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The Kargil War was a two-month conflict fought in 1999 between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir in the Kargil region. The war began in May when Indian forces discovered that Pakistani paramilitary troops had invaded Indian territory in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani troops had sneaked in during the mountainous region’s harsh winter and occupied several strategic Indian military outposts. Pakistan initially claimed the invaders were members of independent militant groups, but it later became apparent the nation’s military was behind the incursion, possibly without the knowledge of Pakistan’s prime minister. By July, international pressure and the advancing Indian military had driven the Pakistani troops out of the region and brought the war to an end.

The Kashmir conflict is an ongoing dispute between the neighboring South Asian countries of India and Pakistan over control of the Kashmir region, an area that abuts both nations’ northern borders. Since 1947, India and Pakistan have engaged in multiple military confrontations over Kashmir. The two sides have faced off in two wars and numerous smaller exchanges of violence. As of 2022, the situation remains a point of significant concern to the international community, both for humanitarian reasons and because India and Pakistan are both armed with nuclear weapons. A March 2021 assessment of the situation published by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation noted a pattern of rising tensions between the two nations over Kashmir. The tension escalated significantly in 2019 after a Pakistan-aligned suicide bomber carried out a deadly attack on Indian paramilitary forces in Kashmir. The incident prompted India to publicly reconsider its stated “no first use” nuclear weapons policy.

The Line of Control is a 450 mile (724 kilometer) region that marks the military border between India and Pakistan in the disputed state of Kashmir. The two nations were once colonized by the British, but were partitioned in 1947 once India declared its independence. Since then, both nations have laid claim to the region of Kashmir, a mountainous area to the northwest of India. The Line of Control passes through Kashmir, leading to numerous outbreaks of violence between the two nations along the line. Both nations have heavily fortified the region and routinely keep large numbers of soldiers stationed in the area.

Summary: In July 2011, India and Pakistan resumed talks that were part of a "peace process" launched in 2004 and suspended by India in 2008 after a terrorist attack on Mumbai, India. The 2011 talks sought accord on "confidence-building measures" that fall far short of an all-encompassing settlement of the two nations' fundamental dispute over Kashmir. These measures range from adding scheduled bus trips across the Line of Control in Kashmir to benefit families living on either side of the truce line to agreeing on a dam started by India in 1985. The talks resumed after a suspension of more than two years after India accused Pakistan of aiding and abetting terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November 2008. That raid, in turn, was one in a long string of attacks dating from 1989, carried out by radical Islamists wishing to establish a Muslim state, either independent or part of Pakistan, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The conflict over Jammu and Kashmir, usually called simply Kashmir, began in 1947. Kashmir was a quasi-autonomous principality in British India whose Hindu ruler had hoped for complete independence and resisted joining Pakistan or India. After Pakistani Muslim militants invaded in October 1947, Kashmir asked for military aid from India, which they provided on condition that Kashmir cede to India control over defense, foreign relations, and communications, which it did. This arrangement angered the majority Muslim population in Kashmir. A full-scale war between India and Kashmir ensued, the first of two. The second was in 1965. Many analysts view the long string of Islamist terrorist attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India as an undercover war sponsored by the Pakistani military but carried out by civilian militants.

The clashes over Kashmir between India and Pakistan must be understood against the background of India’s struggle for independence from British rule, which lasted approximately two hundred years, and the eventual partition of India and creation of Pakistan at the time of independence . The question of India’s unity as a nation was a major issue that divided the leaders of the Indian subcontinent’s struggle for independence during the years that led up to August 15, 1947, when the British finally relinquished power. The Muslim minority within the predominantly Hindu India was led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who argued for the creation of a separate nation, Pakistan.