Between 1947 and 1971, Pakistan fought three direct conventional wars against India, with the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 witnessing the secession of East Pakistan as the independent state of Bangladesh. In the latter war, the Pakistan Armed Forces were the main organizers and perpetrators of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, in which, most independent researchers estimate, around 300,000 to 500,000 people were killed and 200,000 to 400,000 were systematically raped, although the Bangladeshi government regularly claims the number of deaths was as high as 3,000,000. Rising tensions with Afghanistan in the 1960s (primarily over the Durand Line dispute) and an indirect proxy war fought against the Soviet Union throughout the 1970s and 1980s in the Soviet–Afghan War with American, British and Israeli assistance led to a sharp rise in the development of the Pakistan Armed Forces. In 1999, an extended period of intense border-skirmishing with India, the so-called Kargil War, resulted in a massive redeployment of forces in Kashmir. the military has been conducting counter-insurgency operations along the border areas of Afghanistan, while continuing to participate in several United Nations peacekeeping operations.