Tensions remain high over a border drawn six decades ago
RECENT DAYS have seen the most dangerous confrontation between Pakistan and India for two decades. A suicide-bombing in Kashmir , followed by tit-for-tat sorties by Indian and Pakistani warplanes, have left the two nuclear-armed powers on the brink of a catastrophic stand-off. Why is Kashmir so often the flashpoint?
While Kashmir’s Hindu ruler prevaricated, hoping somehow to become an independent country, Pakistan’s leaders decided to force the issue. Since Kashmir was a Muslim-majority territory, Pakistan felt justified in seeing Pushtun warlords charge in from the north-west of Pakistan, late in 1947, to seize control of Kashmir. India, apparently invited by Kashmir’s ruler, responded by deploying its national army.
The situation as understood in Delhi, the Indian capital, as purveyed in the Indian press and as widely accepted by 1.3bn other Indians, is that brave Indian troops are waging a largely successful effort to crush a small but resilient band of Islamist terrorists who are operated by remote control from Pakistan. The situation as experienced in the Kashmir Valley, whose 7m people are nearly all Kashmiri-speaking Muslims, is rather different.
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