India and Pakistan seem headed for a military conflict in the wake of India’s worst terrorist attack in years. The question is what form that clash will take and just how far the confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbors could escalate.
The latest crisis in the long-running tensions between the two nations began on April 22, when gunmen killed 26 people in a popular tourist resort in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir. Pakistan and India each control parts of the region of Kashmir and each claim the entirety of it, a dispute that dates back to the partition of British India in 1947. The two countries have fought several wars and a number of smaller skirmishes over the territory.
The attackers appear to have targeted Hindu men, reportedly asking some of the victims their names or testing if they could recite Quranic verses before killing them. A militant group called the Resistance Front has claimed responsibility for the attack. Indian authorities say the group is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group which carried out 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, and which has widely reported links to Pakistan’s security services. Pakistan claims Lashkar-e-Taiba has been essentially dismantled.
Amid public outrage over the attacks, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to “raze whatever is left of the terror haven,” an implicit threat against Pakistan, which India has long accused of backing terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The Pakistani government has denied any links to the attacks, and the Indian government has yet to publicly present evidence of Pakistani complicity.
Since the crisis began, Indian and Pakistani troops have sporadically exchanged fire across the border, India’s Navy and Air Force have carried out drills, and Pakistan has closed its airspace to India airliners. India has also suspended participation in a water-sharing treaty, threatening to withhold the water Pakistani farmers rely on to produce crops.
Late Tuesday, Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X that “Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends carrying out military action against Pakistan in the next 24-36 hours,” a claim that followed a statement from Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, that an Indian attack was “imminent.”
There has been a long-running anti-India insurgency in the parts of Kashmir that India controls, which, despite denials from Islamabad, has been widely reported to be backed by Pakistan.
In 2019, after 40 Indian police were killed in a suicide bombing in Kashmir, India carried out airstrikes against militant targets on Pakistani territory. Pakistan responded with strikes of its own on Indian Kashmir, which led to an air battle and downing of an Indian fighter jet.
A short time after that, India revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status, putting it under direct control of the federal government, and pushing through a series of controversial legal changes that have stoked resentment among Kashmiri Muslims but which Modi’s government credits with tamping down insurgent violence.
Indian authorities have also been heavily promoting Kashmiri sites like Pahalgam, a scenic mountain area known as the “Switzerland of India,” as tourist destinations, arguing that thanks to their reforms, the region is safe for all.
Sumit Ganguly, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and expert on South Asian politics told me, that as such, India’s leaders may feel their response “will have to be something rather dramatic and visible.”
One possibility is that India could send troops into the Pakistan-administered areas of Kashmir, a dramatic response but one perhaps less likely to trigger all out war than an incursion into what India considers Pakistan-proper.
Strikes on alleged terrorist training camps would be one option; attacks on the Pakistani military itself would be a much more dramatic step. And as always, there’s no guarantee that a limited war would stay limited.
As has been the case since the 1970s, when the two countries first developed nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear war looms over the crisis. The two countries have around 170 nuclear warheads each and even a “limited” nuclear exchange between them could kill tens of millions of people. India has a “no-first use” policy on nuclear weapons (though some officials’ recent statements have cast doubt on that commitment) but Pakistan does not. Asif, the Pakistani defense minister, said this week that Pakistan would only consider using nuclear weapons if "there is a direct threat to our existence."
In past blowups over Kashmir, US diplomacy has played a key role in talking the two sides back from the brink.
The State Department said Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had plans to speak with Pakistani and Indian leaders. But there’s not much indication President Donald Trump is deeply involved. He initially issued a strong statement backing India following the Pahalgam attack, then when asked about the crisis on Air Force One on Friday, said, somewhat nonsensically, that "There have been tensions on that border for 1,500 years. It's been the same, but I am sure they'll figure it out one way or the other.” (India and Pakistan have only existed as separate countries for 77 years.)
This time around, the comment suggested, the two countries may have to find their own way back from the brink.
