Reddit reviews Military, Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy

>Having gone to both the places, I can say that POK is much more peaceful in comparison to IOK. One of the factors must be due to that Kasmir as a whole has huge Muslim population, and Pakistan being an Islamic country, they feel more at home. Another one is that the population in POK is much lesser, alongside the landmass too.

You forgot to mention the most important reason. Indian Administered Kashmir is less peaceful because Pakistan sends about 500 terrorists to Kashmir every summer, when the snow melts in the mountains and the passes between the mountains open up. These terrorists are well-established in the Kashmir Valley, with a network of safe houses and hiding places. They have been building their terrorist infrastructure since the late 80's, when this infiltration started.

These terrorists murder the local police and burn down police stations. This forces India to station soldiers in Kashmir by the tens of thousands, who then become more targets for the terrorists. In order to control the terrorists, the army has to set up barricades, impose curfews, which disrupts life in the Valley and irritates the locals. And when the locals protest, there are Pakistani terrorists hiding in those same crowds, using the civilians as shields for stone throwing, the murder of police and army personnel, and yet more terrorist attacks.

This doesn't happen in POK because India doesn't send terrorists to POK. Also, half of POK's population has already left and is settled in the UK and Gulf, and replaced mostly by Pakistani Punjabis. They have no reason to rebel against the government that gives them free goodies. And whatever protest does happen, the Pakistani military puts it down with a heavy hand.

>Has Pakistan sponsered terrorism on Indian soil? Possibly.

User r/Twsji knows more than the governments of India, the US, the UK, the EU, and the entire United Nations, who don't use the word "possibly". All of them have declared the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to be terrorist organizations, aided and supported by Pakistan's military. Hafiz Saeed, the man who planned the Mumbai terror attacks, was designated a terrorist under UN Security Council resolution 1267 and has Interpol warrants for his arrest. But he lives freely in Pakistan, supported by the Pakistani government, and even runs his own political party, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which contests Pakistani elections and has members in the Pakistani Parliament. Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed lives freely in Pakistan, where he leads rallies of mullahs and is also politically active. Jaish-e-Mohammed is the organization that just a couple days ago claimed responsibility for the Pulwama terrorist attack that murdered 40+ Indians, and even posted videos of the suicide bomber.

But hey, u/Twsji doesn't believe what 190+ members of the United Nations say, he's got his own sources, he has friends from both sides of Kashmir who study in his school, don't you know. He thinks it's possible that perhaps Pakistan sponsors terrorism in India, but he's not convinced. His friends are better sources than the US, the UK including the entire European Union, not to mention India. And the UN Security Council.

>But a fact that has to be absolutely taken into consideration is that there are enough insurgents in IOK itself, Indian Kashmiris, who have rebelled against the government, and they are capable of carrying out attacks without the aid of any foreign country, simply like the Naxalites.

Right. And these "insurgents" are also capable of magicking up the military grade semtex that was used in the Pulwama attack and the Mumbai bombings. They also have access to military grade night vision goggles which were officially acquired by the Pakistani military from China.

>It is because they hate the Gurkha regiment. Apparently that is the force that India sends, when the unrest becomes an emergency. And, it is the regiment they send as a last resort to push back the rebels during the Kargil war.

Free plug to the Gurkhas! Watch out, ayo gorkhali! Upvotes please for /u/Twsji for pushing a popular narrative.

The truth is somewhat different. There are 700,000 Indian soldiers in Kashmir, while the entire Indian military combined has less than 50,000 Gurkhas. In reality, Gurkhas are a tiny component of Indian forces in Kashmir, and they are never the last resort "in an emergency". This is just wet dreams.

Nor were the Gurkhas the "last resort to push back rebels in the Kargil war". This is unmitigated bullshit. The truth is that soldiers didn't win the Kargil war, artillery did.

Pakistan and India had a tacit agreement that every winter they would abandon their camps on the Siachen glacier, and return to them in the summer. But that year, Pakistan sneaked in its soldiers early, to occupy the Indian camps before summer. When Indian soldiers arrived, they found Pakistanis already established at fortified Indian camps on high mountaintops, overlooking the Ladakh-Leh highway which is an essential resupply route for the Indian military.

Hundreds of Indian soldiers lost their lives trying to assault the Pakistani positions, with very little success. There was no easy way to climb the mountain while exposed to Pakistani fire. Air power could not be used because the mountains were backed by Pakistani territory, and the Indian government had given strict orders not to cross the LOC.

In the end, India won the war by moving Bofors 155mm howitzers to the battlefield, and these guns slowly converted the Pakistanis on the mountaintops to scattered chunks of red jelly. They had no defense against heavy guns shooting them from 40 kilometers away, and nowhere to hide on a bare mountaintop.

>The propaganda helps both the governments win elections and keep the nationalism uptight. So they too, keep the enmity alive.

More childish nonsense.

The fact is that the Pakistani government is weak and powerless. Their country is run by the military. If the government engages in peace talks with India, the military slaps them down. If they go too far, the military arranges another terrorist attack on India, which escalates tensions and shuts down talks. This has happened repeatedly over the years - at Pathankot, Uri, Pulwama. Every one of these attacks was preceded by peace talks, and all those peace talks broke down over new terrorist attacks on India.

Why does the Pakistani military do this? They do it because that's how they survive. The Pakistani military owns the country. The military owns around 20% of Pakistan's best and most fertile land. They own farms, factories, businesses, banks. They own housing colonies, real estate businesses. They own transport companies, hospitals, clothing stores, cement companies, fertilizer manufacturing, fuel supply.

And on top of that, they also get a huge defense budget, at the expense of education, healthcare, and all the other amenities the Pakistani people do without. For comparison, India spends 7% of its GDP on education, while Pakistan only spends 2%. Because their military is such a huge money sink.

This is why there are terrorist attacks on India. The Pakistani military justifies its existence on the "India threat". The fear of India is what keeps Pakistanis feeding their military machine and not complaining when the military takes more and more of the country's wealth. This would all go away if there was peace, so peace is antithetical to their wealth. That's why when the government gets too friendly with India, there is a coup and a military dictatorship.

If you want to see how Pakistan's military works, I highly recommend the book Military, Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy by Ayesha Siddiqa.