India, under the presumption that Pakistan is culpable for the massacre, responded by closing the main border crossing between the two countries. It has also expelled Pakistani diplomats and revoked the visas of some Pakistani people in India, while it has also suspended a water-sharing treaty the two sides had previously agreed on. Pakistan, maintaining that it wasn’t involved in the massacre, has responded in kind, expelling Indian diplomats and cancelling Indians’ visas, while it has also suspended a peace treaty between the countries.
Worse still, more violence is breaking out on the ground. Indian and Pakistani troops have been firing shots at each other, and India has begun testing missiles. This could very easily spiral out of control, despite a period of relative, if uneasy, stability in the region having held in recent times. That calm seems to be gone now.
Kashmir has been a flashpoint for India and Pakistan for as long they’ve existed as independent nations. A question mark hung over what to do with Kashmir following Britain’s partition of its one-time colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan—honestly, look into any major border dispute in the world today, and there’s a decent chance the Brits were involved in creating it. The region was given a choice: join India or join Pakistan. Kashmir’s maharaja—its monarch—initially wanted independence, but, ultimately, he decided to join with India, though Pakistan maintained its claims over the land. Troops from both sides flooded into the region, and the first war between India and Pakistan was fought across 1947 and 1948. It would not be the last. Several more have followed.
A new war over Kashmir should be avoided for the very obvious reason that it will lead to death and misery for the people of the region. No good can come of it. But, the prospect is especially scary when we consider that both India and Pakistan bear nuclear weapons—India got its first in 1974, and Pakistan followed in 1998. According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, India today has approximately 164 nuclear warheads, with land-based, sea-based and air-launch nuclear capabilities, while Pakistan has approximately 170 warheads. If these sound like low numbers, it is only because we have grown numb to the fact that, between them, the U.S. and Russia bear thousands of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan both hold enough firepower to induce global catastrophe.
Estimates of how many people would die in the event of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan vary greatly, but whichever way you look at it, it would be cataclysmic. If India used 100 of its weapons, while Pakistan used 150, it has been estimated by a 2019 study in the Science Advances journal that between 50 to 125 million people could die. But that doesn’t account for the possibility of a nuclear winter being induced. If that was to happen—that is, the smoke created by the nukes blocks out the sun, which, in turn, drops surface temperatures and restricts rainfall, and, thus, causes mass crop failure and starvation—literally billions of people around the world would be at risk. Recovery from such a nuclear winter scenario could take, maybe, a decade. This is a genuinely apocalyptic prospect.
It isn’t necessarily likely that India or Pakistan would use nukes in a premeditated way. But mistakes can happen. In 2022 India accidentally fired a missile into Pakistan owing to a “technical malfunction.” Nobody was killed and the missile was not loaded with explosives, but what if it had been? What if the Pakistanis had taken it for an armed missile and responded in kind? These slip-ups could lead to nuclear engagement, and there may be no coming back from that. The possibility of a war between these two sides is terrifying, and it should be taken seriously. And what’s worse is that they’re not even the only military or nuclear power in the region. China, holder of around 600 nukes, is a major player in this part of the world, claiming its own part of Kashmir and becoming involved in border skirmishes with India very recently. Should war break out between India and Pakistan, would China avoid being pulled in? Who knows? But the possibility that it wouldn’t is a sobering thought.
The world is today being consumed by wars sparking to life all over the place. Some make it to the news, most do not. But a flare-up in Kashmir could prove to be one of the most dire conflicts on the planet if things continue to deteriorate as they have been this past week. It seems we need to be constantly reminded of this, but nuclear weapons are a very real and ever present threat to life on this planet. Nearly all the countries known to possess them seem to be fast succumbing to war, and the possibility that these obscene weapons may one day be used is consequently rising. It is a notion so scary it is difficult to ponder. But it must be confronted, and an anti-nuclear movement be revitalized. The possibility of another Indian-Pakistani war underpins the urgency of the situation.
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