The tone rises between Islamabad and New Delhi. And the outbidding of reprisals is in full swing between the two nuclear powers. On Thursday, April 24, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised the tone by promising to track down “to the end of the earth” the authors of the attack which caused the death of 26 civilians two days earlier in the Indian part of Kashmir. “I say it to the whole world: India will identify, continue and punish the terrorists and those who support them. We will pursue them to the end of the earth,” he said during his first public reaction to the attack.
Tuesday, in the afternoon, at least three shooters, according to Indian police, opened fire on tourists in the city of Pahalgam, in the foothills of Himalayas, killing 25 Indians and a Nepalese. This attack, attributed by India to Islamists supported by Pakistan, is the deadliest targeting civilians led since 2000 in this Indian territory with a Muslim majority.
Suspension of a water sharing agreement
Wednesday, the Hindu ultra -nationalist government of New Delhi announced a series of diplomatic reprisal measures. Among these largely symbolic decisions, the suspension of a Treaty on Water Sharing (Treatise on the Water of the Indus), ratified in 1960 and never questioned despite three wars between the two neighbors. In the process, Pakistan announced this Thursday that it would take “firm measures” against all “Indian threat”, ensuring in particular that any attempt by its neighbor to reduce its water supply of the Indus river would be considered an “act of war”.
Pakistan, which denied all responsibility in the attack, brought together its national security committee on Thursday afternoon to decide a possible response, announced its government. This committee, which brings together the highest civil and military leaders in the country, is traditionally convened in the event of an extreme emergency. At the end of this meeting, Pakistan announced to close its border and its airspace in New Delhi, while declaring Persona Non Grata several Indian diplomats and canceling the visas of Indian nationals. Almost at the same time, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the “immediate effect” suspension of the deliverance of visas to the Pakistanis and the cancellation of all those in the process of April 29. “All Pakistani citizens currently in India must leave India” by then, he added. Indian and Pakistani authorities have announced that nationals of their neighbor and rival were asked to leave their territory in the short term.
At the edge of a military response?
“I say it unequivocal: those who led this attack and those who have developed it will pay the price beyond their imagination,” said the Indian Prime Minister during his speech in the state of Bihar (northeast). “It is time to reduce the little territory still controlled by these terrorists,” he insisted, “the strength and the will of the 1.4 billion Indians that we are breaking the spine of these terrorists”. On Wednesday, his Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh threatened with reprisals “those who organized it in secret”, implicitly targeting Pakistan.
Many experts anticipate a military response from New Delhi, as was the case in 2019 after a deadly attack that had targeted a convoy of Indian soldiers. “This attack will bring back relations between the two countries in their darkest hours,” anticipated AFP analyst Praveen Queshi, of the International Crisis Group (ICG). Thursday, midday, the Pahalgam shooting had still not been claimed. Police broadcast the robot portraits of three suspects, including two Pakistani nationals, presenting them as members of the Islamic group Lashkar-E-Taibad (Let), based in Pakistan. This group is suspected of jihadist attacks which targeted the Indian megalopolis of Bombay in November 2008, killing 166 people.