The Duran Podcast - India, Pakistan; on the brink of war

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

India, Pakistan; on the brink of war

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the escalation between India and Pakistan. Modi is saying that he is going to retaliate in an aggressive way towards Pakistan, or at least the terrorist groups inside of Pakistan after the terrorist attack that did happen in Kashmir, leaving 20, 26, 27 people dead. And it does seem like Modi is being put in a position where he will have to respond to this terrorist attack. Of course, India has already put the Indus Water Treaty. They've suspended it, they put it on pause.

They've expelled many diplomats and government. officials from India as well. Pakistan has shut down trade and transportation links to India. And Pakistan has also threatened India with using nuclear weapons. The defense minister said all of our nuclear weapons are pointed at you, India, if you retaliate towards us. Of course, the defense minister also, in an interview with Sky News, said that this might have been some sort of a false flag and that Pakistan has been up to many dirty, dirty works over the many decades, which seemed to me as the defense minister trying to perhaps find an off-ramp with India by shifting the blame of this onto false flags and stuff like that.

And then saying, Amel Kupa, we've done many bad things in the past. It was an interesting statement from the defense minister to make. But anyway, Modi, it looks like Modi is preparing a response to this terrorist attack. And it looks like he has the support of the people, the Indian people behind him as well. What are your thoughts on? Well, I think this is an incredibly dangerous situation and one which could very easily spiral out of control. Now, India and Pakistan have fought several wars against each other. They've never, however, gone into an outright war situation since they each acquired nuclear weapons, which they did 20, 30 years ago.

They've each got substantial nuclear arsenals, but they have had many clashes since then. and there's been at least one conflict, I believe it was the one in Cargill, about dead 15, 20 years ago, when there was concerns that we were actually quite close to a nuclear exchange. So, you know, this is a very, very dangerous situation. Now, this hasn't come out of nowhere.

And I think a lot of, you know, we need to look at each country. First of all, Modi, Prime Minister of India, he has one power in India on a nationalist ticket. It's, I think, hardly disputed that he very much looks to support from the Hindu community within India. There are longstanding tensions between Hindus and Muslims within India itself. These go back, well, a very, very long time. So a situation where there's a terrorist attack, Hindus are killed,

it looks as if Islamic terrorists were involved, is going to put him in a position where really he cannot afford not to react. He has to react. He has to take a very, very strong line. Now, going over to the other side to Pakistan, all this about, you know, all kinds of things that Pakistan did in the past, I'm afraid the reality is, and I don't think again this is something that anybody is going to really argue about. Pakistan has had a very, very long history of supporting radical Islamic movements in Kashmir, in Afghanistan, in all sorts of other places. As we all know, a very, very prominent Islamist leader was in Pakistan until the Americans finally caught up with him. I'm not going to say more because we know how sensitive that whole thing is.

But the point I'm trying to say is that there is a very long, very long and undisputed history of Pakistan being involved with these kinds. of groups and they do commit sometimes extreme acts of violence, not different from the one that we have just seen. So when the Pakistanis say that they weren't involved, the trouble is they have been involved in the past and it's very easy to understand why Modi and he's electoral constituency will assume that Pakistan was involved in this. I'm not, by the way, I haven't investigated this. I'm not talking to anybody. I don't know for a fact that Pakistan was involved.

All I am saying is it's completely understandable why Wemodi and the people around him might think that Pakistan was involved. Pakistan also has had a very, very long conflict with India over the status of Kashmir, which has never been resolved either. And I'm not going to go into the history of that on this programme either. Just to say, there has already been wars between Pakistan and India over the status of Kashmir. So we have all of this going on. Now, the other thing to say is that there is a long thing.

standing political crisis in Pakistan. The former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, is in prison. A lot of his supporters are very, very unhappy about this. The economy of Pakistan is in great difficulties. There's very high inflation. So there's social tensions. There's economic tensions. The government is fragile or feels itself to be at least under pressure.

there's a perception that the United States, which was historically Pakistan's great ally and friend, has been tilting increasingly in India's favour over the last 20 years because it sees India as a counterbalance against China. So you can understand why things in Pakistan might be very tense and why that might cause some people in Pakistan. I'm not saying this has happened again. I want to stress this, but they might be saying, well, look, we're in this situation with India. Perhaps what we need is a situation, a kind of controlled crisis with India, which will consolidate society within Pakistan, behind the military, so that we can, to some extent at least, mitigate these particular crises that we have. And even if that is not true, in a condition of crisis within a country,

various players within that country potentially can start to make decisions on their own, which have not been agreed throughout the entire political system. So one way or the other, we are in a situation where India, it's understandable why they think Pakistan. was involved. They're making threats against Pakistan. Pakistan is going to respond to those threats. It's not going to simply allow India to breach Pakistani airspace or territory, launch attacks against people that the Indians say are terrorists. They're not going to allow that to happen. And then, of course, on top of that, we have the Indus River issue. Now, this goes back.

to 1960. The Indus is an enormous river, enormously historic. It provides water to both India and Pakistan. Apparently, Pakistan is very Pakistani agriculture, and remember, it's still a very rural country in many places, is very dependent on water from the Indus. Now, throughout all the various conflicts between India and Pakistan, the Indians have never interfered with the flow of water into Pakistan through the Indus. There was an agreement in 1960 that the India, you know, that basically sorted the fact that the Indus would be shared between these two countries in that way. Now, very dangerously, I think, Modi is now saying that that treaty is suspended.

And there is suggestions that India might start to take action to stop the flow of water to Pakistan via the Indus River. And of course, if that happens, it is an existential crisis for Pakistan. I mean, if Pakistan is not receiving water in that way, then on top of all the other economic and social problems, you will have a potential catastrophe. I mean desertification, possible famine, all kinds of humanitarian crises, one piling on top of the other. So you can understand that for Pakistan this is an existential issue. And they're saying if the Indians take this step, then as far as they are concerned, that would be an act of war. And Pakistan would be at war with India. Now, two things.

Firstly, I don't think that the technology exists to stop the flow of water on this kind of scale from India to Pakistan. I mean, I've read various discussions about this. But I mean, I don't think that India is really in a position to act on these threats. So why threatened to do something that the other side, Pakistan, is going to see a situation. is going to see as existentially dangerous if you can't follow through with it anyway. So I think Modi was mistaken to threaten this. I think it's escalated the situation to extraordinary levels.

But secondly, Pakistan on its side has had a policy of being prepared to use nuclear weapons first and they're now threatening to do so. And that again is going to exacerbate this crisis to an extraordinary degree and is potentially, I mean, unbelievably dangerous. Because if India perceives that there's a real possibility of Pakistan using nuclear weapons against India, then logically and understandably, India might decide to use its nuclear arsenal against Pakistan. So it's very easy to see how this thing could get out of control. As I said, we've had clashes in the past. It's usually up to now been possible to bring this situation under control.

But this looks like a particularly dangerous incident. And I think everybody who's following it needs to be very worried. Imran Khan was someone who was someone who was repeat. pairing relationship, the relations with India, Pakistan and India, right? Yes. Absolutely. He was, well, he was, I mean, lots of criticisms of him. People say that, you know, he's overrated.

But he wanted, as far as one can tell, to distance Pakistan from its past. He wanted to establish a more civilian type of government in Pakistan. he wanted to reduce the role of the military there. He wanted good, all these better relations with India. And of course, he wanted good relations with Russia. So the American embassy wasn't happy about that. The military weren't happy about that. All kinds of stakeholders within Pakistan,

a very complicated political system in Pakistan, weren't happy about it. And as I said, the result is that he's in prison. So you're quite right. I think a lot of this current crisis is traceable back to that decision, basically to remove Imran Khan from the premiership through what, as far as I'm concerned, has all the looks, look of a parliamentary coup, and then to conduct lawfare against him and to imprison him. By the way, I want to stress, as it's often the case with these kind of scandals,

I'm not suggesting that Imran Khan is, you know, absolutely innocent of all the things he's accused of. But if you're talking about corruption in Pakistan, then, I mean, corruption is not just widespread at the highest levels of the Pakistani system. It is universal, as is universally acknowledged. Does this jeopardize bricks in any way, given... India and China, the tensions between those two powers, given China's growing investment and support with Pakistan? Potentially, yes. I mean, the friendship between Pakistan and China goes back to the 1960s.

India and China had been very good friends in the 50s. Then they fell out massively over issues of the border. there was actually a war between China and India in 1962, which China won. That left China in control of large stretches of territory, which India claims as its own, and there had been tensions between China and India ever since. India then forged close relations with the Soviet Union, which was, of course, at that time, China's adversary, and China balanced those by, building up a strong relationship with Pakistan. China has never shown any hint of wanting to sacrifice

its relationship with Pakistan ever since, because as far as China is concerned, Pakistan has been a consistently reliable ally. Also, I think at a deeper level, the Chinese probably calculate that they need Pakistan to be friendly to themselves. because they don't want a hostile government in Pakistan that might start supporting Islamist groups within China itself. So there is this very strong relationship between China and Pakistan, which makes India obviously extremely uneasy. And if we start moving towards an outright conflict,

then I can very easily see that this could cause enormous strains within the bricks. We're not there yet, but we are moving slowly in that direction, or maybe even quickly in that direction. What do you see as a possible off-ramp here? I mentioned the defense minister's statements, which were interesting statements coming from the Pakistani defense minister admitting that Pakistan was doing all kinds of terrible things for many decades. What do you think is a possible off-ramp to this crisis? Well, I think that firstly, the two sides need to start calming the situation by stopping making these threats against each other.

So first of all, I think Pakistan should tell India that they're prepared to cooperate with India to investigate this terrorist incident. Now, you know, they can do that and then, as has happened, I believe before, going forward, they might walk it back. I don't know. But at least it would de-escalate the problem now. India could reciprocate by, except, you know, by ending the suspension of the Indian River, the Indus River agreement. And Pakistan could say that it's not looking to use nuclear weapons. happens against India. I think if something like that happens, the situation could ease and stabilize quite good. Give this terrorist group to India or something. I mean, I don't know,

because there's this terrorist group. I forgot their name that that was behind this terrorist attack that has safety that has received, that is in Pakistan. And is there a way for Pakistan to somehow allow India to hit this terrorist group or something like that. Yeah, absolutely. What Pakistan could, in theory, do is that they could start taking action against this group themselves, because we could see how dangerous it was. They could tell the Indians, look, we are not going to obviously allow you to attack this group on our territory.

I mean, that is an infringement of our sovereignty. and we have to resist it. But we will take action ourselves and they could tell the Indians what that action was and they could start, you know, rounding up these people and doing those kind of things.

Of course, again, and this is where, by the way, sponsorship of terrorist groups, why it is an incredibly bad idea because those terrorist groups could then turn against the Pakistani government itself and they do have some support

within Pakistani society. and it could create a further set of problems for Pakistan. But I would have thought that avoiding war with India, potentially a nuclear war, ought to be the priority at this time. So I think the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers should meet, and I think there should be some attempt to move this thing forward. And I think, by the way, and I'm not trying to be here, even-handed at all. I'm simply saying that I think Modi also should at least try, make bigger

efforts to maintain some kind of long-term dialogue with Pakistan than he has done up to now. Because one of the reasons, I suspect, why this has happened is because in the absence of dialogue, and Modi has shown little interest in dialogue with Pakistan, that Pakistan is feel increasingly isolated and with India growing more powerful, literally every day, perhaps more threatened. And in India's own interests, talking to the Pakistanis in a way that might diffuse these tensions and ease these worries that they're being boxed into a corner could prevent incidents like the one we just see.

and with all the consequences that we now have to worry about. I mean, it just seems to me that India is much more powerful than Pakistan, but it's the nuclear component for Pakistan that access the deterrence. Exactly. But, of course, the very fact that Pakistan is the much weaker party makes it more likely to use nuclear weapons in a crisis by definition. Right. Okay.

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