Pakistan’s Defense Minister, Khawaja Asif, said on Thursday, May 8, that it is “almost certain” that Pakistani forces will launch an attack on India soon in response to waves of Indian drones targeting dozens of sites on the Pakistani side.
Since the night of Tuesday, May 6, into Wednesday, May 7, India has been carrying out air and heavy artillery strikes on Pakistan in retaliation for the April 22 terrorist attack in the Besairan Valley, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 26 Indian tourists and police officers.
The government of Narendra Modi stated that the wave of attacks was contained and planned to neutralize training camps and terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory or in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, advising Islamabad not to respond in order to de-escalate the situation.
In addition to exchanges of heavy artillery fire between military units of both countries along the divided Kashmir border in the Himalayan region, Pakistan, despite the aggressive rhetoric, has not yet launched a large-scale response against New Delhi.
However, taking the Pakistani Defense Minister at his word—although these statements may also be aimed at a domestic audience to ease pressure from more radical Islamic communities calling for war with predominantly Hindu India—the worst cannot be ruled out.
That is why major powers in the region—China, which shares part of Kashmir, and Russia, which also has borders in this part of Asia, as well as the United States—are, according to international news agencies, active on the diplomatic front, trying to forge a solution through dialogue.
One possibility is that mediators may achieve political concessions to ease military tensions, building on measures already taken by both sides since April 22 (see links below), ranging from mass expulsions on both sides to India’s withdrawal from the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty on the sharing of Kashmir’s seven rivers.
This is particularly critical because, while artillery exchanges and Indian missile strikes already carry serious risks of all-out war, the water issue is existential for 90% of Pakistan’s agriculture and the foundation of its food security—potentially prompting radical actions, as Islamabad’s government has warned.
For now, India appears content with the retaliation it has already carried out against sites allegedly linked to Islamic terrorist organizations, and tensions may begin to ease… but it remains to be seen whether the Pakistani Defense Minister was indeed announcing an actual strike against India.
In New Delhi, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has already stated that if Pakistan insists on responding, the Indian Union’s forces will deliver a powerful reply, although he also emphasized—according to The Guardian—that his government has always acted responsibly and “favors negotiated solutions.”
These statements seem aimed at helping to de-escalate tensions, though everything clearly depends on what Pakistan decides to do in this moment of high cross-border tension.
This is also because internal political factors “force” the governments of both countries not to appear too “pacifist,” as that could spark internal unrest among the more radical factions—both in India’s Hindu majority and in Pakistan’s overwhelming Islamic majority.
This is evident in the statements of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who vowed in a televised national address to “avenge each and every drop of the martyrs’ blood”—referring to the 31 Pakistanis who died during India’s attacks.
Crises like this between the two nuclear powers have been common over the decades since their independence in 1947, but they gained greater visibility after Islamabad and New Delhi officially became nuclear powers—India in 1974 and Pakistan in 1998.
And both before and after their “nuclearization,” Indians and Pakistanis have repeatedly resolved crises through negotiated agreements, though some only came after prolonged wars with thousands of casualties, notably in 1965 and 1971—all centered on the territorial dispute over Kashmir.
Source: O Novo Jornal
