On Tuesday, April 22, terrorists attacked a group of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 26 people and injuring several more. It appears to be the worst massacre of Indian civilians in the insurgency-afflicted state of Kashmir in at least 20 years.

India has long blamed Pakistan for most of the violence in Kashmir – a mountainous border region both countries claim as part of their territory. The group that claimed responsibility for this week’s attack, The Resistance Front (TRF), is relatively new. Many in India see TRF as a proxy for an older Pakistan-based terrorist group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into office in 2014. On two prior occasions during Modi’s tenure, separatists conducted large-scale attacks in Kashmir that became India-Pakistan crises. In 2016, at Uri, 19 Indian soldiers died in an attack by separatist militants. In 2019, at Pulwama, 40 Indian paramilitary troops died when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle next to their convoy. 

India has long blamed Pakistan for most of the violence in Kashmir – a mountainous border region both countries claim as part of their territory. The group that claimed responsibility for this week’s attack, The Resistance Front (TRF), is relatively new.

Both of these earlier attacks prompted retaliatory attacks on Pakistan. In 2016, India retaliated with a series of “surgical strikes” by Indian special operations forces along and across the fortified Line of Control that divides the Indian-administered from the Pakistan-administered portions of the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 2019, India opted to use stand-off airstrikes that........

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