The fear of a confrontation between India and Pakistan, after the attack on tourists

Few French people could locate with precision the high mountainous valleys of cashmere. However, this region, large as a third of France, in the extreme north of the Indian subcontinent, has been disputed by three powers now with nuclear weapons, with episodes of more or less marked tensions for decades. At the risk of a catastrophic gear?

In 1947 and in 1965, India and Pakistan clashed directly during two armed conflicts that caused several thousand deaths. In the fall of 1962, the Chinese army attacked the Indian positions and had grabbed an area east of the cashmere that it still controls.

Since then, more limited armed clashes have occurred at irregular intervals. The last one has its source at April 22, 2025. After having checked that they were not Muslims, terrorists kill at close range 26 civilians, mainly Indian tourists in vacation in Pahalgam, a region appreciated for its climate, under the authority of New Delhi. The massacre was claimed by a resistance front, of which the sponsors, according to the Indian authorities, would find themselves in Pakistan. This organization regularly attacks “Indians from outside”, accused of trying to “colonize” the cashmere in a Muslim majority, the only region of India in this case, recalls Praveen Quali, analyst in International Crisis Group.

For the government of Narendra Modi, who seated his power over an exacerbated Hindu nationalism, this failure of its security services turns to humiliation. New Delhi closed the border, recalled that “Pakistan has a history of support, training and financing of terrorist organizations” and suspended an Indus Water Sharing Agreement for Islamabad.

A balance of terror

In February 2019, a cashmere attack led to air strikes on both sides of the Indo-Pakistani border. But the nuclear power status of the two countries encourages restraint. Holds, each, more or less 170 nuclear heads*, the capitals are subject to a balance of terror which forces them to limit their blows. Officials of the defense of each camp take care, these days, to specify that the use of the supreme weapon is only conceivable in case the very existence of their state is threatened.

A study by the University of Rutgers (United States), in 2019, evaluated, it is true, at 100 million the number of immediate victims in the event of atomic climbing. Unthinkable.

For the time being, the tension remains circumscribed to exchanges of artillery fire around the demarcation line set up in cashmere, half a century ago. India reprisals should be limited, as is the response that will follow from Pakistan. The United States, a country who is both ally in India against China and the main provision of external aid in Pakistan, will ensure. They have enough arguments to be heard from New Delhi like Islamabad.

* Source: Sipri report, June 2024.