by organizations in the media within Pakistan. So yes, I have no doubt that. Of course Issama bin Laden couldn't have lived there for so long without some complicit help by the by the Pakistani government. I'm just saying that we, the US, are not blameless in creating that very fraud relationship with Pakistan.

backing down. Do you think Pakistan retaliates maybe a tick for table.

it there. But yeah, there's been exchanges of artillery. There have been casualties on both sides.

Indian military targets in India definitely an escalation. And that is when it's certainly going to be concerning deep because Modi, as you you know, you're probably aware is he's populist, he's a nationalist. Remember you know the problems the Canadians have had with him over assassinating Sikh activists in Canada, and the Indians just didn't back down on that. You know, it's basically hate. Who gives a shit whether you disagree

with it or not. I mean, it was very clear that they did that, so you know, and it's he's not going to want to lose face. So a civical tell you know. The pakistanis though, will understand this too, and it's going to be you know that they're both playing brinksmanship because they're both playing to our home audience.

And it may be. It may be and I'm not saying necessarily true that on the Pakistani side, you know where the military is concerned, because you know that what's what's the saying that Pakistan and in most countries, you know, most democratic countries you have, they'll have a military. But in Pakistan it's a case of the military having a country. And you know, there's some truth in that. I mean, no civilian government in Pakistan has survived without support of

the military. But my point is the strength there may be that is they don't have to play to a civilian population to get re elected. And you know, I and Pakistani military is as aggressive as though maybe sounding certainly don't want to plunge their country into war. And just a reminder for everyone, India is far bigger than Pakistan, right, So, I mean it would be a tremendously bloody, costly, pointless war for both countries, but Pakistan would be liable to emerge from this the worst.

it's been the United States. It's kind of led the the charge on trying to negotiate and calm things down. I haven't really seen that. You know, there's been a little bit of a you know, Rubio has he's he's commented about it. Yeah, and he's he India's briefed him, he said, But that doesn't seem to be a very concerted effort to try and diffuse the crisis. And it's really it's not clear whether the United States has he

appetite or opacity to do so. And I know the President said it's a shame, you know, they've been fighting for many, many decades. But that's not quite the same as as reaching out to both leaders and saying, hey, knolk it off.

And you know, Pakistan could respond whether a retaliatory strike with I mean, Pakistan's got a large diverse arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles which you could fire into India without requiring jets to cross the border. It could do that,

but it hasn't done that yet. And I think it's because despite all the heat rhetoric, Pakistan's likely to choose the scale and nature of its response with a lot of care and doing, you know, enough to applicate its own populace by saying, look what we're doing and restore a modicum of deterrence, but without escalating the crisis. I mean, I think beneath the rhetoric, that's what you see from both the countries.

could really like kill crops in the United States. Costs millions of people to die in the US because it'll get all the way to the West coast from from where India and Pakistan are, which is you know, insane to actually think about. Hopefully, like you said, and I'm trusting you, it doesn't go down and watch once we sign off here, it's going to be pacising, you know, shoots twenty fucking ballistic missiles into India knock out Wood.

wanted to tell absolutely accurate story from both sides. You know, why why did this happen? Why was Hamas able to conduct these attacks? But why did Hamas plan the attacks?

You know? What was some of the background to this and not not all of this has been in the papers, by the way, And you know, so I found I was very fortunate in that I had a number of contacts who are not trying to be mysterious, you know, who I can't name in the book, but who had a tremendous amount of knowledge about the background from from both you know, points of view, and so yes, you know what, how did Hamas plan the attacks? Was the

detail that went into these planning? How did they prepare for? And some of this is astonishing material, it really is. And then you know why why was Israel lolled into the sense of complacency? And you know, we talked a lot about it being an intelligence failure, but it was really a failure of imagination, you know, because the intelligence

was there. Admittedly a lot of the collection methods had been had been steadily shut down because of partly because of policy and partly because of complacency, but the you know, the science was certainly there. Why were they ignored? And perhaps more importantly, you know, as an operations guy, I'm not an intel guy, and so I know enough as

an operations guy. You don't rely on intel to give you an early warning because very simply stated, all all successful attacks rely on surprise, right, So you're always you've always got to be on your guard. And there was an entire division, the guards, a division that was focused on containing Gaza, and a number of missteps both you know, again policy intelligence and the operational side, and then you know,

the attacks themselves. The performance of the IDEA from responding to those attacks were quite I think the we're part of the most shocking, not the most shocking, but were part of the the impact of the story to the Israeli public, for whom the IDEF had always been this kind of iconic institution. To find out how seriously they failed, not just in the lead up to the attacks, but on the day of the attacks, and then subsequently in a number of ways, and really in a realization that

they had kind of a two tier army. They had an army that was technologically very savvy, very good, considered itself very good at targeting, had some very good units, and yet the rank and file, the quality of the rank and file, the you know, the regular infantry units had plummeted considerably and that's you know, I'm jumping a little bit into the book here, but look at the huge number of casualties of civilian casualties in Gaza, and there are a number of complex reasons for that, but

one of the reasons is simply that the you know, the IDEAF couldn't trust their infantry to go in and do, for instance, what we did in Fallujah. I mean, I was going to say, you probably remember Flujah. You were a kid then, but you know, having formed my way through Fallujah, we made mistakes. We made a lot of mistakes, but we didn't We didn't annihilate everything in our path. We had to go in and clear buildings time after

time after time. And anyone who pushes back on that, I would challenge that is not the way that the IDEF approached you know, they, as you saw it was kind of a scorched dirt policy. They would flat places, very very heavy reliance on fire support. And that's kind of what you do when you have second rate infantry, is you have Yeah, I'm not saying they had to do that. I'm saying that's what you find yourself doing. The very few, you know, SECT for the special operations

units who as I said, were very good. The very very few incidents where soldiers had to go into a building and clear rooms the way we did Influjah. And by the way, I don't advocate that at all, you know, I mean there are smarter ways to do that. You can do it now with drones, you can do it

with unmanned vehicles. But it but certainly, you know, there's say, there's a lot of a lot of parts to this story, and that's been one of the hardest parts about about making this much more than just a narrative of massacre and reaction, you know, a story really about why it happened and why it happened the way that it did without becoming too analytical at the same time, keeping the narrative going, it's been it's been a Challenge's tested my limited writing skills too, it's really limits.

that the IDF recovered and did so incredibly quickly. I mean, the majority of their casualties in that war were in the first forty eight seventy two hours, and they mobilized a huge number of reservists through them into the line and they performed admirably. That was not the case in this case. As you were probably seeing a lot of the investigations now coming out, So this isn't just Andy

Milburn talking about what happened on seven October. It's raally investigations are revealing it again and again that the IDEA failed to protect civilian communities for a number of reasons, you know, not having a quick reaction force, not you know, not being aggressive enough there were kibbutzers where the army waited outside while the inhabitants were being slaughtered. I mean,

this is, this is almost incomprehensible. A beach as sold where Hamas fighters, a small group of them, by the way, eight of them stormed ashore and killed something like twenty civilians and sekeen beach. And there was a patrol and it's Raeli patrol who didn't even engage them, you know, I mean it's why not, well, who knows? Who knows? You know, lack of initiative, lack of aggression, lack of courage. I mean, I'm going to get villified to saying this.

I don't know, I don't know the answer. But you can if you doubt what I'm saying, you can read the investigations in the Israeli papers about what happened. Now, don't get me wrong. There were lots of incidents of where individuals and units showed great courage on the day, but there was a total breakdown of command and control, you know. And this is and a lot of commanders who just seemed to lack the initiative or aggression to

do what they were supposed to do. And that is why partly the story of why so many civilians died on the day, and it's, you know, to these really public it's it's a hugely shunking revelation.

is last night or the night before. I'm losing track on sminows ahead of you guys, So it must have been the night before, and you know, Zanitsky's called for the stronger sanctions on Russia to pave the wave to diplomacy, and I don't know if anyone's going to listen to him. And you know, there is going to be a supposedly three day ceasefire. The Russians have said in commemoration of what they call Victory Day, what we call Victory in

Europe Day, which is nine May. And so we'll see you know where that goes.

it's just phenomenal. They are, they are losing. They're losing as many soldiers just in Ukraine, and you can look this up. I know I keep saying that, but I'm very careful with my statistics. They're losing as many soldiers as the combined Allied armies lost in Normandy every day, right, much smaller force, and so it's just staggering. And yet you don't hear about things like fraggings, right, of soldiers rebelling or shooting their officers. It's just an extraordinary atmosphere.

And I think it's partly cultural historical that they are just inured to suffering. And it's a very you know, it's a very sad comment, but it really the effect. So I guess what I'm saying is, whether you're talking soldiers or civilians, that doesn't seem to be a correlation

between low morale and affecting policy. You know, it was even it was even better in Soviet days, arguably because you remember the end of the Afghan War in part was brought about by pressure on Gorbachov from within his party and notably by a group of or a political lobbying group formed by mothers of soldiers in Afghanistan, and the war was extremely unpopular, and yet the Russians suffered what fifteen thousand killed, you know, that's that's a few

days in Ukraine. I mean, it's a couple of weeks in Ukraine, without exaggeration, and they but that made it, the afghan that made it. That put enough pressure on Gorbachev and of course he was dealing with a ton of other things by nineteen eighty nine. The leaders but to pull that up, and you just don't see that in modern day Russia.

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