Where the Latest India-Pakistan Conflict May Lead: QuickTake

(Bloomberg) -- Tensions between India and Pakistan are escalating once again. India has blamed Pakistan for a Feb. 14 terrorist attack on security forces in Kashmir that killed dozens of paramilitary troops. The suicide attack was the worst incident of violence since India elected Narendra Modi in 2014 and took place in the run-up to a tightly contested general election due by May. It’s the latest blowup between two of the world’s nuclear-armed nations. While Pakistan denied responsibility, Modi has pledged a “befitting reply” and given his military “full freedom” to respond.

1. Why do India and Pakistan distrust each other? 

India and Pakistan were created out of the bloody partition of British India in 1947. The tensions before and after the drawing of new borders uprooted 14 million people and erupted in mob violence that killed as many as 1 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. The two countries have gone on to fight three major wars since independence. Pakistan’s founders believed India saw the subcontinent’s partition as temporary and hoped to absorb the territory that had become Pakistan at the first opportunity. India has been frustrated by what it sees as Pakistan’s support for terrorists that continue to strike inside its territory, particularly in Kashmir.

2. What’s so special about Kashmir?

Two of the countries’ three wars have been over Kashmir, an area in the Himalayas that is claimed in full -- and ruled in part -- by both India and Pakistan. At the time of partition, India and Pakistan courted the subcontinent’s various princely states to join their respective fledgling nations. The Hindu ruler of Muslim-majority Kashmir couldn’t decide which new country to join. Pakistani irregulars invaded, India intervened, and the two countries fought to a stalemate. Roughly 70 years later, the two sides remain in a tense stand-off along a de facto border known as the Line of Control, one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world.

3. What was the latest attack?

At least 37 members of the Central Reserve Police Force were killed and others injured in an assault on a convoy. Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based terror group, claimed responsibility for the attack that took place near the state capital of Srinagar. The last time an incident on this scale occurred -- in 2016, when an Indian military camp near the Kashmiri town of Uri was ambushed -- India attacked what it said were terrorist staging grounds in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir across its border. Investors responded by selling assets in both countries. Jaish-e-Mohammad is a jihadist group dedicated to Kashmir becoming part of Pakistan and was connected with the 2002 murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.

4. Does India risk starting another full-scale war?

Not really. Although there is enormous domestic pressure to respond militarily, India has long been constrained by the fact both countries have nuclear weapons. After the 2016 attack on Uri, Modi’s government authorized limited strikes and made sure the situation didn’t escalate -- a predicament helped by Pakistan’s denials that any cross-border attacks even took place. However, this latest attack comes as Modi’s party slumps in the polls ahead of the elections, possibly heaping greater pressure on the prime minister to retaliate.

5. Where are we likely to go from here?

Even with its denials of involvement in the most recent attack, Pakistan is likely to come under renewed diplomatic pressure. The White House called on Pakistan to “end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil.” The attack may also put pressure on China, a close ally of Pakistan, to alter its position at the United Nations Security Council, where Beijing has blocked India’s attempts to list Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a designated terrorist. Analysts doubt India’s military will do anything too drastic. Modi is most likely to authorize some sort of limited retaliation, such as artillery strikes, that “burnish his image of strength without risking calls for retaliation on the Pakistani side and further dangerous escalation,” said Sasha Riser-Kositsky, a senior South Asia analyst at New York-based Eurasia Group, in an email. “Failing to retaliate in any way is politically untenable.”

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