Kashmir: the new rallying point for global Islamism

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

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India and Pakistan launched a series of lethal missile attacks against one another last week. Fighting broke out after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for a jihadist assault in Kashmir last month, in which 26 non-Muslim tourists were killed. A ceasefire was announced by US president Donald Trump this week, which was welcome news after reports the administration received ‘alarming intelligence’ regarding a possible escalation in the conflict.

When the ceasefire was declared, both sides were able to celebrate a victory from the skirmishes – India for eliminating scores of terrorist camps, and Pakistan for downing Indian jets and defending its territory. The world celebrated the ceasefire, too. What could have been a catastrophic war between two nuclear powers has been, at least temporarily, averted. Yet even as fighting has subsided, one certain outcome of these clashes is that the world will pay more attention to the troubled region of Kashmir.

Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan, was the battleground for much of last week. Early reports suggest that as many as 50 Kashmiri civilians died as a result of shelling across the line of control, which was established after the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Since 1947, the Muslim-majority region has been the casus belli of four wars (excluding last week’s clashes). The dispute has caused countless suffering and lives lost.

Last month’s attack on non-Muslim tourists was an eerie reenactment of the violence that plagued Kashmir in the early 1990s, when Islamist attacks caused the mass exodus of the region’s Hindu population. India has always held Pakistan responsible for the bloodshed, claiming that Islamic groups are harboured, or at least ignored, by Pakistan’s powerful military.

Kashmir has since become one of the most heavily militarised regions on Earth, with as many as an estimated 750,000 Indian troops alone regularly deployed there at any one time. Indian forces have been accused of serious human-rights violations, from the use of excessive force against protesters to enforced disappearances.