India and Pakistan on the brink of war
The UN has urged India and Pakistan to show "maximum restraint" as the two nuclear-armed rivals inch closer to war in the aftermath of a deadly attack in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mainly Indian tourists.
This plea from the UN comes after Indian and Pakistani officials both confirmed that their troops exchanged gunfire overnight across the “Line of Control” in the disputed Himalayan territory.
Delhi is reeling from the deadliest attack on civilians in the region in over two decades. On Tuesday, 26 tourists were killed in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir, after five gunmen - who are still on the loose - emerged from the pine forests and launched their ambush.
Kashmir has been divided up between India and Pakistan since its independence in 1947, but both countries claim it in full. Rebel groups have waged an insurgency in the Indian-controlled parts of the territory since 1989, demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power in 2014, he extended an olive branch to Islamabad by inviting then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration. Modi even visited Sharif on his birthday in 2015.
Since then, relations have soured again.
The Modi government’s decision in 2019 to revoke the special status accorded to Indian-administered Kashmir in its constitution - and subsequently impose a crippling communications blockade on the majority-Muslim state - ended the thaw in tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Last Autumn, Delhi hailed the largely peaceful elections held in the territory, amid high voter turnout, as a sign of a return to relative stability. But that progress has again been derailed by this week’s attack.
Despite years of fluctuating violence, relations between India and Pakistan have now plummetted to their lowest level in decades.
On Wednesday, Modi vowed to pursue those responsible for the massacre “to the ends of the earth” and he blamed Islamabad for offering the militants “cross-border support”. While the militant group operating within Kashmir calls itself the Kashmir Resistance, Delhi considers it a front for the Pakistan-based militants Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Yesterday, India announced that it was suspending visas for Pakistani nationals, ordering them to leave the country by the end of the week.
Pakistan has in turn closed its airspace for Indian airlines and suspended trade with Delhi, including through third countries.
Yet perhaps the most inflammatory move of all is India’s announcement on Wednesday that it is suspending a 65-year-old bilateral water-sharing treaty.
The Indus water treaty, signed by the two rival nations in 1960, sets out how the Indus river system which runs between the two nations is managed and it divides up the control of six important rivers between them. About 80 per cent of Pakistan’s irrigated water supply comes from the river system.
This World Bank-brokered water-sharing agreement has survived several periods of hostility between India and Pakistan and been credited with preventing a full-scale conflict between them.
The Pakistani government has been clear this week that water is a red line. Any attempt by Delhi to violate the treaty and divert water flows, it warned, “will be considered as an act of war”.
For now though, there are no signs that Modi is in any mood to show restraint in response to Tuesday’s deadly attack.
Without significant international pressure to de-escalate, the only real restraint on both nations are concerns about their respective economies - and the other’s nuclear arsenal.
Caitlin Allen
Deputy Editor
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