India-Pakistan: How to break cycle of tensions over Kashmir?

India blaming Pakistan for Kashmir’s worst terror attack in years… the killing of 26 tourists with non-Muslims singled out and murdered in front of loved ones. Islamabad denies… Islamabad which blamed Delhi for the March terror attack on a train in Baluchistan. There too, 26 killed… the matching tolls fueling speculation and conspiracy theories. What did happen?

And how to break the cycle of repeated tensions over Kashmir, a region carved up at independence from Britain in 1947 and whose borders remain disputed to this day.

How far could it go this time? India suspending a vital 1960 treaty that manages water use between the two neighbors, a treaty that held through three subsequent wars. Why is this time different?

Then there’s Kashmir itself, which on the Indian side lost its partial autonomy in 2019. What’s changed inside the Muslim majority region since? And what’s changed on the Pakistani side after what had been a period of relative détente? Is this really a fight orchestrated by respective capitals?

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip.

• Jean-Luc RACINE Senior Fellow, Asia Centre

• Chietigj Bajpaee Senior Research Fellow for South Asia, Chatham House

• Taha Siddiqui Pakistani Journalist in exile

• Anuradha Bhasin Executive Editor, Kashmir Times