India and Pakistan have announced tit-for-tat suspensions of visas for each other’s citizens with immediate effect in the aftermath of the deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir that killed at least 26 people.
Pakistan on Thursday cancelled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all India-owned or India-operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India including to and from any third country. Islamabad also reportedly expelled all Indian defence, air and naval attaches.
In a statement issued at around the same time, India’s foreign ministry said all visas issued to Pakistani nationals would be revoked with effect from Sunday. It advised Indian citizens not to travel to Pakistan, and for any Indian citizens in Pakistan to leave as soon as possible.
Thursday’s developments did nothing to dispel the expectation that India will conduct some form of military strike against Pakistan in response for the attack on Pahalgam in south Kashmir. Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh has promised a “strong response”. Pakistan’s government, meanwhile, says India has provided no evidence to show it was connected to the Pahalgam gunmen, none of whom have yet been apprehended.
India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir but both claim the territory in its entirety. New Delhi typically describes all militancy in Kashmir as Pakistan-backed terrorism. Pakistan denies this, and many Muslim Kashmiris consider the militants to be part of a home-grown separatist struggle.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, in his first public statement following the terror attack, declared that India would “identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
India on Wednesday expelled Pakistani diplomats and suspended the landmark 1960s Indus Water Treaty until the neighbouring nation “credibly and irrevocably” ends “support for cross-border terrorism”. Pakistan said any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan will be considered an act of war.
In a sweeping diplomatic offensive against Pakistan after the attack at the popular tourist destination of Pahalgam, New Delhi summoned Islamabad’s top diplomat, Saad Ahmad Warraich, and handed him a notice declaring him persona non grata, foreign secretary Vikram Misri said.
It also ordered all defence advisers at Pakistan’s embassy to leave within a week and moved to withdraw its own military staff from Islamabad. “These posts in the respective high commissions are deemed annulled,” Mr Misri added. “Five support staff of the service advisers will also be withdrawn from both high commissions.”
Pakistan said the Indian High Commission in Islamabad will be reduced to 30 diplomats and staff members from 31 April. The move came after a Cabinet Committee on Security meeting chaired by Mr Modi formulated a list of punitive measures against Pakistan.
Mr Modi said: “India’s spirit will never be broken by terrorism. Terrorism will not go unpunished. Every effort will be made to ensure that justice is done. The entire nation is firm in this resolve.”
“Everyone who believes in humanity is with us. I thank the people of various countries and their leaders who have stood with us. The punishment will be significant and stringent, which these terrorists would have never even thought about.”
Of all the measures announced by India, it is the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty that analysts say will have the most profound consequences. The treaty gives India the unrestricted right to use the waters of the eastern rivers – Sutlej, Beas and Ravi – and entitles Pakistan to the western rivers of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
The Integrated Check Post at Attari has been closed. The border crossing, one of the last active conduits between the two countries, has played a vital role in facilitating limited trade, religious pilgrimages and diplomatic interaction over the years.
Addressing the media, Mr Misri said the Cabinet Committee on Security had assessed the overall security environment and instructed all forces to remain on high alert.
Military analysts do not discount the possibility of action similar to the cross-border strikes on Pakistan in 2016 and 2019.
After a militant attack in Kashmir’s Uri in September 2016 killed 19 Indian soldiers, the military conducted what it termed “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control, the de facto border with Pakistan, targeting suspected militant launch pads. In 2019, the Indian air force launched airstrikes on a suspected militant camp in Balakot, the first deep strike in Pakistan since the 1971 war, after more than 40 paramilitary troops were killed by a suicide bomber in Kashmir’s Pulwama. Pakistan retaliated with air raids of its own.
“We are likely to see a strong response – one that signals resolve to both domestic audiences and actors in Pakistan. Since 2016, and especially after 2019, the threshold for retaliation has been set at cross-border or airstrikes,” military historian Srinath Raghavan told the BBC. “It will be hard for the government to act below that now. Pakistan will likely respond as it did before. The risk, as always, is miscalculation – on both sides.”
Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar called India’s punitive measures “immature” and “hasty”. “India has not given any evidence. They have not shown any maturity in their response,” Mr Dar told a TV channel. “This is a non-serious approach. They started creating hype immediately after the incident.”
Pakistani analysts caution that any confrontation could escalate beyond the 2019 standoff. “Indian escalation already began last night and it will be at a bigger scale than February 2019,” security analyst Syed Muhammad Ali told The New York Times.
He argued that India was exploiting the attack to gain support from the US, ease tensions over US president Donald Trump’s tariff threat, and recast the push for Kashmir’s independence as a terrorist movement.
Former Pakistani diplomat Asif Durrani described the Kashmir attack as “unfortunate and condemnable”, while adding: “but the Indian reaction against Pakistan is a sheer provocation leading to a suicidal course”.
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, cautioned that “jingoism is not strategy”.
“Playing screaming ‘warrior’ on TV is easy but war is always difficult. India and Pakistan have both seen this tragic movie before. Time to try and change the ending,” he said on X.
Meanwhile, in Srinagar, law enforcement authorities publicly identified three of the four suspected assailants, revealing that two are nationals of Pakistan, while the third is from Kashmir. The three attackers are reportedly affiliated with the terror organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba, The Indian Express reported. They have been identified by the police as Hashim Musa alias Suleman, a citizen of Pakistan, Ali Bhai alias Talha Bhai, also a citizen of Pakistan, and Abdul Hussain Thokar, a resident of Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir.
A manhunt is underway. The authorities have also announced a cash reward of two million rupees (£17,600) each for information leading to their capture.
According to senior police officials who spoke with the BBC, around 1,500 people have been detained throughout Kashmir as part of the investigation and questioning process.
Indian TV channels have framed the wider situation in the wake of the Pahalgam attack as a Hindu versus Muslim issue, fuelling polarisation and hatred towards the minority community, and especially Kashmiri Muslims.
Several right-wing Hindu groups have started issuing threats and hostile rhetoric towards Kashmiri Muslims and there have also been reports of violence. In a viral video shared on social media, Kashmiri students in Dera Bassi in the northern city of Chandigarh recounted a brutal midnight attack with sharp weapons inside their hostel, alleging that the campus security didn’t intervene and the Punjab police failed to respond.
