As if the ever-increasing cruelty and brutality of Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and the long-running war following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not creating enough misery in the world, we now have the possibility of yet another conflict, this time between India and Pakistan.

Those two countries have been having tensions along their border for a long time, fueled by the dispute over Kashmir. While the intensity has waxed and waned, it was usually limited to skirmishes between troops of these two countries patrolling the s0-called line of demarcation. But the most recent flare-up looks like the most serious in a long time, with an attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir resulting in India launching a wave of missile attacks and Pakistan vowing to retaliate.

At least three people have been killed and 12 injured after India launched attacks on what it claimed were nine sites of “terrorist infrastructure” inside Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir, in a sharp escalation of hostilities between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Loud explosions were heard early on Wednesday, and power was knocked out in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, witnesses said.

The missiles struck at least two locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and five in the country’s eastern Punjab province, Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Asif, told the Guardian.

“We can confirm at least seven civilian areas have been targeted by Indian missiles fired from Indian airspace. We are in the process of retaliating. You will see Pakistan’s response before the morning,” Asif said.

The Indian government said in a statement that nine targets had been hit in the strikes, which it said were launched as a response to an attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month in which 26 men were killed.
…

The escalation comes amid soaring tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours in the aftermath of the attack in the Baisaran Valley, a picturesque meadow in Pahalgam, a well-known tourist town in Kashmir.

India blamed Pakistan for the attack and vowed to respond.

While the attack on the Hindu tourists was appalling, it seems (to me at least) that it is unlikely that the Pakistani government would have been behind it (though the Pakistani secret service does have an unsavory history of waging clandestine warfare) and that it was probably done by one of the armed and militant Muslim religious groups that exist in that country. Both Hindu zealots in India and Muslim zealots in Pakistan regularly harass and attack people of other faiths.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu zealot, seems intent on raising the stakes.

The strikes came just hours after India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, said that water flowing across India’s borders would be stopped. Pakistan had warned that tampering with the rivers that flow from India into its territory would be an “act of war”.

Modi did not mention Islamabad specifically, but his speech came after Delhi suspended its part of the 65-year-old Indus waters treaty, which governs water critical to Pakistan for consumption and agriculture.

“India’s water used to go outside, now it will flow for India,” Modi said in a speech in Delhi.

The quick and strong response by India, without waiting some time to see if the Pakistani authorities take action to bring the killers to justice, seems likely to inflame the situation even more. All that we need is for Trump to open his mouth and make things worse.