Kashmir

Islamabad, Pakistan – An uneasy calm hangs over Pakistan-administered Kashmir as the region marked the fourth day of a complete shutdown on Thursday, with at least 15 people killed – including three police officers – during violent clashes between protesters and security forces.

Dozens more have been injured on both sides as the standoff continues.

The federal government has dispatched a negotiating committee that arrived on Thursday in Muzaffarabad, the territory’s capital, to hold crucial talks with the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), an umbrella organisation representing traders and civil society groups that has emerged as the voice of grassroots discontent across the region.

Led by activist Shaukat Nawaz Mir, the JAAC-organised lockdown commenced on September 29 and has brought several districts of Pakistan-administered Kashmir – locally known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) – to a grinding halt.

The government, on its part, has meanwhile imposed a complete communications blackout, with residents cut off from mobile telecommunications and internet access since September 28.

In Muzaffarabad, the usually bustling markets have remained shuttered, while street vendors and public transport have vanished from the roads. The paralysis has left the region’s roughly four million residents in a state of uncertainty.

The government said in a statement that authorities were working to restore order and urged the public not to be swayed by what officials described as propaganda and “fake news” circulating on social media as part of a “specific agenda”.

This JAAC-led protest – the third such major mobilisation in the past two years – erupted after the government failed to agree to the committee’s 38-point demands, according to the group’s leaders.

The current crisis marks the latest escalation in a two-year confrontation between Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s local government and a grassroots movement that has shown its street power on several occasions.

What sparked the protests?

The Kashmir valley is the picturesque yet deeply contentious Himalayan region over which Pakistan and India have fought multiple wars since both nations gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Both control parts of it, with China also administering two slivers of the region’s north. The region is claimed in its entirety by India, while Pakistan claims all of Kashmir except the parts held by China, its ally.

With a population exceeding four million, according to the 2017 census, Pakistan-administered Kashmir operates under a semi-autonomous system with its own prime minister and legislative assembly.

The current unrest has roots in May 2023, when residents first took to the streets to protest against what they said were skyrocketing electricity bills. Simultaneously, complaints emerged about widespread flour smuggling and acute shortages in subsidised wheat supplies.

By August 2023, these disparate grievances had coalesced into organised resistance. In September of that year, hundreds of activists gathered in Muzaffarabad to formally establish the JAAC, bringing together representatives from all districts of the region.

The movement reached its first major flashpoint in May 2024, when protesters launched a long march towards Muzaffarabad. Violent clashes ensued, resulting in the deaths of at least five people, including a police officer.

The violent protests were suspended only after Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif agreed to key demands to slash flour prices and reduce electricity tariffs, with the government allocating billions of rupees in subsidies to make flour affordable and support electricity price reductions.

However, the peace proved short-lived. In August of this year, the JAAC announced it would launch another lockdown, this time broadening its critique beyond economic grievances.

Why are protesters dissatisfied, and what are their demands?

The latest charter of demands presented by the JAAC consists of 38 distinct points. The demands range from providing free education and healthcare facilities and launching major infrastructure projects to changing the structure of the provincial legislature.

But topping the list is the abolition of what the JAAC characterises as “ruling elite privileges”, a demand that has featured prominently in previous sets of grievances as well.

The JAAC maintains that following the May 2024 protests, the government acknowledged that a judicial commission would be formed to review “privileges granted to high government officials”.

Some of the perks provided to senior government officials, such as ministers, include two government-provided vehicles, personal staff including bodyguards, as well as unlimited fuel for vehicles they use for government work.

A second key demand, incorporated into the JAAC’s list for the first time, involves ending the system of 12 reserved seats for refugees in the autonomous region’s legislative assembly.

According to the JAAC, refugees and their descendants, who migrated from Indian-administered Kashmir after the 1947 partition, now constitute a powerful political bloc that has monopolised development funds.

The charter also demands the withdrawal of legal cases filed against activists during the protests that erupted in 2023 and 2024.

Demands also include tax exemptions and improved employment opportunities, among others.

Infrastructure development features prominently in the JAAC’s vision. The committee has demanded new projects, including tunnels and bridges connecting the mountainous region with the rest of Pakistan, apart from an international airport.

Muzaffarabad currently has an airport that has remained nonoperational for years. However, in April of this year, Prime Minister Sharif formed a committee to work on reviving the project. He also issued instructions to examine the feasibility of the development of another airport in Mirpur, the second-largest city in the region.

How is the government responding?

The local administration has implemented a communications blackout and has ordered educational institutions shut indefinitely.

More controversially, it has called for paramilitary forces as well as additional police contingents from the rest of Pakistan.

The JAAC has objected to the deployment of paramilitary forces. Mir, the JAAC leader, told reporters earlier this week that with local police already present, “there was no need to order paramilitary from mainland Pakistan”.

Abdul Majid Khan, the finance minister of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, acknowledged that while there had already been a first round of negotiations, a new committee had now arrived in Muzaffarabad specifically tasked with addressing the protesters’ grievances.

“Initially, when they launched their protest last year, it was all about electricity and flour price, and we agreed on those. But they also must understand that things cannot happen overnight, and they take time,” Khan said, defending the government.

However, Khan acknowledged that while the government has agreed to most of the JAAC’s 38 points, negotiations have reached a deadlock on two particularly contentious issues – the elimination of the 12 reserved seats for refugees and what the JAAC calls ending “ruling elite perks”.

The minister challenged the logic behind eliminating seats reserved for refugees, pointing to what they lost at the time of the subcontinent’s partition.

“These are the people whose families migrated from India, where they were landowners and businesspeople, but moved to Pakistan in abject poverty, having left their wealth behind, but JAAC thinks it is unjust to give them a quota of seats. If we don’t give these people the rights, then why did they even go through the trouble of moving here?” Khan argued.

The minister himself belongs to the estimated 2.7 million people in the region whose families migrated from Indian-administered Kashmir.

Khan also questioned the logic of renewed protests, given that the JAAC’s previous demands had largely been met. He said that for many of the current issues, local authorities must seek funding from the federal government in Islamabad.

“There is barely any taxation on the people here, with already reduced electricity tariffs. Additionally, we have less than 5,000 tax filers in the entire region, which shows little revenue generation for the government,” he said.

What happens next?

Thursday’s negotiations between government representatives and JAAC members concluded without any resolution, with the next round of talks expected on Friday.

Both sides publicly profess their commitment to dialogue, but distrust runs deep after repeated cycles of promises and disappointments.

Despite the JAAC’s persistent protests, the government maintains it has met most demands and that constitutional and electoral reforms require legislative processes that cannot happen overnight.

Khan indicated that once there is meaningful progress in negotiations, the government will move quickly to restore internet and mobile services, which he said “had to be curtailed due to the situation on the ground”.

“With the negotiation team being present in Muzaffarabad, I am sure there will be a solution to this deadlock, and things will return to normalcy soon,” Khan said.

Ladakh, a high-altitude cold desert region in the Himalayas that has been at the heart of recent India-China tensions, was rocked on Wednesday by violent Gen Z-led protests as youth torched the regional office of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

As protesters, including school students, clashed with the police in Leh, the regional capital, at least four of them were killed and dozens were injured, protest coordinators told Al Jazeera, following additional deployment of the armed forces. Authorities said dozens of security forces were also injured in the clashes.

For the past six years, thousands of people in Ladakh, led by local civic bodies, have taken out peaceful marches and gone on hunger strikes demanding greater constitutional safeguards and statehood from India, which has governed the region federally since 2019. They want the power to elect a local government.

On Wednesday, however, groups of disillusioned youth broke with those peaceful protests, said Sonam Wangchuk, an educator who has been spearheading a series of hunger strikes.

“It was an outburst of youth, a kind of Gen-Z revolution, that brought them on streets,” Wangchuk said in a video statement, referring to recent uprisings in South Asian countries, including in Nepal earlier this month, that led to the overthrow of the government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.

So, what’s happening in Ladakh? What are their demands? How did the Himalayan region get to this point? And why does the crisis in Ladakh matter so much?

What triggered clashes in Ladakh?

On Wednesday morning, a hunger strike by local Ladakhi activists, led by the Ladakh Apex Body, an amalgam of socio-religious and political organisations, entered its 15th day.

Two activists, aged 62 and 71, had been hospitalised the previous evening after two weeks of hunger strike, leading to a call by organisers for a local shutdown. The protesters were also angry with the Modi government for delaying talks with them.

These issues led the youth to believe that “peace is not working”, Wangchuk said on Wednesday evening in a virtual press meeting, during which he appeared frail.

Then the youth-led groups broke away from the protest site in Leh at the Martyrs’ Memorial Park and moved towards local official buildings and a BJP office, raising slogans, leading to clashes with the police. Four were killed and another remains critical, while dozens were injured.

“This is the bloodiest day in the history of Ladakh. They martyred our young people – the general public who were on the streets to support the demands of the strike,” said Jigmat Paljor, the coordinator of the apex body behind the hunger strikes.

“The people were tired of fake promises for five years by the government, and people were filled with anger,” Paljor told Al Jazeera. Amid the violence, he said, his organisation withdrew the hunger strike, calling for peace.

In a statement, India’s home ministry said that clashes “unruly mob” had left over 30 forces personnel injured — and that “police had to resort to firing” in self defence, leading to “some casualties”.

The government said that “it was clear that the mob was incited by [Wangchuk]”, adding that the educator was “misleading the people through his provocative mention of Arab Spring-style protest and references to Gen Z protests in Nepal.” Wangchuk has been warning that youth sentiments could turn to violence if the government does not pay heed to the demands of peaceful protesters — but insists he has never advocated violence himself.

What do protesters want?

In 2019, the Modi government unilaterally stripped the semi-autonomous status and statehood that Indian-administered Kashmir had previously enjoyed under the Indian constitution.

The state had three regions – the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, the Hindu-majority Jammu, and Ladakh, where Muslims and Buddhists each form about 40 percent of the population.

Then, the Modi government bifurcated the erstwhile state into two territories: Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature, and Ladakh without one. While both are federally governed and neither has the powers of other states in India, Jammu and Kashmir’s legislature at least allows its population to elect local leaders who can represent their concerns and voice them to New Delhi. Ladakh, locals argue, doesn’t even have that.

Kashmir is a disputed region between India, Pakistan and China – the three nuclear-armed neighbours each control a part. India claims all of it, and Pakistan claims all except the part held by China, its ally. Indian-administered Kashmir borders Pakistan on the west, and Ladakh shares a 1,600km (994-mile) border with China on the east.

Since the end of statehood, Ladakhis have found themselves under the rule of bureaucrats. More than 90 percent of the region’s population is listed as Scheduled Tribes. That status has prompted a demand for Ladakh to be included under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which provides autonomous administrative and governance structures to regions where recognised Indigenous communities dominate the population. There are currently 10 regions in India’s northeastern states that are listed under the schedule.

However, the Modi government has so far resisted both statehood and the protections of the Sixth Schedule for Ladakh.

The separation of Jammu and Kashmir from Ladakh has meant that it is harder for Ladakhis to find work in Jammu and Kashmir, where most jobs in the previously unified region were. Since 2019, locals have also accused the Indian government of not putting in place clear policies for hirings to public sector jobs.

“[The young protesters] are unemployed for five years, and Ladakh is not being granted [constitutional] protections,” Wangchuk said on Wednesday. “This is the recipe of social unrest in society: keep youth unemployed and then snatch their democratic rights.”

Ladakh has a 97 percent literacy rate, well above India’s national average of about 80 percent. But a 2023 survey found that 26.5 percent of Ladakh’s graduates are unemployed – double the national average.

On Wednesday, the anger tipped over.

“What’s happening in Ladakh is horrific,” said Siddiq Wahid, an academic and political analyst from Leh. “It is scary to see Ladakh sort of pushed to this edge.”

“In the last six years, Ladakhis have realised the dangers that their identity faces,” he said, adding that the people have been “adamant about the need to retrieve their rights since they were snatched away six years ago”.

“The youth anger is a particularly worrisome angle because they’re impatient. They’ve been waiting for a resolution for years,” said Wahid. “Now, they are frustrated because they don’t see a future for themselves.”

Have there been protests earlier in Ladakh?

Yes. Since the abrogation of the region’s semi-autonomous status and the removal of statehood, several local civic groups have staged protest marches and at times gone on hunger strikes.

Wangchuk, the educator, has led five hunger strikes in the last three years, demanding constitutional protections for Ladakh. He is also the most well-known face of the protests in Ladakh – having a wider reach due to his past sustainability innovations. Wangchuk’s life has also inspired a Bollywood blockbuster movie that has also gained legions of fans in China.

The site of the hunger strike, the Martyrs’ Memorial Park, is also dedicated to three Ladakhis who were killed in August 1989 in a firing incident during protests. At the time, the protests were over anger about perceived Kashmiri dominance in the unified state that Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir belonged to.

The site also honours two other protesters who were killed in January 1981 during an agitation demanding Scheduled Tribe status for Ladakhis.

But Wednesday’s protest marked the deadliest day in Ladakh’s political history.

Sajad Kargili, a civil member of a committee constituted by the Modi government to speak with the protesting activists, said that the violence in Ladakh “highlights the frustration of our youth”.

“The government needs to understand that there are young people here who are angry and not opting to sit on a hunger strike,” Kargili said. “The Modi government should not turn its back on these calls.”

Why Ladakh is so significant

Ladakh sits at India’s Himalayan frontier, bordering China.

The region also connects to vital mountain passes, airfields, and supply routes that are critical for India’s military in the event of a conflict with China. In 2020, the Indian and Chinese forces clashed in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), following a Chinese incursion.

At least 20 Indian forces personnel were killed alongside four Chinese. The confrontation triggered the mobilisation of tens of thousands of troops on both sides, with heavy weaponry and infrastructure being rushed to high-altitude posts.

Since then, Ladakh has remained the nerve centre of India-China border tensions. Multiple rounds of military and diplomatic talks have led to a thaw since late last year.

Now, Wahid, the political analyst, said that the Modi government’s actions in 2019 are returning to haunt India with a new threat in Ladakh – an internal one. Indian authorities, he pointed out, have long had to deal with Kashmir as a “centre of discontent”. Now, they have Ladakh to contend with, too.

Islamabad, Pakistan – For the second time in three years, catastrophic monsoon floods have carved a path of destruction across Pakistan’s north and central regions, particularly in its Punjab province, submerging villages, drowning farmland, displacing millions and killing hundreds.

This year, India – Pakistan’s archrival and a nuclear-armed neighbour – is also reeling. Its northern states, including Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Indian Punjab, have seen widespread flooding as heavy monsoon rains swell rivers on both sides of the border.

Pakistani authorities say that since late June, when the monsoon season began, at least 884 people have died nationally, more than 220 of them in Punjab. On the Indian side, the casualty count has crossed 100, with more than 30 dead in Indian Punjab.

Yet, shared suffering hasn’t brought the neighbours closer: In Pakistan’s Punjab, which borders India, federal minister Ahsan Iqbal has, in fact, accused New Delhi of deliberately releasing excess water from dams without timely warnings.

“India has started using water as a weapon and has caused wide-scale flooding in Punjab,” Iqbal said last month, citing releases into the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers, all of which originate in Indian territory and flow into Pakistan.

Iqbal further said that releasing flood water was the “worst example of water aggression” by India, which he said threatened lives, property and livelihoods.

“Some issues should be beyond politics, and water cooperation must be one of them,” the minister said on August 27, while he participated in rescue efforts in Narowal city, his constituency that borders India.

Those accusations come amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, and the breakdown of a six-decade-old pact that helped them share waters for rivers that are lifelines to both nations.

But experts argue that the evidence is thin to suggest that India might have deliberately sought to flood Pakistan – and the larger nation’s own woes point to the risks of such a strategy, even if New Delhi were to contemplate it.

Weaponising water

Relations between India and Pakistan, already at a historic low, plummeted further in April after the Pahalgam attack, in which gunmen killed 26 civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for the attack and walked out of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), the transboundary agreement that governs the Indus Basin’s six rivers.

Pakistan rejected the accusation that it was in any way behind the Pahalgam attack. But in early May, the neighbours waged a four-day conflict, targeting each other’s military bases with missiles and drones in the gravest military escalation between them in almost three decades.

Under the IWT, the two countries were required to exchange detailed water-flow data regularly. With India no longer adhering to the pact, fears have mounted in recent months that New Delhi could either try to stop the flow of water into Pakistan, or flood its western neighbour through sudden, large releases.

After New Delhi suspended its participation in the IWT, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah in June said the treaty would never be restored, a stance that prompted protests in Pakistan and accusations of “water terrorism”.

But while the Indian government has not issued a formal response to accusations that it has chosen to flood Pakistan, the Indian High Commission in Islamabad has, in the last two weeks, shared several warnings of possible cross-border flooding on “humanitarian grounds”.

And water experts say that attributing Pakistan’s floods primarily to Indian water releases from dams is an “oversimplification” of the causes of the crisis that risks obscuring the urgent, shared challenges posed by climate change and ageing infrastructure.

“The Indian decision to release water from their dam has not caused flooding in Pakistan,” said Daanish Mustafa, a professor of critical geography at King’s College London.

“India has major dams on its rivers, which eventually make their way to Pakistan. Any excess water that will be released from these rivers will significantly impact India’s own states first,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shared monsoon strain

Both Pakistan and India depend on glaciers in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges to feed their rivers. For Pakistan, the Indus river basin is a lifeline. It supplies water to most of the country’s roughly 250 million people and underpins its agriculture.

Under the IWT, India controls the three eastern rivers – Ravi, Sutlej and Beas – while Pakistan controls the three western rivers, Jhelum, Chenab and Indus.

India is obligated to allow waters of the western rivers to flow into Pakistan with limited exceptions, and to provide timely, detailed hydrological data.

India has built dams on the eastern rivers it controls, and the flow of the Ravi and Sutlej into Pakistan has considerably reduced since then. It has also built dams on some of the western rivers – it is allowed to, under the treaty, as long as that does not affect the volume of water flowing into Pakistan.

But melting glaciers and an unusually intense summer monsoon pushed river levels on both sides of the border dangerously high this year.

In Pakistan, glacial outbursts followed by heavy rains raised levels in the western rivers, while surging flows put infrastructure on the eastern rivers in India at serious risk.

Mustafa of King’s College said that dams – like other infrastructure – are designed keeping in mind a safe capacity of water that they can hold, and are typically meant to operate for about 100 years. But climate change has dramatically altered the average rainfall that might have been taken into account while designing these projects.

“The parameters used to build the dams are now obsolete and meaningless,” he said. “When the capacity of the dams is exceeded, water must be released or it will put the entire structure at risk of destruction.”

Among the major dams upstream in Indian territory are Salal and Baglihar on the Chenab; Pong on the Beas; Bhakra on the Sutlej; and Ranjit Sagar (also known as Thein) on the Ravi.

These dams are based in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, Indian Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, with vast areas of Indian territory between them and the border.

Blaming India for the flooding in Pakistan makes no sense, said Shiraz Memon, a former Pakistani representative on the bilateral commission tasked under the IWT to monitor the implementation of the pact.

“Instead of acknowledging that India has shared warnings, we are blaming them of water terrorism. It is [a] simple, natural flood phenomenon,” Memon said, adding that by the end of August, reservoirs across the region were full.

“With water at capacity, spillways had to be opened for downstream releases. This is a natural solution as there is no other option available,” he told Al Jazeera.

Politics of blame

According to September 3 data on India’s Central Water Commission website, at least a dozen sites face a “severe” flood situation, and another 19 are above normal flood levels.

The same day, Pakistan’s Ministry of Water Resources issued a notification, quoting a message from the Indian High Commission, warning of “high flood” on the Sutlej and Tawi rivers.

It was the fourth such notice by India after three earlier warnings last week, but none contained detailed hydrological data.

Pakistan’s Meteorological Department, in a report on September 4, said on the Pakistani side, two sites on the Sutlej and Ravi faced “extremely high” flood levels, while two other sites on the Ravi and Chenab saw “very high” levels.

The sheer volume of water during an intense monsoon often exceeds any single dam or barrage’s capacity. Controlled releases have become a necessary, if dangerous, part of flood management on both sides of the border, said experts.

They added that while the IWT obliged India to alert Pakistan to abnormal flows, Pakistan also needs better monitoring and real-time data systems rather than relying solely on diplomatic exchanges.

The blame game, analysts warn, can serve short-term political purposes on both sides, especially after May’s conflict.

For India, suspending the treaty is framed as a firm stance against what it sees as Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism. For Pakistan, blaming India can provide a political scapegoat that distracts from domestic failures in flood mitigation and governance.

“Rivers are living, breathing entities. This is what they do; they are always on the move. You cannot control the flood, especially a high or severe flood,” academic Mustafa said.

Blaming India won’t stop the floods. But, he added, it appears to be an “easy way out to relinquish responsibility”.

Torrential rain struck Chisoti, a town in Kishtwar district in Indian-administered Kashmir, on Thursday morning.

At least 37 people have been killed after a sudden cloudburst unleashed torrential rain in Indian-administered Kashmir, a disaster management official said, marking the second major disaster in the Himalayas in just over a week.

The deluge struck Chisoti, a town in Kishtwar district, on Thursday morning. The site serves as a key stop along the pilgrimage route to the Machail Mata temple, a revered Himalayan shrine dedicated to Goddess Durga.

Television footage showed terrified pilgrims crying as water surged through the settlement.

Omar Abdullah, chief minister of the federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir, described the situation as “grim” and said confirmed details were slow to emerge from the remote location.

Mohammed Irshad said rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village of Chositi brought at least 100 people to safety.

“Dead bodies of 37 people have been recovered,” said Irshad, a top disaster management official, adding there was no count of any missing people available.

According to Ramesh Kumar, divisional commissioner of Kishtwar, the cloudburst hit at about 11:30am local time. He told ANI news agency that police and disaster response teams were on the ground, while army and air force units had also been mobilised. “Search and rescue operations are under way,” Kumar said.

An official, who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the flood swept away a community kitchen and a security post set up to serve pilgrims. “A large number of pilgrims had gathered for lunch and they were washed away,” the official told the news agency Reuters.

The India Meteorological Department defines a cloudburst as a sudden, extreme downpour exceeding 100mm of rain in an hour, often triggering flash floods and landslides in mountainous regions during the monsoon.

Last week, a similar disaster in Uttarakhand, another Himalayan state, buried an entire village under mud and debris after heavy rains.

The Srinagar weather office has warned of further intense rainfall in several parts of Kashmir, including Kishtwar, and urged residents to avoid unstable structures, power lines and old trees due to the risk of fresh landslides and flash floods.

On August 5, 2019, the Indian government stripped the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state of its special status under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, split it into two entities and demoted the two units to Union Territories under New Delhi’s direct control.

As the sixth anniversary approached, the region was caught in the grip of rumours of a probable further division, or other administrative changes. Reports of unusual jet activity over Srinagar triggered widespread panic among residents.

This evoked harrowing memories of similar aerial activity coupled with a similarly bizarre set of rumours in the tense days leading up to August 5, 2019. People waited anxiously.

The bombshell that came on the sixth anniversary was an official order banning 25 books that focus on Jammu and Kashmir’s history and politics – all accused of promoting “false narratives” and “secessionism” – a sweeping judgement that does not stand the test of scrutiny and is not based on any evidence.

My book A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, published in December 2022 by HarperCollins, is one of them. The book is a rare chronicle of the day-to-day reality in Jammu and Kashmir after 2019. Based on ground research, extensive interviews and the collation of data from other primary and secondary sources, it punctured the Indian government’s claims of “normalcy” in Jammu and Kashmir.

The government justified the actions of August 5, 2019 on the grounds that they would usher in peace and development in the region, while glossing over the unprecedented physical and cyber-restrictions imposed across the erstwhile state, during which thousands of people, including pro-India politicians (three former chief ministers included), were arrested. Barbed wire and military barricades turned the region, particularly the Kashmir Valley, into a curfewed zone, and communication channels – from internet to telephone lines – were pushed into some black hole.

Six months later, when some of these restrictions were slightly eased and the internet was partially restored, the stranglehold of the Indian state became even more oppressive, with an exacerbation of raids and crackdowns against journalists, political and social activists, and civil rights defenders. The policy of widespread detentions under laws like the Public Safety Act, which allows the government to detain anyone without charge for up to two years, was ramped up significantly.

These realities were hardly ever reported. Journalism was severely curtailed under the state’s clampdown, particularly affecting local publications. Newspapers that refused to fall in line were choked financially until they were out of print. Those that did comply were rewarded with lavish government advertisements that kept the businesses going, minus the journalism.

Either co-opted or terrorised, the newspapers were no longer daily chroniclers of the events, developments and incidents in the region. Community voices were silenced while journalists no longer asked questions. The rich archives of some newspapers, showcasing the complex day-to-day history of the region, became inaccessible or were removed.

In the last six years, the government has been extremely intolerant of any criticism. Any word of dissent invites punitive measures ranging from mere intimidation and interrogation to confiscation of devices, and from the slapping of income tax and money laundering cases to terrorism accusations, sometimes accompanied by short detentions or prolonged arrests. While local journalism was reduced to an extension of the government’s public relations department, all civil society voices were throttled by intimidation, leaving major gaps in information.

It was this vacuum that my book aimed to fill. Focused on the first two years of the revocation of Article 370, and in 12 chapters, I documented what was happening on the ground – the increased suppression of the masses, the lack of space for freedom of expression, the shrinking space for civil society and political activism, the criminalisation of dissent, the continuation of terrorism as opposed to the claims of peace and normalcy, and the hollowness of the development claims by the government even as the new policies and actions robbed the people of their homes and agricultural lands.

The book is a pursuit of truth – the naked truth, which challenged everything the Indian state was saying. A paranoid state whose only method of engagement in Jammu and Kashmir is through increasing its military footprint, merciless subjugation of the residents and silencing of all voices of dissent was obviously uncomfortable with what I documented. The book was a warning to the government that its methods of control, creation of a police and surveillance state, and misplaced development models were unsustainable and would fail.

In the last six years, the government has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the world by trumpeting its achievements of bringing peace, normalcy, tourism and development. The April 22 killings this year of 26 innocent civilians punctured this bubble. It was a wake-up call for the government to sit back and review its policies in Kashmir and begin course correction.

Instead, it clamped down even further with a horrific scale of demonisation of Kashmiris, ruthless detentions and even more brutal demolitions of houses. This, even as there was widespread public condemnation of terrorism, including vigils and calls to reject violence – something unprecedented in the more than three-decade-long history of rebellion in the region – and even as the investigators indicated foreign militants, not locals, were involved in the killings.

In the last three months, the government has demonstrated that its policy of control through harsh security measures and pervasive surveillance would be further accelerated. The ban on 25 books, many of which provide rich, well-researched, and layered historical, political and legal narratives about the complex and trouble-torn region, is an extension of the pattern. Through this ban, there is an attempt to erase every trace of a counter-narrative and alternate memory.

By branding all criticism of the state and narratives that are out of sync with the official version as “seditious”, the government can now seize and destroy these books. Not only are the written words being criminalised – even the act of reading will be wrongfully deemed a threat to the security and integrity of the nation. While this may not stop ideas and memory from being suppressed, policing what people write and read is likely to be further intensified.

Though senseless, shocking and irrational in scale and scope, the ban, which ironically coincides with a government-backed Chinar Book Festival in Srinagar, sends a chilling message: Knowledge and information will be regulated by the state. What people write and read will be decided by the state. The thought police will penetrate deeper.

Last year, during Jammu and Kashmir’s first assembly elections as a Union Territory, India’s home minister, Amit Shah, took a dig at the regional political parties and alleged that while “they (local politicians) gave the youth stones in their hands”, his government had given them “books and laptops”.

The hollowness of such claims is laid bare when the daily reality is one of confiscation of digital devices, including laptops, during raids and interrogations, alongside a blanket book ban that only reinforces the central message of my work: Kashmir is anything but normal.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir – Hafsa Kanjwal’s book on Kashmir has just been banned, but it’s the irony of the moment that strikes her the most.

This week, authorities in India-administered Kashmir proscribed 25 books authored by acclaimed scholars, writers and journalists.

The banned books include Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir: State‑Building under Indian Occupation. But even as the ban was followed by police raids on several bookstores in the region’s biggest city, Srinagar, during which they seized books on the blacklist, Indian officials are holding a book festival in the city on the banks of Dal Lake.

“Nothing is surprising about this ban, which comes at a moment when the level of censorship and surveillance in Kashmir since 2019 has reached absurd heights,” Kanjwal told Al Jazeera, referring to India’s crackdown on the region since it revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status six years ago.

“It is, of course, even more absurd that this ban comes at a time when the Indian army is simultaneously promoting book reading and literature through a state-sponsored Chinar Book Festival.”

Yet even with Kashmir’s long history of facing censorship, the book bans represent to many critics a particularly sweeping attempt by New Delhi to assert control over academia in the disputed region.

‘Misguiding youth’

The 25 books banned by the government offer a detailed overview of the events surrounding the Partition of India and the reasons why Kashmir became such an intransigent territorial dispute to begin with.

They include writings like Azadi by Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy, Human Rights Violations in Kashmir by Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska, Kashmiris’ Fight for Freedom by Mohd Yusaf Saraf, Kashmir Politics and Plebiscite by Abdul Gockhami Jabbar and Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? by Essar Batool. These are books that directly speak to rights abuses and massacres in Kashmir and promises broken by the Indian state.

Then there are books like Kanjwal’s, journalist Anuradha Bhasin’s A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 and legal scholar AG Noorani’s The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012, which dissect the region’s political journey over the decades.

The government has blamed these books for allegedly “misguiding youth” in Kashmir and instigating their “participation in violence and terrorism”. The government’s order states: “This literature would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting a culture of grievance, victimhood, and terrorist heroism.”

The dispute in Kashmir dates back to 1947 when the departing British cleaved the Indian subcontinent into the two dominions of India and Pakistan. Muslim-majority Kashmir’s Hindu king sought to be independent of both, but after Pakistan-backed fighters entered a part of the region, he agreed to join India on the condition that Kashmir enjoy a special status within the new union with some autonomy guaranteed under the Indian Constitution.

But the Kashmiri people were never asked what they wanted, and India repeatedly rebuffed demands for a United Nations-sponsored plebiscite.

Discontent against Indian rule simmered on and off and exploded into an armed uprising against India in 1989 in response to allegations of election fixing.

Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir sheds light on the complicated ways in which the Indian government under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, consolidated its control over Kashmir.

Some of Nehru’s decisions that have come under criticism include the unceremonious dismissal of the region’s leader Sheikh Abdullah, who advocated for self-rule for Kashmir, and the decision to replace him with his lieutenant, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad, whose 10 years in office were marked by the strengthening of New Delhi’s rule of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Kanjwal’s book won this year’s Bernard Cohn Book Prize, which “recognizes outstanding and innovative scholarship for a first single-authored English-language monograph on South Asia”.

Kanjwal said the ban gives a sense of how “insecure” the government is.

‘Intensification of political clampdown’

India has a long history of censorship and information control in Kashmir. In 2010, after major protests broke out following the killing of 17-year-old student Tufail Mattoo by security forces, the provincial government banned SMS services and restored them only three years later.

At the height of another civil uprising in 2016, the government stopped Kashmir Reader, an independent publication in Srinagar, from going to press, citing its purported “tendency to incite violence”.

Aside from prohibitions on newspapers and modes of communication, Indian authorities have routinely detained journalists under stringent preventive detention laws in Kashmir.

That pattern has picked up since 2019.

“First they came for journalists, and realising they were successful in silencing them, they have turned their attention to academia,” said veteran editor Anuradha Bhasin, whose book on India’s revocation of Kashmir’s special status in 2019 is among those banned.

Bhasin described the accusations that her book promotes violence as strange. “Nowhere does my book glorify terrorism, but it does criticise the state. There’s a distinction between the two that authorities in Kashmir want to blur. That’s a very dangerous trend.”

Bhasin told Al Jazeera that such bans will have far-reaching implications for future works being produced on Kashmir. “Publishers will think twice before printing anything critical on Kashmir,” she said. “When my book went to print, the legal team vetted it thrice.”

‘A feeling of despair’

The book bans have drawn criticism from various quarters in Kashmir with students and researchers calling it an attempt to impose collective amnesia.

Sabir Rashid, a 27-year-old independent scholar from Kashmir, said he was very disappointed.  “If we take these books out of Kashmir’s literary canon, we are left with nothing,” he said.

Rashid is working on a book on Kashmir’s modern history concerning the period surrounding the Partition of India.

“If these works are no longer available to me, my research is naturally going to be lopsided.”

On Thursday, videos showed uniformed policemen entering bookstores in Srinagar and asking their proprietors if they possessed any of the books in the banned list.

At least one book vendor in Srinagar told Al Jazeera he had a single copy of Bhasin’s Dismantled State, which he sold just before the raids. “Except that one, I did not have any of these books,” he shrugged.

More acclaimed works on the blacklist

Historian Sumantra Bose is aghast at the suggestion by Indian authorities that his book Kashmir at the Crossroads has fuelled violence in the region. He has worked on the Kashmir dispute since 1993 and said he has focused on devising pathways for finding a lasting peace for the region. Bose is also amused at a family legacy represented by the ban.

In 1935, the colonial authorities in British India banned The Indian Struggle, 1920-1934, a compendium of political analysis authored by Subhas Chandra Bose, his great-uncle and a leader of India’s freedom struggle.

“Ninety years later, I have been accorded the singular honour of following in the legendary freedom fighter’s footsteps,” he said.

As police step up raids on bookshops in Srinagar and seize valuable, more critical works, the literary community in Kashmir has a feeling of despondency.

“This is an attack on the people’s memory,” Rashid said. “These books served as sentinels. They were supposed to remind us of our history. But now, the erasure of memory in Kashmir is nearly complete.”

Indian media reports claim the men were linked to the April 22 Pahalgam attack, but there is no official confirmation.

Indian security forces have killed three suspected rebels in India-administered Kashmir during fighting in a national park, the military says.

The incident occurred on Monday in the mountains of Dachigam, about 30km (18 miles) east of the disputed region’s main city of Srinagar.

“Three terrorists have been neutralised in an intense firefight,” the Indian army said in a statement on social media. “Operation continues.”

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and the South Asian nuclear powers, which both claim Kashmir in full, have fought three wars over its control.

Since 1989, Kashmiri rebels have been fighting against Indian rule, demanding independence or the region’s merger with Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of backing the rebellion, but Islamabad says it only provides diplomatic support to the Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination.

Indian media reports said the three men killed on Monday were suspected to be behind the April 22 attack in India-administered Kashmir’s resort town of Pahalgam, which killed 26 people.

Al Jazeera could not immediately verify the involvement of the men in the April attack, which sparked a four-day military conflict with Pakistan that killed more than 70 people on both sides.

The Indian military did not immediately identify those killed on Monday, but a police officer told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that they were all “foreigners”.

This month, the United States designated The Resistance Front (TRF), the group accused of being behind the Pahalgam attack, as a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Monday’s incident took place near the Hindu shrine of Amarnath, to which more than 350,000 people from across India have travelled as part of an annual pilgrimage that began on July 3.

Fighting between rebels and Indian government forces in India-administered Kashmir has drastically declined during the past five years, but many local fighters have been killed since the Pahalgam attack, according to officials.

India denies US claims

In a related development, India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said New Delhi had ended its military conflict with Pakistan in May as it had met all its objectives and had not responded to any outside pressure.

Singh’s remarks during a discussion in parliament on the April 22 attack effectively rejected US President Donald Trump’s claim that he brokered the truce between the two neighbours.

“India halted its operation because all the political and military objectives studied before and during the conflict had been fully achieved,” Singh said. “To suggest that the operation was called off under pressure is baseless and entirely incorrect.”

New Delhi has said Pakistani nationals were involved in the Pahalgam killings. Pakistan denied involvement and sought an independent investigation.

In their military conflict in May, the two sides used fighter jets, missiles, drones and other munitions, killing dozens of people, before Trump announced they had agreed to a ceasefire.

Pakistan thanked Trump for brokering the agreement, but India said the US had no hand in it and that New Delhi and Islamabad had agreed between themselves to end the fighting.

Indian opposition groups have questioned what they say is the intelligence failure behind the Pahalgam attack and the government’s inability to capture the assailants – issues they are expected to raise during the parliament discussion.

They have also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for coming under pressure from Trump and agreeing to end the fighting, along with reports that Indian jets were shot down during the fighting.

Pakistan claimed it downed five Indian planes in combat, and India’s highest ranking general admitted suffering “initial losses in the air,” but declined to give details.

Hugam, Indian-administered Kashmir – Nasir Amin Bhat, 17, was barely ankle-deep in the water when his school friend and neighbour Adil Ahmad shouted from the riverbank on a breezy summer evening in May.

“Turn back! There’s something in the water.”

Across the Lidder, a tributary of the Jhelum River, in Hugam village of Indian-administered Kashmir’s Anantnag district, a Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) plunged into the glacial waters and started paddling furiously against the current with all four limbs.

“I had no idea what it was,” Bhat, a high school student, told Al Jazeera, “but I grabbed my smartphone and turned on the camera.”

The grainy, nine-second video shows the creature with a fur coat – classified as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List – gliding out of the water and jumping onto the riverbank.

After a few clumsy steps, the semiaquatic animal, which can reach elevations of 3,660 metres (12,000 feet) in the Himalayas during the summer, disappears behind a thick grove of bushes, bringing the video to an uneventful end.

Long believed to have gone extinct, Eurasian otters seem to be showing signs of resurgence in Kashmir, with three individuals spotted by Indian wildlife officers in two places since 2023.

The chance sightings have excited environmentalists and wildlife conservationists while raising hopes of a better future for the Himalayan region’s fragile freshwater ecosystems, which have been battered by climate change in recent years.

‘Habitat has improved’

Indian wildlife biologist Nisarg Prakash believes the sighting of otters in Kashmir was an indicator of high-quality aquatic habitats.

“The reappearance of otters might mean that poaching has come down or the habitat has improved, and maybe both in some cases,” Prakash, whose work focuses on otters in southern parts of India, told Al Jazeera.

Protected under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, otters were once widely distributed across north India, including the Himalayan foothills, the Gangetic plains and parts of the northeast.

A peer-reviewed study by IUCN in November last year noted that the Eurasian otter, known among Kashmiri locals as “voddur”, was found in water bodies of Lidder and Jehlum valleys, including Wular Lake, one of Asia’s largest freshwater lakes.

However, over the years, their population became “patchy and fragmented due to habitat loss, pollution and human disturbances”, says Khursheed Ahmad, a senior wildlife scientist at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST-K).

Ahmad said that, due to habitat alterations from human activities and the encroachment of their ideal habitats along riverbanks and other water bodies, Eurasian otters retreated and became confined to areas that were least accessible to humans.

“Although they were not extinct, sightings and occurrences had become extremely rare and they were never documented,” said Ahmad, who heads the Division of Wildlife Sciences at SKUAST-K.

Less than two years ago, a research team led by Ahmad accidentally stumbled on otters during a study on musk deer in Gurez, a valley of lush meadows and towering peaks split into two by the Kishanganga River along the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the Himalayas.

Past midnight on August 6, 2023, two individual otters were captured in a riverine habitat at an altitude of 2,600 metres (8,530 feet) in the valley near the 330MW Kishanganga Hydro Electric Project built by India following a prolonged legal battle with Pakistan at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

After that sighting, the research team focused on documenting the presence of otters on the Indian side of Kashmir.

“Unfortunately, due to heavy disturbance from fishing and other local and paramilitary activities, no further presence was documented,” the IUCN study notes.

Ahmed said Bhat’s video is only the second photographic evidence of otters in Kashmir.

‘Too terrified to go there’

But in the large farming village of Hugam, comprising some 300 families, residents are both excited and worried.

At the crack of dawn, Muneera Bano, a homemaker, wakes to the flutter of crows cawing furiously on the willow trees lining the tributary’s banks outside her home in Hugam, located some 58km (36 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar.

Bano has stopped washing clothes and utensils on the riverbank after the otter was discovered, something she had done for years.

“There are underwater caves [in the tributary], and it is hiding in one of them. When it comes out in the morning, crows see it and they start screaming. I am too terrified to go there,” she said.

Bhat, the teenager who filmed the video, said he often used to bathe in the tributary’s glacial waters and sometimes also caught fish. “Now I can’t even think about going there,” he said.

The grainy video led to rumours about the presence of crocodiles in the tributary, prompting Indian wildlife officials to set up a camera trap, which confirmed that it was a Eurasian otter – also seen in Bhat’s video – and not a crocodile.

Some wildlife officials even bathed in the river in the presence of village elders to demonstrate that the water was completely safe.

Although otters do not pose any threat to humans, they can turn unpredictable, especially when close to humans. But scientists say these animals can grow accustomed to the presence of humans.

Wildlife biologist Prakash said rather than being scared or fearful, curiosity about otters can make them a sight to be enjoyed while watching them fish or swim.

“Otters are largely active around dawn, dusk and after dark, though they can sometimes be seen during daytime as well. Eurasian otters largely prey on fish, eels, and sometimes, waterfowl,” he said.

Kashmiri farmer Wasim Ahmad remembers a summer day in the early 1990s when he was on the way back from school situated along the banks of Doodhganga, a major tributary of the Jhelum River.

As Ahmad, now in his 40s, turned the corner, he saw a large procession of people walking jubilantly. One man was holding a dead otter while another was walking a dog on a leash.

Bagh-e-Mehtab in Srinagar is home to a community of poachers who, in the past, made a living by selling skins of animals such as cats, otters, and other animals. With stricter animal welfare laws in force in India now, the community has given up the old profession.

“Our elders warned us that otters skinned the children and ate them raw,” said Ahmad, who was in ninth grade then. “But as I grew up, I didn’t come across even one person who was harmed by otters. It was basically a tactic to keep the children away from the river.”

Ahmad, the wildlife scientist, said the reappearance of otters in Kashmir was a positive sign.

“Now we should see to it that the new habitat is protected from uncontrolled pollution, garbage accumulation, increased carbon emissions and habitat degradation. Addressing these challenges is crucial for their conservation and wellbeing,” he told Al Jazeera.

India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir for decades, and Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control, a de facto border that cuts Kashmir into two, are caught in the middle of it all.

Why do India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir? And what do Kashmiris want? #AJStartHere with Sandra Gathmann explains.

This episode features:

Sumantra Bose – Professor of international and comparative politics, Krea University

Hafsa Kanjwal – Associate professor of South Asian studies, Lafayette College

Amitabh Mattoo – Professor, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Special thanks to Alia Chughtai, senior producer at AJLabs, for helping and advising the Start Here team with this episode.

Muslims around the globe are celebrating Eid al-Adha, one of the biggest holidays in the Islamic calendar that commemorates sacrifice and submission to God.

The festival, running from June 6-9, honours the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to obey God’s command that he sacrifice his only son Ismail, ignoring the devil’s attempts to dissuade him from the act.

The devil appeared before Ibrahim three times, but the prophet responded by throwing stones, driving him away. As he was about to kill his son, God stayed his hand and spared his son, giving him a lamb to sacrifice instead.

The “Feast of Sacrifice” is traditionally marked by the slaughter of an animal, typically a goat, sheep, cow, bull or camel, with the meat shared among neighbours, family members and the poor.

The start of the event coincides with the final rites of the annual Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, observed by adult Muslims.

In remembrance of Ibrahim’s resistance to Satan, pilgrims at Hajj participate in a symbolic “stoning of the devil” at the Jamarat complex in Mina, near Mecca.

The stoning ritual takes place at the three spots where it is said the devil tried to dissuade Ibrahim from obeying God, represented by three concrete walls.

Pilgrims collected their pebbles overnight on Thursday from Muzdalifah, an area located a few kilometres away from Arafat, a hill outside the city of Mecca with great spiritual significance.

On Friday, an estimated 1.6 million-plus pilgrims stoned the devil, throwing their pebbles at the concrete walls in Mina.

For some, the ritual marks a solemn moment – a complete submission to God. For others, it represents a victory over evil.

The rail link will connect the Kashmir Valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has opened one of the country’s most ambitious railway projects, which will connect the Kashmir Valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time.

Dubbed by the government-operated Indian Railways as one of the most challenging tracks in the world, the 272-kilometre (169-mile) line begins in the garrison city of Udhampur in the Jammu region and runs through Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar. The line ends in Baramulla, a town near the highly militarised Line of Control dividing the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.

The Indian government has pegged the total project cost at about $5bn.

The railway line travels through 36 tunnels and over 943 bridges and will facilitate the movement of people and goods, as well as troops, that was previously possible only via treacherous mountain roads and by air.

One of the project’s highlights is a 1,315-metre-long (4,314-foot) steel and concrete bridge above the Chenab River connecting two mountains with an arch 359 metres (1,177 feet) above the water. Indian Railways has compared its height with the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which stands 330 metres (1,082 feet), and said the bridge is built to last 120 years and endure extreme weather, including wind speeds up to 260 km/h (161mph).

Modi visited the Chenab bridge on Friday with tight security, waving an Indian tri-colour flag before boarding a test train that passed through picturesque mountains and tunnels to reach an inauguration ceremony for another high-elevation bridge named Anji.

The railway “ensures all weather connectivity” and will “boost spiritual tourism and create livelihood opportunities”, Modi said.

The prime minister also helped launch a pair of new trains called “Vande Bharat” that will halve the travel time between Srinagar and the town of Katra in the Jammu region to about three hours from the usual six to seven hours by road.

Modi’s visit to Indian-controlled Kashmir on Friday is his first since a military conflict between India and Pakistan brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war last month when the countries fired missiles and drones at each other.

The conflict was triggered after a shooting attack in late April that left 26 men, mostly Hindu tourists, dead in Indian-controlled Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for supporting the attackers, a charge Islamabad denied.

India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.

Armed groups in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir armed groups are backed by Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.

General Anil Chauhan, India’s chief of defence staff, has admitted that an unspecified number of fighter jets were shot down during its conflict with Pakistan last month.

The acknowledgement of aerial losses by the country’s highest ranking general comes weeks after the two South Asian neighbours were engaged in their heaviest fighting in decades, which involved fighter jets and cruise missiles.

Indian officials had previously refused to confirm or deny Pakistani claims of downing Indian jets. The conflict was triggered after gunmen killed 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam town on April 22.

India’s first official admission of a loss of fighter jets came during Chauhan’s interviews on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore.

What was the conflict between India and Pakistan?

India carried out strikes on what it called “terror infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 7 in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack. India blamed armed groups backed by Pakistan for the April 22 attack.

An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam killings. India accused the TRF of being an offshoot of the Pakistan-based armed group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan denied involvement, condemning the Pahalgam attack and calling for a neutral investigation.

India claimed to have targeted at least six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on the first day of the conflict. Pakistan initially asserted that it had downed six Indian fighter jets in retaliation. But a senior Pakistan official told Al Jazeera five Indian aircraft were lost in the aerial battle.

India did not confirm or deny the Pakistani claims. “Losses are a part of combat,” Air Marshal AK Bharti, India’s director general of air operations, said at a news conference on May 11.

The Indian embassy in China called reports of the downing of jets “disinformation”.

After that, tit-for-tat cross-border attacks across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, rattled the region, renewing fears of a nuclear war.

On May 10, United States President Donald Trump announced that the two countries had reached a ceasefire, potentially averting a “nuclear disaster”. India and Pakistan have given competing claims on casualties in the fighting, but more than 70 people were killed on both sides.

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but administer only parts of the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory.

Here is what Chauhan said in recent interviews with the Reuters news agency and Bloomberg TV:

On the downing of Indian fighter jets

Chauhan admitted that India suffered air losses on the first day of fighting without giving details.

In an interview with Reuters, he said: “What was important is why did these losses occur and what we’ll do after that.”

The Indian general said that after the losses, the Indian army “rectified tactics” and then went back on May 7, 8 and 10 “in large numbers to hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes”. He added that the Indian air force “flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances” on May 10.

Islamabad acknowledged that its airbases suffered some minimal losses but denied that it lost any planes.

When a Bloomberg reporter asked Chauhan about Pakistan’s claims that six Indian jets were downed, Chauhan responded that this information was incorrect.

He went on to say: “What is important is … not the jets being downed but why they were downed.” Some media outlets inferred that his statement appeared to imply that a number of jets were lost in the aerial battle.

The general did not provide details about the number of jets downed or specifics about what these rectified tactics were.

The Pakistani military said India did not fly its fighter jets in the conflict again after suffering the air losses.

On the risks of nuclear war

Media reports suggested that some attacks were near Pakistan’s nuclear sites but the nuclear infrastructure itself was not a target.

“Most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre [3.3ft] to whatever was our selected mean point of impact,” Chauhan said in the interview with Reuters.

Chauhan had previously provided assurances that India was not considering using nuclear weapons during the conflict. The chairman of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, has done the same for his country.

“I think there’s a lot of space before that nuclear threshold is crossed, a lot of signalling before that. I think nothing like that happened. There’s a lot of space for conventional operations which has been created, and this will be the new norm,” Chauhan said.

The Indian general added that on both sides, the most “rational people are in uniform” during conflict because they understand the consequences of “this kind of conflict”.

“I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions. So why should we assume that in the nuclear domain there will be irrationality on someone else’s part?”

On Chinese role

The Indian chief of defence staff said that while Pakistan enjoys a close alliance with China, there was no sign that Beijing helped Islamabad during the conflict.

China sits on India’s northern and eastern borders and controls a barely inhabited northeastern zone in Kashmir called Aksai Chin.

“We didn’t find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,” Chauhan said.

When Chauhan was asked whether China provided Pakistan with intelligence information such as satellite imagery, the Indian general responded by saying that such information is commercially available and Pakistan could have obtained it from China or other sources.

However, Chauhan said “almost 80 percent of the equipment” in Pakistan has been procured from China in the past few years.

From 2020 to 2025, China supplied 81 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Chinese jets got a boost after media reports said Pakistan used Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighter jets in the air battle. The Chinese government did not officially confirm that the J-10C jets were used to down Indian jets, but China Central Television, a state broadcaster, posted on social media on May 17 that the jets achieved actual combat results for the first time.

What’s next

Chauhan said that while hostilities have ceased, India would “respond precisely and decisively should there be any further terror attacks emanating from Pakistan”. He added that this will be a new normal for India.

“So that has its own dynamics as far [as] the armed forces are concerned. It will require us to be prepared 24/7.”

The president of the main opposition Indian National Congress party said Chauhan’s admission warrants a review of India’s defence preparedness.

“There are some very important questions which need to be asked. These can only be asked if a Special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened,” Mallikarjun Kharge wrote in an X post on Saturday.

Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added: “The Modi Govt has misled the nation. The fog of war is now clearing.”

“We salute [the Indian military’s] resolute courage and bravery,” Kharge said. “However, a comprehensive strategic review is the need of the hour.”

The Congress party has called the Pahalgam attack a “security and intelligence failure” and sought accountability, given that India-administered Kashmir is directly governed from New Delhi.

Rizza Alee is from Indian-administered Kashmir. He takes us on a journey of his day-to-day life, and how it’s changed since May, when hostilities broke out  between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. His video diary shows the uncertainty that comes with living in a region affected by a decades-old conflict.

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Javaid Iqbal opens a photo on his mobile phone. It shows a little girl sporting a pink woollen beanie, a grey trinket slung loosely around her neck – her face beaming in a wide smile.

Five-year-old Maryam, his daughter, who happily posed for the photo only last month. Today, she is no more.

Maryam was killed on the morning of May 7 when an explosive landed on their home in Sukha Katha, a cluster of some 200 homes in Poonch district of Indian-administered Kashmir, some 20km (12 miles) from the Line of Control (LoC), India’s de facto border with Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region.

“Oh, Maryam,” Iqbal, 36, cries out, clutching the phone to his chest. “This is a loss I cannot live with.”

Maryam was among at least 21 civilians – 15 of them in Poonch – killed in cross-border shelling in Indian-administered Kashmir in early May as the South Asian nuclear powers and historical enemies engaged in their most intense military confrontation in decades. For four days, they exchanged missiles and drones, and stood on the precipice of their fifth war before they announced a ceasefire on May 10.

That truce has since held, even though tensions remain high and both nations have launched diplomatic outreach initiatives to try and convince the rest of the world about their narrative in a conflict that dates back to 1947, when the British left the subcontinent, cleaving it into India and Pakistan.

But for families of those who lost relatives in the cross-border firing, the tenuous peace along the LoC at the moment means little.

“My heart bleeds when I think of how you [Maryam] died in my arms,” wails Iqbal.

‘The earth rattled beneath us’

For decades, residents along the LoC have found themselves caught in the line of fire between India and Pakistan, who have fought three of their four previous wars over Kashmir. Both control parts of the region, with two tiny slivers also administered by China. But India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan also claims all of the region except the parts governed by China, its ally.

In 2003, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire along the LoC that – despite frequent border skirmishes and killings of civilians on both sides – broadly held, and was renewed in 2021.

But on April 22, gunmen killed 25 tourists and a Kashmiri pony rider in Pahalgam, a scenic resort in Indian-administered Kashmir, starting the latest chapter in the India-Pakistan conflict over the region.

New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing the gunmen, a charge that Islamabad denied. Since the beginning of an armed rebellion against India’s rule in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1989, New Delhi has accused Islamabad of training and financially supporting the rebels. Islamabad says it only provides diplomatic and moral support to the separatist movement.

On May 7, the Indian military responded to the Pahalgam killings by launching missiles at multiple cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India claimed it struck “terror camps” and killed about 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan said more than 50 people were killed – but most were civilians, with a military personnel also killed.

Pakistan responded with heavy cross-border firing. Iqbal says he was jolted awake at about 2am on May 7 by the sounds of artillery shells landing “one after the other, their thuds rattling the earth beneath us”.

“I made frantic calls to everyone, like police, officials in administration I knew, and on toll-free emergency numbers like 108, pleading with them to rescue me and my family,” he told Al Jazeera. “But no one came.”

He says he huddled his family – his wife, three children and three children of his brother who were with them at the time – in an outhouse abutting their main house, hoping that cinder blocks on top of the structure would make it more resilient to any Pakistani shells.

The explosions kept getting closer.

Shortly after sunrise, he says, a shell whizzed across the mountains, a trail of smoke streaming behind it, and landed with an explosion close to their shelter. Its splinters hurtled in every direction, blasting through the walls behind which Iqbal and his family had sought refuge.

As he squinted through the smoky haze, his eyes rested on Maryam, whose little body was perforated with hot metal shards as she lay listless amid the debris, which was soaked with her blood.

“I called a friend for help. He alerted the administration, who sent an ambulance, which tried to come near our house, but the continuous shelling forced it to return,” he said, adding that the ambulance attempted to come closer five times but could not.

By the time the shelling subsided and they could get to a hospital, Maryam was dead. Her sister, 7-year-old Iram Naaz, was also hit by a splinter in her forehead and is currently recovering in the family’s ancestral village in Qasba, close to the LoC.

A ghost town

The shelling continued in Sukha Katha for three days. Today, it looks like a ghost town, its ominous silence shattered only by the strong gales of wind sweeping through the open doors and windows of empty homes, with curtains fluttering and dust swirling around them.

Most residents who fled the shelling haven’t returned.

“There are about 200 homes here and they are empty because everyone has fled to safety,” said Muhammad Mukhar, a 35-year-old resident. He and a few others remained. “We are just keeping an eye out for thieves. These townspeople are unlikely to return soon because things are still uncertain.”

The villagers have reasons to remain fearful of more attacks, says Kashmiri political analyst Zafar Choudhary. He says the loss of civilian lives on the Indian side of the border in Poonch is due to the “peculiar” topography of the region, which confers a “unique advantage” to Pakistan.

“Most of the towns and villages on the Indian side are situated down in the valleys while Pakistani army posts remain high on the mountain tops, overlooking the civilian habitations here,” he says. “Even if India retaliates, the civilian loss to the Pakistani side would remain minimal. This makes border towns such as Poonch vulnerable.”

At Khanetar, a town of rundown structures of bricks and rebars overhung with life-size advertisements of soda drinks, an asphalt road zigzags through the forests and ravines and links the border areas of Poonch with the plains of Jammu, in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir.

In this village, a Pakistani shell explosion killed 13-year-old Vihan Kumar inside the family’s car when they were trying to escape the firing. The boy died on the spot, his skull ripped open.

“It was a loud sound, and at once, my son was in a pool of blood,” recalls Sanjeev Bhargav, Vihan’s father. “We immediately rushed to the district hospital in Poonch, where Vihan breathed his last.” Vihan was the only child of his parents.

‘Naked dance of death’

Meanwhile, at the intensive care unit of the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu, the second largest city in Indian-administered Kashmir, about 230km (140 miles) southeast of Poonch, Arusha Khan is consoling her husband, Rameez Khan, a 46-year-old teacher, who is battling for his life after shrapnel punctured the left side of his liver.

They are mourning the loss of their twins – son Zain Ali and daughter Urba Fatima – who died in the shelling of their house on May 7. They had turned 12 in April.

The family was cowering inside their home in Poonch when the frightened twins called their uncle, Arusha’s brother Aadil Pathan, who lived in Surankote, in the same district, about 40km (25 miles) away, pleading with him to save them.

“The children were scared to their wits’ end,” Arusha’s sister Maria Pathan tells Al Jazeera over the telephone. “Aadil left home in his car at 5:30am and reached their place an hour later.”

Maria says Aadil called out from outside the house and swung open the door of his car. But as soon as the trapped family came out and began to dash in the direction of the car, a shell struck. Urba died on the spot. Rameez also suffered “tremendous blood loss” from his injuries, Maria said.

“And suddenly, Arusha couldn’t see Zain around,” says Maria. “He was injured and had staggered into a neighbour’s home about 100 metres (300ft) away. When Arusha rushed to see him, he was just a body on the floor.” He, too, had died.

“We don’t wish even for our enemies what has happened to my sister and her family,” Maria says amid sobs.

Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia, says attacks on children during such conflicts between two nations could constitute war crimes.

“Indiscriminately striking civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law,” she says, speaking to Al Jazeera. “If such attacks are committed willfully, they would amount to war crimes.”

Poonch-based politician Shamim Ganai says the destruction wreaked by the Pakistani shelling was a “naked dance of death”.

“We weren’t prepared for what we eventually came to experience. There were no preparations to evacuate people. People were simply running, many even barefoot, holding on to chickens and other belongings in their arms,” he recalls.

“I have lived through previous border clashes,” he says. “But this was nothing like I have ever seen.”

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – In a quiet laser clinic in Indian-administered Kashmir’s biggest city, Srinagar, Sameer Wani sits with his arm stretched out, his eyes following the fading ink on his skin.

The word “Azadi” (freedom in Urdu), once a bold symbol of rebellion against India’s rule, slowly disappears under the sting of the laser. What was once a mark of defiance has become a burden he no longer wants to carry.

As Sameer, 28, watches the ink vanish, his mind drifts to a day he will never forget. He was riding his motorbike with a friend when Indian security forces stopped them at a checkpoint.

During the frisking, one of the officers pointed to the tattoo on his arm and asked, “What is this?”

Sameer’s heart raced. “I was lucky he couldn’t read Urdu,” he tells Al Jazeera, his voice tinged with the memory. “It was a close call. I knew right then that this tattoo could get me into serious trouble.”

When he was younger, he said, the tattoo was a “sign of strength, of standing up for something”.

“But now I see it was a mistake. It doesn’t represent who I am any more. It’s not worth carrying the risk, and it’s not worth holding on to something that could hurt my future.”

Sameer is one of many young Kashmiris choosing to erase tattoos that once reflected their political beliefs, emotional struggles or identity. Once worn with pride, the tattoos are now being removed in growing numbers across the region – quietly and without fanfare.

While a trend to remove tattoos was already under way, the urgency has deepened since India and Pakistan – who have fought three wars over Kashmir since emerging as independent nations in 1947 – came to the brink of yet another war following the killing of 26 people in the scenic resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

New Delhi accuses Islamabad of backing an armed rebellion that erupted on the Indian side in 1989. Pakistan rejects the allegation, saying it only provides moral diplomatic support to Kashmir’s separatist movement.

Two weeks after Pahalgam, India, on May 7, launched predawn drone and missile attacks on what it called “terror camps” inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir – the most extensive cross-border missile strikes since their war in 1971. For the next three days, the world held its breath as the South Asian nuclear powers exchanged fire until United States President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between them on May 10.

However, peace remains fragile in Indian-administered Kashmir, where a crackdown by Indian forces has left the region gripped by fear. Homes of suspected rebels have been destroyed, others have been raided, and more than 1,500 people have been arrested since the Pahalgam attack, many under preventive detention laws.

‘We feel it on our skin’

In such a tense atmosphere, many Kashmiri youth say they feel exposed – and more vulnerable to scrutiny over even the most personal forms of expression.

“Every time something happens between India and Pakistan, we feel it on our skin – literally,” Rayees Wani, 26, a resident of Shopian district, tells Al Jazeera.

“I have a tattoo of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s name on my arm, and after the Pahalgam attack, I started getting strange looks at checkpoints,” he said, referring to the separatist leader who passed away at the age of 91 in 2021. The Hurriyat is an alliance of pro-freedom groups in Indian-administered Kashmir.

“Even my friends ask me uncomfortable questions. The media, police, and even the neighbours start looking at you differently,” Rayees added.

“I just wish people understood that a tattoo doesn’t define someone’s loyalty or character. We are just trying to live, not explain ourselves every day. I want to erase this as soon as possible.”

Arsalan, 19, from Pulwama recently booked a tattoo removal session. He did not share his last name over fears of reprisal from the authorities.

“People with visible tattoos – especially those hinting at past political affiliations – are suddenly worried they could be profiled, questioned – or worse,” he said.

To be sure, tattoo culture itself isn’t fading in Kashmir. Tattoo studios are still busy, especially with clients aged between 22 and 40, many of whom wait for hours to get inked. But the trend has shifted; instead of political or religious tattoos, people now prefer minimalistic designs, nature-inspired patterns, names or meaningful quotes in stylish fonts.

Some Kashmiris trying to get rid of tattoos say that’s part of their personal evolution and growth.

“For me, it was about being brave,” Irfan Yaqoob from Baramulla district told Al Jazeera. Now 36, Yaqoob got a slain rebel’s name tattooed on his left arm when he was a teenager.

“Back then, it felt like a symbol of courage. But now, when I look at it, I realise how much I have changed. Life has moved on, and so have I. I have a family, a job, and different priorities. I don’t want my past to define me or create trouble in the present. That’s why I decided to get it removed. It’s not about shame. It’s about growth,” he said.

Many reasons to remove tattoos

It isn’t just the security forces that are driving this move among many Kashmiris to get rid of tattoos.

For some, tattoos became painful reminders of a turbulent past. For others, they turned into obstacles, especially when they tried to move ahead professionally or wanted to align the inscription on their bodies with their personal beliefs.

Anas Mir, who also lives in Srinagar, had a tattoo of a sword with “Azadi” written over it. He got it removed a few weeks ago.

“People don’t clearly say why they are removing tattoos. I removed mine only because of pressure from my family,” the 25-year-old said.

“It’s my choice what kind of tattoo I want. No one should judge me for it. If someone had an AK-47 or a political tattoo, that was their choice. The authorities or government shouldn’t interfere. And yes, tattoo trends also change with time,” he added, referring to the Russian-made Avtomat Kalashnikova assault rifles, arguably the most popular firearm in the world.

One of the key reasons behind people removing tattoos is religion. In a Muslim-majority region, tattoos, especially those carrying religious or political messages, could often conflict with the faith’s teachings.

Faheem, 24, had a Quranic verse tattooed on his back when he was 17.

“At that time, I thought it was an act of faith,” he told Al Jazeera, without revealing his last name over security fears. “But later, I realised that tattoos – especially with holy verses – are not encouraged [in Islam]. It started to bother me deeply. I felt guilty every time I offered namaz [prayers] or went to the mosque. That regret stayed with me. Getting it removed was my way of making peace with myself and with my faith.”

Many others said they shared the feeling. Some visit religious scholars to ask whether having tattoos affects their prayers or faith. While most are advised not to dwell on past actions, they are encouraged to take steps that bring them closer to their beliefs.

“It’s not about blaming anyone,” said Ali Mohammad, a religious scholar in Srinagar. “It’s about growth and understanding. When someone realises that something they did in the past doesn’t align with their beliefs any more, and they take steps to correct it, that’s a sign of maturity, not shame.”

Another key factor driving tattoo removals is job security. In Kashmir, government jobs are seen as stable and prestigious. But having a tattoo, especially one with political references, can create problems during recruitment or background checks.

Talib, who disclosed his first name only, had a tattoo of a Quranic verse shaped like an AK-47 rifle on his forearm. When he applied for a government position, a family friend in law enforcement hinted it might be an issue.

“He didn’t say it directly, but I could tell he was worried,” said the 25-year-old. “Since then, I have been avoiding half-sleeve shirts. I got many rejections and no one ever gave a clear reason, but deep down, I knew the tattoo was a problem. It felt like a wall between me and my future.”

As the demand for tattoo removal rises, clinics in Srinagar and other parts of Indian-administered Kashmir are seeing a steady increase in clients. Laser sessions, once rare, are now booked weeks in advance.

Mubashir Bashir, a well-known tattoo artist in Srinagar who also runs a tattoo removal service, said: “After a popular singer’s death in 2022, the trend of AK-47 tattoos exploded,” Bashir said. Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala, whose music often glorified guns, was killed in May 2022. Police blamed his death on an inter-gang rivalry.

“But now, especially after the Pahalgam attack, we are seeing more people coming in to erase those tattoos. The fear is real,” Mubashir said.

He estimated that tens of thousands of tattoos have been removed in the region over the past seven years, since 2019, when India abrogated Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status and launched a major crackdown, arresting thousands of civilians. “Some say the tattoo no longer represents them. Others mention problems at work or while travelling,” Mubashir said.

Laser tattoo removal isn’t easy. It requires multiple sessions, costs thousands of rupees and can be painful. Even after successful removal, faint scars or marks often remain. But for many Kashmiris, the pain is worth it.

Sameer, whose “Azadi” tattoo is almost gone, remembers the emotional weight of the process. “I didn’t cry when I got the tattoo,” he says. “But I cried when I started removing it. It felt like I was letting go of a part of myself.”

Still, Sameer believes it was the right choice. “It’s not about shame,” he says. “I respect who I was. But I want to grow. I want to live without looking over my shoulder.”

As he finishes another laser session, a faint scar is all that is left of the word that is Kashmir’s war-cry for freedom.

“I will never forget what that tattoo meant to me when I was 18,” Sameer says as he rolls down his sleeve. “But now, I want to be someone new. I want a life where I don’t carry old shadows.”

In the aftermath of the armed insurgency that erupted in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir in 1989, the valley fell into what Basharat Peer called ‘Curfewed Night’—a’ prolonged nightmare. Three decades later, New Delhi revoked Article 370, apparently to spur investment and deepen integration in the valley. Yet, for Kashmiris, the nightmare has not ended. The recent attack in Pahalgam, which led to Operation Sindoor, serves as an unmuted episode in Kashmir’s nightmare.

Decades ago, Kashmiris inscribed ‘Q.K.’ (Quit Kashmir) on courtyard walls, and slogans like ‘Go India Go,’ ‘Al-Umar,’ and ‘Taeju’ echoed through the valley. During a 2008 visit to KASHMIR, Arundhati Roy recorded hearing chants such as ‘Dhoodh maango ge, kheer dein ge; Kashmir maango ge, cheer dein ge’ (Ask for milk, we’ll give you dessert; ask for Kashmir, we’ll tear you apart). Today, those slogans have faded. Headlines now highlight G20 meetings and post-2019 booms in tourism and investment. This raises a critical question: has the revocation of Article 370 erased half a century of resentment in just six years?

The Pahalgam attack challenges the narrative of Modi’s prosperous ‘Naya Kashmir.’ According to the managing editor of Kashmir Times, ‘normalcy has proved to be a mirage in Kashmir.’ After India’s 2019 clampdown silenced most headlines, KASHMIR faded away from the memory of the international community. But silence does not translate into peace. Within a month of the revocation of Article 370, more than 200 politicians, 100 community leaders, and many outspoken activists were imprisoned. There has been a systemic institutionalization of information control. Journalists and human rights defenders have been harassed, detained, and accused of ‘terrorism’ for reporting gross human rights violations in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmiris witness collective punishment. The human cost is profound: in 2022, a Kashmiri man lost his overseas job, faced financial hardship, and struggled with legal burdens because his brother, a journalist, was arrested for sharing a protest video on Twitter (now X).

Farah Bashir recounts in her memoir that every Kashmiri lives with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or is described as being possessed by a djinn—a traditional way of expressing mental anguish. During crackdowns, soldiers storm homes, ransack belongings, and scatter staples like rice and flour across the floor. These crackdowns often lead to food shortages and, at times, starvation. Reigniting collective trauma, Indian security forces launched a sweeping crackdown following the Pahalgam attack across the valley. Kashmiri students in Jammu and across northern Indian states have faced a wave of violence, threats, and communal slurs. Around 1,500 Kashmiris have been placed under preventive detention. India’s response to the attack shows how the country continues to conflate security with collective punishment. For those born after 1990, fear and resistance have become normalized elements of daily life. Repression in Occupied Kashmir has migrated from open violence to more invisible, psychological forms of control. 

In 2021, the Russell Tribunal on Kashmir warned that the Valley had reached the brink of genocide, fueled by Hindutva-driven policies carried out with impunity. Yet, this reality remains largely invisible in both Indian and global media. The absence of independent reporting suggests that media bias is deeply entrenched, systematically sidelining accounts of state violence. It was only after the mass casualties of Indian tourists in the Pahalgam attack that global attention briefly redirected towards the situation in Occupied Kashmir, highlighting how the region’s persistent human rights crisis otherwise remains marginalized in international discourse.

Only a few Indian analysts have criticized their mainstream media for perpetuating the illusion of normalcy in the disputed territory, arguing that this portrayal masks the enduring reality of Jammu and Kashmir as a war zone. Thousands of Indian troops are omnipresent, and every Friday, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is placed under house arrest to prevent him from leading prayers. 

Since 2019, normalcy in Kashmir has been manufactured through repression, control of the media, and projection of economic development. As long as dissent is crushed, histories erased, and trauma left unhealed, Occupied Kashmir will remain a conflict unresolved—silenced, perhaps, but far from settled. 

Four days after India and Pakistan reached a ceasefire after a rapid escalation in a military conflict between them, key differences between their battlefield claims remain unresolved.

Among them is Pakistan’s assertion that it shot down five Indian fighter jets on May 7, the first day of fighting, in response to Indian attacks on its territory.

As a battle of narratives takes over from the actual fighting, Al Jazeera takes stock of what we know about that claim, and why, if true, it matters.

What happened?

Tensions between India and Pakistan erupted into military confrontation on May 7 after India bombed nine sites across six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

India said it had struck what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in response to the deadly April 22 killings of tourists by suspected rebels in India-administered Kashmir.

Gunmen on April 22 shot dead 25 male tourists and a local pony rider in the picturesque meadows of Pahalgam, triggering outrage and calls for revenge in India. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for supporting the fighters responsible for the attack, a charge Islamabad denied.

Pakistan said Indian forces on May 7 struck two cities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and four sites in the country’s largest province, Punjab. It said civilians were killed in the attacks. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rejected the Pakistani claims, reiterating that Indian forces “struck only those who harmed our innocents”.

Over the next four days, the two nuclear-armed neighbours were engaged in tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, while unleashing drones into each other’s territories.

Amid fears of a nuclear exchange, top officials from the United States made calls to Indian and Pakistani officials to end the conflict.

On May 10, US President Donald Trump announced that Washington had successfully mediated a ceasefire between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Despite initial accusations of violations by both sides, the ceasefire has continued to hold so far.

Pakistan reported on Tuesday that Indian strikes killed at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children, while India has said at least five military personnel and 16 civilians died.

What has Pakistan claimed?

Speaking to Al Jazeera shortly after the May 7 attacks, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Islamabad, in retaliation, had shot down five Indian jets, a drone, and many quadcopters.

Later in the day, Pakistan’s military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said the warplanes had all been downed inside Indian territory, and aircraft from neither side crossed into the other’s territory during the attacks – an assertion India seconded.

“Neither India nor Pakistan had any need to send their own aircraft out of their own national airspace,” British defence analyst Michael Clarke told Al Jazeera.

“Their standoff weapons all had long enough ranges to reach their evident targets whilst flying in their own airspace,” Clarke, who is a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, added.

On Friday, Pakistan’s Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed claimed that among the five downed aircraft were three Rafales, a MiG-29, and an Su-30, providing electronic signatures of the aircraft, in addition to the exact locations where the planes were hit.

The battle between Pakistani and Indian jets lasted for just over an hour, Ahmed, who is also the deputy chief of operations, told reporters.

He stated that the confrontation featured at least 60 Indian aircraft, among them 14 French-made Rafales, while Pakistan deployed 42 “hi-tech aircraft,” including American F-16s and Chinese JF-17s and J-10s.

What has been India’s response?

After Chinese state news outlet The Global Times wrote that Pakistan had brought down Indian fighter planes, India’s embassy in China described the report as “disinformation”.

However, beyond that, New Delhi has not formally confirmed or denied the reports.

Asked specifically whether Pakistan had managed to down Indian jets, India’s Director General of Air Operations AK Bharti avoided a direct answer.

“We are in a combat scenario and losses are a part of it,” he said. “As for details, at this time I would not like to comment on that as we are still in combat and give advantage to the adversary. All our pilots are back home.”

What else do we know?

Beyond the official accounts, local and international media outlets have reported different versions of Pakistan’s claims of downing the jets.

According to Indian security sources who spoke to Al Jazeera, three fighter jets crashed inside India-controlled territory.

They did not confirm which country the warplanes belonged to. However, with neither side suggesting that Pakistani planes crossed into Indian airspace, any debris in Indian-controlled territory likely comes from an Indian plane.

Reuters news agency also reported, citing four government sources in Indian-administered Kashmir, that three fighter jets crashed in the region. Reports in CNN said that at least two jets crashed, while a French source told the US outlet that at least one Rafale jet had been shot down.

Photos taken by AP news agency photo journalists showed debris of an aircraft in the Pulwama district in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Will both sides ever agree on what happened?

Defence analyst Clarke said if India has indeed lost a Rafale, that would certainly be “embarrassing”.

“If it came down inside Indian territory, which must be the case if one was destroyed, then India will want to keep it only as a rumour for as long as possible,” he added.

“India has said that “losses” are inevitable, and that is probably as near as they will get to admitting a specific aircraft loss for a while.”

Pakistan reiterates its commitment to the ceasefire but warns it will respond forcefully to any future Indian attacks.

India has ordered a Pakistani diplomat to leave the country within 24 hours as tensions simmer in the wake of heavy military exchanges between the nuclear-armed neighbours before a ceasefire was agreed last week.

The unnamed official, stationed at Pakistan’s embassy in New Delhi, was accused by India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday of “indulging in activities not in keeping with his official status”.

The move comes after a brief but intense military confrontation last week that threatened to erupt into the fifth full-scale war between the two countries. While the truce brought a temporary halt to cross-border missile and drone strikes, sporadic skirmishes continue along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border  in disputed Kashmir, a region claimed by both nations.

On Tuesday, Pakistan reiterated its commitment to the ceasefire but warned it would respond forcefully to any future attacks.

The statement came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned in his first national address since the truce that India would strike “terrorist hideouts” across the border if provoked again.

The ultranationalist Hindu leader added that India “only paused” its military action against Pakistan.

Modi’s remarks were swiftly condemned by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which called them “provocative and inflammatory”.

“At a time when international efforts are being made for regional peace and stability, this statement represents a dangerous escalation,” it said.

“Pakistan remains committed to the recent ceasefire understanding and taking necessary steps towards de-escalation and regional stability,” the statement continued, adding that any future aggression would receive a response.

The conflict ignited after a deadly April 22 shooting attack in the Pahalgam area of India-administered Kashmir, where 25 Indian tourists and one Nepalese visitor were killed. India accused Pakistan’s government of links to the attacks – an accusation Islamabad strongly denied.

India launched strikes on what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

According to Islamabad, 40 civilians and 11 Pakistani military personnel were killed in last week’s violence. India said at least 16 civilians and five Indian soldiers were killed.

The fighting marked the most severe exchange between the two countries in nearly 30 years and ended only after sustained diplomatic pressure. On Monday, India said it held a rare phone call with Pakistan’s military leaders, agreeing to uphold the ceasefire and explore ways to de-escalate the conflict.

Fragile ceasefire

Despite the ceasefire, sporadic violence continued on Tuesday with Indian forces reporting a gun battle in southern Kashmir’s Shopian district. The army said three suspected fighters were killed in a “search and destroy” operation launched on intelligence input.

On Tuesday, Modi visited Adampur airbase near the border and reiterated India’s stance in a speech to air force personnel. “We will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism,” he said.

“We will enter their dens and hit them without giving them an opportunity to survive.”

Meanwhile, both sides have taken a series of retaliatory diplomatic and economic measures.

India has suspended most visa services for Pakistani nationals, halted bilateral trade and announced its intention to unilaterally suspend the Indus Waters Treaty, a World Bank-brokered water-sharing agreement in place since 1960 that is critical for farming.

In response, Pakistan banned visas for Indians, closed its airspace to Indian aircraft and imposed a reciprocal trade embargo.