April 28, 2025
ISLAMABAD – IT wasn’t clear if US President Donald Trump was using a figure of speech or confused his history when mentioning the Kashmir dispute as being over 1,000 years old but the operational part of his statement on board Air Force One on Friday was that he appeared confident that India and Pakistan, both of whom ‘I am close to’, will sort this out.
He was responding to a question on the spiralling tension between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours in the wake of the terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam in India-held Kashmir this week in which 26 civilians were killed.
Indicating that it held Pakistan responsible for the carnage, India announced a number of measures including reduction of diplomatic staff at the Pakistan mission in Delhi, expulsion of all military attachés, cancellation of visas issued to Pakistan nationals and more significantly holding in abeyance the Indus Waters Treaty between the two countries that has survived several armed conflicts between them.
Pakistan retorted with its own measures mirroring the Indian move in terms of reduction of diplomatic mission staff, cancellation of visas, and more interestingly, mulling the suspension of bilateral agreements such as the Simla Agreement concluded after the 1971 war.
The Trump remarks, which echoed the assessment of some Western diplomats in Islamabad, shared privately with journalists, seemed to suggest that this diplomatic tit-for-tat was all the fallout from the Pahalgam incident that was to be; and that, after a tense period, de-escalation would likely follow. But the mood in India, at least judging from the media, belied this assessment as it was belligerent and jingoistic. An array of recently retired senior military and intelligence officials all seemed convinced that the Modi government would not let the matter rest with the diplomatic measures but would surely plan a ‘kinetic’ operation to ‘punish’ Pakistan.
One Indian anchor on a mainstream channel asked a recently retired three-star general who commanded the corps in Kashmir if the kinetic action could include “eliminating some major or brigadier of the Pakistani military or its intelligence services who ordered the Pahalgam attack?”
“Why stop at a brigadier or junior officers,” the former three-star responded. This same former military officer drew parallels between Hamas and its activities with the Pakistani military and intelligence services. He also suggested Pakistan face similar consequences to the campaign of Israeli occupation forces against Gaza.
Shockingly insane as this chalk and cheese (to put it mildly) comparison was, I was left wondering if this was a retired officer airing his own dream or was this view shared by India’s military commanders and the political decision-making set-up with the Hindu nationalist BJP at the helm.
If social and legacy media is a representative measure of the sentiment in India, then let me say that I have watched many, many Indian experts, military and civilian, betraying zero empathy for the victims of the Gaza genocide. Also, they have been repeatedly expressing admiration and envy for the Israeli occupation forces, and wondering aloud why their country could not replicate this against Pakistan.
Of course, there are a few, isolated voices of sanity, even though they appear to be losing the battle to be heard against the cacophony of the utterly insane ones, reminding their compatriots of the perils of creating a momentum leading to an armed conflict between two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The main value of the nuclear deterrent is to forestall a conventional war, especially between two numerically uneven adversaries, and only the deranged would want to see the situation spiralling towards such a possibility because it leads to mutually assured destruction.
Yes, experts would take us down the path of second strike capability and who has it and who doesn’t. But to me all that does not mask an unprecedented threat to humanity, to one-and-a-half billion people, in the two countries and even more across South Asia.
The Modi government has often demonstrated the hold it enjoys over most of the country’s mass media and has social media handles, amplifying its view, running into millions. So, if it doesn’t wish the media to raise public expectations of ‘kinetic action to punish Pakistan including assassinations’ into becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, it may consider dialling down some of the rhetoric that the public is feeding off.
It is prudent of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to offer an ‘impartial and transparent’ probe into the Pahalgam incident so the Indian allegations of Pakistan’s role can be evaluated and discarded as not being legitimate or credible.
Some India peaceniks say this offer would not be seen as amounting to much at this time because it would have helped if Pakistan had taken its probe into the 2008 Mumbai attacks — which saw militants kill some 175 people and injure nearly 300 — to its logical conclusion but it did not.
That may be a valid point but since then, Pakistan’s actions against militant groups as part of its compliance with the Financial Action Task Force regulations on terror funding, money laundering, etc, has choked them off and resulted in the jailing of many key figures. Additionally, observers also point out to at least two to three ‘false flag operations’ where it was subsequently established that allegations of Pakistani involvement were patently false.
Equally, at a time when the Pakistani military and civilian leadership has assigned top priority to economic recovery and stability, an incident such as the Pahalgam massacre would be totally counterproductive to its prioritised cause. Any such incident’s fallout would harm Pakistan more than India.
Whenever passions are running high, sanity tends to take a backseat. Despite Western optimism about South Asia peace, the situation appears poised on a hair trigger. Matters are exacerbated because there appears to be no dialogue mechanism between India and Pakistan.
Against this backdrop, Saudi and Iranian mediation efforts represent hope of a peaceful resolution and should be welcomed. The Saudi foreign minister has already talked to his counterparts in New Delhi and Islamabad but we await details of the conversations.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com