Ido Gadi Raz
On April 22, 2025, Rishi Bhatt, an Indian tourist in the Baisaran Valley in Kashmir, slid down a zipline, smiling at his phone camera. He was enjoying the sunny afternoon while capturing dozens of picnickers below him in the green valley. Suddenly, as Bhatt made his way down, gunshots and shouts were heard. As he later realized, one of the deadliest terrorist attacks India had witnessed in recent years had just taken place. What Bhatt did not know was that the terror attack by the Resistance Front group, which claimed the lives of 26 people, would trigger a security zipline in the region, leading to a violent conflict between the two South Asian nuclear powers. This would have grave implications for the security of India, Pakistan, and beyond. As the threshold for war between states decreases, terrorist organizations may exploit this momentum to amplify chaos within and between these countries.
The collective shock in India was immediate. The documented scenes of tourists being killed by Islamists for being non-Muslims were unusual and therefore pushed New Delhi to take unprecedented steps. Militant attacks had occurred before in the areas of Jammu and Kashmir, primarily coordinated by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), an Islamic Salafist militant group with links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) that was responsible for several attacks on Indian security forces. However, civilian casualties were rare in an area with a Muslim majority. Thus, the Baisaran Valley attack was also viewed as an anti-Hindu assault, further inflaming religious tensions in the subcontinent.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—known for its Hindu nationalist agenda and for using rhetoric portraying Muslims as a threat—responded immediately. After publicly accusing Pakistan of orchestrating the attack, India suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) with Pakistan, a move that could lead to a significant water shortage for millions of Pakistanis. Additionally, India began preparing a military response, though the scale of this operation remained unclear at the time. In response, Pakistan denied any involvement in the attack. However, after learning of New Delhi’s actions concerning the IWT, it warned that suspending the treaty would constitute an act of war. Eventually, on May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor, targeting nine sites identified as “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and issuing a clear warning that any Pakistani response would be met with retaliation.
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