Dr Chietigj Bajpaee
On 22 April, a terror attack in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir claimed the lives of 26 people, mostly Indian tourists. This is the deadliest attack in the disputed territory since 2019 when a car bomb targeting a convoy of buses carrying Indian paramilitary soldiers killed 40 people in Pulwama. More alarmingly, it is the biggest attack targeting civilians in over two decades. The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy for Lashkar-e-Taiba – a Pakistan-based terrorist organization – has claimed responsibility for the attack, while the civilian government in Pakistan has denied any involvement.
Benign neglect or strategic restraint?
When the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power in 2014, it extended an olive branch to Pakistan, inviting then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other South Asian leaders to Modi’s inauguration. Modi even visited Sharif on his birthday in 2015.
But relations between India and Pakistan have since deteriorated. In 2016, India carried out so-called ‘surgical strikes’ inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir in response to an attack on an Indian army facility in Uri. In 2019, India launched airstrikes inside Pakistani territory following the Pulwama terror attack. The Modi government’s decision to end the special autonomous status of Indian-administered Kashmir in August 2019 further soured relations between New Delhi and Islamabad.
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