Pakistan has conducted airstrikes over the ceasefire line in disputed Kashmir and claims to have shot down two Indian jets that responded by entering Pakistani airspace, capturing both of the pilots.
India confirmed that one of its pilots is missing in action and said it shot down one of the Pakistani jets as it escaped over the heavily militarised border separating the two.
The skirmishes, a day after India flew sorties into Pakistan for the first time in nearly 50 years, are steep escalations in the most serious military crisis in south Asia since the pair fought a brief war in the Himalayas in 1999.
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Who controls Kashmir?
The region in the foothills of the Himalayas has been under dispute since India and Pakistan came into being in 1947.
Both claim it in full, but each controls a section of the territory, separated by one of the world's most heavily militarised borders: the ‘line of control’ based on a ceasefire border established after a 1947-48 war. China controls another part in the east.
India and Pakistan have gone to war a further two times over Kashmir, most recently in 1999. Artillery, mortar and small arms fire are still frequently exchanged.
How did the dispute start?
After the partition of colonial India in 1947, small, semi-autonomous ‘princely states’ across the subcontinent were being folded into India or Pakistan. The ruler of Kashmir dithered over which to join until tribal fighters entered from Pakistan intent on taking the region for Islamabad.
Kashmir asked Delhi for assistance, signing a treaty of accession in exchange for the intervention of Indian troops, who fought the Pakistanis to the modern-day line of control.
In 1948, the UN security council called for a referendum in Kashmir to determine which country the region would join or whether it would become an independent state. The referendum has never been held.
In its 1950 constitution, India granted Kashmir a large measure of independence. But since then it has eroded some of that autonomy and repeatedly intervened to rig elections and dismiss and jail democratically elected leaders.
What was Kashmir’s special status?
Kashmir’s special status, given in exchange for joining the Indian union, had been in place since 14 May 1954. Under article 370, the state was given a separate constitution, a flag, and autonomy over all matters except for foreign affairs and defence.
An additional provision, article 35a, prevented people from outside the state buying land in the territory. Many Kashmiris believed this was crucial to protecting the demography of the Muslim-majority state and its way of life.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata party repeatedly promised to scrap such rules, a long-term demand of its Hindu nationalist support base. But analysts warned doing so would almost certainly ignite unrest.
On Wednesday 31 October 2019, the government formally revoked Kashmir’s special status. The government argued that the provision had only ever intended to be temporary and that scrapping it would boost investment in Kashmir. Critics, however, said the move would escalate tensions with Pakistan – which quickly called India’s actions illegal – and fuel resentment in Kashmir, where there is an insurgency against Indian rule.
What do the militants want?
There has been an armed insurgency against Indian rule over its section of Kashmir for the past three decades. Indian soldiers and Pakistan-backed guerrillas fought a war rife with accusations of torture, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killing.
Until 2004, the militancy was made up largely of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. Since then, especially after protests were quashed with extreme force in 2016, locals have made up a growing share of the anti-India fighters.
For Indians, control of Kashmir – part of the country’s only Muslim-majority state – has been proof of its commitment to religious pluralism. For Pakistan, a state founded as a homeland for south Asian Muslims, it is the last occupied home of its co-religionists.
Michael Safi and Rebecca Ratcliffe
Imran Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, used a televised address to call for dialogue to prevent more reprisals, making reference to both countries’ nuclear arsenals.
“With the weapons you have and the weapons we have, can we afford miscalculation?” Khan said. “Shouldn’t we think that, if this escalates, what will it lead to?”
Pakistan has released footage purportedly showing one of the captured Indian pilots, a wing commander who gave his name as Abhinandan. His uniform was bloody and a rag was tied around his head. He gave his name, service number, rank and religion, but when asked for more, replied: “I’m sorry sir, that’s all I’m supposed to tell you.”
The country’s armed forces spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor said one pilot was being interrogated and the second was injured and being treated in hospital.
India said it was aware that Pakistan had claimed to have one pilot in its custody. “We are ascertaining the facts,” the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, Raveesh Kumar, told journalists in Delhi.
The dogfights on Wednesday morning – the first publicly acknowledged between the two countries since 1971 – have shut down commercial flights across Pakistan and north India. Flight radar images showed deserted airspace over both countries. All commercial airports in Pakistan have been shut along with eight major Indian airports including those in Jammu city, Srinagar and Amritsar.
In Srinagar, the capital of disputed Kashmir, a work crew could be seen painting a large red cross on the top of Shri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital, marking it out as a medical facility from above.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday morning that it had struck “non-military target[s]” across the ceasefire line in Kashmir without entering Indian airspace to demonstrate its “right, will and capability for self defence”.
“We have no intention of escalation, but are fully prepared to do so if forced into that paradigm,” said Mohammad Faisal, the foreign affairs ministry’s spokesman.
Ghafoor told a media briefing on Wednesday afternoon Pakistan struck six targets on the Indian side of the ceasefire line, ensuring they kept a safe distance away from civilian, administrative or military sites.
“When PAF [Pakistan Air Force] took targets, IAF’s [Indian Air Force] two planes violated the line of control and entered Pakistan,” he said. “PAF was ready, there was an engagement and as a result both Indian planes were shot down. One wreckage fell on our side and another wreckage fell on their side.”
He told the Guardian after the briefing that Pakistan had not entered Indian airspace. “We want to send the message that we have the ability to strike, the capability for self defence, but in the way of a responsible nation,” he said.
But India rejected his account. “[Pakistan] used its air force to target military installation on the Indian side,” Kumar said. “Due to a high state of readiness and alertness Pakistan’s attempt were foiled successfully. The Pakistan air force was a detected and the Indian air force responded instantly.
“In that aerial engagement one Pakistan fighter airplane was shot down by a MiG 21 Bison of the Indian air force. The Pakistan airplane was seen by ground forces falling from the sky on the Pakistan side.”
Pakistan has denied losing an aircraft in the morning’s engagements.
In a national address on Wednesday afternoon, Khan called for talks between Delhi and Islamabad. “I will tell you again that better sense should prevail,” he said. “We should sit down and resolve our problems through dialogue.”
Another Indian aircraft crashed about 150km away in Budgam district on Wednesday, killing at least one person aboard, but it was unrelated to the fighting.
India has been on high alert since Tuesday’s strikes, an operation Islamabad had promised to repay with its own “surprise” attack.
Fighter jets patrolled the skies above Srinagar, the capital of disputed Kashmir, throughout Tuesday night as India and Pakistan traded mortar fire a few hundred miles away at the ceasefire border.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, issued a statement largely supportive of India, characterising its incursion five miles into neighbouring territory a “counter terrorism action” and calling on Pakistan to take “meaningful action against terrorist groups operating on its soil”.
There are still significant questions over what, if anything, was struck by India’s fighter jets in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Both countries agree that Indian jets made it to within at least a few miles of Balakot, a small city about five miles inside Pakistani territory. But accounts diverge from there.
India claims it hit a militant training camp and killed “a very large number” of fighters from the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) group, which took responsibility for a 14 February suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 paramilitaries.
Pakistan says the Indian fighters were confronted before they could reach Balakot and dropped four to five bombs in an open field as they fled back across the border.
Both countries mounted media blitzes to push their particular narrative but had appeared to leave room to de-escalate the conflict.
On Wednesday morning, India’s external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, emphasised that Pakistan’s military was not the target of the sorties.
“No military installations were targeted,” Swaraj said. “The limited objective of the pre-emptive strike was to act decisively against the terrorist infrastructure of the JeM in order to pre-empt another terrorist attack in India.”
She added: “India does not wish see further escalation of the situation and India will continued to act with responsibility and restraint.”
Pakistan is holding a joint session of parliament on Wednesday afternoon followed by a meeting of the National Command Authority, whose responsibilities include overseeing the country’s nuclear arsenal.
“It is your turn now to wait and get ready for our surprise,” Ghafoor said on Tuesday night.
Both armies accused the other of shelling villages and opposition army posts across the line of control that separates Indian and Pakistani controlled Kashmir.
A Pakistani police official told the Associated Press that six people were killed by Indian mortar attacks. Indian security officials did not report any casualties but said villages were hit including Kamalkote and Kalgo, both near the heavily guarded military border.
Two militants allegedly belonging to JeM were shot dead in Indian-controlled Kashmir Shopain district on Wednesday morning, in the fourth counter-insurgency operation since a car laden with explosives was detonated by an Indian paramilitary convoy, sparking the latest round of tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Markets and shops across Kashmir were shut on Wednesday in protest at the arrests of hundreds of separatist activists and leaders in the days before Tuesday’s military operations.