Kashmir: how a mountain paradise became a nuclear tinderbox

But even by Kashmir’s blood-stained standards, the attack last month in a mountain meadow above the resort town of Pahalgam was deeply shocking. Twenty-five tourists, almost all Indian, and a Kashmiri, were gunned down. The attackers are said to have shot those men who couldn’t recite a Muslim prayer; several were slaughtered in front of their wives.

India hasn’t made public the evidence that, in its view, implicates its neighbour in this massacre – an allegation angrily repudiated by Pakistan. But the forceful military response has, for the first time in half a century, included targets in the Pakistani heartland of Punjab and in Pakistan Kashmir. Among those to endorse India’s action is the former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, who said “no nation should have to accept terrorist attacks being launched against it from land controlled by another country”.

Pakistan claimed to have shot down several Indian military planes. There's also been an upsurge of artillery fire both ways across the ceasefire line in Kashmir as well as drone attacks well beyond Kashmir. Most alarmingly, both countries have reported multiple missile attacks on air bases. What initially seemed a limited military action is escalating rapidly and in an unpredictable manner. China, Pakistan's principal ally, has urged restraint, a call echoed by G7 foreign ministers. The world will be watching to see how well the ceasefire, announced on Saturday, beds down.

Of the four wars between India and Pakistan, three have been fought in and about Kashmir. Both nations now have nuclear weapons. Once again Kashmir is living up to Bill Clinton’s description as “the most dangerous place in the world”.

1846

The Kashmir problem has a long back story. On my first visit to the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar, more than 30 years ago, I asked a prominent historian when the Kashmir Valley was last ruled by Kashmiris. “1586!” he exclaimed, adding in a whisper, “but don’t quote me on that.” In 1846, Britain sold Kashmir to a Hindu warlord for a few million rupees and an annual tribute of goats and shawls. It didn’t make Kashmiris feel valued.

The maharajah of Kashmir accumulated territories which had little in common beyond their princely ruler. Of its main constituents, Jammu is a northern extension of the Punjab plains and mainly Hindu, while the Kashmir Valley, in the Himalayan foothills, is overwhelmingly Muslim. All told, three-quarters of the citizens of the princely state were Muslims.

When the British pulled out, dividing India into two independent nations, their assumption was that Kashmir would join Pakistan. The logic of Partition was that adjoining Muslim majority areas should become part of a new Muslim nation. And the main market for Kashmiri apples, walnuts, saffron and willow was in what became Pakistan.

But the decision about which new nation to join rested with Kashmir’s maharajah, who played for time. The British departed with the issue unresolved. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, famously remarked that “Kashmir will fall into our lap like a ripe fruit”. It didn’t. Pakistan’s new government, sensing that Kashmir was slipping away, encouraged thousands of armed tribesmen to invade. That initiated what historians view as an enduring aspect of Pakistani statecraft: that it fights for Kashmir largely by proxy. It also panicked the maharajah into signing up to India, which airlifted troops to repulse the invaders.

1947

Within months of independence, Indian and Pakistani armies were at war in Kashmir. By the close of 1949, the United Nations had drawn up a ceasefire line, which has changed little in the intervening decades. The former princely state is divided between India and Pakistan, but both nations continue to claim all of it. India has the larger part, including – a key point – all the Kashmir Valley, with a population approaching eight million and the crucible of Kashmiri culture. India would be broadly content if the ceasefire line became an international border; Pakistan is determined to prise the Kashmir Valley away from its regional rival. A plebiscite envisaged in UN resolutions has never been held.

The late 1980s

The insurgency that erupted in the Kashmir Valley at the end of the 1980s was ignited by young, often well-educated Kashmiris who had been armed and trained in camps across the ceasefire line in Pakistan Kashmir. The Indian army’s response was forceful – many Kashmiris would say brutal. For several years, Srinagar was a war zone, with curfews, checkpoints and street-corner bunkers swathed in anti-grenade netting. “This has the feel of a city under occupation”, I was told by a Latin American general who headed the UN observer group in Kashmir.

While Indian security forces gained the upper hand, they never completely smothered the insurgency. And persistent human rights abuses alienated many Kashmiris. There are probably half a million Indians in uniform based in Kashmir, to combat the threat from Pakistan and to keep the peace within Indian Kashmir. And what do Kashmiris think? It’s hard to be sure, and many are guarded in expressing an opinion. Disaffection with India runs deep, but there’s little evident enthusiasm for Pakistan.

Six years ago, India’s Hindu nationalist government revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy arguing that it amounted to appeasement of the country’s only Muslim majority region. The move, and the manner of its implementation, caused anguish in Kashmir. The Kashmir Valley continues to face high levels of youth unemployment and civil society has just about disappeared. But security improved markedly, prompting Indian tourists to return to the northernmost part of their nation – there were more than three million last year.

At times, the Indian authorities have suggested that the number of tourists is evidence that normality has returned to the Kashmir Valley. Perhaps that’s why those responsible for the Pahalgam massacre took the callous and appalling decision to target tourists in a manner which would capture world attention.

Photograph by Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty

Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC India correspondent and the author of A Mission in Kashmir