RFE/RL reports that Pakistan’s envoy to India was recalled today due to increased tensions between the two countries. The BBC reports that least four Indian soldiers and a civilian were killed today in a gunfight in the Pulwama district of Kashmir, the region that India and Pakistan have disputed for many decades. This follows a suicide bombing on Thursday in the area, which killed dozens of members of the Indian Central Reserve Police Force. The Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, the biggest attack in decades in Kashmir. In response to the Thursday attack, India revoked Pakistan’s most-favored-nation trading status and raised customs duty to 200%. Now that further conflict has occurred, pressure is building to raise the stakes.
Viping Narang, an MIT political science professor, is quoted in today’s Financial Times [paywalled] as saying that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “is basically promising a pretty significant retaliatory strike. All the signs are that they are considering some sort of stand-off strike from across the LOC [Line Of Control] into Pakistani targets. The risk is that Modi miscalculates how far he can go without provoking a significant Pakistani response.”
As Zachary Keck noted in a National Interest blog republished Friday, the India–Pakistan conflict remains the most likely place in the world that a nuclear war will start. Keck gives the following plausible scenario:
In hopes of keeping the conflict limited to conventional weapons, Delhi might authorize limited punitive raids inside Pakistan.... These attacks might be misinterpreted by Pakistani leaders, or else unintentionally cross Islamabad’s nuclear thresholds. In an attempt to deescalate by escalating, or else to halt what they believe is an Indian invasion, Pakistani leaders could use tactical nuclear weapons against the Indian troops inside Pakistan. With nuclear weapons introduced, Delhi’s no-first-use doctrine no longer applies….
And the scenario gets worse from there. Keck’s headline leads with the phrase “Billions Dead”.