Developments linked to Kashmir have been nothing short of shocking. The country has escaped a major terrorist campaign because of some good police work by the Jammu & Kashmir Police. But it could not escape all of it – the Red Fort blast and the subsequent accidental explosion of captured explosive material in Nowgam, have led to more than a dozen casualties, several of them police officers.

The ramifications of the “doctor’s plot” have led to some alarming developments. First they indicate that a class of people who functioned as so-called “overground workers”– sympathisers, supporters and facilitators of the militancy – are now no longer above becoming active participants as militants and terrorists themselves. In a recent article, Praveen Swami has argued that the long war of attrition may actually be now pushing Kashmiri extremists to take the war to Indian cities in the form of bomb blasts and attacks.

What is evident is that this is happening when India-Pakistan relations are yet again at a nadir. Since the 1990s, India-Pakistan relations have been one of ups and downs, with repeated crises and periodic efforts towards normalisation. The casus belli is ostensibly Kashmir, but it goes deeper. Pakistan knows that it lacks the military heft to take Kashmir from India, neither are its nuclear weapons or proxy wars able to offer more than pinpricks to the larger country. Yet it persists on its course because of an inordinate and irrational fear of its larger neighbour.

The shift has occurred since the Modi government read down Article 370 and demoted the state to a Union Territory. Simultaneously, it cracked down on not only the militancy, but mainstream Kashmir parties. In other words, instead of dialogue, negotiation and compromise, the government has sought the outright surrender of Kashmiris – separatists as well as those who are not separatist.

For 67 years since the passage of Article 370, the Kashmiris lived with the vanity that though they were part of India, they were somehow different. That, indeed, was the aim of Article 370. Almost every state in this varied Union has a sense of uniqueness – whether or not they are specified as by Articles 371-371J of the Constitution – which is what makes this a great country. Fostering it is not anti-national, but a celebration of India’s unique nationhood.

Kashmir seems to be truly lost in a spiral that seems to tragically repeat itself. Violence begets repression, which exhausts itself to the point of a ceasefire when an interlocutor is appointed to find a way out. He, in any case is pre-destined to failure and then we go back and repeat the cycle. That was the case, at least till 2017-2018, when the government had announced that former IB chief Dineshwar Sharma would be the government’s “special representative” to carry forward the dialogue with “all sections of the people.”

But this process was a mirage that came crashing down following the Pulwama attack in February 2019 that led to a short India-Pakistan clash. After winning the general elections, the government decided to embark on a hardline policy that involved the end of Article 370, the demotion of the state to a Union Territory and a broad crack down on all sections of political opinion in the Valley – from the separatist, to the mainstream parties like the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party.

The government touted this as the solution to J&K’s ills. They said that not only would this end the separatist insurgency but would also lead to the economic transformation of the state. But almost immediately, the ISI changed tactics. Pakistan pushed a large number of jihadis into the state, but they focused in areas outside the Valley beginning with the Poonch-Rajauri areas and then expanding towards Doda and even the Hindu-majority areas of Jammu.

The main targets were the security forces, but there were also attacks on civilians such as the attack on a bus of Hindu pilgrims near Reasi, killing 9 persons in June 2024.

After the successful conduct of the Lok Sabha and the State Assembly elections, the centre of gravity of terrorist activity shifted back to the Valley. According to one report, since the swearing in of Omar Abdullah as Chief Minister, the Valley saw a spate of incidents culminating in the Pahalgam massacre of April 2025.

The Red Fort incident was the culmination of a crackdown initiated in the state since the beginning of the year and which intensified after the Pahalgam incident. Hundreds of people were detained and the houses of alleged terrorists, such as those reportedly involved in the Pahalgam case, as well as the Red Fort case were demolished.

The Pahalgam massacre also led to a breakdown in India-Pakistan relations. Back-channel efforts to restore normalcy were abandoned, especially in view of the hostility of the new Pakistan army chief field martial Asim Munir. In keeping with the post-Pulwama process, India hit at terrorist bases in Pakistan triggering a short, largely aerial war in May 2025. India articulated a new doctrine wherein India will not, in the words of Prime Minister Modi, “differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism.”

Despite brave words, New Delhi does not appear ready to hit Pakistan on account of the Red Fort attack; indeed, the government hesitated for 24 hours before declaring it a terrorist attack. What this brought out was the weakness in India’s response to the Pakistani proxy war because effectively under the new Indian doctrine, any terrorist group in Pakistan could hold India-Pakistan relations hostage by conducting a relatively minor terror attack.

Resolution: The long and the short

A long look back at J&K makes it clear that the only way to deal with the situation is through dialogue and negotiation. The government needs to understand that the key to winning a counter-insurgency, especially one involving your own people, is in winning the hearts and minds of the people. A 2010 RAND study of 30 counter-insurgency campaigns in the world showed that only eight succeeded.

It noted that repression and punishment provided only temporary relief. But what was important was material support from neighbouring countries, and that this support often trumped popular support for the insurgents. There is therefore no avoiding dealing with Pakistan.

What New Delhi needs to deal with in J&K itself is both sentiment and reality. In today’s connected world, the meaning of “azaadi” is somewhat ambiguous; it most certainly does not mean accession to Pakistan. The robust participation of the J&K population in the recent Lok Sabha and Assembly polls suggest it means something that Valley Kashmiris feel they lack in the current political arrangements. In Kashmir, it is often a sentiment that was grossly dented by the abrogation of Article 370. Offering lesser autonomy for the Kashmiris provides the government little room to initiate any kind of a political dialogue with the Kashmiri separatists.

The problem with the current approach is that the government had conflated militancy with terrorism. Aimed at a domestic constituency, it has actually boxed in the government itself. You can negotiate with militants, but you cannot talk to terrorists. This is presuming the government understands that terrorists are those who attack non-combatants and militants those whose normal targets are the state or symbols of the state.

Instead, the government seems to be doubling down on Israeli tactics, most notably blowing up houses of alleged terrorists. This only punishes the innocents-parents, siblings and other relatives. The perpetrator himself is either dead or headed for long incarceration, and has shown by his actions that he cares little for his family. The government, however, is motivated with the view that the family has probably served as overground facilitators who need to be punished.

But from here it is a short step to the Israeli strategy in Gaza of destroying entire societies – schools, hospitals and all, without bothering for the safety of non-combatants, even little children, who, they often claim, are nothing but Hamas supporters.

Despite its genocidal violence, Israel is nowhere near settling its 75 year old Palestinian problem. It has repeatedly made war, which has now engulfed the entire Middle-East, but they are nowhere near a solution.

In his various works, the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld analysed several counter-insurgency campaigns. He commended the British approach in Northern Ireland, where after initial errors in the early 1970s, the British settled for the long haul with a strategy that emphasised staying within the framework of law, avoiding torture, illegal killing and arbitrary punishment like house demolitions. He has been generally critical of the Israeli Defence Force strategy and taken the view that force alone is not a sustainable solution. As we know, the Israelis have not succeeded in Gaza, whereas there is peace in Northern Ireland.

Long forgotten, too, is the lesson in India where we have managed to restore normalcy in Mizoram by negotiating and compromising with the separatist movement of the 1960s. In counter-insurgency, it is vital to use discriminate disciplined force, accompanied by other measures to deradicalise people and win them over.

The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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