Tim Willasey-Wilsey
The killing of 26 Indian tourists at Pahalgam in Indian Administered Kashmir (IAK) is the first major terrorist incident in Kashmir since Pulwama in 2019. Following the Pulwama episode, India launched an aerial attack on an alleged training camp outside the Pakistani town of Balakot. Later an Indian MiG 21 jet was shot down and its pilot taken prisoner. The prompt Pakistani release of the pilot enabled both sides to climb down the escalatory ladder and for war to be avoided. It was a fortunate end to a perilous situation.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi set two precedents in the way he responded to the Pulwama episode. The first was that any terrorist attack in which a direct Pakistani hand was evident would be met with a kinetic response. The second was that the retaliation would happen in Pakistan and not in Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) where low-level conflict is relatively commonplace. He also established a belief in India that there exists a space for conventional warfare against Pakistan without the danger of nuclear escalation.
So the strong likelihood now is that India will launch a retaliatory attack in the days to come. New Delhi seems already to have concluded that Pakistan was complicit in the attack and that the relatively new Resistance Front (TRF) is an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) terrorist organization, which is based at Muridke, about 30 miles from Lahore.
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