India and Pakistan are on the precipice of a possible military confrontation, almost two weeks after a deadly terrorist attack against the side controlled by India in the Kashmir region in difficulty triggered aggressive declarations between the nations of the archiv.
India suggested that Pakistan was linked to the April 22 attack which killed 26 people, an assertion that Pakistan has denied several times.
The cashmere, a picturesque Himalayan valley, is stuck between India and Pakistan, the nuclear countries that have struggled to control the region for almost 80 years. The Kashmiris rarely had a say in their own fate.
Here is a story of the dispute.
1947
Starts and heavy
The statement on cashmere began almost as soon as India and Pakistan have formed.
In 1947, Great Britain divided India, its former colony, in two countries. One was Pakistan, with a Muslim majority. The other, mainly composed of Hindus, has kept the name of India. But the fate of cashmere remained undecided.
In a few months, India and Pakistan claimed the territory. A military confrontation ensued. The Hindu Sovereign of Kashmir, who had first refused to abdicate his sovereignty, agreed to be part of the India region in exchange for a security guarantee, after the militias of Pakistan moved in a part of his territory.
What followed was the first war that India and Pakistan fight for cashmere.
Years later, in 1961, The former sovereign of cashmere died in Bombay. In a VECRology, the New York Times summed up its decision to sell the territory to India in words which would prove to be true for the decades to come. His actions, according to the article, had contributed to “a continuous bitter dispute between India and Pakistan”.
1949
A tenuous ceasefire
In January 1949, the First War between India and Pakistan on cashmere concluded after the United Nations intervened to negotiate a cease-fire.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, a line was drawn by dividing the territory. India would occupy about two thirds of the region and Pakistan the other third.
The demarcation line was supposed to be temporary, pending a more permanent political settlement.
1965
War explodes again
Tensions were already raised between India and Pakistan in the summer of 1965. There had been a skirmish between their forces along the border Earlier in the year, in an area south of cashmere.
When Pakistan led a secret offensive through the Cashmere ceasefire line in August, the fights quickly turned into a large-scale war. The confrontation was short -lived – Only about three weeks – but bloody.
In January 1966, India and Pakistan signed an agreement To settle future disputes by peaceful means.
But peace would not last.
1972
An official division
After a regional war in 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India decided to review the unresolved question of cashmere.
In December 1972, the countries announced that they had resolved the blocking on the ceasefire line in cashmere. But few has changed in addition to the designation. The 1949 temporary ceasefire line has become an official “control line”. Each country has kept the cashmere section which it had already detained for more than 20 years.
Although the agreement has done little to change the status quo to cashmere, it came with an aspiration to improve the volatile relationship between India and Pakistan.
Report on the New Delhi agreement, a Times correspondent wrote on the two countries: “Official sources here indicated that they were satisfied with the colony, which, according to them, had been reached” in an atmosphere of good will and mutual understanding “. »»
During a period of particular political disorders – aggravated in 1987 by disputes over the local elections that many thought they were faked – some Cashmiris turned to activism, which Pakistan would end up stirring and supporting.
During the next decade, cashmere state police recorded tens of thousands of bombings, shootings, removal and attacks of rockets.
This violence began to moderate around the 2000s, but the years of intense insurrection had still eroded the fragile relationship between Pakistan and India.
1999
Peace talks are short
As a new millennium approaches, India and Pakistan seemed ready to establish a more permanent peace.
In a gesture of good will, the Pakistani Prime Minister organized his Indian counterpart for a weekend of jocular diplomacy in February 1999. No Indian Prime Minister had visited Pakistan in a decade.
The summit – between the leaders of the opponents who now had each of the nuclear weapons – produced signed documents affirming their mutual commitment to normalize relations.
“We have to bring peace to our people,” said Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during a press conference, while Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee smiled alongside him. “We have to bring prosperity to our people. We owe each other and future generations. ”
Three months later, their country was at war. Again, cashmere was the point of discord.
The fighting broke out after Pakistan infiltrates seized positions in the undivided Indian part of the cashmere. India said that infiltrates were Pakistani soldiers, which Western analysts would also come to believe. Pakistan denied that its forces were involved, insisting that the fighters independent of freedom were at the origin of the operation.
The war ended when Mr. Sharif called for infiltrators to withdraw (he argued all over that they were not Pakistani forces and that Pakistan did not control them). A few months later, Mr. Sharif was filed in a military coup headed by a Pakistani general who, he was later determined, had led the military foray that sparked the war.
After the war in 1999, cashmere remained one of the most militarized areas in the world. The almost constant troubles on the territory brought India and Pakistan to the edge of the war several times in the years that followed.
The last major push took place in 2019, when a bombing in cashmere killed at least 40 Indian soldiers. Indian war aircraft have made air strikes in Pakistan in retaliation, but the conflict emerged before becoming a total war.
A more sustainable decision occurred later that year, when the Indian government stripped the cashmere of a darling status.
For the entire modern history of cashmere – since its Hindu sovereign has accessed India – the territory had experienced a certain degree of autonomy. Its relative independence was devoted to the constitution of India. But in August 2019, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi retraced the privileged status of the cashmere.
The repression came with a rapid succession of draconian measures: thousands of Indian troops have increased in the territory. Internet connections have been cut. The telephone lines were cut. Mr. Modi’s government began to administer New Delhi’s territory directly, and it has imprisoned thousands of cashmiris, including political leaders who had long taken the side of India in the face of separatist activism.
The government’s heavy approach has amazed observers around the world. But the results, with regard to India, justified the means. A new era of peace seemed to follow. Acts of terrorism have decreased. Tourism has prospered.
It was an illusion.
2025
A terrorist attack
On April 22, activists shot and killed 26 people, mainly tourists from different parts of India, near Pahalgam, in cashmere. Seventeen others were injured.
It was one of the worst attacks on Indian civilians for decades.
Almost immediately afterwards, Indian officials suggested that Pakistan had been involved. Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister, judged serious sanctions for the authors and those who give them a refuge, although he has not explicitly mentioned Pakistan.
Pakistan quickly denied participation and said it was “ready to cooperate” with any international investigation into the terrorist attack. But India was not appeased. Since then, his leaders have seemed to build a case of military confrontation.
