[News] World War 3? India vs Pakistan

Discuss escalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan after a Feb 14 terrorist attack launched from Kashmir killed 40 Indian troops.

BBC live updates

Hostilities continue to escalate between the two nuclear weapon wielding neighbors. The current conflict started with a cross-border Indian airstrike retaliating for a Feb 14 terrorist attack by a Kashmir-based militant group. The militia attack left 40 Indian troops dead in Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have clashed over Kashmir for years.

A couple of things worry me about this:
* The possibility of non- or semi-state actors doing something to mess things up. That's how it started, and it'd be really easy for some small bunch of chuckleheads to start something big even though both sides seem to want it de-escalated as much as possible without losing any face
* Indian elections are coming up and while I know very little about the politics it seems like the Indian PM would welcome a little wag-the-dog moment.
* Folks over there care a *lot* about this; anecdotally, I was involved in USENET administration in the late 90s when a new group "soc.culture.india.jammu-kashmir' was proposed. Loads of people were exercised over this in both directions because it supposedly legitimized India's control over the region. After long debate in news.groups, many thousands of votes were received over this group from people who clearly knew nothing of USENET but wanted to chime in on the political question.

Abhinandan: Pakistan 'to free Indian pilot on Friday'

That's a step in the right direction!