Seventy years of hostility in the Himalayas has led Pakistan and India back to the brink of major conflict.
Mountains Of Trouble: The Kashmir Conflict
- By Amos Chapple
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Ringed by the world's highest peaks and streaked with precious waterways, the Kashmir region lies behind almost every conflict between India and Pakistan since the British Empire left the continent.
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Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British-ruled India. In 1947, the departing British authorities oversaw the slicing up of India along religious lines. The partition sparked the largest mass migration in history.
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As Muslims flooded west and east to the newly formed Islamic "homelands" of today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindus and Sikhs moved in the opposite directions.
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In the chaos, mobs attacked their religious counterparts in violence that killed hundreds of thousands and shocked the world.
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In 1947 Kashmir had a mostly Muslim population but a Hindu ruler. Maharajah Hari Singh (pictured in London) needed to decide if his region would join India, Pakistan, or become an independent state.
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As the maharajah wavered, violent uprisings broke out and tribal militants sent from Pakistan infiltrated the region in a bid to seize it by force. This rare photo shows one of the Pathan fighters, swaddled in looted clothing, after his capture by Indian troops.
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Finally, in late October 1947, the maharajah requested military help from Delhi and signed a declaration to join his mountainous fiefdom with India. The maharajah fled to safety, and Indian troops arrived in Kashmir to seize control. But the chronology of those events remains bitterly disputed.
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Female fighters being inspected by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in Kashmir in 1947. Many argue that Maharajah Singh had left the region before signing the accession and therefore had no right to declare Jammu and Kashmir's union with India.
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As the two countries dug in on their respective claims in Kashmir, the disputed region was split into a Pakistani-held north and Indian-held south. The "line of control" was to become the front line of the ensuing conflict. The United Nations recommended that India prepare for a referendum that would decide whether Kashmir would join with India or Pakistan, a vote that was never held.
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Indian troops patrolling the Kashmiri mountains in 1965. Pakistan and India have fought three wars over Kashmir, most recently in 1999.
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An Indian soldier leaps from a blazing government compound after it was attacked by militants in 2005. Violence in Indian-administered Kashmir has been nearly continuous but surged after 1989, when a Pakistan-backed insurgency against Indian rule began. Since then, more than 20,000 people have died in the violence.
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A demonstration in Pakistan in 1998. That year, both India and Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons, further raising the stakes in the ongoing dispute over Kashmir.
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Indian police in Kashmir grieve at the funeral of four colleagues killed during a shoot-out with a militant in 2008. As well as attacks on Indian troops, Islamic fundamentalists in the heavily Muslim Kashmir Valley have reportedly targeted and intimidated religious minorities.
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Indian police beat Kashmiri demonstrators in 2008. Indian authorities have been accused of unlawful killings, torture, and sexual violence against civilians in the ongoing conflict.
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In 2016, militant leader Burhan Wani (seen on a poster during a rally in Pakistan) was killed in a shoot-out with Indian forces in Kashmir, sparking deadly demonstrations. Pakistan’s prime minister prompted Indian outrage when he referred to Wani as a "martyr."
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In February 2019, the Kashmir conflict again flared up when a suicide bomber slammed his explosives-laden car into a bus carrying Indian police. Forty-one people were killed.
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India’s response to the deadly bombing met with failure on February 27. One day after a bombing raid on what India described as a militant camp in northeastern Pakistan, at least one Indian fighter jet was downed and its pilot (pictured) captured.
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Pakistan pledged on February 28 to hand over the captured pilot as a "gesture of peace." Meanwhile, India's prime minister struck a more combative tone, vowing less than two months before a general election that his country would "fight as one."
