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India and Pakistan are both under pressure – but in different measure– from the international community, to de-escalate tensions that erupted after Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed launched a terrorist attack in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir.
Even though India was at great pains to call its air strikes in Balakot Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK) a “pre-emptive” and “non-military” move aimed at terrorists alone, Pakistan escalated this on Wednesday, 28 February, by targeting military installations in India.
Pakistan’s air strikes inside India on Wednesday, led to the downing of an Indian Mig-21. The result – an Indian pilot is in Pakistani custody, a propaganda coup that Pakistan has exploited fully in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Pakistan circulated videos of the pilot being first beaten by locals, and then being captured and shown praising his military captors, enraging Indian public opinion. But that was expected.
At this point, the rightness of India’s cause seems obscured by fears of escalation to a full-fledged war, a fear primarily expressed by nuclear experts and area academics, incessantly gaming various scenarios from afar on Twitter.
But governments in major capitals are making a clear distinction between the victim and the perpetrator this time. Pakistan is in the dock, and the Islamabad-Rawalpindi combine knows it. No country has defended Pakistan for harbouring terrorists.
Late Wednesday, the United States, France and Britain renewed a proposal to put JeM chief Masood Azhar on the sanctions list under UN resolution 1267, in a bid to increase pressure on Pakistan and put China on the spot. China will find it harder than before to artificially block Azhar’s designation, given the fact that it signed a UN Security Council statement, strongly condemning the Pulwama attack just last week.
This time, however, the background is grim and it will bring Beijing’s calisthenics on terrorism under a sharper spotlight. Push will come to shove for China in terms of reputational costs.
If it is good enough for four of the five members – assuming Russia will help not hinder India – then it should be good enough for the Chinese to put the man on the sanctions list.
The action in the United Nations is but one part of the overall picture. Indian diplomats are in close consultation with their counterparts in major capitals to keep the focus on Pakistan’s overt and covert support for terrorists on its soil.
While the US said Wednesday that it was “deeply concerned about rising tensions”, and called on both sides to take “immediate steps to de-escalate the situation,” it also expressed “strong solidarity with India following the Pulwama attack” in the same statement.
A day earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had referred to India’s strikes as “counter-terrorism” measures after he spoke to India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. He emphasised “our close security partnership and shared goal of maintaining peace and security in the region”.
Pompeo’s call came after National Security Adviser John Bolton told his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, that America supports India’s right to self-defence, in a phone call shortly after the Pulwama attack in which over 40 CRPF personnel were killed by a JeM operative on 14 February.
Pakistan, for its part, should return Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthman as many Pakistani commentators have already suggested. And both the generals and the politicians can walk out of the labyrinth.
At the same time, the international community and key players within it must understand that unless Pakistan takes real action against the terrorists it has spawned, we will have to watch this movie again.
(The writer is a senior Washington-based journalist. She can be reached at @seemasirohi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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