Pakistan & India on Brink of War After Oct 7th Style Terrorist Attack Kills 27 in Kashmir

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Pakistani (in black) and Indian (in khaki) border guards at the Waga border ceremony that occurs daily between the two nations.

Pakistan & India on Brink of War After Oct 7th Style Terrorist Attack Kills 27 in Kashmir

- A Radical Dispatch

1) What Happened?

Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India find themselves at the brink of war.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“The Pakistani defence minister has said his country is reinforcing troops in anticipation of an ‘imminent’ ­military incursion by India. Tensions between the two nuclear powers have been growing since ­militants last week killed 26 tourists in Kashmir, an attack India has said was linked to Pakistan.”

Since this attack, both countries have responded with a series of measures that have deepened the crisis.

The Times reports 25th April 2025:

“The massacre of 26 Indian tourists by Islamist militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Tuesday has brought India and Pakistan close to outright war. In a dizzyingly swift escalation, illustrating the endemic tension between the two countries, India immediately accused Pakistan of backing the militants, closed the only land border crossing and suspended a crucial water-sharing treaty that has withstood two earlier wars. Delhi also revoked the visas of Pakistani nationals in India. Denying any involvement in the massacre, Pakistan responded by cancelling the visas of Indian nationals, closing Pakistani airspace to Indian airlines and suspending bilateral trade. Soldiers from both sides have since exchanged fire across the Line of Control, the militarised frontier dividing Kashmir.”

2) Escalation

The world now awaits in trepidation for India’s military response to what it says was a Pakistan-backed terrorist attack, which the Pakistanis vehemently deny. Any retaliation by India is likely to set off a series of tit for tat face-saving measures.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“India blames Pakistan and Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has vowed to pursue the ‘terrorists’ and ‘their backers’ to the ‘ends of the earth’. Pakistan denies any connection to the attack and has promised tit-for-tat responses to punitive action by Delhi. Reports suggested that, after a week of diplomatic reprisals, India would soon launch military action and that several options were being considered. This would please the crowd watching the Wagah border flag-lowering ceremony. ‘War is the only answer,’ said Ravish Shulka, from central India, who had ­Indian flags painted on his face. Others chanted ‘attack, attack, attack’ when asked how Modi should respond.”

India has already taken steps to threaten Pakistan’s access to fresh water from Himalayan rivers that lie upstream, by suspending the 1960 Indus Waters treaty. Pakistan said that any action taken to block water supply would be an act of war.

The Times reports 27th April 2025:

“On Wednesday India placed the 1960 Indus Waters treaty in ‘abeyance’ — a signal that one of the last remaining buffers of stability between the two countries is beginning to crumble. Islamabad said that any attempt to stop or divert water belonging to Pakistan would amount to an act of war. On Friday the Indian minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said: ‘Not a single drop of water meant for India will be allowed to flow into Pakistan.’ His response suggested that Delhi might be serious about ‘weaponising’ rivers that are lifelines for millions of people in neighbouring Pakistan.”

If India were to block the rivers that flow from Indian occupied Kashmir into Pakistan, Pakistan would be deprived of 80% of its fresh water, and its agricultural land in the Punjab would go dry.

Such a move would make war inevitable, which is why suspending the Indus Waters treaty has worried many outside observers.

In the unlikely event of all-out war, being the larger country by almost all metrics, India’s army appears the largest of the two nations.

But with the two rivals both being nuclear powers, any size factor is equalised instantly by threats to deploy nuclear arsenals.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“Pakistan’s leader, Hanif Abbasi, in turn warned Indians that his country’s nuclear arsenal was not merely for ‘display’ and threatened nuclear retaliation. India has suspended a crucial water-sharing treaty that ­regulates the supply of water to its neighbour and has long been credited with preventing direct conflict over the precious resource between the two nations. Abbasi said that if water failed to reach Pakistan, Indians should know that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons ‘are targeted at you’.”

At best, any all out total war between the two nations would lead to Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.). This is why total war remains highly unlikely.

3) Reciprocal Blame

The conflicting sides have blamed each other for the terrorist attack, conducted by a hitherto unknown group calling itself Kashmir Resistance.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“Analysts say tensions may have flared up again because the new head of the Pakistan army, Asim Munir, takes a more ideological hardline approach in Kashmir. Only a few days before the attack he said that Pakistan would not forget Kashmir and its ‘brethren’ there. Others suggest it is because India has meddled more in the affairs of Pakistan in recent years, carrying out assassinations and helping the Baloch separatist movement. India denies these allegations and says these attacks happen when Pakistan is in internal disarray and needs a unifying cause.”

Both sides accusations against the other are, however, largely accurate. Pakistan does have a history of supporting terrorist groups inside India, especially in Indian occupied Kashmir. And India has been meddling in various rebellions and insurrections inside Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Sky News correspondent Yalda Hakim recently raised the Pakistani element of such provocations against India with Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif.Hakim received perhaps a more honest reply from Asif than was expected.

Sky News reports 25th April 2025:

Click to play:

Sky News: “You do admit, sir, that Pakistan has had a long history of backing and supporting and training and funding these terrorist organisations?”

Pakistan Defence Minister: “Well, uh, we have been doing this dirty work for United States for about three decades you know, and West, including Britain.”

Sky News: “So that that's your argument that um..?”

Pakistan Defence Minister: “No, we, that that was a mistake and we suffer for that, and that is why you are saying this to to to to me. If we had not uh joined the war uh against Soviet Union, and later on the the war after 9/11, Pakistan's track record was not an unimpeachable track record.”

Sky News: “Defence Minister, I just want to get back to this particular incident in Kashmir and the noises that are now coming out of Delhi. Do you believe this situation is going to escalate and that India will launch airstrikes? Is Pakistan preparing itself for that?”

Pakistan Defence Minister: “We are already prepared for it, you know. We are already prepared for it. Any eventuality which takes place in the next one or two or three or four days of week or ten days, we will retaliate and we will react to that, you know, in kind, Inshaa Allah.”

Sky News: “How will you respond if India does launch a series of airstrikes?”

Pakistan Defence Minister: “We will measure our response to whatever is initiated by India, according to that.”

It remains an open question as to who gains most domestically from facilitating such a brazen attack in Kashmir.

The Times reports 25th April 2025:

“Such reckless responses are extremely dangerous. Both governments are under pressure at home and are seeking an external diversion to rally restive public opinion. In Pakistan, the jailing of Imran Khan, the deposed prime minister, the trumped-up charges against his party and the manoeuvrings of the army and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency to retain their grip over the squabbling politicians have reduced the country to an almost ungovernable state. In India the fall-out raises even greater stakes. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has seen his image and his political dominance under growing attack since he unexpectedly failed to achieve a predicted landslide electoral victory last year. Having risen to power on the openly sectarian platform of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, he has steadily pushed through more and more discriminatory laws and measures hurting India’s large Muslim minority. He now has to keep ahead of the sectarian wave he has unleashed, and needs to bolster his standing with powerful Hindu nationalists by identifying Muslim Pakistan as the enemy seeking to undermine India’s attempts to emerge as a world power.”

4) Reciprocal Deescalation

What remains paramount at this time are efforts to deescalate conflict and prevent an October 7th style spiral towards more and more violence. In that regard, the below observations are helpful.

As we have already stated, all out war remains unlikely, and deescalation is the only real option on the table. Thankfully, this sentiment is also being expressed by Indian military leaders.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“‘They will be looking for a target that sends a strong message but which is not too escalatory,’ said Lieutenant General Deependra Singh Hooda, who was in charge of the Northern Command during the 2016 strike. He added that some backlash from Pakistan is to be expected but ‘no one wants an all out war’.”

Cutting off Pakistan’s water supply, which would be an act of war, would also harm India too. What India would have done to Pakistan, Pakistan’s ally China could then justifiably do to India. This is why it is unlikely to happen, despite the Indus Waters treaty being placed into “abeyance” by India.

The Times reports 27th April 2025:

“If India tried to divert water from Pakistan, it could spark a regional conflict over water that could end badly for India itself, warned Aaron Wolf, a conflict resolution specialist renowned for his work on ‘water diplomacy’. He said: ‘China is upstream of India and an ally of Pakistan. What India can do to Pakistan, China can do to India’…….China controls much of the world’s ‘water tower’, as the high Himalayan glaciers are known. Mirumachi said the development of dams by China is causing concerns for India: ‘The fear is [the Chinese] could stop the flow’.”

Regardless, it appears that such threats are for mere public consumption. India doesn’t have the infrastructure to carry through on the water threat.

The Times reports 27th April 2025:

“Others saw Delhi’s move as aimed less at Pakistan than its own population. ‘For me, it’s a largely symbolic step, a populist measure designed to satisfy public appetite for action over the terror attacks,’ said Brahma Chellaney, a think tank analyst and author of Water: Asia’s New Battleground. ‘In reality, India doesn’t have the hydro infrastructure to disrupt flows of water to Pakistan. It would take them 15 to 20 years to build all the dams they would need to have an impact’.”

Though a looming conflict between India and Bangladesh over water might just be possible. Bangladesh is a far weaker nation, and does not possess a nuclear deterrent.

The Times reports 27th April 2025:

“It may have put paid to the idea of water supplies becoming immune from conflict but the unravelling of the Indus treaty seemed less significant to some analysts than rising tensions between India and Bangladesh. ‘Their agreement on the Ganges river ends next year and relations are tense, so I don’t think that pact will be renewed,’ said [professor of peace and conflict research at Sweden’s Uppsala University, Ashok] Swain. ‘A major conflict between India and Bangladesh might be looming’.”

5) False Flag Warning

It is also important to remember that there are nefarious parties globally that seek to thwart all peace efforts, because they gain from war.

With that in mind, it is quite possible that the Kashmir attack was a false-flag attack perpetrated not by Pakistan but by a power that seeks to embroil Pakistan and India in war.

Similar to October 7th attacks, there remain open questions about glaring security lapses in Indian Kashmir, one of the most militarised regions on the planet.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“The army said it wanted to understand the security lapse that left the tourists so vulnerable. They were attacked in a vast meadow with not a single soldier around, despite Kashmir being one of the most militarised zones in the world. The worst attack on civilians in Kashmir for 25 years, it has pushed anger to fever pitch — not least because the victims were asked ­whether they were Hindu before being killed. It was the deadliest attack on Indian civilians since the Mumbai atrocity in 2008, which was carried out by the Pakistan-based ­Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.”

Keeping with the October 7th attacks - as they best reflect the modus operandi of what has just happened in Kashmir - it is already being alleged by Israel’s domestic intelligence service Shin Bet, that the terrorist attack by Hamas was highly likely to have been facilitated years in advance, by Netanyahu.

Jerusalem Post reports 24th March 2025:

“While the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) took a significant amount of responsibility for the disasters on October 7 in its report published unexpectedly on Tuesday, it also implicated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by implying that his policies regarding the Temple Mount, the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and the judicial reform led to Hamas’s decision to initiate its long-planned invasion.
Other policies carried out under Netanyahu that the agency flagged as problematic and as contributions to Hamas’s decision to invade were his facilitation of Qatari funding to Hamas and his opposition to proposed assassination operations of top Hamas leaders at the time.”

That last allegation made by the head of Shin Bet: ‘[Netanyahu’s] opposition to proposed assassination operations of top Hamas leaders at the time’ was explained in detail by the Radical Dispatch 18th October 2024:

This view goes some way to explaining why Israel’s CCTV footage at the Gaza border from October 7th has since disappeared. It forms the background to why Israel’s head of Shin Bet Ronen Bar is just yesterday reported to have resigned in open disgust at Netanyahu.

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

The Times reports 28th April 2025:

“Israel’s spy chief has announced his resignation over the failure of the security establishment to prevent the October 7 massacre by Hamas. Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, said he would step down on June 15 — nearly three months after Binyamin Netanyahu tried to dismiss him, saying he no longer trusted him. The sacking was blocked by the Supreme Court after a petition by opposition parties who said it constituted a conflict of interest motivated by the agency’s investigations into a corruption scandal involving Netanyahu’s closest aides.”

All of this was outlined by Radical Media only a week after the October 7th attacks.

Radical Media reports 15th October 2023:

Click to play:

Maajid Nawaz for WARRIOR CREED: “But you can see there at the bottom of this image, we'd already published all of this for you in the Radical Dispatch as far back as the 15th of October 2023, only a few days after the October the 7th attacks, that same few weeks after the attacks we published, next week, in fact, after the attacks, we published that headline that's at the bottom of the screen for you: ‘Netanyahu Funded and Supported Hamas for War - Receipts’. You can see it being compared with the later 2025 headline from March by the Jerusalem Post, above it. It's almost identical. The Jerusalem Post says: ‘Netanyahu's Funding for Hamas via Qatar Enabled October the 7th Invasion, Shin Bet Reveals,’ and ours from two years prior in the Radical Dispatch: ‘Netanyahu Funded and Supported Hamas for War...the Shadow knows.”

The aim of such false flag operations would be…

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