By John J. Metzler, May 8, 2025A long smoldering fuse to wider conflict has reignited in the wake of a terrible terrorist attack killing 27 tourists in the mountainous Pahalgam region in disputed Kashmir.
The Indian civilians were apparently targeted because of their Hindu religion.
Since the unprovoked attacks in late April, rhetoric between India and Pakistan has been ratcheted up and the respective capitals of New Delhi and Islamabad have seethed with renewed saber rattling.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had vowed to retaliate against the terrorist perpetrators, pledging to pursue the attackers “to the ends of the earth.” Subsequently India’s military has launched air strikes on terrorist targets inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Just weeks earlier Pakistan’s army chief Gen. Asim Munir, in what some observers call a “coded message,” termed Kashmir as Pakistan's “jugular vein,” in what is viewed as among the possible triggers for the terror attack in Pahalgam coinciding with the visit of U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
While the Pakistan government has not directly carried out such attacks, in the past it has supported Islamic militants to do its dirty work.
Some in India’s outspoken media have labelled Gen. Munir, “The Jihadi General.”
Crisis comes quickly in Kashmir, the disputed resource-rich region divided between India and Pakistan.
The territory has been the source of three wars between the now nuclear-armed neighbors as well as countless standoffs and scuffles near the dividing Line of Control, the old cease-fire line going back to the 1972 Simla agreement. The point is both India and Pakistan staked out contested claims backed by emotion and nationalistic rhetoric.
Much of Kashmir’s complex history is rooted in religion, resources and real estate.
Even today Kashmir is divided between India’s Jammu and Kashmir region, Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir and Gilgit, and an area China seized in 1962.
Kashmir forms a complex geographic puzzle. Created in the aftermath of Indian independence from Britain in 1947 and the subsequent bloody partition of the united British Raj into separate states India and Pakistan along largely religious lines.
Though Kashmir is largely Muslim, the territory chose to join India, thus planting the seeds for conflict.
The region contains the headwaters of the mighty Indus River, indispensable for agriculture on both sides, most especially Pakistan.
India’s Prime Minster Modi tried to block some of the up-stream waters of the river by suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.” He also cut trade and transit ties with Pakistan.
After India suspended the treaty following the terror attack, Pakistan’s former Foreign Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari (leader of a key political party) told a rally on the banks of the Indus, “Either water will flow in the Indus, or their blood will.” He added, “I want to tell India that the Indus is ours and will remain ours.”
The six main branches of the Indus River system run westward through India before crossing into Pakistan; The waters are nothing short of a lifeblood for Pakistan’s population.
Foreign capitals are nervous how this rhetoric can spin out of control into conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has striven to deescalate a conflict, expressing his sorrow for lives lost in the terrorist attack in Pahalgam. He “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to cooperation with India against terrorism.” Rubio encouraged India to work with Pakistan to de-escalate tensions and maintain peace and security.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told correspondents, “Targeting civilians is unacceptable, and those responsible must be brought to justice through transparent, credible, and lawful means. It is also essential, especially at this critical hour, to avoid a military confrontation that could easily spin out of control.”
The Secretary General pleaded, “Now is the time for maximum restraint and stepping back from the brink. Make no mistake: A military solution is no solution.”
Beijing’s Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure program and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor are deeply invested and entrenched in Pakistan.
The Chinese Communist Party is decidedly nervous about its Pakistani proxy slipping into a likely unwinnable war with India.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi wants Pakistan to tread carefully. Currently Beijing is facing serious economic blowback from the Trump Administration’s tough trade tariffs. China’s once unchallenged export industries now feel the pain. Beijing knows that domestic discontent inside Mainland China could spell disaster.
The rhetorical brinksmanship in both New Delhi and Islamabad could slip into a regional conflict where nuclear weapons may come into play. This is the time for both India’s and Pakistan’s allies to engage in preventive diplomacy to stop the slide into wider chaos.
It’s time for calm.
John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]
