The India-Pakistan Relationship Faces Most Serious Escalation in Decades. Here’s How it Got to this Point. By Joanna Slater and Pamela Constable – Washington Post
India launched an airstrike on a target in Pakistan on Tuesday, the most serious escalation in hostilities between the two countries in decades.
According to Indian officials, the strike’s target was the training camp of a Pakistan-based militant group that had claimed responsibility for a massive suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Feb. 14.
The nuclear-armed neighbors have a long history of animosity. The main, ongoing source of conflict is Kashmir, a Himalayan border region whose status has been contested ever since India gained independence and Pakistan was created in the partition of British India.
Since then, the two countries have fought three brief wars — in 1947, 1965 and 1971 — as well as a smaller conflict in 1999. Over the past two decades, there also have been numerous attempts at rapprochement: At one point, secret talks reportedly neared a final resolution on Kashmir…