🌊 The Town that Could Trigger Nuclear War

Did someone forward you this? Subscribe here free!

By Max Frost

Muridke, Pakistan

A few weeks ago, we got in a car in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, and started a drive up the Grand Trunk Road, which connects Lahore to Afghanistan.

After an hour, we passed through a city that was as crowded, dusty, and non-descript as any other. Yet this wasn’t any ordinary town: If we were to pull off the main road and head through some residential neighborhoods, we’d have found a compound that could trigger a nuclear war. 

And last week, it may have done just that. 

Pakistan is home to an alphabet soup of militant groups: JeM, JeI, TTP, HM, SSP, LeJ, and BLA, to name a few. Each has a different goal: Some are separatists; others are religious extremists who target rival sects. Some seek to topple Pakistan’s government; others have close ties with it.

That latter group includes LeT, meaning Lashkar-e-Taiba or “Army of the Righteous.” 

LeT has been conducting attacks against India for over 30 years. It seeks to liberate Kashmir – a region mostly controlled by India but claimed by Pakistan – from Indian control.

LeT has blown up trains, massacred Hindu pilgrims, and repeatedly attacked soldiers and police across India. In 2008, LeT terrorists traveled by boat from Pakistan to Mumbai, where they attacked tourist sites, blew up a train station, and took hostages at a five-star hotel. Known in India as 26/11, that was India’s highest-profile terror attack. 

Last week, militants massacred 26 tourists in India-controlled Kashmir. India soon announced that the attackers were linked to LeT and at least several had crossed into the country from Pakistan. 

In the attack’s wake, India’s defense minister issued a declaration: “We will not only reach those who perpetrated this act, we will even reach those who, sitting behind the scenes, conspired to carry out such nefarious activities on Indian soil.”

So what will happen next? 

Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, making direct attacks on each other risky and difficult. To get around this, Pakistan’s military and intelligence agency, the ISI, cultivated a strategy of supporting terrorist groups that can target India without prompting a full military response, as a direct attack may. 

These militants have been found to receive money, equipment, and training from the Pakistani state. Muridke, the dusty town we passed through, for example, hosts an LeT training grounds where recruits undergo drills and receive paramilitary training; educational institutions, where recruits receive a mix of religious and Pakistani nationalist propaganda; and planning centers, where the group’s leadership can organize attacks. All of this happens relatively openly.

Multiple intelligence agencies, investigative journalists, and former Pakistani officials have confirmed the links between LeT and the ISI. Until recently, the group’s founder and leader, despite being a wanted terrorist with a bounty on his head, was allowed to live relatively freely throughout Pakistan. 

Notably, Pakistanis also accuse India of supporting terrorists within Pakistan. These allegations primarily rest on confessions from arrested separatist militants, who have testified that India armed them, and the arrests of alleged Indian spies. Beyond these testimonies, though, significant hard evidence of India’s support for terrorists isn’t publicly available.

The question now is how India will respond to last week’s Kashmir attack.

Traditionally, India’s responses have been limited. After an attack killed 19 Indian soldiers in 2016, for example, India responded with a “surgical strike” into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to destroy alleged terrorist launching pads. Striking Kashmir was deemed less provocative than striking Pakistan proper. 

In 2019, though, India did just that: For the first time since 1971, India conducted airstrikes inside “mainland” Pakistan, bombing alleged terrorist training camps just a few hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad. The strikes allegedly killed 350+ Pakistani militants. Pakistan, in turn, shot down an Indian jet and took the pilot hostage before releasing him in an apparent effort to reduce tensions. 

Another such standoff is now underway: Last week, India canceled a water-sharing treaty with Pakistan that plays a major role in providing the latter’s 257M people with water for drinking and farming. Pakistan declared that an act of war and announced the end of an India-Pakistan peace treaty. In the days since, Pakistani and Indian troops have exchanged fire across their border. 

This Tuesday, Pakistani officials announced that they had "credible intelligence" that India was preparing an “incursion” within the next 36 hours “on the pretext of baseless and concocted allegations of involvement in the [Kashmir] incident.”

Pakistan’s military would act "assuredly and decisively," they said. The country’s defense minister added that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons if "there is a direct threat to our existence."

"Those Shaheen [missiles], Ghaznavi [missiles], which we have kept arranged in our bases, we have kept them for Hindustan [India],” one minister said. “The 130 [nuclear] weapons we possess are not just kept as models – and you have no idea in which parts of Pakistan we have positioned them."

So war could erupt between the world’s first- and fifth-most populous countries, and that war could have nuclear consequences. If it does, a chapter of the story will have been written in that dusty roadside city.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading. Very curious to hear from the Pakistani and Indian readers here: How should each country respond to last week’s attack in Kashmir? Let us know by replying to this email. 

Below are our recent installments in case you missed them:

• Roca reports from inside the Vatican

• Is a serial killer on the loose in New England?

• How the son of a CIA official died fighting for Russia

• Celebrating five years of RocaNews

• The legal theory that goes beyond the Constitution 

Thanks to all who wrote in to yesterday’s report and shared their thoughts on the next pope and the future of the Catholic Church. Below is a selection of those responses.

Meg from Missouri wrote:

Ian from South Africa wrote:

And Anonymous wrote:

That’s all, see you tomorrow.

—Max and Max