Kashmir Day in Post May 2025 Conflict

This year’s Kashmir Day, in the wake of the May 2025 conflict, offers an opportunity for reflection and introspection on peace and stability in South Asia. Kashmir Day, observed on the 5^th of February every year since 1990, expresses solidarity with Kashmiris under India’s illegal occupation, highlights Pakistan’s moral and political support for the people of Kashmir, and Pakistan`s principled stance on the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). The symbolism attached to the day rests in India’s illegal occupation of the region, inability to ensure security therein, and even-handed colonial rule towards the oppressed Kashmiris. The February 2019 conflict, the fragile peace in the region, and especially the May 2025 conflict, suggest that the Kashmir issue is far from settlement despite India’s claims of normalization.

Since the 1990’s first Intifada (Indigenous uprising) in illegally occupied Kashmir, the region stands at the core of the instability and has turned into a nuclear flashpoint, triggering a sub-conventional crisis every time, potentially leading to conventional and nuclear catastrophe. This has become a highly exploitative pattern since February 2019 and most recently in May 2025, when India brazenly shifts blame for instability in the region under its illegal occupation to Pakistan, for justifying belligerence under the guise of counterterrorism.

The February 2019 post-Pulwama crisis was a significant departure from the past, when India crossed the threshold since 1971 and conducted airstrikes against mainland Pakistan. India also crossed the threshold of humiliation it received as a result of the Operation Swift Retort by Pakistan in February 2019. Similarly, during the May 2025 Conflict, India also unprecedentedly expanded the scope of the conflict further from the previous trend of Air strikes and launched missiles and drones against population centres in Pakistan. In this conflict, India also faced humiliation, with the scope of the humiliation expanding from previous incidents. The fact that both crisis episodes ended with third-party mediation highlights the futility of using military force by India to resolve regional issues and recognizes the role of credible third-party mediation in resolving the Kashmir issue at the earliest possible. Notwithstanding, both crisis episodes, despite Pakistan’s utmost restraint, came at a high cost and posed an unprecedented risk of inadvertent escalation, further emphasizing the importance of conflict resolution to ensure peace and stability in the region.

Particularly, the May 2025 conflict crossed almost all previous thresholds in geographical reach, systems employed, and the impacts produced, and transcended in the information domain, revealing the heights of misinformation and propaganda even by mainstream Indian media. Unfortunately, the lessons learned or unlearned from the Pulwama-Balakot crisis could not prevent India’s belligerence in May 2025, and India’s assertion that the conflict has just “paused” means a gamble with peace is still a lure for India to continue with aggression and project power against smaller countries in the region. India’s recklessness, which carries the fate of the region home to one-fifth of the world’s population, suggests a negation of a shared understanding of peace and stability in the region, in pursuit of never-ending wars.

Therefore, from the Indian perspective, Kashmir offers a perfect pretext for aggression against Pakistan, and its resolution may diminish the leverage that India has for belligerence in the region under the pretext of counterterrorism. However, this gamble with peace also risks the escalation of the South Asian crisis into a potential catastrophe that may threaten peace and stability in the region, with consequences beyond the area of conflict.

From a Pakistani perspective, this day emphasizes that Kashmir remains an unresolved international issue and has turned into a nuclear flashpoint endangering the peace and stability in the region. This Kashmir D-day in the post-May 2025 conflict marks the day and reinforces the issue’s volatility as the core of the region’s instability. It also serves as a reminder of how easily tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals can escalate into war. This year’s Kashmir Day, in the post-May 2025 conflict, also suggests that Kashmir is not just a humanitarian issue but an existential threat to regional peace and stability.

To conclude, the failure of security and terrorist attacks in the region under India’s illegal occupation, which India quickly attributes to Pakistan without substantial evidence or investigation, set an exploitative pattern and perfect “pretext architecture.” In the wake of the May 2025 conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries, this gamble with peace defies the logic of nuclear deterrence between the two nuclear-armed countries in the region. It poses a perpetual threat to peace and stability. Therefore, this year’s Kashmir Day carries added weight because Kashmir remains the epicentre of India-Pakistan hostilities and a potential nuclear flashpoint.