Jammu & Kashmir: A Region Long Caught Up in Conflict
The ceasefire between India and Pakistan which was announced on Saturday is holding, despite claims that it has been breached from both sides. Tensions have escalated over the past weeks, reignited by an attack by five armed gunmen in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir, which left at least 26 civilians dead. The Resistance Front, an offshoot of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, later claimed responsibility for the attack. India blames Pakistan for the incident, while Islamabad denies involvement, even going so far as to accuse the Indian government of using the attacks as a justification to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty.
In the following days, the Indian military launched strikes against Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, stating it targeted “terrorist infrastructure”, while Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told GeoTV that the strikes hit civilian areas. Clashes broke out along several parts of the Line of Control, an unofficial militarized border that divides the disputed region, and drone attacks were reported from both sides.
The region has long been thrust into the crossfire of conflict, with Pakistan too having experienced domestic terrorism which it has attributed to separatist groups. The violence reaches back to Britain’s 1947 partition of the subcontinent at the end of its colonial rule, splitting it into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, when between 200,000 and 2 million people are estimated to have been killed. While the autonomous Princely State of Kashmir was initially independent, its ruling Hindu Maharaja later decided to join India, despite the state having a Muslim-majority population.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) provides data on the latest period of history in the Indian-administered part of the region, named Jammu and Kashmir. The following chart focuses specifically on the number of reported “terrorism related incidents” since 2000, including fatalities, suicide attacks, arrests, arms recoveries and explosions. While this source is managed by an organization based in India, the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), the data published includes major incidents initiated not only by militants but also by Indian security forces.
As the following chart shows, the number of reported incidents in Jammu and Kashmir has dropped in the past 25 years. In this time frame, it hit a high of 391 incidents in 2001, when 303 civilians were reported killed, as well as 351 members of the security forces and 1,248 militants, while a further 659 people were left injured. In 2025, 67 terrorism-related incidents in the Indian-administered part of the region had been reported as of May 10. The April 22 incident is included here, when two locals and 24 tourists were killed.
2019 is another marker year for Jammu and Kashmir, when Indian authorities revoked its special autonomy. According to the SATP data, 25 incidents were initiated by Indian security forces in the region in 2018 and 23 were started by militants. In 2019, 10 incidents were started by security forces and 12 by militants. The data shown here are compiled from news reports and are provisional.
