Kashmir: Paradise Lost

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On April 22, 26 tourists were brutally murdered in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. In the following days, gun battles erupted between Indian and Pakistani armed forces. Is the next war now looming in Kashmir?

The Resistance Front (TRF), which Indian security agencies classify as a Pakistan-backed militant organisation, claimed to have committed the attack. The attacker singled out non-Moslem men. Except for one they all were non-Moslems, tourists from India. visiting Pahalgam, the Indian holiday paradise in Kashmir. The Pakistani government expressed its condolences to the victims' families but did not condemn the attack.

Both India and Pakistan claim the troubled region as their own. Kashmir has been disputed since the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947. One part is controlled by Pakistan, while another part is controlled by India, and Kashmiri separatists have long demanded independence. The "Line of Control," a kind of ceasefire line agreed between the two countries since 1971, is the de facto border. But military clashes have regularly broken out.

From 1947 to 1949, India and Pakistan waged war over Kashmir. A second war followed in 1965, and the third Indo-Pakistani war over East Pakistan, present-day Bangladesh, followed in 1971. Finally, in 1999, the armed forces of the two hostile neighbours fought out the fourth war in the Kargil region, a disputed part of Kashmir. Although India was militarily superior in most of these wars, a lasting solution to the Kashmir conflict has not yet been achieved. Politically and diplomatically, there have been ups and downs. Attempts at rapprochement with the opening of the border and cross-border trade were repeatedly followed by phases of political alienation with brutal terrorist attacks by militant groups from Pakistan and Kashmir. For example, in 2008, one of the largest terrorist attacks was by militant Muslim groups on a hotel in Mumbai.

In recent years, the government in New Delhi calmed life in Kashmir with a tough policy. In 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi abolished the special constitutional status of the predominantly Muslim region with a stroke of his pen and placed the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir under central government control as Union Territories. New Delhi deployed around 40,000 additional troops, who brutally cracked down on protesters because Delhi viewed them as terrorists. Thousands of opposition politicians and journalists were imprisoned. For a long time, the Indian-controlled Kashmir valley was barred from outside communication. Millions of people in Kashmir, the overwhelming majority of whom reject Indian citizenship and have fought for decades for their right to self-determination, were besieged and subjected to military occupation.

The dominant military and police presence led to a decline in terrorist attacks. In early April 2025, India's Home Minister Amid Shah declared during a visit to Jammu and Kashmir that the region's "entire terrorist ecosystem" had been "crippled." This assessment is an indication of how much the Indian government was ill-informed and surprised by the latest terrorist attack.

New Delhi sees Pakistan's hand behind the attack. Militant groups are said to be supported by Pakistan's security forces. Prime Minister Modi announced that India will "identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the end of earth. The time has come to raze whatever is left of the terror haven." Naturally, Pakistan sees things very differently. Just recently, Army Chief Asim Munir spoke of Kashmir as Islamabad's "jugular vein" and advocated the so-called "two-nation concept," according to which Hindus and Muslims belong to two different nations. Thus, Muslim-majority Kashmir would belong to Pakistan.

Following the latest attack and mutual accusations, calls for reprisals are going viral on social media in both countries. The governments may be tempted to mobilise the military to meet public demands for greater security

Calculated Escalation

The government in New Delhi initially responded with a calculated escalation: half of the diplomats were withdrawn from Pakistan, Pakistani diplomats in India were expelled, the border crossing at Attari-Wagah was closed, and the Indus Water Sharing Treaty was suspended. This treaty, agreed between the two countries in 1960 through the mediation of the World Bank, is a potentially powerful weapon. The Indian government has threatened a blockade in previous conflicts. If New Delhi follows through with this measure, it will have serious consequences for Pakistan's agriculture and the population's water supply. Pakistan's economy, already in a desolate state, depends on agriculture for one-quarter of its income The crisis would worsen. In contrast, India would have little to lose. The Pakistani government described the potential water blockade as an "act of war."

Domestically, India's government could potentially score points by definitively terminating the water-sharing agreement, but internationally it is more likely to face criticism for breaching a binding treaty. The last dangerous clash over Kashmir, short of a fifth war, took place in February 2019. A suicide bomber killed 40 Indian soldiers. The Indian Air Force launched cross-border attacks, and Pakistan responded by flying fighter jets over Indian territory., To the embarrassment of the Indian air force, an Indian fighter jet crashed on Pakistani territory. The conflict was ultimately ended by diplomatic pressure from Washington. Today, however, a diplomatic freeze exists between the hostile neighbours. Both have long since withdrawn their ambassadors from their respective capitals. When Prime Minister Modi took office in 2014, he approached Pakistan to improve relations. But, as often before, the cultivated hostility between the former sister nations stood in the way.

Will India now respond militarily? Public pressure is intense. So far, there have been limited military skirmishes. If Pakistan were attacked, the government in Islamabad stated, "then our army is ready for it. … A fitting and immediate response will be given.” In the background there is always the fear that military conflicts could escalate, with nuclear weapons being used or at least threatened.

What could be a sustainable solution to the problem? For more than 75 years, all previous attempts at a peaceful solution have failed. New Delhi's attempt over the past five years to maintain law and order with a powerful police and military presence appears to have failed due to this latest attack. The Indian government has been trying for years to diplomatically marginalise Pakistan internationally; this has been quite successful, thanks to India's economic power and political clout on the one hand and Pakistan's weakness on the other. However, India's international dominance is not leading to calm in the troubled province of Kashmir. Neither side is willing to compromise.

India's central government should not only consider possible retaliation against Pakistan, the popular public call today, but also take seriously the fears and grievances of the local Kashmiri population. It should restore the region's revoked autonomy and address the fears of marginalisation among Kashmir's Muslim population. This, however, is entirely inconsistent with the policy of prioritising Hinduism at all levels of society, which Modi and his government have been pursuing for years.

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Herbert Wulf is a Professor of International Relations and former Director of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC). He is presently a Senior Fellow at BICC, an Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg/Essen, Germany, and a Research Affiliate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. He serves on the Scientific Council of SIPRI.