Pakistan refuses to recognise that the state’s accession to India is a closed chapter, more so after the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 by Parliament and its approval by the Supreme Court, which has created a new context — and future — for Kashmir and Kashmiris. However, the Pakistan army and the country’s spy agency ISI still seem to believe they can weaponise J&K’s troubled past to further their strategic interests. New Delhi has refused to rebuild ties with Islamabad because it believes the latter is unwilling to abandon the use of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy and dismantle the infrastructure built to wreak havoc in its neighbourhood. The Pahalgam carnage confirms this bleak analysis of Islamabad’s diabolic intentions, based on an ideological reading of its past and its warped understanding of its destiny. This is why the Pakistani establishment has been nonchalant about its “assets” targeting civilians, as in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

It is widely expected that India will react militarily to the terror strike — targeting, as it did after the Pulwama and Uri attacks, terror pods across the border. Indian agencies also have to track down the killers, establish their identities, figure out how they reached Pahalgam, and plug loopholes in the security grid that enabled them to target a tourist hotspot. The onus is now on the political and security establishment — in New Delhi and Srinagar — to work together, uncover the terror networks and linkages, and gather evidence so that responsibility can be pinned on the perpetrators of the violence. They need to do this without constricting the civic freedoms available to residents, especially since the election of a popular government in October 2024.