SUMMARY
The territorial conflict in Kashmir has been one of the most protracted and most serious regional problems confronting India during the last decades, with many of the conflict years having reached the intensity of war. The conflict pits a large number of insurgent groups, commonly referred to as Kashmir insurgents, against the Indian government. The aim of the insurgents is the Kashmir’s secession from India, a demand firmly rejected by India. The conflict has been closely tied to Indian-Pakistani relations, and India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of fueling the insurgency. While the conflict has remained active since 1990, it has not reached the intensity of war since 2005, following a broader trend of de-escalation, except for the period between 2015 and 2018. Since then, the conflict has continued on a path of declining intensity.
In 2025, a slight decrease in fatalities compared to the previous year was recorded, aligning with the last years trend on negative intensity. Although conflict intensity continued to decrease, violence remained prevalent throughout the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The government of India remained focused on a mainly military solution to the Kashmir issue, and there has been continued criticism against the violence from security forces and human rights abuses in the region. As in previous years, the most active groups within the umbrella actor Kashmir insurgents in 2025 were Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM).
IN DEPTH
Roots of conflict and the emergence of Kashmir insurgents
The insurgency in Kashmir (the Indian part of Kashmir, formally known as Jammu and Kashmir) has its origin in the state's disputed accession to India following the turbulent partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The dispute over Kashmir escalated into full-fledged war between Pakistan and India in 1948. The ceasefire line agreed upon through UN mediation in 1949 has effectively defined the de facto borders of Kashmir, dividing it between Indian and Pakistani controlled sections. What was originally referred to as a temporary solution of letting Kashmir accede to India gradually came to be seen as a permanent solution.
Despite the arrangements providing for local autonomy, the post-independence period in Kashmir was shaped by continued political confrontations and tensions between the local population and the government. Democratic development remained limited until the late 1970s. By then, the first elements of a militant opposition movement had emerged, mainly in exile. The period of democratic consolidation in the early 1980s managed to dampen the secessionist demands. Nevertheless, by 1988, the progress had been reversed, and nonviolent channels for expressing discontent had become more limited. Sympathy for the militant outfits advocating violent secession from India increased dramatically.
A series of anti-government demonstrations, strikes, and violent attacks on government targets launched in July 1988 marked the onset of the Kashmir insurgency. In 1990 the conflict escalated into war, and the insurgency in Kashmir became the most important internal security issue in India during the 1990s. The conflict from the outset pitted a range of groups and factions, collectively referred to as “Kashmir insurgents” against the Indian government.
Conflict actors and regional dynamics
In 1989, the first year of recorded armed conflict, JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) was the single dominant rebel group. By January 1990, the rapidly escalating insurgency struggle was said to include as many as 40 different militant outfits. The Kashmir insurgency movement was thus extremely fractionalized from the outset, and the number of groups would more than double throughout the course of the conflict. Shifting alignments and the lack of overall command, furthermore, have compounded the problem of separating the activity of the different armed outfits. In UCDP data, the multitude of outfits fighting for Kashmir’s secession from India is jointly referred to as Kashmir insurgents.
What unites all of the Kashmiri groups is the desire to end Indian rule, since all the Kashmir insurgents dismiss the legality of Jammu and Kashmir's accession to India in 1947 and thus the legitimacy of India's claim to the territory. The more precisely stated goal of incompatibility differs, however, between the separate outfits. The main division is between the pro-Pakistani elements, favoring accession to Pakistan, and those advocating Kashmir's complete independence. Any attempt to forge unity between the rebel movements has necessarily had to leave this issue undecided. To complicate the matter, several of the outfits have been deliberately vague on the issue, since Pakistan's patronage has been dependent on adhering to pro-Pakistani stance.
The Kashmir insurgents and the Indian government are the two primary warring parties in the conflict, but as indicated above, the intrastate conflict has been closely entangled with the interstate relations between India and Pakistan. India has repeatedly accused the Pakistani government of supporting the Kashmir insurgents through provisions of arms, training of militants, as well as allowing infiltration along the border between the two countries. Pakistan has explicitly denied these allegations and stated that its support to the insurgents is limited to political, cultural, and diplomatic support. Regardless of the alleged assistance from Pakistani officials, it is clear that infiltration by non-Kashmir militants across the Line of Control has been a regular occurrence. Since the beginning of the 1990s, many of those crossing the Line of Control have been Arab veterans of the Afghan war wanting to join Kashmir insurgents in their "jihad" (holy war) against the Indian government. These foreign-based groups have been among the most reluctant to embrace any initiative to find a political solution to the conflict.
Military developments and peace efforts
The Indian government's initial response to the emerging Kashmir insurgency in 1989 was to meet violence with violence. The enforcement of a military solution to the Kashmir issue, employing the army and paramilitary forces, has remained the preferred strategy of India throughout the conflict. The army's military presence in the geostrategically important Kashmir was estimated in 1995 to be around 500 000 troops and has remained high throughout the conflict. At times, severe criticism has been directed at the security forces for serious human rights violations in Kashmir.
The Indian government has also sought nonviolent mechanisms to end the violence. In 1994 the government initiated a political dialogue with the Kashmir insurgents and, in a conciliatory move, released selected militant leaders. In 1996 the Indian government decided to reintroduce a democratically elected state assembly in Jammu and Kashmir. Despite widespread intimidation by both security forces and militants and severe restrictions on freedom of the press, a government was elected and took office on the platform of finding a political solution to the conflict within the Indian constitution. But the attempt to collaborate with the Indian government failed, as did the efforts to improve the security situation in the region.
Positive moves by representatives of both parties in mid-2000 and early 2001 again raised a small hope that a political dialogue could be underway, but there were no initiatives leading to substantial progress. Discussions have been deadlocked by the irreconcilable preconditions for negotiations set up by the parties: the Indian government has taken a "non-negotiable" stand that all talks must take place within the framework of the Indian constitution, while the insurgents demand that any talks must address the demand for independence. The insurgent movement has demanded that Pakistan must also participate in the negotiations and that such tripartite talks must address Pakistan's stake in the incompatibility. The Indian government has consistently refused any involvement of a third party, insisting that Kashmir is a purely internal concern for the Indian government.
There has, however, been some progress towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict. First, an increased gap has been observed between the more moderate and more extremist elements in the Kashmir insurgent movement. Important militant leaders have explicitly distanced themselves from the more extremist elements, especially those dominated by foreign mercenaries. Some of the insurgent groups have also given up their demand for Pakistani participation and instead proposed separate bilateral dialogues with each of the two governments. In 2004 the government launched an unprecedented dialogue with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) – a legal political alliance of political, religious, and community groups campaigning for Kashmir's autonomy, but also assumed to represent the main political voice for important segments of the insurgency movement in Kashmir. Talks between the government and the APHC over the following years, however, failed to produce any breakthrough, and did not include direct representation of the Kashmir insurgents groups.
After a peak in casualties in 2002, the number of deaths began to drop steadily over the subsequent years. This trend was reinforced by the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan in 2003, and the construction of a new fence along the Line of Control in 2005. However, these developments were associated with worrying indications that civilians were increasingly becoming a key target of insurgent operations, and that some groups were redirecting their energies towards large-scale attacks on soft targets outside of Jammu and Kashmir. Incidents underlining such concerns included the Mumbai train bombings of July 2006 and the Mumbai attacks of November 2008, both allegedly committed by the Kashmir insurgent group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Indian security forces during this period also faced increasing accusations of extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses in connection to their operations in Jammu and Kashmir.
Since reaching the intensity of war in 2005, the conflict has generally followed a steady trend of declining fatalities. This pattern plateaued in 2011, followed by a renewed escalation between 2015 to 2018. In August 2019, strict curfews and communication blackouts were imposed following the revocation of Article 370, which had granted the region autonomy since 1947. Although these measures were lifted in February 2021, shorter, temporary curfews and internet shutdowns have persisted. Since then, the conflict has returned to a path of de-escalation, with 2024 recording the lowest number of fatalities since 1989.
