Back-to-back terrorist strikes in the heart of India and Pakistan’s capitals have spiked tensions in a region long frayed by fractured histories, animosities and violence. The November 10 car explosion near Red Fort in Delhi killed 11, while the November 11 suicide bombing at the district judicial complex in Islamabad killed 12. In both cases the chain of immediate culpability was established fairly quickly. The suicide bomber in Islamabad was identified as Usman aka Qari, an Afghan national, and his trail was traced back to four Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants, who were arrested, and ‘commander’ Saeed-ur-Rehman aka Daadullah in Afghanistan. The Delhi bomber, Umar un Nabi, has been linked back to a terrorist cell in Faridabad, which had accumulated nearly 2,900 kg of explosive materials, and beyond that, to multiple locations, including Nowgam in Srinagar, J&K. The wider conspiracies in each case are likely to be discovered over time. The immediate positions taken by the governments on both sides of the border are, however, of particular interest.

In the past, major incidents of terrorism in Pakistan and in India have drawn a knee-jerk response of mutual recrimination and vaunting rhetoric, even before any investigative process has made the slightest progress. Pakistan’s response in the present case has been within this pattern, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declaring that “the real face of India has been exposed” and that Pakistan would not allow “the blood of its citizens to go in vain.” Interestingly, his own Defence Minister, Khwaja Muhammad Asif, attributed the attack to the Afghan Taliban, claiming it was supporting terrorists who were operating across the border into Pakistan. He declared, further, “We are in a state of war,” and threatened that a cross border operation inside Afghanistan could not be “ruled out”.

The rhetoric of a “state of war” appears to have influenced the Indian response as well, but reactions in the two countries could not have been more different. The Indian government has displayed extreme reluctance to commit itself on even the smallest matters of detail. Indeed, it was only on November 12 that the government officially declared the Red Fort bombing an incident of “terrorism”, and November 16 when the first official confirmation of fatalities—10 “innocent civilians” and the bomber—came.

India’s extreme and uncharacteristic reluctance to make any but the most minimal claims relating to the Red Fort bombing are clearly linked to the boastful rhetoric of the post-Operation Sindoor days, when the government declared that “any future act of terror will be considered an Act of War against India,” and that Operation Sindoor was not over, but only in suspension, that this was the “new normal”, and would be repeated in case of any future act of terrorism by Pakistan-linked groups. New Delhi’s present evasions clearly indicate that there has been a realisation that the unintended consequences of Operation Sindoor perhaps outweigh any benefits that may have accrued to India, that deterrence has not been achieved, and that a repetition or escalation is unlikely to serve any measurable Indian interest.

At the same time, both India and Afghanistan have explicitly rejected the Pakistani claims of state backing for the Islamabad bombing. Nevertheless, the near-synchronous attacks in New Delhi and Islamabad can only rekindle the geopolitical fault lines that have long defined South Asia, especially the triangular tension among India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. External powers like the US and China are also likely to intensify their involvement in the fragile and hotly contested South Asian region. In this high-stakes environment, the temptation for all sides to resort to proxy tactics—supporting non-state actors, clandestine operations, or diplomatic pressure—rather than overt confrontation, can only grow. But the danger remains that misattribution, inflammatory rhetoric, or further attacks could unravel this tenuous balance, resulting in a more volatile and unpredictable security dynamic across the region.