The spectre of another US-led conflict, this time targeting Iran, casts a long and ominous shadow over South Asia. History offers a grim lesson. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Palestine have yielded not security, but endless suffering, insurgency, destabilised geographies, and waves of forced migration.
A confrontation with Iran risks a catastrophe of even greater magnitude, potentially igniting a regional tinderbox already primed with unresolved conflicts and latent hostilities. In this perilous moment, the nations of South Asia face a critical imperative: to de-escalate their own rivalries and forge a collective front for stability before external shocks push the region past the point of no return.
South Asian complexities
The substrate of South Asia is a complex mosaic of overlapping tensions. Nearly every nation within the SAARC framework, along with Iran and China, holds latent or active territorial claims against its neighbours. Ethnic and religious affiliations defiantly straddle arbitrary borders, while dissatisfied populations often become pawns in proxy contests.
The landscape is dotted with active insurgencies, from Balochistan on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border, to the simmering discontent in Kashmir and Indian Punjab. We see the diffuse separatist undercurrents in Xinjiang, the organised Kurdish struggle in Iran, and a burgeoning rights movement in Pakistan’s tribal areas, fueled by repression and mirroring the Baloch trajectory.
This pattern of leveraging internal dissent is a tragic regional habit. Historical precedents abound: Indian support for Tibetan separatism and its earlier incubation of Sri Lanka’s Tamil militancy; Afghan and Indian backing for insurgents in Pakistan’s northwest in the 1970s, which prompted a tit-for-tat response from Islamabad. That very retaliation, supercharged by American funding, spawned the Afghan mujahideen, and ultimately, the transnational monsters of Al Qaeda and ISIS.
The subsequent "War on Terror" became a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction, which, in Pakistan’s case, cemented the military’s dominance at a profound cost to democratic progress.
Fragile Regional Stability
These unresolved issues are more than historical footnotes; they are active pressure points and potential chokeholds on regional stability. Worse, they fuel sectarian and ethnic violence, creating feedback loops of radicalisation.
Pakistan’s support for jihad in Afghanistan bred its own nemesis in the TTP. The proxy warfare in Kashmir heavily informed the rise of a militant Hindu nationalism in India, which now manifests in raw violence against minorities. This toxicity is spilling across borders, with anti-Muslim majoritarianism in India now provoking retaliatory sentiments against Hindus in Bangladesh—a dangerous new fault line.
The animosity has even infected diaspora communities in the West, where Baloch dissidents find support in Indian circles, and Sikh separatists find sympathy among Pakistanis. This external lobbying does nothing to alter geographic realities but deepens mutual hatreds, transforming political disputes into existential, zero-sum conflicts.
A war on Iran would pour accelerant on this smoldering landscape. The collapse of the Iranian state could unleash a tsunami of refugees, trigger unprecedented sectarian violence, and create a vacuum for every regional and global actor to fill—by force. The resulting chain reaction of conflict and displacement would be catastrophic.
From Conflict to Dialogue
Therefore, the path forward must be one of urgent, sober dialogue. The cornerstone of any regional compact must be a mutual and unequivocal respect for territorial integrity. The initiative must be led by the region’s giants, China and India.
By demonstrating the political will to resolve their own border disputes, they would set a powerful precedent. This model could then be replicated between India and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and with Iran.
The stark reality is that no country in the region—with the possible exception of China—can afford a war. China’s current aversion to military adventurism, focusing instead on economic corridors and diplomatic influence, offers a crucial template.
It is time for South Asia to learn from the endless cycles of its own painful history and from the looming disaster at its doorstep. The choice is between a collective descent into a maelstrom of war or a courageous, collaborative climb toward a stable peace. The hour for that choice is rapidly approaching.
Have you liked the news article?