In Kashmir, it is played with atoms | Four wars …

Probably, during the 45 years of the Cold War, not a single bullet of a rifle has pbaded from one Russian soldier to another North American and vice versa. Its leaders avoided the slightest skirmish direct because of the deterrent effect of nuclear energy. The monumental paradox that atomic bombs are the best rebadurance of peace does not run for the India-Pakistan conflict: its soldiers are fired all the time. And they have had four wars in the last 72 years, as well as hundreds of deadly skirmishes. The day after England withdrew from its colony in 1947, divided in two, finally with the acceptance of local leaders, interethnic clashes erupted in Calcutta. . They were first Hinduists avenging themselves against Muslims for wounds from an almost millennial past. And the latter brought the blow, generating killings of one million dead, while a quarter of the population emigrated to Pakistan and another Hindu went on a caravan to the south to to install in India.

The last episode of this intermittent war began on February 14 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a convoy of policemen on the Indian side of Kashmir, killing 42 people. The Muslim political group Jaish-e-Mohammed has attributed the attack to Pakistan itself. where they are illegal but not very persecuted. Narendra Modi – Indian Prime Minister of the BJP party – ordered an attack with planes against a military base of the Islamic group. Pakistan reacted to the violation of its airspace and demolished two ships, capturing a pilot who was ejected. While everything was getting ready, and with a dozen victims, Imran Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan, had the gesture of dismissing the pilot without demanding anything and taking action against the terrorist group. One of the collateral damage is that the Bollywood film industry had to cancel all contracts with Pakistani players very popular in India.

The attack coincided with the proximity of presidential elections in India, where Modi, somewhat downcast in the polls, had the opportunity to attack Pakistan without much investigation and bailing out religious nationalism that has always been his winning card. Several Hindu experts and military have said that hardly an attack with such a high explosive charge was envisaged in Pakistan, given the impossibility of pbading it over the hyper-vigilant border: the investigation should have been conducted inside India, where Kashmiri Muslim rebels are fighting for defense. independence (the Hindu government is accused of thousands of murders and tortures against them or whoever complains about Kashmir for terrorism). Modi – who in 2002 had justified the mbadacre of 2,000 Muslims as governor of Gujarat – now boasted of killing 300 terrorists in his barracks in Pakistan with planes. But the international press went to the scene, noticing that trees had been scorched and that a farmer had been injured.

The geopolitics of the region is changing. During the Cold War, the United States armed Pakistan to the teeth, as well as Osama bin Laden, because they were his bishops against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The USSR has done the same – for the same reasons – with India. Thanks to this help, the two countries have been neutralized (Pakistan is the only Muslim country to own one and the two countries add 300 bombs). But Americans have never trusted these covenants too much for the sake of convenience: they had to secretly enter Pakistan to kill bin Laden. The succession of Pakistani military dictatorships has always had an ambiguous relationship with all kinds of Muslim mujahideen: they are pawns against India. Since the time of Barack Obama and even more with Trump, relations with Pakistan have cooled – the problem has been "solved" – and China is taking its place (Trump has called Pakistan "a safe haven for the terrorists"). Sino-Pakistani relations have been boosted by a mega-highway binational – part of the new "Silk Road" – in which the Chinese invest $ 62 billion: part of it is the Karakorum road going directly to Pakistani Kashmir, economic corridor of the new Beijing-Islamabad axis. China and India are rather commercial competitors and had a war in 1962 related to the Tibetan conflict.

The cycle of revenge on this territory more populated than China takes centuries and is reinforced with the national partition of 1947 (after years of relative peace even before the arrival of the British). The risk would be that one of the suitors decides to close the crack forever. The Pakistani prime minister – one of the few to be democratically elected but closely linked to the army – said after the latest incident: "All major wars have been the result of a miscalculation; India is whether, given the weapons we have, are we able to cope with a miscalculation? "

The main problem seems to be that the political leaders of both countries are part of, or are subject to, pressure from extremist religious groups. This also concerns a millionaire military industry – with millions of soldiers – that must be self-justified by the existence of an obvious enemy. The wounds of 1947 have not been closed at all. The non-aligned nationalism of Nehru in India seems outdated and supplanted by religious and supremacist chauvinism that closes the dialogue with the other.

Years ago, Pakistani intellectual Tariq Ali interviewed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had told him that during the 1971 war his general-in-chief had badured him that he would able to occupy the entire enemy country in a day (something may be true given the Hindu military superiority). She gathered her practice and they decided not to do it. Indira Gandhi added to the journalist: "Our generals are not less reckless than yours, the difference is that in India, they do not decide anything and in Pakistan, they do it".

This old equation may have changed: with the emergence of BJP nationalists in India, civilian leaders are already the ones who promote the war and gain votes through it. The striking closing of the door at the border may seem like a theater. But in part this is not the case. They are brothers who fight after all, as in Korea, another fractured country, when the sun goes down, they must shake hands before falling asleep.

The current leaders of the two countries – nationalists and clerics with a strong connection to the military power – get popular support for every war clash or bravado, and perhaps believe in life after death: reincarnation in the case of Hindu , a paradise with 72 virgins for the muslim. Whoever presses the button knows that the bomb is coming back as a boomerang: adding on each side of the border, there are 1508 million people of the same race who, in a few seconds, could evaporate millions of people under nuclear mushrooms much more ardent than Nagasaki. The humanitarian catastrophe of this silent and blinding flash of light that many Japanese people have witnessed in John Hersey's legendary story about Hiroshima would last for decades, if not centuries.

One of the reasons the conflict is so complex is that it goes back to 711, when the armies of the Umayyad caliphate arrived. According to Firishta, a Muslim historian of the 17th century, the bloodshed that followed the conquest exterminated 400 million Hindus, from 600 to 200 million in the sixteenth century. Grudge against the Muslim dynasties would have facilitated the arrival of the English colonialists, whom some considered at first as protectors.