South Asia on the Brink: From May Clash to Twin Capital Bombings—A 2025 Crisis Timeline

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Video originally published on November 16, 2025.

In 2025 the subcontinent has moved from isolated flare‑ups to a landscape where war appears imminent. A brief but ferocious clash between India and Pakistan in May, renewed cross‑border violence along the Afghan‑Pakistani frontier in October, and back‑to‑back bombings in New Delhi and Islamabad have shattered any illusion of stability. As regional powers scramble for leverage and extremist networks exploit porous borders, the balance between deterrence and catastrophe hangs by a thread.

Key Takeaways

The May 2025 India‑Pakistan war, sparked by alleged Pakistani support for Jaish‑e‑Mohammed, escalated into a five‑day conflict in which Pakistan claimed to shoot down several French‑made advanced combat jets operated by India, leaving both sides militarily bruised and politically embarrassed.
In October 2025 the Afghan‑Pakistani border erupted into cross‑border violence after the Taliban's collapse of peace talks, with Pakistan threatening to use even a fraction of its full arsenal to obliterate the Taliban regime and push them back to the caves.
Back‑to‑back bombings in New Delhi and Islamabad within 24 hours in mid‑November shattered the perception of safety in both capitals, revealing that terror cells linked to Jaish‑e‑Mohammed and the Pakistani Taliban can penetrate even the most secure zones.
Indian investigations uncovered a ricin‑manufacturing cell led by Ahmed Saiyed, connected to the Islamic State's Khorasan branch, indicating a broader network of transnational terrorism feeding regional conflicts.
Pakistan's defense minister Khawaja Asif's public threat to obliterate the Taliban regime and later declaration that the Islamabad attack represents a war for all of Pakistan signals a shift from diplomatic engagement to aggressive military posture, raising the risk of a wider South Asian conflict.
The United States, China, Russia, and Iran are aligning more closely with Pakistan, while India faces diplomatic isolation, reshaping the strategic balance and potentially emboldening Pakistan's escalation.

Escalating Tensions in 2025: A Chronology of South Asian Flashpoints

The year began with simmering disputes that quickly boiled over. In May, India and Pakistan engaged in a five‑day war that left both sides bruised and embarrassed. India accused Pakistan of supporting Jaish‑e‑Mohammed, a terror outfit operating in Kashmir, while Pakistan claimed to have shot down several French‑made advanced combat jets operated by India and used the victory to fuel nationalist rhetoric. Later, in October, the fragile ceasefire between Islamabad and Kabul collapsed. A third round of peace talks, mediated by Turkey and Qatar, fell apart, prompting Pakistan's defence minister to threaten the Taliban regime with obliteration using even a fraction of Pakistan's full arsenal. Within days, border skirmishes erupted, with bombs and bullets crossing the porous frontier. These incidents did not occur in isolation. Each clash raised the stakes, hardened public opinion, and forced military planners on both sides to reposition troops and assets along contested borders. By November, the region was primed for a broader confrontation.

The May India‑Pakistan Confrontation: Triggers, Tactics, and Immediate Aftermath

The May conflict was sparked by a major Kashmir terror attack earlier in the year, with India accusing Pakistan of supporting Jaish‑e‑Mohammed and related terror networks. India's response was swift and conventional: air strikes, artillery barrages, and a brief ground incursion that tested Pakistan's air defence capabilities. Pakistan, in turn, claimed parity by shooting down several French‑made advanced combat jets operated by India and highlighted its success in a domestic propaganda campaign. Strategically, the war demonstrated the limits of both nations' conventional forces. India's reliance on rapid air power was checked by Pakistan's air defence systems, while Pakistan's ground forces struggled against India's larger mechanised formations. The ceasefire, brokered by the United States, left both sides feeling humiliated—India for needing external mediation, and Pakistan for the perception that it had only managed a tactical stalemate. In the months that followed, both governments used the outcome to justify military build‑ups. Pakistan's army chief, Asim Munir, secured lifelong immunity and expanded powers in November, positioning the military as the decisive actor in any future crisis. India, meanwhile, intensified investigations into a sprawling terror plot it linked to the May clash, setting the stage for the events of November.

Taliban‑Pakistan Border War: Cross‑Border Violence and Its Ripple Effects

October saw the Afghan‑Pakistani border become a live battlefield. After the collapse of the third peace‑talk round, Pakistan's defence minister publicly warned that Pakistan did not require even a fraction of its full arsenal to completely obliterate the Taliban regime and push them back to the caves for hiding. Within days, Pakistani forces reported killing twenty insurgents in raids against Pakistani Taliban hideouts along the frontier. The Taliban, however, retaliated with a barrage of bombings and small‑arms fire that crossed into Pakistani territory. The exchange was not limited to conventional troops; the Pakistani Taliban, a large and well‑equipped insurgent group, claimed responsibility for multiple attacks, including a suicide assault on a military school in Wana. Afghanistan denied harboring the militants, yet the porous border and the presence of Afghan‑based safe havens made it impossible to contain the violence. The border war strained regional security calculations. Pakistan's growing ties with the United States under the Trump administration and its deepening partnership with China positioned it to receive strategic backing, while Russia and Iran offered tacit support, signalling that Islamabad would face limited diplomatic resistance. Afghanistan, lacking comparable military capability—possessing little more than foot soldiers with AK‑47s and museum‑quality heavy equipment—found itself vulnerable to being drawn into a larger conflict despite its stated desire for restraint.

Capital Bombings and the Alleged Terror Plot: Unraveling the Latest Crisis

In the span of twenty‑four hours in mid‑November, the capitals of New Delhi and Islamabad were struck by devastating explosions. On Monday, a car bomb detonated near Delhi's historic Red Fort, killing twelve and injuring over thirty. Investigators traced the vehicle to a driver linked to a recently dismantled terror cell in Gujarat, where a Chinese‑educated doctor, Ahmed Saiyed, was arrested alongside two handlers. The trio was accused of manufacturing ricin, possessing handguns, and maintaining connections to the Islamic State's Khorasan branch. A subsequent raid in Pulwama, Kashmir, uncovered a cache of roughly 2,900 kilograms of explosives, detonators, and firearms, and led to the detention of seven more suspects, including two additional doctors. Indian authorities allege that the entire network was coordinated by Jaish‑e‑Mohammed, an organisation India accuses Pakistan of directly supporting. The car bomb may have been a panicked attempt to carry out an attack while the driver still could, given that the vehicle was still in motion when it detonated and the driver was still inside. The following day, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Islamabad district court, also killing twelve. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, though its highest leadership later attempted to distance itself from the attack. The bombing came on the heels of a failed assault on a military school in Wana and a series of raids that killed twenty insurgents along the Afghan border. Pakistan's prime minister immediately blamed India for the Islamabad blast, while the defence minister warned that the attack should be seen as a war for all of Pakistan. The twin bombings shattered the perception of safety in both capitals and provided each government with a potent narrative to accuse the other of sponsoring terror, further inflaming bilateral tensions.

Strategic Calculations: Military Posturing, Nuclear Deterrence, and the Risk of Escalation

Both New Delhi and Islamabad have been repositioning forces in response to the cascade of crises. Pakistan's arsenal now includes world‑class fighter aircraft, hundreds of advanced main battle tanks, and thousands of artillery pieces, while India's conventional capabilities remain robust but increasingly isolated as its traditional US partnership shows signs of strain. China, viewing India as an emergent rival, has adopted a more adversarial stance, whereas Pakistan enjoys a growing relationship with both Washington and Beijing, positioning it to test Chinese military hardware on the ground. The nuclear dimension adds a further layer of danger. Each side maintains a doctrine of credible retaliation, and the rapid succession of conventional confrontations—May's brief war, October's border exchanges, and the November capital bombings—has heightened the risk that a miscalculation could trigger a nuclear escalation. The presence of extremist groups that deliberately seek to provoke state‑on‑state conflict compounds this risk, as their attacks are designed to force governments into retaliatory cycles that could spiral beyond control. International actors have begun to pick sides. Russia and Iran have signalled tacit support for Pakistan, while India finds itself relatively isolated, with limited diplomatic options that do not involve aligning with a Taliban‑ruled Afghanistan—a prospect that would be both a liability and a strategic complication. The convergence of conventional posturing, nuclear deterrence, and extremist provocation creates a precarious balance where any further flashpoint could tip South Asia into a full‑scale war.

The Accelerationist Threat: How Extremist Networks Control the Detonator

The most dangerous element in South Asia's current crisis is not the intentions of state actors but the capacity of non‑state extremist networks to force their hand. The Pakistani Taliban operates with a clear strategic objective: to inflict maximum harm on Pakistan by any means necessary, including by triggering a regional war. The organization knows that future terror attacks inside Pakistan will be interpreted as hostile acts by India, and the more sensitive the target, the more severe Pakistan's response will be. They know that India can inflict more damage on Pakistan, even in a contested war, than their own asymmetric insurgency ever could. They know that they can attack Pakistan with impunity, basing their operations on Afghan soil and exploiting a porous border that Afghanistan cannot control, and they know that Pakistan has already built the justification to interpret a terror attack supposedly enabled by Afghanistan as a terror attack sponsored by India. The Pakistani Taliban's objective is not to avoid a regional conflict but to accelerate it, because for the price of a few suicide bombers and a few hundred kilograms of explosives, they can get the governments of India and Afghanistan engaged militarily with Pakistan in a way that an insurgency could never achieve. Their success or failure in that effort rests on Afghanistan's ability to stop them, and right now that is not something Afghanistan is capable of. Similarly, Jaish‑e‑Mohammed and related networks operating in Kashmir and across the disputed region possess the same accelerationist calculus, seeking to provoke Indian retaliation that will draw Pakistan into a broader conflict. International experts on India and Pakistan have emphasized that war is not necessarily inevitable and that both nations have real incentives to back down, but the problem runs even deeper. Even if none of these nations would choose, by themselves, to start a war in the coming weeks, that choice could be taken out of their hands at a moment when India and Pakistan would each accept the outbreak of war and Afghanistan would be forced to live with it. The detonator for South Asia's next war is held not by any government but by a loosely connected network of extremist, accelerationist terror organizations with a keen awareness of what they might achieve by pushing that big red button.

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FAQ

What triggered the May 2025 India‑Pakistan conflict and what were its main outcomes?

The conflict began after a major Kashmir terror attack earlier in the year, with India accusing Pakistan of supporting Jaish‑e‑Mohammed and related terror networks. It escalated into a five‑day war involving air strikes, artillery barrages, and a brief ground incursion. Pakistan claimed to shoot down several French‑made advanced combat jets operated by India, while both sides felt humiliated by the US‑brokered ceasefire.

How did the October 2025 Afghan‑Pakistani border conflict develop and what threats were made?

After the collapse of the third round of peace talks mediated by Turkey and Qatar, Pakistan's defense minister warned that Pakistan did not require even a fraction of its full arsenal to completely obliterate the Taliban regime. Pakistani forces then reported killing twenty insurgents in raids, while the Pakistani Taliban retaliated with bombings and a failed assault on a military school in Wana.

What were the details of the twin bombings in New Delhi and Islamabad, and which groups claimed responsibility?

In New Delhi, a car bomb detonated near the Red Fort on a Monday in mid‑November, killing twelve and injuring over thirty. In Islamabad, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a district court the following day, also killing twelve. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Islamabad attack, while the Delhi bombing was linked to a cell connected to Jaish‑e‑Mohammed.

Who is Ahmed Saiyed and what role did he play in the Indian terror investigations?

Ahmed Saiyed is a doctor with a medical degree from China who was arrested in Gujarat on November seventh for manufacturing ricin, a naturally occurring and very deadly poison. He led a terror cell linked to the Islamic State's Khorasan branch and was connected to the larger network that Indian authorities allege orchestrated the Delhi car bombing.

How are global powers influencing the South Asian conflict dynamics?

The United States, China, Russia, and Iran are aligning more closely with Pakistan, offering diplomatic and potential military support, while India faces isolation with weakened US ties and a wary China viewing it as an emergent rival. This shift emboldens Pakistan's aggressive posture and reshapes the regional strategic balance, leaving India with limited diplomatic options.

Why do extremist groups like the Pakistani Taliban seek to trigger a regional war rather than avoid one?

The Pakistani Taliban's objective is to inflict maximum harm on Pakistan by any means necessary, including by accelerating a regional conflict. They know that terror attacks inside Pakistan will be interpreted as hostile acts by India, and that India can inflict more damage on Pakistan than their own insurgency ever could. For the price of a few suicide bombers and explosives, they can get India and Afghanistan engaged militarily with Pakistan in a way their asymmetric insurgency could never achieve.

Sources

About the Author

Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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