A terrorist attack last week outside the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian Kashmir reignited an ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers who have fought four wars (in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999) and had consistently rancorous relations since the creation of Pakistan in 1947.* 

On April 22, 2025, a group of Indian tourists was targeted by four gunmen in a coordinated assault that led to the deaths of 26 people (including one foreign national). Reports indicate that the terrorists asked their victims to recite an Islamic prayer, so as to avoid killing Muslims. Responsibility for the attack was initially claimed by a little-known group, the Resistance Front, thought to be connected to (or a subset of) the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), a prominent terrorist group based in Pakistan with a long pedigree of attacks in India, including the 2008 assault on Mumbai.

The Indian government immediately condemned the act, with Prime Minister Narendra assuring his nation that justice would be dealt to the perpetrators. India has since suspended the decades-old Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, closed its airspace to Pakistani aviation, expelled several Pakistani diplomats, and closed key border crossings. Pakistan has issued a firm denial of any involvement and condemned the violence, expressing condolences to the victims’ families. Furthermore, it has claimed that the attack was a “false flag” operation: in other words, staged by India to discredit Pakistan during a visit to New Delhi by Vice President J.D. Vance.

Analysis

Hindu-majority India gained independence from Britain in 1947. At the same time, Muslim Pakistan broke away from India. Pakistan was initially divided into two wings, West and East Pakistan, with India situated in between, making the country a cartographical nightmare. In 1971, East Pakistan became the sovereign nation of Bangladesh after a bloody war of secession. The Partition of 1947 is at the root of the present crisis, as Muslim-majority Kashmir remained with India, much to Pakistan’s consternation. Pakistan has always claimed that Kashmir, by rights, should have been a part of Islamic Pakistan, not Hindu-majority India. It has, ever since, tried to wrest control of Kashmir, resorting both to conventional warfare and the support of jihadi groups.  

India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty marks a major (even radical) escalation in the decades-old conflict, as it governs the sharing of water from six rivers flowing through both countries. Suspending the water flow to Pakistan, which heavily relies on these rivers for agriculture and drinking water, could be viewed as a violation of international law, and has led to retaliation from Pakistan, which this week suspended the 1972 Shimla Agreement, a treaty (concluded after Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 war) by which both countries committed to settling their disputes by peaceful means.

Terrorism has played a crucial role in shaping the dynamics of the Kashmir conflict. This attack will trigger a prolonged period of instability, possibly leading to civil unrest, and a further radicalization of young Kashmiri men. It should be noted that all of the prominent elected politicians in Indian Kashmir (including the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who is not an ally of Prime Minister Modi) have condemned the terrorist attack. 

Pakistan could see this as an opportunity to capitalize on radicalization in the region. An increased Indian Army presence in Kashmir could be framed as a narrative of Indian oppression. Pakistan has, since its inception, positioned itself as a defender of Kashmiri Muslims in the struggle against Indian aggression–even as it crushes the rights of its own minorities, such as the Baloch, and marginalizes Pashtuns and Sindhis. 

Whatever the excesses of the Indian state in Kashmir, however, the bottom line is that Islamist Pakistan has, for at least the last four decades, used terrorist infiltration into Kashmir as a key instrument of its India policy. It possesses a serious nuclear arsenal, and banks on its nukes to serve as a deterrence to any Indian retaliation. How India responds to the Pahalgam attacks will be a severe test of New Delhi’s ingenuity.   

*Contrary to President Trump’s assertion to the media in the aftermath of the terror attack that the enmity between India and Pakistan is “a thousand years” old, the two countries have been at loggerheads for a mere 78 years.