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29-04-2025
Bureau Report + Agencies
ISLAMABAD/ NEW DELHI/ SRINAGAR: Pakistan’s defence minister said on Monday that a military incursion by neighboring India was imminent in the aftermath of a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir last week, as tensions rise between the two nuclear-armed nations.
The militant attack killed 26 people and triggered outrage in Hindu-majority India, along with calls for action against Muslim-majority Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan of backing militancy in Kashmir, a region both claim and have fought two wars over.
“We have reinforced our forces because it is something which is imminent now, so in that situation some strategic decisions have to be taken, so those decisions have been taken,” Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Reuters in an interview at his office in Islamabad.
Asif said India’s rhetoric was ramping up and that Pakistan’s military had briefed the government on the possibility of an Indian attack. He did not go into further details on his reasons for thinking an incursion was imminent.
After the Kashmir attack, India identified two suspected militants as Pakistani. Islamabad has denied any role and called for a neutral investigation.
Asif said Pakistan was on high alert and that it would only use its arsenal of nuclear weapons if “there is a direct threat to our existence”.
India should not do anything to alienate Kashmiris in its hunt for militants who killed 26 people last week, especially as residents of the Muslim-majority Himalayan region have staged protests against that attack, its chief minister said on Monday.
The April 22 killings of tourists by gunmen from an armed Islamist group have prompted a crackdown on suspected militants in the troubled region, including the demolition of nine homes belonging to the families of suspected Islamist militants.
Hindu-majority India has been fighting an armed insurgency in Kashmir for decades, though in recent years the situation had improved. The picturesque region is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan but ruled only in part by the neighbors.
“We should not do anything to alienate the people after their spontaneous reaction (against the attack),” Omar Abdullah, chief minister of the Indian federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir, said in the local assembly house.
“Guns can only control militancy, not finish it. It will only end when the people are with us. It seems people are now reaching that stage.”
He did not elaborate, but several protests, including candlelight demonstrations and a symbolic day long shutdown, were held in the past week in Kashmir against the attack.
Some Kashmir residents have also spoken out against the move by the authorities to destroy several homes of militants’ families, like that of Rifat Sheikh.
On Monday, she stood next to her razed kitchen, assessing the damage she said was caused by explosives used by the police to demolish the house.
Police say her brother Asif is with the Lashkar-e-Taiba armed group, which New Delhi has declared a terrorist organization and is suspected to have had a role in the April 22 attack. Sheikh said her family had not seen or spoken with Asif after he left home one morning in 2022 on the pretext of going to the local market.
“Why are they punishing us by destroying our house this way for what they say he has done?” she asked. “We don’t know where he is or what he is doing. This is provocation, but I pray that people remain calm.” Two police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter, say they were only acting against homes that retained connections with militants. They denied using explosives or detaining any members of militants’ families.
