PAHALGAM is on course to be India’s 9-11, or rather, 9-11 for the Kashmir region.
Because we must remember that the 26/11 Mumbai attack was much more like 9-11 in terms of both scale and setting, but this was not reflected in India’s response.
Only now, as a result of the recent massacre in IOK, does India finally appear to be launching its own “war on terror”.
That includes the unprecedented move of suspending the Indus Water Treaty in place since 1960.
The current situation is very different from how things turned out when the Pulwama attack killed dozens of Indian troops back in 2019.
Tensions between India and Pakistan were at an all-time-high and I remember being afraid a nuclear war could break out in my hometown.
Then the Balakot airstrike was conducted, which evidently achieved no results, but Pakistan responded by shooting down and capturing an Indian pilot.
It was a highly dramatic crisis but not a turning point.
As provocative as Balakot was, India made a show of only targeting militants and not the nation of Pakistan itself.
Fast forward six years, the latest attack is producing a colossal rupture in Indo-Pak relations, which may be irreversible.
South Asia’s history after Mumbai 2008 and Pulwama 2019 was not very different from before, but Pahalgam 2025 is becoming the real turning point.
What is making a difference is how much the geopolitical environment has changed since 2019 both globally and regionally.
Globally, an age of turmoil emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, marked by America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now the international order that has maintained relative stability in most parts of the world for decades is breaking down.
Within South Asia, the big game-changer was how the BJP government changed India’s longstanding policy towards Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.
That included ending the ban on outsiders immigrating to Kashmir.
By opening the door to an altering of Kashmir’s demographics, this move was inevitably going to be a major destabilizing factor slowly but inexorably.
Now we see that manifest in the nature of what happened at Pahalgam.
Whereas militants in Kashmir previously restricted themselves to political and military targets, this time it was civilians that came under attack, which signals a shift in the approach of the Kashmiri resistance.
Obviously, India got the message and has decided to change its own approach.
Plus, after the BJP’s underwhelming electoral performance in 2024, now having to govern as part of an unpredictable coalition, PM Narendra Modi may be tempted to behave in a more bellicose manner in order to reassert his political authority.
Modi’s India has spent these years testing the waters.
After the 2016 Uri attack, it conducted what it said were surgical strikes across the LoC.
After Pulwama, it did the same much deeper and Pakistan’s strong response probably deterred India from continuing down the same path.
As such, Pakistan may not be in imminent danger of a kinetic clash as a result of Pahalgam.
But the future of peace in the region is suddenly much bleaker.
Pakistan and India fought four wars, to which the 2019 Balakot exchange was just a throwback.
But, from the very beginning, the Congress Party put India on a progressive course, strengthening the pillars of stability in South Asia, including by signing the crucial Indus Waters Treaty that held even during war.
Bharatiya Janata Party (whose leader said “blood and water cannot flow together” years ago) has been slowly veering India off that course since 2014, weakening those very pillars.
It unfortunately appears that their collapse has started on 22 April, 2025.
—The writer is Director at Pakistan’s People Led Disaster Management. (shahzebkhansaheb@gmail.com)
