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Muhammad Amir Rana // DAWN: May 11, 2025
PAKISTAN and India have long struggled to resolve their disputes, with the Kashmir issue continuing to cast a long shadow over both nations.
Despite failing to address the core issues, both sides have historically managed their differences by maintaining certain norms to limit escalation and achieving milestones that have kept the conflict within bounds.
However, this time the tensions ran very high, resulting in conflict that broke through those long-maintained boundaries. This escalation came at a time when the international community showed little interest in mediating between the two.
The US, which was once a key mediator, appeared initially disengaged, and US Vice President J.D. Vance had even remarked that a potential war between India and Pakistan would be “none of our business”. Apparently, this was a smokescreen, and the US was engaged with the leadership behind the scenes. Ultimately, its efforts for a ceasefire appeared productive.
Saudi Arabia had appeared to take a more proactive stance. While it appeared uncertain whether Riyadh could play the same role as the US and, to some extent, Russia once did, Saudi Arabia has been increasingly active in international diplomacy in recent years, seeking to position itself as a global mediator and a stabilising force in regional and international conflicts. Besides its mediation role in Africa, Saudi Arabia has also intervened in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, while maintaining balanced relations with both Russia and the West during the war.
Apart from Saudi Arabia, the UAE is also interested in gaining a foothold in regional and global politics. The UAE played a key role in brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in 2021, which halted cross-border skirmishes that had been ongoing since 2019.
Nonetheless, the nature of the long-simmering India-Pakistan tensions over Kashmir is such that an entirely new approach is needed. Saudi Arabia has become more assertive on the global stage, recently intervening in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and mending ties with Iran. Its relationship with India has strengthened significantly since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, while its approach towards South Asian Muslim nations, especially Pakistan, has evolved. Still, it remains uncertain whether Saudi Arabia possesses diplomatic leverage over India.
The nature of the long-simmering India-Pakistan tensions is such that a new approach is needed.
The question of mediation always resurfaces whenever tensions between India and Pakistan flare up. While both countries officially commit to resolving disputes bilaterally, they often wait for international intervention to calm tensions. Nevertheless, there have been instances demonstrating their ability to engage in direct negotiations. One such example is the Non-Attack Agreement, signed on Dec 31, 1988, and entered into force on Jan 27, 1991. Under this agreement, both nations exchange coordinates of their nuclear facilities every January, regardless of ongoing tensions or diplomatic relations.
The 1972 Simla Agreement, signed with US mediation and once considered a no-war pact, also stipulated that both countries would resolve differences through peaceful bilateral negotiations.
It converted the ceasefire line of Dec 17, 1971, into the Line of Control and included a commitment neither side would attempt to alter unilaterally. When India recently hinted at withdrawing from the Indus Waters Treaty, Pakistan responded by questioning the validity of the Simla Agreement, arguing that its violation would mean the LoC could no longer be respected.
There was also the Karachi Agreement of 1949 (which was abandoned by both nations) to bring about a ceasefire in Kashmir, while another notable example of mediation is the Tashkent Declaration, signed on Jan 10, 1966, following the India-Pakistani war of 1965. Brokered by the Soviet Union and the US, the declaration led to a ceasefire and an agreement to restore diplomatic ties, exchange prisoners of war and improve bilateral relations. The 2003 ceasefire agreement also marked a significant milestone in de-escalation efforts.
Extensive literature exists on these agreements, negotiations, and conflicts — both from within the region and by international academics, diplomats, and officials working in South Asia. A consistent theme in much of this analysis is that leadership matters. Peace requires leaders willing to challenge entrenched interests that thrive on conflict and interests embedded within state institutions and who are influential in shaping public opinion.
Unfortunately, such leadership is lacking today. In particular, the BJP-led government in India appears increasingly hostile in its domestic and regional politics. It shows little interest in mutual negotiations or conflict resolution, preferring to impose its own solutions on neighbouring countries. Its decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status on Aug 5, 2019, and now its move to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty go against accepted international legal norms and the bilateral agreements the two countries have upheld.
Both states are undermining their capacity to negotiate peace. Unfortunately, peace lobbies within civil society are also weak, limiting the creation of a conducive environment for dialogue. When two parties manage their affairs bilaterally, third-party mediation can often restore the status quo, but rarely results in substantial development or behavioural change. Pakistan and India do have a framework for dialogue, which includes Kashmir and terrorism — the two major concerns of both states — but achieving meaningful progress requires courage and long-term commitment.
When conflict escalates and brings nations to the brink of war, third-party mediation is often considered a blessing, as it at least halts the momentum of conflict and allows emotions to settle.
Diplomacy for peace requires broader global engagement. In the recent conflict, while China’s influence was understandable given its close alliance with Pakistan, India likely viewed its efforts with suspicion. Russia faced its own constraints due to its historical relationship with India. Actors such as the OIC, the UN, the EU, Asean and the SCO have limited potential to play a decisive role in any future conflict between India and Pakistan.
With a ceasefire declared, both nations have a chance to reflect on the consequences of continued conflict and consider the possibility of a new beginning.
The writer is a security analyst.
Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2025
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Abbas Nasir // DAWN: May 11, 2025
AS escalation appeared on the cards with tit-for-tat missile and air attacks continuing between India and Pakistan, US President Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social media platform that a US-mediated “full and immediate” ceasefire had been agreed between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours.
In the hours, even minutes before the Trump announcement, fears were mounting of a major escalation with India’s missile attacks against non-military targets followed by strikes against military bases in Pakistan and the latter’s retaliatory action targeting Indian military assets.
At that point, when the situation seemed poised on a knife-edge, the only certainty was that India’s attempt to set a new normal in carrying out attacks deep inside Pakistan after blaming the latter for its own security and intelligence and policy failures in held Kashmir had backfired spectacularly.
Whether among the five downed Indian warplanes, during the aerial fight with BVR (beyond visual range) weapons, after the first set of missile attacks on Pakistan earlier this week, were two French-made Rafale jets or three is immaterial.
What counts is that purchased at way over $250 million apiece, the state-of-the-art warplane, the perceived force multiplier, failed to project power as it was meant to and was effectively neutralised by weapons systems used by the Pakistan Air Force with stunning skill. The PAF’s most expensive J-10C fighter costs a fifth of the Rafale’s price tag.
PAF’s multiple kills seemed to have taken defence and modern aerial warfare experts by surprise. A cursory glance at the world media in general, and defence-related publications/ sites in particular, shows the fascination with how the Chinese-provided assets were used to lethal effect by the PAF.
It was this embarrassment that perhaps made immediate de-escalation difficult as India continued to talk of de-escalation while targeting Pakistani bases in the small hours of Saturday, provoking retaliation from Pakistan, which claimed huge successes in its missile/ air campaign including hitting the formidable Russian-made S-400 air defence missile site on an Indian Air Force base.
At a media briefing in New Delhi, the Indian military spokeswomen conceded ‘limited damage’ at three of their bases, while again reiterating they wanted to ‘de-escalate’. More or less as this briefing was happening another high-explosive drone strike on a PAF base in Sindh, near Hyderabad, was confirmed. Casualties, including fatalities, were feared.
This prompted concerns that Pakistan would also be compelled to retaliate in a spiralling confrontation. In such a rapidly escalating military conflict, miscalculations can happen, leading to untold repercussions, given the two nations are said to together possess some 300 tactical and strategic nuclear warheads and also tested, diverse delivery systems.
As South Asia and possibly the wider world heaved a sigh of relief that a possible, even if improbable, nuclear exchange had been averted, what next was the question on many minds. Would it be back to the future, a repeat of the past so many decades when a terrorist incident in India blamed on Pakistan would lead to fears of war with troops locked in eyeball to eyeball stand-offs as they have many times, before de-escalation?
Many Pakistanis and, I am sure, Indians, may have become accustomed to such recurrences every few years. But after the last round of tension triggered by the Pulwama attack in Indian-held Kashmir that left dozens of paramilitary soldiers dead in 2019 was the first instance of a ‘retaliatory’ strike on Pakistan soil and the downing of an IAF fighter and the capture of their pilot, as the PAF responded.
But attacking a forested area in Balakot, adjacent to Azad Kashmir where hostilities routinely erupt, and claiming a win was one thing, launching missile attacks on civilian targets deep inside Pakistan this week after last month’s Pahalgam terror attack was a different matter.
Pakistan, it turned out, was determined to robustly resist this attempt by India to set a new normal. The embarrassment of losing state-of-the-art aerial assets drove India to launch missile attacks on PAF bases. And the Pakistanis who appeared prepared and determined to hit back, did so, as per their claims, with telling effect and forced India to agree to a ceasefire.
Now many readers in India would consider the use of the word ‘forced’ unacceptable, given what they have been hearing in their government-controlled and dominated media and sanitised social media environment but they would do well to reflect what their government stance on talking to Pakistan has been.
After President Trump announced the ceasefire and congratulated both countries on displaying “common sense and great intelligence”, the more revealing and tell-tale tweet came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio who said Vice President J. D. Vance and he had engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials including the two prime ministers, the Indian foreign minister, the two national security advisers and the Pakistan army chief.
He commended the two prime ministers on their “wisdom, prudence and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace”. But the most significant part of his statement was that both the countries had agreed to “start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site”.
The timing or the place of these talks was not immediately known but whether these happen in Abu Dhabi, as was being speculated, or elsewhere, it wasn’t without significance that India shifted from its position of no talks with Pakistan “until the latter ends its support to terrorism”.
Like it usually happens between India and Pakistan, both will claim this as a win but it is clear that only one side moved from its stance on talks as Islamabad has repeatedly called on New Delhi to come to the negotiating table.
If a dialogue were to materialise indeed and India does not backtrack, then the real winners will be the people of the subcontinent, several hundred million of whom try and survive below the poverty line. A terrible war has hopefully been averted and perhaps the newly established balance of conventional power below the nuclear threshold will prevent future conflicts.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2025
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DAWN EDITORIAL: 11 April 2025
PAKISTAN and India have just stepped back from the brink. After several days of hostilities, initiated by India’s unprovoked aggression targeting Pakistan early on May 7, it took American intervention for both sides to silence their guns.
Questions had been raised about Washington’s apparent indifference after the US vice president said that war between Pakistan and India was “none of our business”. But the fact is that hostilities between two nuclear-armed states should concern the international community as a whole. After initial lukewarm calls for restraint, it took a flurry of diplomatic activities over the last 48 hours to broker the ceasefire in South Asia.
President Donald Trump on Saturday afternoon broke the news on social media, which was soon thereafter confirmed by Pakistan’s deputy prime minister. Earlier in the day, tensions were running extremely high.
The military had said that India had attacked three PAF facilities — in Rawalpindi, Chakwal and Shorkot — though all assets were reportedly safe. In response, Pakistan had launched Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos, hitting several military targets in held Jammu and Kashmir as well as Indian Punjab. Now it is hoped that the ceasefire holds and both states take concrete steps to restore calm.
What is clear is that this was a very different kind of conflict compared to the several wars and mini-wars that both states have fought since independence, including the last major showdown in 2019, following the Pulwama episode. The hostilities, which India launched after continuously blaming Pakistan — without proof — for the Pahalgam tragedy, saw the widespread use of drone swarms and electronic warfare. What was also of note was the role media played, particularly in India, in promoting war hysteria.
Many mainstream Indian outlets, including some respected journalists, had no qualms about peddling pure lies and fake news, such as the fact that the Indian forces had laid numerous Pakistani cities to waste. Now that things are calming down, media and civil society in both states must look inward and examine this inflammatory trend. At the same time, the crisis created a sense of unity within Pakistan, as the people put aside their differences to confront the threat to national sovereignty.
The days ahead will be critical to see whether the ceasefire holds and gives way to relative normalcy. If India had shared its concerns and proof — if any — regarding the Pahalgam attack with Pakistan through diplomatic channels, many precious lives could have been saved, and the violence of the past few days avoided.
Moreover, Pakistan must seek clarity about the future of the Indus Waters Treaty, as the agreement is critical for this country’s economy, food security, and water needs. Also, as we have said in these columns earlier, that while the international community stepped in to douse the flames before they could turn into a conflagration, to expect foreign states to hold the two countries’ hands and walk them through the peace process is unrealistic. While foreign friends can certainly help create a conducive atmosphere, it is Islamabad and New Delhi that will have to do the heavy lifting themselves to secure peace.
UN Secretary General António Guterres has zeroed in on the core issue when he said, following the ceasefire, that hopefully “the agreement will contribute … to addressing broader, long-standing issues” between the two states. And there is no outstanding issue of greater import than the Kashmir question.
The last few weeks have shown that left unattended, the Kashmir dispute remains a powder keg in South Asia, and unless there is a just resolution to this decades-old dispute, the eruption of another round of hostilities might come sooner than expected.
The foreign powers that have helped broker the truce must realise that Kashmir remains the key issue, and communicate this to India. Rebuilding bilateral trust will take time, largely due to the toxic atmosphere that has been created. But the alternative to dialogue is perpetual conflict in South Asia.
Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2025
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