In May 2025, the world watched anxiously as India and Pakistan engaged in a short but sharp air war accompanied by cross-border shelling on the ground. The conflict was provoked by a terrorist attack on tourists on 22 April in Indian Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, a mountainous area of forests, meadows, and rivers. Twenty-eight men were shot, including 26 Hindus, one Christian, and a Kashmiri Muslim horseman who tried to wrestle one of the gunmen. The dead included a Nepali tourist.
Radha Kumar is a former government-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir and author of Paradise at War: A Political History of Jammu and Kashmir, from which much of the historical material in this article is summarized.
The gunmen comprised two Pakistanis and two Kashmiris, preliminary Indian investigations suggested, based on matching eyewitness descriptions of wanted terrorists. The gunmen fled into a 25-mile-long forest belt surrounding the Baisaran meadow after the killings; despite sustained military combing of the forests, they have not yet been found. A little-known group called the Resistance Front claimed responsibility for the attack via social media, but later retracted its claim, saying its X account had been hacked.
Formed as an “online entity” in 2019 according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the Resistance Front is one of several armed groups of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based UN-designated terrorist group whose head Hafiz Saeed has been under house arrest in Pakistani Punjab for the past two years, although he was sentenced to prison. The Resistance Front’s leadership includes Sajid Jatt, Sajjad Gul, and Salim Rehmani, all Lashkar operatives. Since late 2019, the Resistance Front has been implicated in 25 targeted killings of troops, Kashmiri Pandits (Hindu Brahmins), shopkeepers, elected representatives, and teachers. Its commander, Sajjad Gul, was declared a terrorist under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 2022, and the Resistance Front was banned.
Although initial evidence indicated links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani government under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif immediately denied any involvement in the attack. Indeed, it went further, organizing security for Hafiz Saeed’s house. India initially responded by freezing diplomatic ties with Pakistan, cancelling visas, and suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, a 65-year-old old agreement on water sharing underwritten by the World Bank. Pakistan reciprocated by expelling several diplomats and cancelling visas of Indians visiting Pakistan.
In India, commentators and anchors, as well as social media users, felt the Indian steps were too little. There was a sustained clamour for military action, to which the Modi administration responded with targeted air attacks on nine terrorist bases in Pakistan-held Kashmir and Pakistani Punjab on 7 May. Pakistan retaliated with drones and missiles.
The 100-day air war formally ended in a temporary ceasefire on 12 May 2025. Thirty-one Indian civilians died due to Pakistani shelling across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. A similar number died in Pakistan due to India’s air attacks, while the Indian army claimed it killed 70 terrorists who were living in the targeted areas, some of them with their families (who were also killed). Widely circulated photographs of their funeral prayers led by Hafiz Abdur Rauf of the UN-sanctioned Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation, flanked by Pakistani army officers, caused further outrage in India.
With the fragile ceasefire seeming to hold, at least for now, a number of questions nevertheless loom. Why did the attack occur, and more importantly, what can we expect in the coming weeks and months? Moreover, what, if anything, can the international community do to reduce the danger of war?
What Motivated the Attack?
The Resistance Front claimed that the attack was retaliation for the Modi administration’s actions of August 2019, which abolished Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy granted by Article 370 of the Indian constitution, including the restriction banning non-Kashmiris from acquiring land, and divided and demoted the state to two union territories administered by a centrally appointed lieutenant-governor instead of an elected administration. However, the Modi administration, under orders from the Supreme Court of India, had held elections in October 2024. Jammu and Kashmir had an elected administration that was still subordinate to the lieutenant-governor, and hopes were high that statehood would be restored soon. In other words, a rectification process was already underway.
More immediately, Jammu and Kashmir was poised for a booming tourist season in a region where tourism constitutes some 16 percent of the economy. The impact of the attack was to cripple the tourist season. In all probability, it has also put the restoration of statehood on the back burner. Worse still, it has swung the Indian focus away from potential peacebuilding in Jammu and Kashmir to counterterrorism, which almost always entails violations of human and political rights.
The attackers likely intended for these outcomes. Their broader goal, which was made clear by their deliberate targeting of non-Muslims, was clearly to further the polarization between Hindus and Muslims in India. The Indian foreign secretary’s daily briefings, in which he was flanked by a Muslim colonel and a Hindu wing commander, were clearly intended to signal unity and pluralism. Splendid as they were in calming tempers, it is unclear whether or what impact they will have on the ground.
What happens next depends on how the Sharif administration in Pakistan acts, and more importantly, what the international community does.
In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Modi praised the unity with which the nation had responded. Yet Kashmiri students and traders in other parts of India have been attacked by nationalist mobs. Social media is rife with abuse and false claims, including that the Kashmiri ponywallahs who saved so many tourists, including the injured, did not run away because they wanted to watch Hindus being killed. The accusation would be ludicrous if it were not so disgusting.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, himself of Kashmiri Pandit ancestry, was attacked on social media; the aforementioned Muslim colonel, Sofiya Qureshi, was called a “sister” of the terrorists by the state leader of Modi’s BJP in Madhya Pradesh and State Cabinet Minister Kunwar Vijay Shah. Shah has since been asked to apologize by the Supreme Court, but not to step down as minister.
The attacks on Kashmiris have since dwindled, partly due to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah dispatching his ministers to other states to appeal for calm. That said, they have not ended fully, and the abuse on social media continues without any recognition that such abuse risks furthering the terrorists’ goals. Meanwhile, a professor at India’s reputed Ashoka University who criticized the optics of the Indian air response, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, was arrested and released on bail from prison a week later.
A Skirmish 78 Years in the Making
What happens next depends on how the Sharif administration in Pakistan acts, and more importantly, what the international community does. The official Pakistani position is that little will change — including its protection of armed anti-India groups — until the Kashmir issue is resolved.
The dispute over Kashmir stems from the 1947 partition of India, when Pakistani irregulars invaded the princely state in pursuit of the claim that Muslim-majority Kashmir belonged in Pakistan. The then-Maharaja acceded to India following the invasion, and Indian troops together with Kashmiris repelled the invaders in a six-month-long war that Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru took to the United Nations. The war ended with the division of the state between the two countries along an UN-negotiated Line of Control. A series of non-binding UN resolutions called for a plebiscite in the state to choose between India and Pakistan, to be held after Pakistanis fighters withdrew. Pakistan refused to withdraw from the parts it still held — a sliver of Jammu and Kashmir and the whole of Gilgit and Baltistan — and the UN resolutions proved stillborn.
The two countries fought two more wars in the years that followed, both of which India won, but returned to the status quo ante. In 1972, the states agreed that they would resolve their disputes bilaterally (the Simla Agreement) through peaceful negotiations. Both countries engaged in several rounds of peace negotiations, most directed towards formalizing the de facto partition into a de jure one. Each round was fruitless, and Pakistan jettisoned the idea in 1980, instead recruiting, arming, and training armed groups to fight in Indian Kashmir.
In 1987, protests against allegedly rigged state legislative elections created an opening for a Pakistan-supported armed uprising that lasted for close to a decade. Widespread cross-border armed attacks continued for several years after, in which over 80,000 died. A series of talks between Kashmiri armed groups such as the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front and the Hizbul Mujahedeen and the Indian government were abruptly halted by terrorist attacks in both Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India each time.
In 1999, then-Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee started a multi-track peace process involving India-Pakistan talks, Indian government talks with pro-independence groups such as the Hurriyat Conference, and encouraging pro-peace exchanges between civil society groups in India, Pakistan, and divided Jammu and Kashmir. The peace process was further expanded by his successor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2004–2014).
The latter two tracks had an enormous impact. Pro-independence leaders such as Abdul Ghani Lone appealed to Pakistan-based armed groups to lay down their arms and enter peace negotiations in 2000. He was assassinated for daring to ask, but he created an important space for Kashmiris to express their turn away from armed conflict, and influenced the Hurriyat, already in secret back-channel discussions with a Vajpayee emissary to play a bridge-building role for peace talks with successive Pakistani administrations, from Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. Indian and Pakistani civil society campaigned to mobilize a swell of support for the peace process.
The Modi administration has carefully cultivated a strongman image, and its rabble-rousing supporters will see peace talks as a climbdown.
The big breakthrough came in 2006–7, when a draft framework for a settlement was arrived at in an official backchannel between the Singh- and Musharraf-appointed envoys, Satish Lamba and Tariq Aziz. The framework agreement committed both parties to the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of Pakistan-based armed groups, followed by a scaling back of troops on both sides of the Line of Control and international border, the provision of autonomy to all parts of divided Jammu and Kashmir, together with mechanisms for joint development of resources and monitoring of implementation by India and Pakistan. It was bolstered by a series of confidence-building measures, such as cross-border trade and travel across the Line of Control.
Then, in July 2007, came an uprising by Islamist clerics against Musharraf and the siege of the Lal Masjid near the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. Musharraf asked that the peace negotiations be temporarily put on hold, and Singh agreed. Elections in 2008 brought Asif Ali Zardari to power, whose administration focused on India-Pakistan trade as a means of creating the environment for a Kashmir settlement.
The Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2009 put paid to that opportunity. Although both Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh had weathered successive terrorist attacks and continued with negotiations, Mumbai was the first massive terrorist attack covered live on Indian television — for five long days. It proved a turning point in more ways than one: never again would an Indian administration be able to weather a large terrorist attack without a concerted response, and never again would there be peace talks with Pakistan that did not work towards ending cross-border terrorism.
The Singh administration chose to respond to the Mumbai attacks with rule of law, producing evidence, pushing for a joint investigation and prosecution, and seeking support from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to sanction Pakistani support for anti-India armed groups. Its efforts bore fruit insofar as the Pakistan-based Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohamad were added to the designated terrorist list. The FATF placed Pakistan on its grey list, making investment and aid more difficult. The outcomes also showed how high the stakes were: the first Pakistani prosecutor was shot and the second had his security revoked. No trials of the Mumbai guilty were held in Pakistan and attempts to revive peace talks withered.
When Prime Minister Modi came to power in 2014, there was a brief moment when it seemed a peace process might resume following his surprise visit to Prime Minister Sharif. Although Sharif appointed the moderate General Qamar Javed Bajwa as army chief, who negotiated a quiet ceasefire on the Line of Control and sought to turn the army commanders in favour of trade with India, Sharif was ousted by the army and forced into exile in London. Pakistani politics and its economy both nosedived in the next decade. Sharif’s successor, Imran Khan, extended Bajwa’s tenure in 2019 and the ceasefire continued to hold. Yet Khan, too, was ousted by the army and is currently in prison.
The present Shehbaz Sharif administration running Pakistan is a weak coalition that appears to be dominated by the army to an even greater extent than previous administrations. Judging by his speech on 17 April, Pakistan’s army chief General Asif Munir appears to represent a reversion to the hard-line doctrine, which first became evident in General Ayub Khan’s 1958 military coup and was further developed by General Zia in 1980, that Indians and Pakistanis are fundamental religious and ethnic enemies. He has just been promoted to the rank of Field Marshal.
Meanwhile, both India and Pakistan are sending parliamentary delegations to international capitals, the former to canvas support against terrorism and the latter to accuse India of supporting anti-Pakistan terrorism such as the train attack by the insurgent Baloch Liberation Army (however, unlike the Pakistan-based anti-India groups, there are no Baloch liberation groups based in India).
International Pressure Is Key
What, then, can other countries do to work for peace? First of all, those with some influence over both countries — mostly the US and Europe — can push for continued reforms against terrorist support in Pakistan through the UN and the FATF. The IMF could also be asked to impose conditions to ensure no part of its loan is diverted to armed groups or their ideologues.
Whether that will be enough to persuade the Modi administration to engage in peace talks with Pakistan is moot. The Pakistan army is part of the problem, but has shown little appetite to be part of the solution. Its army commanders were evenly divided over the Singh-Musharraf framework, then-Indian envoy Satish Lamba told me. The Modi administration, Pakistani analysts say, missed an opportunity with General Bajwa, although he too would have faced the same internal opposition that Musharraf did. For its part, the Modi administration has carefully cultivated a strongman image, and its rabble-rousing supporters will see peace talks as a climbdown — unless there is credible action against anti-India armed groups in Pakistan that the Modi administration can spin.
That both India and Pakistan have done ill by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is undeniable. But these wrongs cannot be righted by violent radicals with a politics of hate.
Even so, it would be foolish to imagine that anything other than talks on confidence-building measures may ensue. These are not to be sneered at, either in the short or in the medium term. For Jammu and Kashmir, a long-term ceasefire and return to joint security monitoring on the Line of Control and international border would be an enormous relief. Shattered homes and buildings on both sides of the divide need to be rebuilt. In Indian Kashmir, the tourist season needs to revive. Lastly, the restoration of statehood needs to be put back on a timeline.
For Pakistani-held parts of the former princely state, the problem is deeper. The civil society and political leadership that I met from Pakistani-held Jammu and Kashmir, including Gilgit and Baltistan, were clear that their democratic rights would only be realized as part of a settlement with India that covered the whole of the former princely state. For them, too, a cessation of hostilities and confidence-building measures will be a large relief, even if their rights might still be restricted.
Meanwhile, pro-peace civil society groups have asked for a joint and transparent enquiry to identify, arrest, and prosecute the Pahalgam terrorists. India’s previous attempt at a joint enquiry left a bitter aftertaste. But if India’s push for international support against Pakistan-based terrorists is to be successful, some form of investigation will be necessary. After the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani civil society and especially the Pakistani media played a stellar role in tracing the guilty. That has not happened this time, perhaps because the BJP’s penchant for abusing Pakistan is deeply resented. In these circumstances, rebuilding civil society dialogue — even in third countries — is vital.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the message from Jammu and Kashmir, where there was a spontaneous outpouring of grief and condemnation following the Pahalgam attack. “Not In My Name”, the placards read at candlelit demonstrations, repudiating the Resistance Front’s claim to represent their sentiments. That both India and Pakistan have, in different ways and to different extents, done ill by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is undeniable. But these wrongs cannot be righted by violent radicals with a politics of hate. International policymakers and the international media would do well to separate the Kashmir issue from terrorist protagonists.
During the worst months of partition violence, Mahatma Gandhi said he saw a “ray of hope” in Kashmir’s refusal to get swept up into the violence. The Kashmiri response to the Pahalgam attack offers a similar ray — to India to restore human and political rights in Jammu and Kashmir, and to Pakistan to crack down on cross-border armed groups and consider human and political rights in its parts of the former princely state.