Politics:  Kashmir spill-over

By Richard North - April 24, 2025

Once again, we’re in a sort of “one war at a time” scenario with the media. Currently, despite the resumption of the ground war in Gaza, the focus is on Ukraine, and the latest attempts to clinch the deal on a peace settlement.

And with the pope’s death and his lying in state hogging the bandwidth on the foreign news pages, that leaves little room for the developing situation in Indian administered Kashmir, which merits only a brief mention in the Telegraph and nothing at all in the current (online) edition of The Times.

Given that Kashmir is a potential flashpoint which has already triggered three wars and hundreds of smaller incidents between two regional nuclear powers – India and Pakistan – and given also that the UK is the former colonial power which messed up the region in the first place, you’d think our own media would be all over the story like a bad smell, but not a bit of it.

The story which is now getting so little attention is the terrorist attack in the Indian-held Kashmiri town of Pahalgam, a popular tourist spot.

There, four Islamic gunmen associated with a group called “Kashmir Resistance” – also known as “The Resistance Front” – slaughtered at least 26 people and injured 17 others, mainly targeting Indian Hindus, although at least one Nepalese citizen seems to have been caught up in the attack.

Doubtless because of the potential for war between two nuclear powers in a region of strategic interest to the US, there is considerably more interest expressed in American papers, with the Washington Post currently running two pieces, one a news report/analysis and the other a lengthy backgrounder.

The news report is headed: “Deadly Kashmir attack threatens new escalation between India and Pakistan”, the core of which tells us of the latest political responses from the Indian government.

After a cabinet meeting, Vikram Misri, India’s minister of foreign affairs, announced that Pakistani nationals would be banned from traveling to India. Additionally, Indian defence advisers are to be withdrawn from Pakistan and a key water treaty between the countries would be put on hold.

The Reuters news agency adds more detail here, noting that diplomatic ties between the two countries were already weak, even before this attack: Pakistan had expelled India’s envoy and not posted its own ambassador in New Delhi after India had revoked the special status of Kashmir in 2019.

On the water treaty issue, this refers to the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty which was mediated by the World Bank, splitting the Indus River and its tributaries between the neighbours and regulating the sharing of water. It has so far withstood even wars between the neighbours, and is crucially important to Pakistan.

This nation is heavily dependent on water flowing downstream from this river system from Indian Kashmir for its hydropower and irrigation needs. Suspending the treaty would allow India to deny Pakistan its share of the waters and the move has already been condemned by Pakistan’s energy minister as “an act of water warfare”.

India also closed the only open land border crossing point between the two countries and as there are no direct flights operating between the two countries, this move severs all transport links between them. Pakistani nationals will not be permitted to travel to India under special South Asian visas, all such existing visas have been cancelled. Pakistanis in India under such visas have 48 hours to leave.

All defence advisors in the Pakistani mission in New Delhi were declared persona non grata and given a week to leave. India will pull out its own defence advisors in Pakistan and also reduce staff size at its mission in Islamabad to 30 from 55.

If this might seem something of an over-reaction, that is not how it seems from New Delhi. Armed insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir has been going on for decades and, while the violence has ebbed in recent years – largely as a result of an intense crackdown by Indian security forces – this targeted attack on civilians is regarded as an unprecedented escalation.

Furthermore, the Indian government is convinced that the attacks, including the current slaughter, are directly supported by Pakistan. Indian intelligence sources claim that Pakistan’s own Inter-Services Intelligence have been supporting country-wide attacks orchestrated by the Indian Mujahideen (IM), a home-grown terror group controlled from Karachi which has close links to the terrorist Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Predictably in the circumstances, Indian defence minister, Rajnath Singh, has declared that “those responsible for the attacks and the people responsible will very soon feel a loud response”. He did not mention Pakistan by name, but the implication was clear.

Other prominent figures have been far more direct. Shama Mohamed, speaking for the opposition Congress party, called for Rawalpindi to be “flattened”, the city where Pakistan’s military is headquartered. “Time to teach Pakistan a lesson they don’t forget”, she added.

Looking at the bigger picture, there is no shortage of evidence as to the sectarian nature of this attack, one example cited where the terrorists called out men from family groups, in one instance demanding of a victim that he recite an Islamic verse. When he failed to do so, “they pumped three bullets into him, one on the head, one behind the ear and another in the back”.

This occurred against the background of ongoing measures by Modi’s BJP to marginalise Muslim communities in India, including a new law that is said to “undermine the rights of the country’s Muslim minority and could be used to confiscate historic mosques and other property”.

The passing of the new law led to angry protests in the eastern state of West Bengal, where demonstrators set fire to shopping malls and cars, hurled bombs and attacked a Hindu home, stabbing two people on Saturday. Another protester who was shot during the clashes succumbed to his injuries.

Now, in a sinister turn of events, we are seeing concerns expressed by Muslims at Israeli-like retaliation tactics being adopted by the Indians, stoking up the temperature in an already inflamed situation.

Here, the domestic relevance is obvious. With Palestinian demonstrations in the UK having become common events, linkage with Kashmir would have devastating effects on inter-community relations. With over a million of the Kashmiri diaspora in the UK, and an estimated 1.2 million Hindus, the potential for street violence is very real.

We have already seen communal unrest in Leicester as recently as 2022, and it could only take a spark for the level of violence experienced to spill over into the streets of London and provincial cities such as Bradford and Birmingham.

This, of course, is one of the many joys of multiculturalism, where third-world conflicts are transposed to the UK, but with the sizeable populations involved, Kashmir could be a powder keg, not just for the region but for the UK.

Of the British papers that are taking any notice, it is the Guardian which seems most on the ball, its latest report headlining: “Kashmir attack sparks fear of fresh conflict between India and Pakistan”.

But the talk there is on the effect on the region. What is not being explored is the potential for the conflict to spill over into the streets of Britian, as has done the Gaza conflict. Whether we can do anything in the short-term to prevent this is questionable, but it does raise the issue once again of whether importing such large numbers of third-worlders was such a good idea.