The terror attack that killed 26 people at Pahalgam, Kashmir, ultimately underlines India’s chronic internal security lapses. Unless the Indian government stops shifting blame to Pakistan and addresses its own institutional shortcomings, similar incidents will inevitably occur.
Predictably, the Narendra Modi government’s initial reaction was to attribute blame to Pakistan — a leitmotif in India’s deflective security narrative. Indeed, just five minutes after news of the incident spread, an Indian security agency blamed Pakistan without any corroborating evidence on social media.
The Resistance Front (TRF), an armed group fighting for Kashmir’s secession from India, has claimed responsibility for the attack. TRF was formed locally in response to the Indian government’s move to strip Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status in 2019. India designated TRF a terrorist organization in 2023.
The Pahalgam killings reveal several severe realities, namely a complex failure of India’s domestic security framework, a complacency culture that prevails in its intelligence evaluations and an obvious institutional negligence.
The Modi government’s rare acceptance of its failure is arguably the first such admission in over a decade, underscoring just how grave the security shortcomings were at Pahalgam. The attack was not a unique event but rather the most recent in a series of Indian security lapses.
Kashmir has a three-tiered security framework comprised of the Indian Army’s 3rd Rashtriya Rifles, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Jammu & Kashmir Police. The attackers, clad in Indian Army uniforms, infiltrated the Pahalgam resort, fired around 40 shots within a 15–20-minute interval, and escaped capture without engagement with any security forces.
That attackers in a heavily guarded area could so easily obtain Indian Army uniforms is obviously concerning. The lack of surveillance cameras, drones or a basic medical response system in a tourist destination where more than 1,000 people visit every day underlines the degree of the security failure.
The CRPF’s protracted response – exceeding one hour to cover seven kilometers, owing to inadequate infrastructure –was the epitome of operational disarray. Visitors and pony handlers transported the victims, highlighting the Indian state’s lack of readiness.
To be sure, the region isn’t new to terror attacks. Prior to Pahalgam, ten attacks have taken place in the area since the 1990s. The government’s rationale that terrorists would refrain from attacking tourists because of their economic significance is now clearly a flawed presumption and further exposes the government’s perilous disconnection from actual circumstances on the ground.
It also illustrates a wider inclination to favor political narratives over empirical danger evaluations. Despite intelligence alerts regarding possible threats, Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley has been open to tourists since 2020. This façade of normalcy in an area plagued by militancy allowed for the tragedy.
On one hand, Modi’s government has vigorously promoted Kashmir as a secure tourism destination, using visitation statistics to reinforce assertions all is well when it isn’t. At the same time, it failed to implement any fundamental security measures for the growing number of travelers to the area.
The assault has not only ravaged the victims and their families; it has also endangered the region’s peace and security by instinctively heightening tensions with Pakistan. After the incident, India announced its unilateral abeyance of the Indus Waters Treaty, which Pakistan has said it considers an “act of war.” Troops have exchanged gunfire across the border in recent days, heightening the risk of a new armed conflict.
Indian media accusations alleging a former Pakistani para commando’s complicity in the Pahalgam attack lack substantiated proof and seem part and parcel of a calculated propaganda drive to blame Pakistan and deflect attention from India’s own security failings.
Rather than spreading unfounded and dangerous allegations, India should invite an unbiased third party, such as the United Nations, to independently investigate the incident and reveal its findings. Unsubstantiated accusations run the risk of exacerbating tensions between the two nuclear powers, jeopardizing regional, if not global, peace.
India’s Unified Command system in Kashmir, frequently lauded as a paradigm of military coordination, disintegrated completely during the Pahalgam assault. The assailants’ unobserved ingress and egress have exposed significant deficiencies in surveillance and inter-agency coordination.
Pointing fingers at Pakistan cannot obscure these shortcomings, which by now are plain for the Indian public to see.
India must implement at least three immediate measures to avoid similar tragedies in the future. First, it must undertake an impartial inquiry into the security services’ deficiencies, with results publicly disclosed, to re-establish credibility at home and abroad.
Second, it must revamp intelligence-sharing protocols to guarantee real-time collaboration among agencies, which despite claims to the contrary, are clearly lacking. Third, it must allocate resources to infrastructure, including rapid-response units, surveillance technology and medical evacuation systems, to safeguard at-risk regions like Kashmir.
The Pahalgam incident should serve as an urgent wake-up call for India and its security services. Unless the government stops shifting blame to Pakistan and addresses its own institutional shortcomings, the incident could spark a wider and potentially disastrous conflict.
Vigilance, rather than vengeance, is the cost of safety, and India has consistently neglected to fulfill this obligation to its people. That should change before India’s security lapses give rise to a regional security crisis.
Marriyam Siddique is senior research fellow at the Maritime Centre of Excellence, Pakistan Navy War College (Lahore). The views expressed here are the author’s alone.
