Pakistan military – Brown Pundits

There is a persistent habit, especially among our soi-disant commentators, of predicting Pakistan’s imminent disintegration. The arguments are familiar: Baloch insurgency, Pashtun irredentism, low Kashmiri fertility, economic weakness, and analogies to 1971. They are also, taken together, wrong.

To begin with, most people discussing Pakistan do not understand its internal sociology. They begin with a conclusion, “Pakistan is artificial and unstable”, and then select facts to confirm it. This is confirmation bias dressed up as analysis.

Consider the Pashtuns. The claim that they are natural irredentists misunderstands who they are and how they live. Pashtuns in Pakistan are not a marginal population looking across the border for salvation. They are deeply integrated into the Pakistani state, economy, and military. They dominate transport, logistics, security, and large parts of urban informal commerce. Large numbers have moved permanently into Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. Assimilation is not failing; it is proceeding at scale. Continue reading Pakistan Is Not About to Break Apart

I’ve just listened to the first half-hour of Op Sindoor, the latest Brown Pundits Browncast featuring Amey, Poulasta, and Omar. The full episode runs over 90 minutes; I’ll be reflecting on the rest in due course. For now, some thoughts on the opening segment, which focuses on the recent terror attack in Pahalgam and its aftermath.

🧨 The Attack Itself: Pahalgam as a National Trauma

The episode begins by recounting the massacre in Pahalgam, Kashmir—a tourist meadow turned execution ground. Twenty-six people, most of them honeymooning Hindus, were murdered after being identified through religious markers: circumcision, Kalma recitations, names. The hosts don’t shy away from calling it what it is: a targeted Islamist attack. The group responsible, the TRF (The Resistance Front), is introduced as a Lashkar-e-Taiba cutout, designed to launder Pakistan-backed militancy through a local Kashmiri lens.

There is a palpable sense of cumulative fatigue in how the Indian speakers describe it—not as an aberration, but as part of a 30-year continuum of such violence. The emotional register is high, but justified. The use of plain terms like terrorists over euphemisms such as militants or gunmen reflects a long-standing frustration with how such attacks are framed in international discourse.

🤝 Modi, Nawaz, and the Civ-Mil Waltz Continue reading 🇮🇳Op Sindoor: A Podcast on Pahalgam, Pakistan, and the Limits of Peace