India said on Wednesday it had carried out strikes on Pakistan, intensifying a conflict between two nuclear powers.
The attacks come after 26 people, most of them tourists, were killed on April 22 in a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. India’s government said there were “cross-border linkages” to Pakistan, which denied involvement.
Here is what to know about today’s strikes, the attack in Kashmir, and the longstanding tensions between India and Pakistan, which both claim the region.
Where were the strikes in Pakistan?
The precise nature and location of the strikes is unclear.
India said it had struck several sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistani military officials said that five places had been hit.
Residents of Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani part of Kashmir, reported hearing jets flying above. They said that a site in a rural area near Muzaffarabad that was once used by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group based in Pakistan, appeared to have been targeted in the strikes.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Army said that four other places had also come under attack. One was Bahawalpur, in Punjab Province, the site of a religious seminary associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad, another Pakistan-based militant group; another was Kotli, a city in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The Pakistani military said that Indian planes did not enter Pakistan’s airspace while conducting the attacks.
“Our actions have been focused, measured, and nonescalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted,” the Indian government said in announcing the strikes.
In its own statement, the Pakistani government said that the strikes “will not go unanswered.” It added, “The temporary pleasure of India will be replaced by enduring grief.”
What happened in the Kashmir attack?
On April 22, 26 people in the Baisaran Valley in Kashmir were killed by militants who approached them and shot them. Another 17 were injured.
Except for one local Kashmiri man, a government tally of the dead showed that all were Hindu tourists. Accounts from the injured and survivors suggested many were targeted after they were asked about their religion. The attack, which occurred near Pahalgam, a town in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir, was one of the worst on Indian civilians in decades.
A group calling itself the Resistance Front emerged on social media to take responsibility. Indian officials privately say the group is a proxy for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization based in Pakistan.
In Kashmir, Indian security forces have begun a sweeping clampdown, arresting thousands of people.
What has Pakistan said?
Pakistan denies that it provides state support for militancy in Kashmir, though its leaders often express solidarity with Kashmiris who want independence from India. And Pakistan acknowledges that it provided funding and training for militant groups in the 1990s.
After the April 22 attack in Kashmir, Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, asserted that groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba were defunct.
Majid Nizami, an expert on jihadist groups who is based in Lahore, Pakistan, said that heightened scrutiny from the Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based global financial watchdog, had pressured Pakistan to impose restrictions on Lashkar-e-Taiba’s leaders and confiscate the group’s financial assets. Tightened border controls by India have also made infiltration across the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir into areas controlled by India and Pakistan, “almost impossible,” Mr. Nizami said.
What are the origins of the dispute?
The roots of the Kashmir conflict trace back to the 1947 partition of British India, which led to the creation of a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
In October of that year, the Hindu monarch of the Muslim-majority princely state of Kashmir acceded to India, but Pakistan laid claim to the territory and sought to take it by military force. A U.N.-brokered agreement in 1949 established a cease-fire line, dividing Kashmir.
After wars in 1965 and 1971, the cease-fire line became the Line of Control, with India possessing about two-thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan the rest. But the dispute remains unresolved.
Has Pakistan supported militancy in Kashmir?
An insurgency in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir began in the 1980s, primarily driven by local grievances, with Pakistan eventually supporting some groups, experts say.
Local elections in 1987 were widely perceived as rigged, disadvantaging a coalition of Muslim parties. “That led Kashmiri political activists to conclude they could never achieve their political demands at the ballot box,” said Christopher Clary, associate professor of political science at the University at Albany.
“A mostly indigenous insurgency emerged,” he said, “but over the next few years it was co-opted by Pakistan-based groups.”
Among the Kashmir-focused insurgent groups that emerged, some supported independence for the region, while others wanted the Indian side of Kashmir to be taken over by Pakistan.
In the 1990s, Pakistan provided training and other support to several militant groups operating in Kashmir and within Pakistan. This involvement was later acknowledged by several senior Pakistani officials, including the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
The insurgency began to ease around 2002, as Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, another major militant group, although Lashkar-e-Taiba continued to operate under aliases. A cease-fire was declared and a peace process with India was initiated, a shift that some observers linked to pressure by the United States after its post-9/11 intervention in Afghanistan.
The peace process collapsed after attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008, which killed 166 people and were attributed to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Will India and Pakistan go to war?
Experts say a military confrontation between India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons, runs the risk of rapid escalation that could be difficult to contain. But India is largely unrestrained by any global pressure to limit its response, and it has become quicker to flex its muscles in recent years as its diplomatic and economic power has grown.
The governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia have spoken to the two sides, and Iran’s foreign minister has publicly offered to mediate. The United Nations and the European Union have called for restraint and dialogue. On May 1, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held separate conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan and the Indian foreign minister, S. Jaishankar.
Analysts say India is interpreting the expressions of support by many countries for its pursuit of justice as a green light for any measures it takes.
But India, the analysts say, may be restrained by the risk of exposing a military that is still under transformation. Such constraints, experts say, could lead Mr. Modi to choose a more surgical option — such as limited airstrikes or special forces raids close to the border with Pakistan — that calms public anger, reduces the risk of embarrassing mishaps and avoids escalatory retaliation.
What is Kashmir’s status now?
India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, and there have been numerous military incursions, police crackdowns and terrorist attacks as militants have killed scores of civilians, including Hindu pilgrims.
Since war last broke out in 1999, Kashmir has remained one of the most militarized places in the world. India and Pakistan have come to the brink of war several times, including in 2019, when a suicide bombing in Kashmir killed at least 40 Indian soldiers.
In 2019, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked a part of the Indian constitution that had given semi-autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The move, to fully integrate Jammu and Kashmir, as India’s portion of the region is known, was part of his Hindu nationalist agenda.
His government began directly administering the territory from New Delhi — bringing a huge security presence to the region and cutting off communications to the outside world. It imprisoned thousands, including political leaders, human rights activists and civilians, and suspended democracy for years.
Pakistan condemned India’s moves. But violent unrest has broken out in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, too. Protests there have reflected a general feeling of dissatisfaction with Pakistani rule.
Direct rule by India dampened the outbreaks of violence in the portion of Kashmir it controlled. Voting also resumed last year. But discontent with Mr. Modi’s party, particularly for how heavily it polices the lives of Kashmiris, remains.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Anupreeta Das covers India and South Asia for The Times. She is based in New Delhi.
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