April 25, 2025: Over the last year deaths in Pakistan related to Islamic terrorism declined while the number of deaths caused by Baluchi rebels increased. Pakistan continues to have problems with the Pakistani Taliban or TTP and violence coming from Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Islamic terrorists and various rebel groups in Pakistan killed about 1,500 people in 2023. A third of the victims were security personnel, another third were terrorists and the rest civilians. In 2024 total deaths grew to 2,200 and so far in 2025 the numbers appear headed for greater losses than 2024. India, with six times more people than Pakistan, has less than 30 percent as many terrorism related deaths

The usual political chaos in Pakistan abated somewhat when former prime minister Imran Khan was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for financial misconduct and is currently serving that sentence. In January 2024 he was sentenced to ten years in prison for violating the Official Secrets Act. Army leadership was angry at Kahn for trying to limit their power and corruption.

Initially Khan expected his followers to make a strong showing in the elections and gain enough power in parliament to pardon Khan who was taken to a prison near the capital to serve his sentence. In the February 2024 national elections Khan’s party won enough votes to form a new government with Khan the Prime Minister. The army once more overruled the voters and kept Kahn in prison.

Khan’s numerous followers appealed his sentence to the high court and that succeeded. Khan planned a political comeback in the late 2024 elections. His major obstacle was the military. While prime minister, Khan sought to limit the economic and political power of the military and the military refused to cooperate. The senior army officers are risking a civil war by again overruling the voters and the courts. The army has prepared for a civil war by increasing the pay of soldiers and suppressing the new media. In the age of the internet you can’t keep the truth out with censorship and seizing control of local news organizations. Most Pakistanis want the military put under civilian control, as it is in India and the United States. The generals fear the worst and some are leaving the country or criticizing the renegade generals.

The generals have become rich and free from civilian control through corruption and did not want that changed. Slowly the army gained control over or cooperation from enough political parties that they got Khan removed from his position as prime minister/PM in April 2022. Khan lost his job as prime minister via a no-confidence vote by a parliamentary majority. He was the first PM to be removed this way. Most PMs are removed by the president of Pakistan, which is another, less messy, form of no-confidence vote. Since the founding of Pakistan in 1947, no PM has completed their five-year term. The main reason for Khan’s political allies to turn against him was economic; high unemployment and inflation, plus increasing Islamic terrorist violence, increasingly violent Baluchistan separatists and some diplomatic disasters. There was another reason, and that was Khan’s efforts to bring the Pakistani military under civilian control. There was much popular support for curbing military power, but the military refused to be curbed and managed to get Khan jailed on corruption charges.

The military was also blamed for increasing violence in the southwest, where separatists in the province of Baluchistan have become increasingly active and aggressive. Since 2024 armed Baluchi separatists have killed over 300 civilians and security personnel while suffering over a hundred killed. Violence in Baluchistan began when Pakistan was created in 1948 and has escalated since the 1990s.

India has a more stable government and, when you take population size into account, less terrorist deaths than Pakistan. India never had a problem with the military interfering in politics because from the beginning the military was subordinate to the elected government and that never changed.

In eastern India, the Communist Party of India/CPI is accused of trying to revive its violent radical faction, the recently depleted Maoist communist rebels. The CPI is legal in India and the leaders of the CPI do not approve of Maoist violence and have cooperated with Indian efforts to keep the Maoists from rebuilding their strength and ability to launch attacks.

There are still Maoist factions in eastern India but the Maoists are found in fewer areas. During 2022 and 2023 there were fewer deaths attributed to Maoist activity. That changed in 2024 when terrorism related deaths increased fifty percent to over 600. The CPI has less control over its armed radical faction that is responsible for most of these deaths.

India’s communist Maoist rebels were once considered one of the most dangerous terrorist groups worldwide. Total deaths caused by the Maoists was lower in 2023 than 2022 when they were 98. Such deaths were 147 in 2021. Terrorism related deaths in India also include Islamic terrorists in northwest Indian Kashmir and tribal rebels in the northeast. The Maoists operate in eastern India, and the areas where they are active have shrunk considerably over the last decade because of energetic government efforts to eliminate them.

So far in 2025 there have been about 250 deaths. In 2024 there were 828 deaths while in 2023 there were fewer than 400 deaths in India from all forms of terrorism, compared to 434 in 2022, 585 in 2021, 621 in 2019 and 940 in 2018. In 2020 54 percent of the dead were in Kashmir, which was higher than usual. In most years non-Islamic terrorist violence accounts for most of the violence, but in 2020 leftist Maoist rebels in eastern India only accounted for 41 percent of the deaths with another five percent caused by tribal separatists in the northeast. The decline in Maoist activity began in 2009 when India assigned 75,000 additional police to deal with the Maoists. Initially this did not increase Maoist losses but did result in more dead policemen. The Maoists did lose many of their rural camps and, in general, were forced to devote more time to security and less to attacking the government or extorting money from businesses. As always, the government had failed to effectively address the social and economic problems in the countryside, where feudalism and corruption are rampant. These problems provided the Maoists with recruits, and support from many of the locals.

Eventually the government did address the local social and economic problems, and this is what deprived the Maoists of areas where they could operate. The police efforts continued and now the Maoists are only active in a small portion of eastern India, where they are more concerned with surviving than expanding or attacking the police. Civilians in Maoist-infested areas are less afraid of providing police with information about Maoist movements or joining pro-government militias to resist Maoist operations. It also became easier to recruit Maoist members to become active informants. These spies are paid monthly, and the sudden affluence of their families often alerts Maoist leaders to the presence of police informants. While details about informants are kept secret, the losses suffered because police had inside information is often obvious. The Maoist decline has demoralized leftist leaders, who have not been able to come up with any way to halt or reverse the losses. Maoists are a radical faction of the once mighty Indian communist party. Many Indian communists were slow to understand why all those East European communist governments, including Russia, collapsed between 1989 and 1991. Despite that many Indians still support communism, but not the violent, ineffective, and increasingly unpopular Maoists.

Pakistani efforts during 2023 to privatize state-owned enterprises were an expensive failure and one of the reasons the economy is in such bad shape. A prime example was the expensive failure of Pakistan Steel Mills. This cost the government $18 billion. This is but one of many cases where state-owned firms were unable to compete, and the losses have grown to the point that they are a major reason for the current economic crisis. India has far fewer state-owned enterprises and the means a more profitable and robust economy. India also lacks problems with military interference in the economy, which is common in Pakistan. There the army generals saw or created opportunities to control many enterprises. That was profitable for the generals but disastrous for the economy. Now the army and the economy find that Pakistan has a poorly performing economy and foreign lenders.

Earlier in 2025 China once more granted Pakistan some debt relief by deferring repayment of $2.1 billion in loans from China for two years. This included suspending interest payments. Pakistan is the largest export customer for Chinese weapons and the destination for billions in Chinese construction investments. Foreign lenders and investors, especially the International Monetary Fund/IMF, China and Saudi Arabia, have lost patience with Pakistan and are unwilling to take further financial risks there. One financial risk is the $77 billion debt to China and Saudi Arabia. This money is supposed to be repaid between 2023 and 2026. Pakistan doesn’t have the money to make the payments and is trying to negotiate an extension. Until this issue is resolved there will be no more loans or investments from China or Saudi Arabia. A side-effect of all this financial turmoil is high 47 percent inflation which is felt by all Pakistanis.

The primary cause of all this financial distress is the Pakistan military, which is currently controlling the government in Pakistan. The excessive military influence on Pakistani politics has been an issue since Pakistan was created after World War II. China and India did not have that problem, for different reasons. The Indian politicians insisted from the beginning that the military remain subservient to the elected government. The Chinese communists took control of the Chinese government after World War II and continually reminded the military leaders that their main job was to keep the CCP, or Chinese Communist Party, in power.

In Pakistan the parliament could not control the generals, who periodically took control of the government for a few years and then let the politicians return to power. During those periods when the generals were in charge, they often made poor economic decisions. One was to purchase more weapons from China than Pakistan could afford or pay for. Now Pakistan has more debt than it can handle, and related economic mistakes have put Pakistan in a debt crisis that requires an expensive and politically difficult solution. The major lenders will have to take losses and Pakistan will have to change and reduce what it spends, especially on the military. Unless the Pakistani economy is put right there is increasing risk of popular violence and a civil war.

In the northwestern region of India Kashmir, Pakistani terrorists continue to cross the border and kill policemen, soldiers, and civilians. India and Pakistan have been at odds over who controls Kashmir for more than 70 years. India has reduced the Pakistani attacks in Kashmir by upgrading border security so that most Pakistani infiltrators are spotted and killed or forced to retreat back into Pakistan. Northeastern India has long been the scene of tribal violence, but more intense policing coupled with increased negotiations over local grievances has reduced violent deaths by more than 60 percent. China and India have agreed to reduce the number of troops both are maintaining in the disputed border area of Ladakh.

Meanwhile India is calling 2023-2032 the decade of transformation. Indians are mystified at the inability of India, the most populous nation in the world with over a billion people, as well as a current GDP of $4.3 trillion, to have adequate weapons for its military. Its GDP is the fifth largest on the planet, after the U.S., China, Germany and Japan. The Indian defense budget of $74 billion is the fourth largest after the United States, China and Russia. This is exceeded by China with $280 billion and the United States with nearly $900 billion. Despite these numbers, India still has to import most of its weapons and remains unable to develop a domestic arms manufacturing industry befitting the nation with the third largest defense budget.

Meanwhile more Indians ask why China developed a world-class weapons development and production capability in the last few decades while India has not? Mainly it’s about corruption and decades of India making it difficult for Indians to start and operate profitable firms that could produce consumer goods as well as military equipment. The United States became the largest economy in the world over a century ago by encouraging this entrepreneurship. Many other nations, including those in Europe and East Asia like Japan, South Korea and China followed that example. India did not.

While making it difficult for Indian entrepreneurs, India tried to use government-owned weapons development efforts and defense manufacturers to locally produce weapons. These state-owned organizations were epic failures and continue to develop second-rate weapons or weapons that don’t work at all. Recent examples include assault rifles, helicopters and jet fighters. The only successes have been with privately owned firms and that is what the government wants more of. New rules and laws to reduce restrictions on commercial firms are meant to encourage less dependence on imports. As with previous efforts in this area, the goals tend to be more aspirational than actual. Indian government bureaucrats and procurement agencies have become quite effective at protecting their own interests at the expense of commercial firms and the needs of the military. This is a problem in all industrialized nations because that is the nature of government; to use their power to expand.

Nations like China and Israel are notably different because China did not begin undergoing the industrial revolution until the 1980s. As usual, that produced spectacular results, which will be eroded over the years as the government expands, often at the expense of successful new firms. That is already happening in China, where the communist government fears the potential political influence of the largest and most successful firms. Israel is a special case because they have been under constant attack by their Moslem neighbors since Israel was founded in 1947. For Israel it has always been a matter of succeeding at developing new weapons or being wiped out.

India is different because it adopted a local form of socialism instead of a free enterprise economy when modern India was formed in 1948. As a result, India has always had to import most of its weapons. Efforts to change this have failed so far, mainly because of corruption and unwillingness to tolerate competitive and efficient defense industries. That corruption that has been pervasive in India for thousands of years and makes imported weapons from nations willing to pay bribes to Indian government officials more attractive than allowing competitive Indian firms to develop and provide cheaper locally made equipment.

This situation is tragic and a growing number of Indians realize it. India, a regional superpower and the world’s largest democracy, now finds itself in a very rough neighborhood and military efficiency is becoming a necessity, not just a worthy goal. To deal with that, India has always maintained large armed forces and one of the largest armies, with a million troops, on the planet. But keeping these troops equipped to handle combat has proved to be very difficult. The army keeps falling behind in replacing aging weapons like artillery and obtaining new technology like missiles, smart munitions, and night vision equipment. Getting the money from the government has been the least of their problems. The biggest hassles are with corruption and failed efforts to develop local weapons production.

The latest government moves to change all that are not revolutionary, but evolutionary. As has long been observed, democracies always do the right thing, but often only after trying everything else. India still has not reached the end of the everything else list. More likely it won’t do so until after losing a few wars.