India and Pakistani troops exchanged small arms fire across the Line of Control in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir last night for a fourth night in a row, according to India.
The concern remains that India will stage airstrikes and perhaps surgical ground operations against Pakistan.
The Indian military has conducted multiple exercises in recent days, most of them previously planned but some clearly intended to signal action against Pakistani forces.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist, has strongly suggested that Pakistan orchestrated the 22 April massacre of 26 Indian tourists in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir and vowed retribution. His ministers have been even more direct in pinning the atrocity on Islamabad and threatening blows against it.
New Delhi, however, has not provided clear evidence for its assertion that two of the three gunmen it says were involved were Pakistani nationals.
It claims the group that claimed responsibility online, the Resistance Front, is a proxy for Lashkar-e-Taiba or another Pakistan-based group that has engaged in insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir.
But Resistance Front has issued a statement saying its website was hacked.
Pakistan has denied involvement in the massacre but has held urgent national security council meetings and declared that India’s retaliatory suspension of a critical Indus River water-sharing treaty amounts to an act of war.
There could be a repeat of the limited exchange of airstrikes India and Pakistan staged against each other near the Kashmir frontier on 26 and 27 February 2019. India initiated those hostilities after 46 of its police reservists were killed in suicide vehicle bombing by a Kashmiri rebel.
India remains embarrassed that one of its jetfighters was shot down and the pilot captured in those exchanges and could opt for bolder moves this time around. But its significant military buildup of the past few years is far from complete, raising questions about the readiness of its armed forces for complex operations.
Pakistan’s military is weaker than India’s yet is no pushover.
The two countries long have sought to manage their deeply rooted hostility to one another, and most likely aim to limit any upcoming exchange of military blows.
But either of the nuclear-armed countries could overestimate its strength, leading to a dangerous escalatory spiral.
Indo-Pakistani tensions should be monitored constantly in coming days and weeks. Personnel should not come within 10 miles of any part of the border between the two countries. Normally the one exception is Punjab State’s Wagah border crossing, to which foreign tourists in India regularly travel without incident to watch the elaborate daily ceremony performed by Indian and Pakistani border guards. That is the crossing that is now closed.
Indian-controlled Kashmir should be avoided completely, and the Jammu region to the south should be visited only on important business after consultation with security professionals.
