A Communist-Islamist Axis Puts India and America in Its Crosshairs
26th April 2025
As India mourns the dozens of tourists murdered in Kashmir this week by jihadists and Prime Minister Narendra Modi vows to pursue them and their backers “to the ends of the earth,” India and Pakistan are at daggers drawn. New Delhi has already closed the land border and suspended a key water-sharing agreement, and the two nuclear-armed militaries are preparing for war.
Any nuclear showdown is concerning, and in this case, the strategic stakes for the United States are high. India is the only Asian country that could conceivably counterbalance China, and the more it focuses on Pakistan, the less it can thwart Beijing. Pakistan is now at the forefront of a partnership that will bedevil Americans in the years to come—the unhappy marriage between radical Islam and communism.
In many respects, these two movements are strange bedfellows. China’s Communist Party is hostile to any religious entity that it does not control and it is bulldozing—in some cases, literally—its country’s Islamic heritage. Radical Islamists are equally determined to extinguish non-Islamic beliefs, and in many cases, the people who hold them. Nonetheless, across much of Asia, an increasing number of countries are welcoming both.