Everything Will Change After the Kashmir Attack

• Everything Will Change After the Kashmir Attack
  by Barkha Dutt, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
  Kashmir has endured roughly 30 years of insurgency, and the region is almost tragically numbed to headlines about terrorism, turmoil and tragedy. But what unfolded Thursday — the worst terrorist attack in decades — will fundamentally change both India’s internal policy within the state and its relations with Pakistan.
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  More than 40 paramilitary police officers were killed by a suicide bomber from the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Indians are apoplectic. This is clearly an act of war. And the man reportedly behind it, Maulana Masood Azhar, is free and operating with absolute impunity in Pakistan. That he was released in 1999 from an Indian prison — in a swap deal for the safety of passengers taken hostage in a commercial airline — makes Indians even angrier.
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  Two decades later, Masood Azhar has not been brought to justice. Instead, he hides in plain sight in Bahawalpur, in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, and is now allowed to address huge Islamist militant gatherings over audio speakers in other parts of Pakistan.
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  There will almost certainly be a strong military response from India. In September 2016, when an army camp was assaulted by terrorists who had infiltrated from Pakistan into Kashmir, the Narendra Modi government sent in commandos to Pakistan to carry out targeted counterattacks. The scale of this attack is much bigger and, likely, so too will be the response from India.
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  Pakistan has long operated on the assumption that two nuclear nations will not and cannot escalate their conflict above a certain threshold. It is this calculation that emboldens Pakistan’s asymmetric war against India, in which terror groups are proxies for its deep state. Well before 9/11, India was already battling this terrorism — mostly alone.
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  Today, as condemnations pour in from countries across the globe, leading international powers must take their share of blame for their unwillingness or inability to draw a red line around Pakistan’s patronage of terror. India’s response should be calibrated, restrained and responsible. Modi will be under enormous pressure to react swiftly. More so because the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has always claimed to be more nationalistic than the opposition. And with elections just a month or so away, the government has a short window to make its point.
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