Hit hard by the “curtain of death,” a suffocating cloud of fine particles combined with an unprecedented heatwave, India and Pakistan could very likely face renewed tensions following the incident in the Baisaran Valley, in the Pahalgam region, in the picturesque Himalayan federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Militants belonging to a little-known group, the “Kashmir Resistance,” claimed responsibility for the attack on what Delhi describes as “tourists,” resulting in over 26 deaths. On social media, the group justified its actions, stating that the Indian authorities had “settled more than 85,000 foreigners in the region, causing a demographic shift (…) and that the targeted individuals were not ordinary tourists but were linked and affiliated with Indian security agencies.” This incident shatters the relative calm that had characterized this sensitive region since the Mumbai shooting in 2008. According to analysts, it also represents a significant setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata, which had touted the 2019 revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status as “a major success” in bringing “peace and development” to this Muslim-majority region. Without splitting hairs, it is nonetheless legitimate to point out that this attack follows verbal sparring and mutual accusations between India and Pakistan regarding the human rights situation in the region during the 58th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council held in Geneva last February. The two sides clashed, exchanging heated remarks over the Kashmir issue, which remains a major point of contention. If cricket, the king of sports in both countries, is a fiery battleground in the sporting arena, the Kashmir Valley issue has repeatedly mobilized troops on both sides of the border. After more than 75 years of tumultuous relations and sporadic clashes, punctuated by truces and periods of calm, it seems that the two nuclear powers are not yet ready to connect the dotted line on the map. The world is troubled enough without opening another front where the weight of history is profoundly heavy.
El Moudjahid
