Amid the posturing, there’s no ruling out renewed fighting in the future
India and Pakistan have come to blows before. But not since the 1970s have the stakes felt higher than after April’s attack in Kashmir. No ceasefire can last long with fundamental issues still unaddressed.
India and Pakistan: river and border disputes
On Tuesday 6 May India launched at least nine missiles into Pakistani territory. This was intended as a response to the Pahalgam attack in Kashmir on 22 April in which 26 people, all but one of them Indian tourists, were killed. In naming its military operation ‘Sindoor’, after the vermillion powder a Hindu husband applies to his wife’s forehead on their wedding day, India evoked a traditional view of women that reduces them to their marital status, on the pretext of defending the widows of the victims, who were all men.
New Delhi said it had targeted only terrorist infrastructure; Pakistan retorted that the attacks had taken more than 25 civilian lives; this was confirmed by early reports, according to which India had targeted mosques. These reports were in turn contested. When Islamabad claimed to have downed five Indian fighter jets, an avalanche of social media posts boasted of the superiority of the Chinese-made Chengdu J-10 (Vigorous Dragon) fighters used by the Pakistani air force compared with India’s French-built Rafales and Mirage 2000s.
This was the fifth military clash between the two nuclear neighbours since the partition of British India into two independent states in 1947. But it was the first time since the 1971 war that either country’s military had hit locations outside the disputed Kashmir region, with missiles striking Muridke and Bahawalpur, in central and southern Punjab respectively, both areas known for harbouring Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani Islamist group which the UN designates as a terrorist organisation and New Delhi blames for coordinating the 22 April attack with Islamabad’s support.
India’s decision to hit these targets broke the tacit boundaries of the conflict between the two countries. Pakistan – where the military runs the show behind an unpopular government – likewise abandoned its traditional restraint by striking Indian air bases, missile depots and air defences using surface-to-surface missiles. (…)
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