Pahalgam & Pakistan

Just when Kashmir was anticipating its most successful tourist season ever, Pakistan and its proxies struck normalcy a terrible blow. With its CCS decisions yesterday – including putting the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance and closing the Attari checkpost – India has begun responding to the vicious Pahalgam terror attack.There have been several attacks on civilians through the 36 years that the sponsored proxy conflict has raged in J&K. But this attack seems to bear something more venomous than usual. When 165 innocents were gunned down by Ajmal Kasab and his cohorts in Mumbai on 26/11 the terrorists did not attempt to determine the faith of their victims.Here the terrorists deliberately targeted Hindu male tourists, singling them out. It’s obvious that their sponsors, the Pak deep state and army, calculated how this single act could throw India’s communal peace into the flames, creating the turbulence and chaos only they would love to witness.That is why, before any emotional or even professional analysis, it is important to communicate that India’s unity is absolutely key at this moment. The sponsors of this mayhem know very well what are the divisive issues in India, but what we Indians know is that all these issues can be resolved through our democratic processes.What they want is to put an end to our march as a nation, a march of progress, towards greater strength, by exploiting our elements of disunity. It’s never easy to respond to such challenges. Emotions do threaten to take over decision-making. But every time such challenges come our way, as they do repeatedly, India has to overcome them united and with resolve.There are several factors that explain the execution of the terror attack at this precise time. A nation with tourists & a nation without | First, each successful tourist season would bind the Kashmiri population more closely with India and keep diluting the relevance of Pakistan in the emerging narrative on J&K. Last year, unable to strike in Kashmir, Pakistan had been able to successfully shift the focus of terror to south of the Pir Panjal range. India’s rapid redeployment of forces led to the terror footprint shifting to the Kathua region. But Kathua is not Kashmir.It’s Pakistan’s primary aim to tell the world that India does not have control over Kashmir even after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, and to restore Pakistan’s fast dwindling relevance in the Kashmiri mind.I cannot forget the hoarding that Pakistan put up at the POK end of the Kaman Aman Setu bridge in Uri to welcome the Kashmiri travellers. It’s still there and reads, Pakistan se rishta kya, La ilaha illallha, implying that the relationship of Kashmiris with Pakistan is through the faith of Islam.It’s Pakistan’s core belief that its interests are spelled by lack of normalcy in J&K, especially in the Valley. The ongoing exodus at Srinagar airport will be a moment of celebration in that nation which knows nothing known as tourism.Vance’s visit & Bill Clinton’s | The timing of this terror attack also grimly harkens to the past. On March 19, 2000, just when Bill Clinton was readying to address India’s Parliament, came news of the deadly attack on Chattisinghpora, a minority Sikh village in South Kashmir, not far from where the current attack has occurred in Pahalgam. That night, 36 innocent Sikhs were gunned down. It was the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s way ofannouncing its arrival in South Kashmir and messaging the US president that Kashmir was not in India’s control. This time US Vice-President JD Vance is in Delhi; the connotation is similar.Pakistan-sponsored terror groups have in the past targeted soldiers and policemen, even those not on duty, but never innocent tourists in Kashmir. In 2024 they did target Hindu pilgrims proceeding to the Vaishno Devi shrine and in 2017 a busload of pilgrims returning from the Amarnath yatra. The targeting of tourists has thus attempted to dissuade both secular and religious tourism, with the Amarnath yatra incidentally having Pahalgam as its administrative base.India will eventually pinpoint why it failed to prevent the Pahalgam carnage. Meanwhile, no one is advocating a general conventional war because outcomes of wars are never certain, as seen in the ongoing operations in Ukraine and Gaza. Besides, knee-jerk decisions are not what sane and stable leaderships favour. GOI, a duly elected govt unlike Pakistan’s appointed variety, knows what our capability is, and this is not restricted to just military options. As the CCS decisions yesterday indicate, there are domains and domains open to us in the world of hybrid actions.Obviously, Pakistan’s leadership is extremely peeved at its losses in Balochistan, a problem of its own creation. Irresponsibly, it points the finger at India. We should stop telling our govt what to do, promote unity through different media and give ourselves time. GOI will respond with full responsibility and a well-thought-out strategy. We must have faith.The writer is a former commander of the Srinagar-based Chinar Corps