Tensions between India and Pakistan appear to be on the rise again after both countries’ capitals were rocked by deadly blasts just a day apart from each other, fuelling fears of another full-blown clash this year.
On Tuesday afternoon, a suicide bomber self-detonated next to a police car outside a court building in Islamabad, killing at least 12 others and wounding at least 27. Many of those killed or injured were passersby or people attending court appointments, according to Islamabad police.
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The leader of the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar group, a splinter faction of the Pakistani Taliban or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the Associated Press, although another commander from the group denied association with the attack. The group has split from and remerged with TTP on a number of occasions, including breaking away in 2022 after its leader was killed in a bombing in Afghanistan. A TTP spokesperson disclaimed involvement in Tuesday’s attack.
But Islamabad has been quick to point fingers at New Delhi, even as it says it is still investigating the attack. The Prime Minister’s Office in Islamabad appeared to blame India for the attack, calling it one of the “worst examples of Indian state-sponsored terrorism in the region.” Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi also claimed the attack was “carried out by Indian-backed elements and Afghan Taliban proxies.”
“We are in a state of war,” Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said in a post on X that did not name India and blamed the Taliban government in Afghanistan. “Anyone who thinks that the Pakistan Army is fighting this war in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and the remote areas of Balochistan should take today’s suicide attack at the Islamabad district courts as a wake-up call: this is a war for all of Pakistan, in which the Pakistan Army is giving daily sacrifices and making the people feel secure.”
India rejected accusations of its involvement, calling them “baseless and unfounded allegations being made by an obviously delirious Pakistani leadership.”
“It is a predictable tactic by Pakistan to concoct false narratives against India in order to deflect the attention of its own public from the ongoing military-inspired constitutional subversion and power-grab unfolding within the country,” Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said in a statement. “The international community is well aware of the reality and will not be misled by Pakistan’s desperate diversionary ploys.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, a car explosion in New Delhi on Monday night killed at least 10 people and injured more than 30 others. The car went up in flames near the city’s historic 17th century Red Fort, or Lal Qila, which is a symbol of India’s independence and a popular area for tourists. Indian authorities have said the incident is under investigation and have not publicly identified any suspects. The case is being investigated by India’s counter-terrorism law enforcement agency, the National Investigation Agency, and Indian authorities invoked the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, an anti-terror law which allows security forces to detain suspects without trial. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed that India’s “agencies will go to the root of this conspiracy and will not spare the conspirators behind it.”Even so, some in India have already cast blame on Pakistan. Indian media reported links between the driver, reportedly a Kashmiri resident, and a Pakistani militant group. Meanwhile, social media users and reports have recalled the language of the deadly armed conflict with Pakistan earlier this year, calling the Delhi attack an “act of war.”
Amit Ranjan, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, tells TIME that he does not see an immediate military confrontation as a likely scenario, particularly as the Indian government is facing various international pressures, from President Donald Trump’s tariffs to seeking to strengthen its ties with China, which has long been friendly to Pakistan.
Still, Ranjan says, there is a competing pressure coming from within India, particularly with growing Hindu nationalist sentiments among the public, on the government to take decisive action. If Indian authorities find a link between the car explosion and a Pakistan-based group, the government may choose to take limited military action, Ranjan adds—although even limited action could escalate into a larger conflict.
“Oftentimes we see that any time there’s an attack, you have one country accusing the other and very rarely is evidence presented. It’s all based on past experiences and grievances,” Sahar Khan, a Washington-based independent security analyst, told Al Jazeera. “I think the dangerous thing is that if more and more attacks keep happening like this … we might see India and Pakistan, especially, go up the escalation ladder.”
India-Afghanistan relations
In recent months, India has increased its engagement with the Afghan Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group that governs Afghanistan. The Taliban and India’s government had a rare face-to-face meeting in October after a United Nations committee temporarily lifted a travel ban on Afghanistan’s interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. Muttaqi made a week-long diplomatic stop in New Delhi, during which both he and India’s Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar reaffirmed “India’s long-standing friendship with the Afghan people” and “emphasized respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” India also agreed to “deepen its engagement in development cooperation projects.”
Muttaqi also met with India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri in Dubai in January and spoke in April with Jaishankar during India’s conflict with Pakistan at the time.
Some analysts have suggested that India’s bolstering of ties with Afghanistan is a strategic move in order to counter the influence of China in the country, buttress its security against Pakistan, and protect its existing investments amounting to around $3 billion in Afghanistan. India is likely also wary of warming ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh, Ranjan tells TIME.
But Ranjan also warns that strengthened ties between India and Afghanistan risk putting Pakistan on edge, especially after cross-border clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Historically, India’s engagement with Afghanistan has angered Pakistan, as the latter feared strategic encirclement and it also influenced Islamabad’s Afghan policy,” Ranjan wrote in an October paper.
Pakistan has historically had warm ties with Afghanistan, and India had for years considered the Taliban a proxy of Pakistan, but relations between Islamabad and Kabul have deteriorated in recent years.
The Afghan Taliban does not recognize the 2,640 km Durand Line as the border between it and Pakistan, which Islamabad does. Afghanistan accused Pakistan of carrying out drone strikes on Oct. 9 that killed several people in Kabul. In the following days, the two countries carried out a series of airstrikes on each other, while fighters mounted cross-border attacks that were among the deadliest between the neighbors since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. The two countries reached a fragile cease-fire brokered by Qatar and Turkey on Oct. 19, but peace talks for a more lasting deal have reportedly strained in recent days.
And as India has drawn closer to Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in October that New Delhi had “incited” the Afghan Taliban, and Defence Minister Asif called Kabul a “proxy of India.”
Pakistan’s government has alleged that Afghanistan is hosting TTP, which it, the U.S. and the U.N. have designated a terrorist organization. The Taliban has denied sheltering the group. Pakistan has also recently accused India of backing TTP, which India has denied.
Pakistani authorities accused TTP of an attempted attack on cadets at an army-run college that was formerly the base for TTP and other militant groups in the city of Wana near the Afghan border on Monday. TTP denied involvement. Pakistani security forces said a suicide car bomber and five other attackers had attempted to take the cadets hostage during the foiled attack. Pakistani troops killed all five attackers, according to Pakistani news outlet Dawn.
Kabul brokered a short-lived cease-fire between Pakistan and the TTP in June 2022, but TTP ended the cease-fire months after it accused the Pakistani military of breaking the truce. Days before the suicide bombing in Islamabad, Pakistani security forces said it killed 20 TTP militants in raids in the northwest region bordering Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s deportation of undocumented Afghans and Afghans with semi-legal statuses including refugees in 2023, the numbers of which rose after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, drew criticism from the Taliban.
Deadly clash over Kashmir
Pakistani relations with India have also soured dramatically this year.
The twin blasts come months after the two nuclear-armed neighbors came to blows around the contested Kashmir region. On April 22, an attack in Pahalgam, a town in the north Indian state of Jammu and India-controlled area of Kashmir, killed 26 civilians, mostly Indian tourists. New Delhi blamed the attack on terrorists they said were sponsored by Pakistan, which Islamabad denied.
After the Pahalgam attack, India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7. India said it launched missiles at terrorism-related infrastructure in Pakistan, while Pakistan said the strikes hit civilian sites, including mosques. The four-day armed conflict that followed, which involved an exchange of strikes and border clashes, was the deadliest between the two countries in decades. India has hailed Operation Sindoor as a victory, although Modi said in July that the military operation “remains active and resolute.”
Pakistan and India’s territorial dispute over Kashmir is deep-seated, stemming from the 1947 British partition of India, which established the borders between Pakistan and India. Both countries have long claimed the entire region of Kashmir, but their current areas of control are separated by a militarized de facto border known as the Line of Control.
In May, Pakistan also designated all militant groups in Balochistan, the largest and westernmost province of Pakistan, as “Fitna al Hindustan,” referring to what it says are sponsored proxies of India.
On May 10, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he had brokered a cease-fire between Pakistan and India.
“After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE. Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Pakistan has since praised Trump for achieving the tenuous peace, including publicly nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. India, a longstanding friend of the U.S., on the other hand, has stopped short of giving Trump credit for the cease-fire and denied that Trump’s threat of tariffs or motivation to secure a trade deal with the U.S. played a role.