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India has just attacked three Pakistani army bases near the Kashmir region with missiles. There are some indications that power infrastructure in a Pakistani town was targeted as well. Troops are also clashing along the line of contact. This is as far as I know the biggest escalation in the region since the Kargil war. If this were any other two nuclear powers the world would be on a state of panic now. What are the culture war implications of a full scale nuclear war in South Asia?
UPDATE Unconfirmed reports that Pakistan is carrying out a military response, including air strikes on Indian bases in Kashmir.
UPDATE Pakistani Prime Minister has confirmed ongoing Pakistani military response. Heavy gunfire, artillery and air strikes heard on live feeds along the line of control on Kashmir
UPDATE Multiple Pakistani news outlets claim that Pakistan has shot down two Indian Rafael fighter jets. Some Indian news agencies are now reporting that a jet was downed.
UPDATE: Second round of missile strikes in the early hours of May 8. Sources confirm that the aerial engagement yesterday that caused the loss of 2-5 aircraft had over 125 fighter jets from both sides involved.
There were 15 killed in Poonch and triple-digit casualties in Pakistan. Indian leftists are silent as going against the army gets you locked in via the UAPA. Pakistan can get buck broken bad simply because India has more money, people, smarter people and geographic advantage. I don't want a war of any kind, but it is wild to see so many MAGA neocon types supporting Pakistan.
Mirpuris, the people behind the rapes in England that Kulak posted about are Pakistani, they also house Osama. The Indian state took the chance to virtue signal by making two women present this operation, two officers, both with zero combat experience, one was muslim, so Modi still yearns for Western validation.
The place attacked is Poonch, plenty of sikhs live there, and around 50 were injured. The strikes were all avoidable, unless you publicly skin some Kashmiri separatists, they will not stop. My hate for the neocon Indian Hindutva right is public as they are neither Hindu nor right, but them striking fear into people's hearts, leftists, is a big positive.
Things are not good. Indian muslims are aware of how bad this can be, and leaders like Owaisi are now bigger war mongers than anyone to show that he is in with India and not Pakistan. Things may escalate. Jaipur is not super safe. I will keep posting updates, but I do hope that we don't see any Indian casualties. The shoehorning of leftist ideals did seem bad. The army is the last bastion of Dwija male spirit, wherein regiments even have names after castes, most popular being the Rajputana Rifles.
I will also state that I am biased, I dislike Pakistan, I have family that has served in the forces and live in an area that is not super safe if an actual war breaks out. American cuck right taking pot shots was just low though, Indian state has issues, yet Pakistan usually starts all conflicts. Defending Mirpuris and people who allowed Osama in is hard to defend. Not all Pakistanis are like that, but the Pakistani state is straight evil. Any comparisons you may see about Kashmir and Gaza should result in you blocking said person.
I pray that I am safe, and my people remain safe. I got enough grains for a few months and am a little sad after the images from Poonch. The attacks in Pakistan were on terrorist bases, whilst Poonch is a civilian area where a lot of muslims got killed too.
Posting a second reply since this is urgent, there were air strikes attempted at night on Rajasthan, not on Jaipur, but in Rajasthan, and bomb threats have been called in Jaipur. Indian drones did damage parts of Rawalpindi, another major city. It hit an empty cricket stadium as a warning.
Furthermore, debris from missiles was found in Amritsar. They also targeted Changigarh and Jammu, two important state capitals with millions of residents. This might become a war after this. The villages near Amritsar are being emptied. I fear they may target my city next, not saying this in a trivial way. I hope we remain safe.
Holy shit, they attacked jaislamer, Jammu and also Kahsmir, this is war, I hope nukes dont get brought out. Pakistan has attacked their fourth civilian target. Mullah motherfuckers want an all out war. They tried bombing Jaisalmer, tanks are at the border. Fuck these people.
The Pakistani defense minister was also spouting off about how a “limited nuclear exchange” couldn’t be ruled out.
That motherfucker needs to be a camp, anyone who mentions nukes is an enemy to humanity. If this gets me banned, fuck it.
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From the safety of the cushiest country on Earth, the prospect of war in the Kashmir is a mildly interesting diversion at most.
But there you are, a fellow mottizen, right alongside it.
Good luck.
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The problem with Kashmir is that India drags out the conflict in a deeply unsympathetic way.
The vast majority of the population is Muslim. Muslims have no real place in a Hindu nationalist project of the kind you and other serious Hindutva activists propose. Some accommodation can probably be made with the Sikhs (who can be domestically pacified) and the other domestic minorities like the Christians and Buddhists don’t really matter.
Either
Or
The current status quo is untenable.
Hindtutva doesn't actually want to do anything with Muslims and this problem has existed since democracy. The only issue is democracy, every other option will lead to violence, destabilisation and bloodshed.
Also India letting go of Kashmir is death, the (pok)(pakistan occupied kashmir) part that's in Pakistan was left there by our own stupidity, letting Pakistani and China have it would mean that we have zero protection.
The only path forward would be making an example out of terrorists publicly, settling Hindus and keeping democracy suspended. Any mention of giving up land is untenable as then you'll lose more land and be pushed downwards on the maintains.
Pok part? Un clear what you are saying here.
POK is pakistan occuiped kashmir
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Or everyone can live peacefully in India. Even many serious Hindutva activists want people of other religions to live their lives peacefully, and are ok with them openly practicing their religion. The kind of extremist opinions you see are a minority.
Yep, there's no Hindu extremism in India. It's mostly anti Hindu and anti upper caste. Democracy smh.
In what sense are Hindus oppressed or campaigned against in India?
I'd refer my posting history. For starters
Some things from the top of my head, there are plenty of much worse things besides these. Upper caste males are seen as the root of all evil who exist to pay nearly all taxes, make up nearly all of the military, nearly all of the achievements of the place, both past and present.
You do a lot of equivocation between social attitudes and government policy and discrimination against Hindus and discrimination against Brahmins, and it's not really clear to me which one you think is going on and which one each bullet is supposed to support.
True perhaps in a technical sense, but when the PM is inaugurating Hindu temples (and I'm not aware of him inaugurating mosques), I'm not sure it's really relevant.
Not only is India not the only nation with Hindus, it's not even the only Hindu majority nation.
The state-run religion is not usually considered to be oppressed. Also, can you explain how a "secular nation" can operate Hindu temples?
This doesn't indicate discrimination against Hindus at all.
The existence of a heckler's veto does not imply that the majority is being discriminated against. You can't have a Mohammed drawing competition in the US without people coming to kill you either, but it's ridiculous to claim that the US discriminates in favor of Muslims.
This is not evidence of discrimination against Hindus.
Which rights do Hindus lack?
Which places in India are exclusively, for example, Christian?
As far as I can tell the ban is only in places with terrible air quality? I don't see that as discrimination against Hindus. Do other religions get to perform celebrations that pollute the air to a similar extent?
What in particular do you find objectionable about it? I don't find it particularly likely that a bill sponsored and signed into law by the BJP is anti-Hindu.
How is a bill that was basically supposed to help everyone but Muslims evidence of discrimination against Hindus? That such a bill was even proposed is primary facie evidence that India discriminates against Muslims.
I would really prefer that you list the things that you think are the worst so that we can get to the bottom of this rather than a bunch of things that aren't really convincing and then go "but this isn't even my final form."
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I also want to know this, because I haven't seen any. Maybe he is just referring to practices that motivate Hindutva activists like conversion, "love jihad", etc. and opposition to religious laws, and mixing of government and religion as part of secularism?
Love jihad is an exercise in weakness. The campaigning agaisnt it is weak though there's a kernel of truth in it, the premise is mostly flawed and the messaging only makes Hindus look worse
Conversions are a very real issue. Forcing poor people to accept Jesus as their lord and savior by offering them grains and threatening social exclusion should get you belted publicly.
I am not a hindutva guy, I am a reactionary which means I can actually be a Hindu. Hindutva comes from Maharashtra of the 1900s where people wanted a caste less Hindu state. Marathas are shudras or OBCs who out if rage agaisnt their more competent Brahmin counterparts, started funding explicitly anti Brahmin activists which influenced Hindutva as RSS and the Bjp, which are both sister organizations unofficially, come out of Maharashtra.
Unfortunately, non Hindutva alternatives are even worse. Nehru and his family set the nation back in ways there's no coming back from, ever. Up until a few years ago, prime minister of the nation wouldn't visit temples as that was agaisnt the secular fabric of the nation.
Don't forget people balstng Islamic prayers daily in Al localities with zero consequences, a way to tell others to fuck off and stay in their lane.
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There's pictures floating around of what looks like MICA shaped debris (a fairly exclusive European missile that mounts on the Rafale).
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Rafale.
Rafail.
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God dammit. I was planning to head back home for a few weeks and now I'm genuinely worried about flights being canceled. Guess I'll just have to take the risk.
First the terrorist attack in Kashmir that my family missed by a few hours, now this. Can't catch a break.
Please instruct a non-anglophone - isn't your family missing that attack you already catching a break?
I think the anxiety induced by near-misses is bad enough. I certainly don't want to contemplate the effects of an airspace lockdown at this point of time.
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I would caution against taking these early rumors too seriously. Propaganda claims and people just plain being wrong on the internet run wild in the early phases of anything like this. It is undoubtedly true that the Pakistani army is firing artillery across the border and that skirmishes are happening between the two sides in Kashmir, but the organized Pakistani retaliation has almost certainly not started yet. Their national security council was summoned this morning (that's morning their time, as in, just a few hours ago at most) for a closed door meeting and has not yet made public statements declaring or claiming a response (other than the vague ones I highlighted in my previous post).
For the shootdown claim specifically I am skeptical. In the initial Indian attack their jets used long-range weapons and did not cross into Pakistani airspace, making an interception of those jets unlikely. Any subsequent shootdown would have to be from further Indian attacks into Pakistan, which do not appear to have happened; as part of Pakistani air raids into India, which also do not appear to have happened yet and would more likely be part of a more organized retaliation operation which, again, has not yet happened; or from air-to-air combat over Kashmir which certainly could be happening, but would be a big deal compared to the usual (and confirmed) infantry skirmishes and artillery duels. I have seen this claim as "2 Indian Rafales shot down", "1 Indian MiG shot down", and "1 Pakistani JF-17 shot down". We don't yet know if any of these various claims are true.
I will say I am particularly skeptical of the specific double-Rafale-shootdown claim. These would be brand-new jets for India; they would both be relatively difficult to bring down and, more importantly, would almost certainly not be used in a high-risk situation this early into a conflict. It would be a pretty big deal if they were, and frankly it smacks of war-fever propaganda to me: "yeah, they hit us with some missiles, but we took down two of their best jets! Pakistan (still) strong!" Not to say it's impossible of course but both sides' media have incentive to lie about this kind of stuff, and a history of doing so.
We will know more soon.
I heard it was a Mirage 2000...
But agree 200% on the importance of skepticism at this point in the conflict.
Pakistan has bought Chinese military hardware including 100+ mile range BVR missiles with datalinks and AWACS aircraft that can guide such, so .. not that unlikely.
There's a whole bunch of footage out there this morning showing various aircraft parts lying on the ground.
Yes, my initial skepticism was... well, not exactly unwarranted, but neither was it correct. French intelligence now confirms one Rafale was shot down (and at least one or two other Indian fighters are being reported shot down in increasingly-credible media), and the use of the PL-15 missiles (for the first time in combat, incidentally) is separately also confirmed -- I suspect those two things are connected. Pakistan's increasingly close relationship with China seems to be paying off for it (and China is surely getting some valuable combat performance data as well).
I would continue to emphasize caution when seeing the stream of wreckage photos (I recall in particular seeing one photo of a crashed Indian jet yesterday that was actually from a previous round of India-Pakistan fighting) but Pakistan does seem to be asserting a meaningful technological edge in the air, thanks to their Chinese purchases.
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Ha! One more for the list then. It's still possible that no aircraft was shot down at all, too.
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Nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Thales Group hardest hit?
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If these two powers enter into a non-meme war I have to imagine the west will get completely drowned by a tidal wave of immigration. RIP my chill software engineer job
Worry slowly. War between India and Pakistan has historically been a limited affair, with both wasting resources on an inconclusive border conflict and then going back to the status quo.
It's a push factor, true, but only one among many.
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From what I have seen (to be fair information is still hazy, but this much seems to be clear) India very deliberately did not hit actual Pakistani military targets. India claims to have only struck confirmed terrorist targets, and Pakistan claims they fired on civilian targets. The reported blackout in Muzaffarabad would imply at least some civilian infrastructure was fired upon but whether this was deliberate, or even if it is correct, is not yet clear.
All things considered the Indian retaliation here was quite restrained. Nine targets divided across three towns (showing ability and willingness to strike over a large geographical range, since not all the targets were near Kashmir); no actual Pakistani regular forces were targeted; and all missiles were fired from Indian territory or from aircraft which stayed within Indian airspace. To me it appears to be more of a demonstration of capability than actual intent to harm: “look, we have the ability to hit you but we’re choosing to hold our punches at this time.”
Essentially India is kicking the can back to Pakistan. They have retaliated for the terror attack but in a limited way, moving only very slightly up the escalation ladder. Pakistan now has the choice to back down or to escalate further. There are reports of artillery duels and skirmishes across the border kicking off shortly after the airstrikes but this doesn’t mean much given the baseline in the region. What might be more significant are the official statements of the Pakistani defense minister, claiming that the strikes were all targeting civilians and that “our response will be greater”, and of a Pakistan Army spokesman: “The temporary pleasure of India will be replaced by enduring grief.”
So, Pakistan will almost certainly retaliate for this retaliation. Their leadership, much like that of India, has put itself in a position where backing down looks like weakness rather than wisdom. The question now is, now that the ball is in their court, whether and how much they choose to escalate.
Edit to correct: I previously said all missiles were fired from Indian aircraft, in truth some appear to have been air-launched while others were surface-launched. The point that no Indian aircraft entered Pakistani airspace to conduct these strikes remains true.
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I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist, but it looks to me like the powers that be in India are deliberately angling for a nuclear war with Pakistan because they see it as inevitable in the long term but think that the results will be more favorable for them the sooner it happens. Moreover, they're also angling for Pakistan to launch the first (nuclear) strike because they expect the rest of the world will be more sympathetic to them in that case.
This makes zero sense. No nation, even Pakistan wouldn't want Nukes involved. Kargil was fought post nukes where Pakistan clearly lost and nukes or civilian areas weren't targeted.
Pakistan needs to keep stirring things in India so that it's army can justify its existence. No one wants nukes involved. No one ever did and there had been a war that Pakistan lost, like every war they ever fought, neither side used anything beyond guns at the border, mostly.
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I wouldn't say they're angling for nuclear war, exactly, but I do think they believe they'd win one if it came to it. The political situation in both countries makes it very unlikely that either will back down, not this early in the conflict at any rate. India's Hindu-nationalist government absolutely cannot be seen to take a targeted anti-Hindu terror attack lying down, and has been putting out a lot of rhetoric about national strength (think of the "India superpower by 20XX" memes). At the same time, their chosen method of retaliation was quite restrained, and optimized for the appearance of strength: it was flashy and geographically-expansive but does not appear to have actually caused much damage. So it can satisfy the voters' need for blood while also giving Pakistan every opportunity to still back down. The Pakistani government, for its part, has been through a lot of internal turmoil in recent years and, on top of the general autocratic impulse/need to look strong for the audience at home, would surely appreciate a chance to rally the public against their hated foreign enemy as a simple distraction. It is possible that Pakistani intelligence encouraged, or even orchestrated, the Kashmir terrorist attack as a deniable means of starting a conflict -- but even if they didn't the government will not be too broken up about the situation.
It is difficult for me to see either side backing down absent some sort of externally-brokered peace talks (which don't look very likely, at least not yet). But it doesn't need a conspiracy to cause a larger war, just good old-fashioned power politics, and there are many steps of escalation for the two sides to go through without resorting to nuclear weapons. Both sides seem confident that they can beat the other in a conventional, limited war. If that confidence holds on both sides then escalation is likely, since both sides know the other is willing to fight without breaking out the nukes.
Hindutva isn't the marauding ideology that people think it is. Both sides serve people porpoganda that helps their cause. Pakistan casually avoids telling its people how badly it lost every war it ever fought whilst Indian media currently is refusing to talk about the civilian deaths in Poonch.
Anyone who thinks Hindutva is pro Hindu or competent is unaware of what's beaneth the surface.
Pakistan can't beat India in a war, as of now. Despite the air casualties, the difference between spending, equipment, people, geography make this a terrible deal for them. China, which actually has a good military doesn't care about wars as much because the Chinese would rather sell things to India and be happy. Pakistan needs skirmishes as India being the mythical anti Muslim boogeyman is the only way to justify it's own existence.
Wars are bad, I don't want Indian causalities. The government should let the soldiers do as they see fit with Kashmiri Muslims, their stupidity should not cause a war.
All of these lowlifes get training inside Pakistan. In my original post about this, I stated that the bulk of the blame should go to Kashmiri Muslims, the remaining is with Pakistan. To them any Hindu lives lost is good. Low borns of the worst kind.
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Uh, doesn’t India have gigantic conventional superiority? Why would Pakistan think they can win a conventional war?
India does have conventional superiority through sheer force of numbers, yes, but I wouldn't call the margin gigantic necessarily -- a significant amount of Indian forces are located away from the Pakistani border, and Pakistan does have some technological advantages with modern Chinese and semi-modern American missiles and radars that can outrange Indian kit, at least under certain circumstances. This appears to have come into play already -- French intelligence has confirmed that one Rafale fighter was indeed shot down, and it's looking increasingly credible that at least one or two other Indian jets were shot down during the Indian strike mission and/or in air-to-air fighting over Kashmir, as well. Relatedly there is strong evidence that Pakistan deployed Chinese-made PL-15 missiles as part of their counter-air operation, the first use of the type in combat -- these are more or less state-of-the-art missiles, at least comparable to the American AMRAAM and quite possibly superior, including modern radar/seeker tech that is supposed to be more effective against countermeasures than older weapons. They are likely superior to anything India can field and, at least on paper, represent a qualitative jump from Pakistani capabilities in past conflicts.
So, I do think India would win pretty decisively in a truly full-scale war, but Pakistan may think they can bleed India enough on the way up the escalation ladder that India will get off the ladder before the war reaches the scale where India's numerical advantage comes fully into play. This is not a gamble I personally would bet my country on, but Pakistan's government is notably a dysfunctional autocracy and the public appears to be swept up in nationalistic war fever (and the same applies to India, albeit a bit less dysfunctional and a bit less autocratic); these are not conditions that lead to cautious decision making.
Notably, as of now Pakistan is still publicly vowing to retaliate for the Indian retaliation -- if they choose to escalate with a more deadly counterattack it is very hard for me to see India backing down absent a concerted effort from foreign countries (or perhaps the UN) to bring the two sides to the table. The US has halfheartedly warned India to "exercise restraint" but has been generally staying out of it; the UN has issued boilerplate calls for restraint and negotiation but nothing more; Chinese officials have been meeting with the Pakistani government in Islamabad, but it is not clear what they were discussing and China has not made overt public declarations of any formal stance on the war.
Edit: actually, while the majority of Pakistani statements have continued to vow further revenge, the defense minister did at one point make a statement saying essentially that Pakistan was ready to cease hostilities if India was. It is not clear, at least to me, if this is supposed to imply they will be ready for a ceasefire after a retaliatory strike against India or instead of such a strike; I am also not sufficiently keyed-in to Pakistani media to be confident if this implies some kind of disagreement within the Pakistani government or if it is entirely compatible with their otherwise-bellicose posture. But there does seem to be some hope of cooler heads prevailing in Pakistan.
India has the Meteor, which I believe should be [contingent on public figures being ~true] comparable to if not superior than an export PL-15 in range (Pakistan gets downgraded stuff, I believe) unless the Indian Meteor is also downgraded. The Meteor's ramjet should give it an edge in certain circumstances, but I don't think the Meteor has an AESA seekerhead, and I believe the PL-15 does, so that definitely gives the PL-15 an edge of its own.
I didn't know India used Meteors, thanks for that -- so they do have range -- but yes the AESA seeker radar is what I believe gives the PL-15 its edge over India's air-to-air arsenal. I'll confess to not having much knowledge of how modern radars actually work in detail (I know what AESA means conceptually but not much about the implications in context) but my understanding is that it gives a significant improvement against countermeasures compared to older weapons.
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Why would it be more favorable sooner? Do you think they expect Pakistan's arsenal to get considerably stronger? Wouldn't India's BMD benefit from more development and deployment time, or do you think it's already capable of meaningfully blunting a Pakistani attack?
I don't know much about India/Pakistan so I don't have a strong opinion, very curious!
That is my assumption, yeah. At the moment, nuclear war between Pakistan and India wouldn't actually be an MAD scenario; Pakistan would be completely destroyed (and you can't get any more destroyed than that) while India would "merely" suffer the worst disaster in memory. Pakistan and India have similar-sized nuclear arsenals (in terms of number of bombs - India's bombs are much stronger), but India is of course much larger, and they also have much more sophisticated nuclear delivery systems; Pakistan's arsenal is dangerous but it's currently one of the easier nuclear powers in the world to foil an attack from. In the future they'll most likely be more evenly-matched and a nuclear war would actually spell the end of both India and Pakistan.
Do we know India has a sufficient amount of deployed thermonuclear warheads to actually destroy Pakistan?
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Hypothetically, if India were to blow its hot nuclear load on Pakistan—in which case, as you mentioned, it would likely suffer the worst disaster in history—would India then have the (nuclear or conventional) wherewithal to prevent, say, a Chinese invasion of the contested northeastern borderlands? Or other violations of its territorial integrity?
If not, this may be reason enough for India not to pursue escalation to nuclear war, even if a nuclear exchange with Pakistan would technically be survivable.
The northeastern front isn't easy to conquer. The Himalayas act as a barrier that is pretty hard to breach, though I'd rather not think about a future where there is much Hindu blood lost.
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Interesting, thanks! Looks like Pakistan has mostly SRBMs and MRBMs and cruise missiles? Pakistan definitely doesn't have the strategic depth that the US/USSR have but I don't know enough about ABMs and in particular India's ballistic missile defense program to know if that gives India much of an edge there.
Definitely makes striking the launchers prior to launch easier though!
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Nothing ever happens ¯\_(ツ)__/¯
More seriously, I would like to believe that everyone has enough skin in the game to recognize that the use of nuclear weapons is a bad thing for the globe. Beyond the direct human suffering of New Delhi getting turned into radioactive slag, the memes are at least partially true, nobody wants a trillion Indian/Pakistani refugees so the rest of the world et al. will do their damnedest to prevent nukes from flying. But maybe the interest of everyone else in the world isn't enough and Modi lets fly. Historical Events seem to be occurring more and more often.
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