At 5:30 in the morning on 18 September 2016, most of the soldiers at the Indian Army brigade headquarters near Uri were still asleep. It was a transition period: troops from 6 Bihar were replacing troops from 10 Dogra, and the incoming soldiers were housed in temporary tents rather than permanent structures. Four militants from Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based jihadist organization, had crossed the Line of Control through Haji Pir Pass two nights earlier and hidden in Sukhdar village, which offered an unobstructed view of the camp's layout. They lobbed 17 grenades in three minutes. The non-fire-retardant tents caught instantly. By the time the six-hour gun battle ended and all four attackers were dead, 17 Indian soldiers had been killed, with two more dying of wounds in the days that followed. The BBC called it the deadliest attack on security forces in Kashmir in two decades.
The Uri attack did not arrive in a vacuum. Since July 2016, Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir had been convulsed by protests following the killing of Burhan Wani, a local militant of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, in an encounter with security forces. The demonstrations were described as the largest anti-India protests in the region in years, and the valley was under curfew and communications blackout for weeks. Separately, militant groups had escalated high-profile attacks against Indian security forces since 2015: three insurgents attacked a bus and police station in Gurdaspur in July 2015, and four to six militants struck the Pathankot Air Force Station earlier in 2016. Indian authorities blamed Jaish-e-Mohammed for the Pathankot attack. Against this backdrop of unrest and escalating violence, the Uri garrison sat just kilometers from the Line of Control, the de facto border between Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
The investigation that followed revealed a chain of failures. Standard security procedures required trimming tall grass and bushes around military installations, but the Uri camp had neglected this, giving the attackers concealment on their approach. Two manned guard posts failed to detect the intrusion, likely due to poor coordination between them. Seven of the nineteen soldiers killed were support staff, including cooks and barbers, people whose work kept a garrison running but who had no reason to expect a pre-dawn assault. The militants had used incendiary ammunition specifically to set fire to the tents, and they seemed to know exactly where the most vulnerable personnel were sleeping. Intelligence agencies later reported that three fidayeen squads had been launched from Pakistani-administered Kashmir simultaneously: one struck Uri, another engaged security forces in Poonch, and a third was believed to be targeting the Srinagar highway.
Ten days after the attack, the Indian Army conducted what it described as surgical strikes across the Line of Control, targeting alleged militant launch pads in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Indian reports claimed approximately 150 militants were killed, though Pakistan denied the strikes had occurred at the scale India described. The diplomatic consequences cascaded rapidly. India pulled out of the 19th SAARC summit scheduled for Islamabad in November, and Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Bhutan followed suit. India announced it would exercise its rights under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty to the fullest extent and suspended talks under the Permanent Indus Commission. Pakistan's adviser on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, warned that revoking the treaty would constitute an act of "war and hostilities." The Board of Control for Cricket in India ruled out bilateral cricket ties with Pakistan. Cultural exchanges froze: Indian entertainment channels stopped airing Pakistani television shows, and Pakistan imposed a blanket ban on Indian programming in return.
The rhetoric that followed the attack revealed how deeply the wound cut. India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh called Pakistan a "terrorist state" that should be isolated. Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif called the attack an "inside job." Prime Minister Modi, speaking at a rally in Kerala six days after the assault, addressed Pakistan directly: "I want to say that India is ready for a war. India is ready for a war on poverty. Let both countries fight to see who would eradicate poverty first." In the US Congress, Representatives Ted Poe and Dana Rohrabacher introduced a bill to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. More than a dozen countries, the United Nations, and the European Union issued condemnations. The attack had accomplished what such attacks are often designed to do: it consumed the diplomatic space between two nuclear-armed neighbors with accusation, counter-accusation, and the noise of countries edging toward a line neither could afford to cross.
Located at 34.08N, 74.03E near the town of Uri in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, close to the Line of Control with Pakistan. The terrain is mountainous with valleys cut by the Jhelum River. Haji Pir Pass, the suspected infiltration route, lies to the southwest at approximately 2,637 m (8,652 ft). Srinagar Airport (VISR) is approximately 100 km to the southeast. The LOC is visible as a cleared zone through forested hills. Recommend viewing altitude of 15,000-20,000 ft. Military sensitivity in the area requires awareness of restricted airspace.