In his 2007 dispatch from the Pakistani side of Kashmir’s infamous Line of Control, Christopher Hitchens called the area ‘the near-certain flash point of a coming war that could well become an Asian Armageddon’. That war came closer to fruition last month than at any time in the past two decades.

It was hardly the first time India and Pakistan have come to blows over Kashmir, the disputed territory that has been split between them (and China, which controls a good chunk of its north-easternmost part) since the partition of British India in 1947. Indeed, given the number of ceasefire violations that take place along the LoC each year, it’s not even technically the first since both countries became nuclear powers.