The Pulse | Security | South Asia

Kashmir’s Uneasy Calm: Silent Guns, Muted Hope

True integration, it appears, will remain elusive until New Delhi stops treating Kashmir as a security variable to be managed.

On May 7, 2026, the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the “remarkable valor and patriotism of the brave soldiers of the country” and also the “self-reliance in the defense sector.” Country-wide celebrations were organized by the government and the military to mark the “victory” achieved last year against the terrorists who responsible for an attack that killed 26 people in Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22, 2025.

Operation Sindoor, which targeted terrorist infrastructure deep inside Pakistan and triggered a brief war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, has remained a critical part of the Indian government’s claims that it has brought normalcy to Kashmir. Nevertheless, while violence has certainly dipped, Kashmir continues to witness a great churning: of local hopes and expectations, stifled local politics, and New Delhi’s security-centric official policies.

At least 92 fatalities were reported in Jammu & Kashmir in 2025, 42 of them after the Pahalgam attack. According to the database of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 46 terrorists were killed, of whom 32 died between May and December that year. Whether these included the actual perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack remains a matter of debate. Meantime, the first six months of 2026 have seen 12 deaths, 10 of them listed as terrorists, most of whom were killed during attempts to infiltrate into India from Pakistan. The month of May, which traditionally sees increased violence in the valley after the snow melts in the mountains enabling movement across the border, passed without a single terror attack. 

A week after the celebrations of Operation Sindoor’s anniversary, I traveled to Kashmir, first to Srinagar, Gulmarg, and then to Uri in the Baramulla district, to assess the change. I had coincidentally been at ground zero for the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam just two days before the bloody massacre of tourists. At that time , the popular meadow was completely unguarded, making it a soft target for the terrorists who descended from the surrounding mountainous terrain. The attack disrupted tourism in the valley. The economic lifeline of the local Kashmiris, dependent on tourism, had come to a standstill, raising the question: Will Kashmir regain its charm and attract tourists again? 

A year later, under beefed-up security, tourists indeed are back. The memories of the attack have faded somewhat. Incidents of stone pelting by youths, a crude mode of dissent at one level, and a sponsored act of destabilization at another, have come to naught. An independent member of the legislative assembly told me that youths and school children don’t show much resistance to singing the national anthem, which is a “positive development.”   

Still, what appears to be normal today co-exists with reports of continued infiltration by terrorists from Pakistan, pointing to the vulnerabilities along the international boundary and of the massive counterterrorism grid that provides security to the region. Sightings of drones that drop weapons, ammunition, and drugs continue. India’s home minister has claimed that the government “effectively eliminated separatist movements in Jammu & Kashmir,” but he travels regularly to the region to review security. The government has plans to implement its “Smart Border Security Project” that will form a “quadrangular security grid” to provide “territorial security” using drones, radars, watchtowers, and other advanced technologies.

In the Uri sector, I traveled to the Kaman border post that once held out the promise of better relations with Pakistan through trade, people-to-people interaction, and bus connectivity. The historic........

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