The tension between India and Pakistan increased significantly last week, with neighboring countries exchanged shots for several days after Indian missile attacks in Pakistan.
While the two countries announced full ceasefire and soon on Saturday, experts said the danger in the region remained.
The United States spoke with Indian and Pakistani officials to mediate the ceasefire, according to State Secretary Marco Rubio.
India on Saturday night accused Pakistan of violating a ceasefire, saying it was in response to the violation.
This new attack occurred after increasing tension when India continued to blame Pakistan for a deadly attack in April in the disputed Kashmir region, a claim that Pakistan was rejected. The militant attack, known as the Pahalgam incident, killed 26 people in Kashmir controlled by India.
“This is only the newest in a series of conflicts between Pakistan and India,” said Retired Colonel Stephen Ganyard, an ABC news contributor and former Department of Foreign Affairs officials, said. “Since the formation of Pakistan in the mid until the late 40s, the two countries have not been associated.”
With the two countries that have nuclear weapons, the escalation threat is very alarming.
“From anywhere in the world, the easiest to imagine the nuclear exchange that occurs is between Pakistan and India,” Ganyard said. “You have these two neighbors with so much hatred, so many history and many and many nuclear weapons that exchange life shots.”
A man stood in his house which was destroyed by the shooting of the Pakistani artillery in Salabad Village in Uri, May 8, 2025.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images
Kashmir at the Conflict Center
The origin of the new hostility between Pakistan and India mostly came from 1947, when they gained their independence from the British government, according to Surupa Gupta, a professor of political science and international affairs at Mary Washington University in Virginia.
“When you think of the current conflict, this is really about Kashmir,” Gupta told ABC News.
Sovereign countries and princes in children are given the choice to access India or Pakistan at the time of independence, but Kashmir is among those who are not, he said. The authorities at that time finally agreed to sign an accession agreement with India after seeking support for attacks on the state.
“Pakistan is never truly aware of the accession agreement,” Gupta said. “Pakistani’s argument is always that Kashmir, and continues to be, a Muslim majority region, while they see India as a majority Hindu country. Which, but the original story is a secular state.”
The war between India and Pakistan erupted in the Himalayan region, and in 1949, the two countries agreed to build a ceasefire line that divided Kashmir, which was very militarized and monitored by the United Nations.
At present, India controls the southern part of the Kashmir and Pakistan regions controls the northern and western parts, although both claim all Kashmir. China also controls part of the northeast kashmir.
“This is one of the few places in the world where the geography is very tight, where the borders face each other, and therefore tension is often spilled because they are still competing for various parts of Kashmir and Jammu,” said Ganyard.
Continuing to trigger conflicts between India and Pakistan is a strong nationalist sentiment and religious spirit, said Ganyard.
“These are two countries with very strong religious feelings, and that religion is injected into relations between the two countries,” he said. “The very strong Muslim population and a very strong Muslim sentiment in Pakistani politics. Prime Minister Modi in India has become a very enthusiastic Hindu nationalist.”
“Throughout humanity, the most terrible and most bloody type of conflict between humans tends to have religious spirit behind them. And that is part of what makes this so dangerous,” he continued.
For many years of hostility
In the next few decades since getting independence, India and Pakistan have fought and battle, including those that exceed Kashmir.
In recent years, the conflict has been “manifesting itself in the form of terrorist attacks in India,” Gupta said, including deadly attacks on military targets in 2016 and 2019 and siege targeting Mumbai hotels and train stations in 2008.
Since the late 1980s, “India has accused Pakistan of supporting international Islamic terrorist groups operating in Kashmir,” Manjari Chatterjee Miller, a senior colleague for India, Pakistan and South Asia for the Foreign Relations Council, told ABC News.
Tension has been a little calm in recent years, except clashes occasionally along the border area, said Ganyard.
Tourism in Kashmir has also increased in recent years, helping to encourage the economy, and there is a normal taste, “Gupta said.
An Indian paramilitary personnel standing near Pahalgam, south of Srinagar, April 22, 2025, after the attack.
Tauseef Mustafa/AFP Via Getty Images
April 22 attack near the City of Pahalgam Resort targets Indian tourists, with civilian attacks marked the departure of a newer military attack on the military, Gupta and Miller said.
Indian missile attacks on Tuesday, which he said targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in Jammu and Kashmir controlled by Pakistan and Pakistan, “was very clearly a reaction to the massacre of 26 tourists,” said Ganyard.
Before the ceasefire was announced, the world “kind of breathing” and “waiting to see whether the pressure was slightly released,” he said, noting that “for the best interests of both parties not to let this out of hand.”
Neighbor’s nuclear power
Since 1998, both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, each between 160 and 170 weapons, said Ganyard.
Both of them are among a handful of countries that have never signed a nuclear non-perpoliferation agreement. India has a policy that is not used first for its nuclear weapons, which Pakistan did not do, Gupta noted.
“This is why this is very critical. You have a religious spirit that divides the two countries. This anger. You have nationalist pride from both parties. And then you have both sides that have nuclear weapons. Very, very, very dangerous cocktail, which is why it is said outside of control,” said Ganyard.
Another aspect that can increase conflict is water. After the April 22 attack, India suspended the main water agreement with Pakistan regarding the Indus River.
“There are many people who have predicted that the next war will occur in water,” said Ganyard.
India previously did not suspend the agreement, marked “departure,” Gupta said.
If India limits the flow of water to Pakistan, “it can be a reason for war,” said Ganyard.
Both India and Pakistan “have incentives not to increase, but at the same time the risk of escalation, especially through calculation errors, is real,” Miller said. “And whenever you have a conflict between nuclear armed neighbors, this is a serious problem.”
An old man walked past a house that was destroyed by the shooting of Pakistani artillery in Kalgi Village in Uri, May 8, 2025.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images
‘Things -Hal will never be good between these two countries’
In the midst of further escalation concerns in their latest conflict, India and Pakistan announced on Saturday that they had approved full and immediate ceasefire.
In the past, the relationship between India and Pakistan has increased with the help of channel diplomacy and international actors such as the US has spoken to the two, said Gupta.
“There are some examples where military commanders are related,” he said. “Based on shared interest to avoid full scale war, the two countries have lowered it.”
The ceasefire talks were mediated by the US, with Rubio in a statement that praised Indian and Pakistani leaders for “choosing a peaceful way.”
A broader problem over Kashmir, however, may not be resolved in the near future, said Gupta.
India had previously tried to negotiate eternal peace with various Pakistani governments, but “the lack of stability in who rule Pakistan is the main factor,” he said, and the effort has not yet gone anywhere.
“I think there is always the possibility of resolving conflicts, but it seems indirect. It seems impossible in the short term, in the medium term,” he said. “This will require a lot of effort to do it, many very sincere efforts to do it.”
Given the stress variable, “things -things will never be good between these two countries,” said Ganyard.
“Is it water, whether it is religion, whether it is territory, geography-there are so many things that are continuous and will continue to disrupt the relationship between Pakistan and India so that the best we can expect is a kind of low-scale war, or a kind of very high relationship, but not the exchange of nuclear weapons,” he said.