Terrorist Attack in Kashmir Increases Tensions Between India and Pakistan

What Happened?

Yesterday at least 26 people were killed and 17 injured after gunmen opened fire on tourists in the town of Pahalgam in Indian controlled Kashmir. The attack was the deadliest in the region since 2019. 

Indian police blamed unspecified militants fighting against Indian rule in Pahalgam, but a self-named ‘Resistance Front’ claimed responsibility on social media. Pakistan’s government denied any involvement. 

Why it Matters

The timing of the attack is a point of interest. The attack coincided with U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance’s visit to India, with Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia, and it comes just before a large Hindu pilgrimage to the area. Terrorist groups sometimes choose to carry out attacks which coincide with high-profile events in order to increase their level of global publicity. 

India and Pakistan have a history of conflict in the Kashmir region, and this attack risks not only inflaming tensions between the two neighboring countries but also igniting a new round of conflict. The last time an attack like this took place in 2019, India retaliated days later with airstrikes against targets in Pakistan, then Pakistan carried out strikes against India. India and Pakistan have fought two wars and engaged in numerous skirmishes in the Kashmir region since 1947.

While Pakistan has denied any involvement in the latest attack, there is a long history of covert Pakistani support for militant groups in Kashmir, and the neighboring Northwest Frontier Province, in addition to Afghanistan. Pakistan is much smaller than India, and it regards those areas as necessary for the creation of strategic depth in a potential war with India. Many military officers in both nations believe another war over the Kashmir region is inevitable.

Since Pakistan lacks the resources to directly control Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier Province, it has often chosen to exercise indirect control through a number of local militant groups. By providing arms and money to these groups, Pakistan often gets a degree of cooperation from them. That includes carrying out attacks like the one in Pahalgam. Though, thus far there is no direct evidence Pakistan was behind the attack, there is evidence Pakistan was behind similar attacks in Kashmir in the past.

Militant groups in the area often practice an extreme form of Sunni Islam, and some members of Pakistan’s military share those same religious beliefs. That the recent attack targeted only Hindu’s is an indication that Muslim extremists could have been behind the attack.

How it Affects You

Both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, and a full-scale war between them would likely result in millions of casualties and a significant disruption to the global economy. In the past, leaders in Islamabad and Delhi have exercised a degree of restraint, authorizing limited attacks against each while stopping short of full-scale warfare. But with each new round of conflict comes the risk that things could spiral out of control.