A knowledgable friend who works in South Asia recently wrote: “The India/Pakistan border tension could case another war between these two countries. A report said that the next possible nuclear war would be between India and Pakistan.

The tension between these two countries greatly impacts the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan is strongly behind certain groups of the Afghan Taliban as they are “Pro Pakistan” and the present government is very “Pro India”. Pakistan does not want a hostile or Pro Indian government in its western border and the Taliban are very close to Pakistan. A reconciliation between the two countries could also bring big changes in Afghanistan and even in Pakistan.

As you all know the problems go all the way back when Pakistan was started and it was born in the blood of more than a million people.”

Please pray for His peace, reconciliation and that these two nations will work through their differences and become friends.

Insight - As Afghanistan endgame looms, a deadly edge to India-Pakistan rivalry

Reuters

By Frank Jack Daniel and Sanjeev Miglani

Tues Aug 13, 2013

BARAMULLA/NEW DELHI, India

Pakistan-based militants are preparing to take on India across the subcontinent once Western troops leave Afghanistan next year, several sources say, raising the risk of a dramatic spike in tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.

Intelligence source in India believe that a botched suicide bombing of an Indian consulate in Afghanistan, which was followed within days last week by a lethal cross-border ambush on Indian soldiers in disputed Kashmir, suggest that the new campaign by Islamic militants may already be underway.

Members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant outfit in Pakistan, the group blamed for the 2008 commando-style raid on Mumbai that killed 166 people, told Reuters they were preparing to take the fight to India once again, this time across the region.

And a U.S. counter-terrorism official, referring to the attack in Afghanistan, said "LeT has long pursued Indian targets, so it would be natural for the group to plot against them in its own backyard".

Given the quiet backing - or at least blind eye - that many militant groups enjoy from Pakistan's shadowy intelligence services, tensions from a new militant campaign are bound to spill over. Adding to the volatility, the two nations' armies are trading mortar and gunfire across the heavily militarised frontier that divides Kashmir, and accusing each other of killing troops.

Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and came close to a fourth in 1999. The tension now brewing may not escalate into open hostilities, but it could thwart efforts to forge a lasting peace and open trade between two countries that make up a quarter of the world's population.

"With the Americans leaving Afghanistan, the restraint on the Pakistani security/jihadi establishment is going too," said a former top official at India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the external intelligence arm.

"We are concerned about 2014 in either scenario. If the jihadis (Islamist militants) claim success in Afghanistan, they could turn their attention to us. Equally, if they fail, they will attack in wrath."

But Pakistan, which has a border with India to the east and with Afghanistan to the west, has concerns of its own. It sees India's expansive diplomacy in Afghanistan as a ploy to disrupt it from the rear as it battles its own deadly Islamist militancy and separatist forces. Vying for influence in a post-2014 Afghanistan, it worries about India's assistance to the Afghan army, heightening a sense of encirclement.

"I'm shocked by these allegations. Pakistan has its own insurgency to deal with. It has no appetite for confrontations abroad," said a Pakistani foreign ministry official referring to the Indian charges of stirring trouble in Afghanistan and on the Kashmir border.

"If anything, we are looking at our mistakes from the past very critically. These accusations are baseless. India needs to act with more maturity and avoid this sort of propaganda."

Both U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry spoke during visits to India recently of the need for New Delhi and Islamabad to resume their stalled peace process as the region heads into a period of uncertainty.

FULL-SCALE JIHAD

At the core of that uncertainty is the pullback of militants from Afghanistan as U.S. forces head home.

Hafiz Sayeed, founder of the LeT, has left no doubt that India's side of Kashmir will become a target, telling an Indian weekly recently: "Full-scale armed Jihad (holy war) will begin soon in Kashmir after American forces withdraw from Afghanistan."

The retreat of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 brought a wave of guerrillas into Kashmir to fight India's rule there.

This time the additional risk will be the rivalry between India and Pakistan over Afghanistan itself, one that threatens to become as toxic as the 60-year dispute in Kashmir. The LeT has said it is fighting Indian forces in Afghanistan as well. LeT was founded in 1990 in eastern Afghanistan by Sayeed, a Pakistani Islamic scholar whom India accuses of masterminding the rampage in Mumbai. The United States placed a $10 million bounty on his head for his alleged role in the attack, but he remains a free man in Pakistan, where he preached to thousands last week.

Please pray for the arrest and prosecution of this evil man and the dissolution of his terrorist organization, the LeT.