Squabbling Siblings: India, Pakistan and Operation Sindoor |
Image Source: Grubb at English Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0
On April 22, militants from The Resistance Front (TRF), a group accused by Indian authorities of being linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, slaughtered 26 tourists in the resort town of Pahalgam in the Indian administered portion of Kashmir. This came as a rude shock to the Indian military establishment, who decided that rebellious sentiments in the region had declined. (In March 2025, an assessment concluded that a mere 77 active militants were busying themselves on India’s side of the border.)
The feeling of cooling tensions induced an air of complacency. Groups such as the TRF, along with a fruit salad of insurgent outfits – the Kashmir Tigers, the People’s Anti-Fascist Front, and the United Liberation Front of Kashmir – were all spawned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August 2019 revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted Kashmir singular autonomy. TRF has been particularly, and violently opposed, to the resettlement of the Kashmiri pandits, which they see as an effort to alter the region’s demography.
The murderous incident raised the obvious question: Would Modi pay lip service to the 1972 Shimla Agreement, one that divided Kashmir into two zones of administration separated by a Line of Control? (A vital feature to that agreement is an understanding that both powers resolve their disputes without the need for third parties.)
The answers came promptly enough. First came India’s suspension of the vital Indus Water Treaty, an essential agreement dealing with the distribution of water from India to Pakistan. Pakistan reciprocated........