The Pakistani military has increased its censorship of Pakistani media identified as potentially troublesome. It has reached the point where any criticism of the military or Islam (and especially Islamic terror groups protected by the military) is punished, often by kidnapping or murder of repeat offenders. At the same time the military is using the media to create a new image of the Pakistani military. There are more pro-military videos available to show on TV and in movies theatres. TV shows and movies that make the military look good have an easier time getting made while those that criticise the military are increasingly rare.

Pakistan has become more dependent on China for weapons as U.S. sales declined 76 percent in the last five years because the Americans are punishing Pakistan for supporting Islamic terrorism and not doing anything to change that. China has become the major supplier of weapons to Bangladesh and Burma as well although for those two countries China simply offers lower prices. India has in turn bought less from Russia, long the main supplier, and depended more on Western nations (mainly the U.S. and Israel.

Pakistan continues to reduce Islamic terrorist violence inside Pakistan. Terror related casualties are headed for a fourth year of sharply reduced violence. In 2014, when the army finally decided to shut down sanctuaries for Islamic terror groups not under military control, there were 5,496 Islamic terror related deaths. In 2015 that dropped to 3,682, then to 1,803 in 2016, 1260 in 2017 and so far in 2018 it looks like these deaths will fall to about 700. India, with six times as many people, has had terror related deaths under a thousand a year since 2012 and most of those have nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. Despite the growing popularity (among Muslims) of Islamic radicalism in the last three decades, Muslim majority Bangladesh has been largely free of it. Compared to Pakistan (with a ten percent larger population) Bangladesh still had only six percent as many terrorist deaths as Pakistan during 2017. So far it looks like Bangladeshi terror related deaths will decline even more in 2018, to about three percent of the Pakistani total.

While Islamic terrorist violence is fading away in Pakistan the same cannot be said for the Pakistan sponsored violence in northwest India (Kashmir) where the Pakistani Army defies its elected political leaders and a growing percentage of the population by continuing to support the violence in Indian Kashmir. A Kashmir peace deal could have been worked out decades ago had not the Pakistani military not decided to use Kashmir as a way to justify their existence and growing wealth. This scam held up in Pakistan far longer than it did with the Indians but now the Pakistani generals are under growing pressure from Pakistanis in general to back off in Kashmir. That is not happening. The problem here is that a lot more Indians are willing to risk war, even nuclear war, to halt the Pakistani military and Islamic terror operations in Kashmir (and less successful Islamic terror efforts throughout India.) A growing number of Pakistani allies are warning the Pakistani military that the violent theatrics and posturing in Kashmir are costing Pakistan a lot of credibility and sympathy. So far the Pakistani generals are not making any changes to their Kashmir strategy. Civilians on both sides of the border report that the violence, especially damage to civilian structures, is worse than the 1990s, when this border violence last peaked.

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