What s behind the enduring India Pakistan conflict

Two weeks after a deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir on April 22, India announced that it had conducted “precise and restrained” strikes on what it called “terrorist camps” in neighbouring Pakistan. Pakistan said it had shot down five Indian planes in retaliation.

The clash will come as little surprise to anyone familiar with the history of India’s relations with Pakistan since their violent and bloody partition into two nations, following independence from Britain in 1947.

They have been at loggerheads ever since, with tensions occasionally boiling over into armed conflict. The main focus of the rivalry is Kashmir, an area of the Himalayas that both India and Pakistan claim in its entirety while governing separate parts.

Why do India and Pakistan distrust each other?

At independence, the countries were split along religious lines, with Pakistan becoming predominantly Muslim and India choosing secular democracy for its mostly Hindu population. The drawing of new borders by the British uprooted almost 14 million people and resulted in sectarian violence that killed as many as one million.

The two countries have fought wars since then, two of them over Kashmir, with scores of skirmishes in between. Pakistan’s leaders have seen India as an existential threat since the partition; some think India still harbours hopes of reversing the split.

Indian intelligence services have linked a succession of terrorist attacks carried out between 2001 and 2019 to Pakistan. Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan vowed to curb militant groups, but failed. The country’s civilian leaders have little power to shape foreign and security policy, which is largely the preserve of the army and Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.

What’s so special about Kashmir?

At the time of partition, India and Pakistan courted the subcontinent’s various kingdoms (which were only indirectly ruled by the British) to join