Last week's suicide bombing attack by a Kashmiri separatist against Indian paramilitary troops in the region was the deadliest in a generation and raised the risk of the Hybrid War in South Asia turning hot.
India and Pakistan obviously have different interpretations of what happened, just like they have different views on the current status of Kashmir. New Delhi believes that its neighbor was behind the attack as part of its alleged long-running material support for the Kashmiri insurgency, while Islamabad denies these unverified claims and asserts that the Indian authorities are trying to scapegoat it to cover up for their own domestic problems in the region.
About that, India claims the entirety of the pre-independence princely state of Kashmir all the way up to the Afghan border in what is nowadays the Pakistani territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, while Pakistan believes that the people of what is nowadays the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir have been denied their UNSC-entitled right to a referendum on self-determination. Both sides accuse the other of occupying Kashmir and claim that there are strategic reasons behind it, namely its location and water resources. It's not within the scope of this program to discuss the legitimacy of each party's claims, but just to introduce the audience to the background behind this very complex issue.
It should go without saying that both countries…
