How does cross-border terrorism impede the achievements of peace and security in South Asia? (2020, 10 Marks)
Cross-border terrorism is violence by non-state groups that train and plan on a neighbour’s soil, often with that state’s patronage. In South Asia it grows above all from the India–Pakistan rivalry. The stability–instability paradox, first set out by Glenn H. Snyder (1965), explains its persistence: nuclear deterrence makes full war unlikely and so makes proxy violence safer for the sponsor.
It keeps two nuclear states on a crisis cycle
- Each major attack has drawn a sharper response: Uri (2016) and the surgical strikes, Pulwama (2019) and Balakot, Pahalgam (22 April 2025, 26 civilians) and Operation Sindoor, which widened from terrorist camps to Pakistani airbases.
- S. Paul Kapur (Dangerous Deterrent, 2007) argues the bomb emboldened Pakistan’s revisionism; India’s new doctrine of treating a major attack as an act of war shortens the space for diplomacy.
It destroys dialogue and functional cooperation
- The Composite Dialogue died after Mumbai (2008) on the principle that talks and terror cannot proceed together.
- Pahalgam ended instruments once quarantined from politics: the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance since 23 April 2025, and all trade suspended on 2 May 2025.
It paralyses regional institutions
- The 19th SAARC summit collapsed after Uri; none has met since 2014. India shifted to BBIN and BIMSTEC, and the 1987 SAARC convention on terrorism stays on paper.
It distorts development and security
- Insecurity deters investment and keeps intra-regional trade under 6% of the region’s total; arms spending crowds out the human security that Mahbub ul Haq placed at the centre of development.
- Accusation spirals: Pakistan blames India for Baloch violence such as the Jaffar Express hijacking (March 2025), which India rejects, so every attack is read as interstate aggression.
- The instrument rebounds: in 2026 Pakistan topped the Global Terrorism Index for the first time, with 1,139 deaths in 2025, and TTP havens have pushed it into fighting with Afghanistan. C. Christine Fair (Fighting to the End, 2014) and Ayesha Jalal trace proxy war to the army’s primacy, which is why engagement alone rarely changes it.
- External entanglement: China’s holds at the UN 1267 Committee shielded Masood Azhar until 2019, and Pakistan’s 2025 defence pact with Saudi Arabia widens the stakes of any crisis.
Conclusion
Cross-border terrorism makes South Asian security zero-sum and holds every regional project hostage to one dyad. The FATF grey-listing of Pakistan (2018–22) shows that concrete multilateral costs can change behaviour; peace needs a verifiable end to state sponsorship, backed by the kind of intelligence sharing that let India and Bangladesh close insurgent camps after 2009.