Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated on 28 April, six days after the 22 April Pahalgam terror attack that killed 25 Indian and one Nepali tourist, that a military incursion by India was imminent, with the Indians blaming Pakistan for an attack on a location 200 kilometres from the Line of Control (LoC). On 7 May at 1:44 AM, India attacked nine sites in Pakistan, with 26 fatalities as per an initial assessment.
The ceasefire was declared by Us President Donald Trump on 10 May effective 5 PM Pakistan time, followed by Ishaq Dar’s confirmation on X, formerly twitter, banned in Pakistan making one wonder who his target audience was, and within the hour by the Indian government.
War propaganda is a tool used to demoralise the general public of the adversary, though the narrative that was effortlessly controlled by governments before the pervasive onset of social media is no longer possible, as indicated in the Israel-Palestinian and Ukraine-Russia conflicts.
However, while mainstream media may engage in propaganda the veracity of social media is also suspect, especially subsequent to the use of Artificial Intelligence.
One member of Pakistan’s national assembly stated on Thursday on a private channel that during the session a fake rumour spread that there was an Indian drone strike in Islamabad which spread fear amongst the members, and he urged the media not to air such news - an exhortation sadly that shows his lack of understanding of the technology.
International media compared the military strength of the two countries, and it comes as no surprise that the Indian government spent nine times more on defence than was spent by Pakistan in 2024 – a little under 90 billion dollars against 10 billion dollars spent by Pakistan.
India has more than twice the number of soldiers, and its conventional military hardware is double ours. These discrepancies are attributable to: (i) India’s geographical size is four times bigger than Pakistan’s – 3,287,263 square km against Pakistan’s 796,095 sq km. and (ii) the state of the Indian economy compared to ours is much larger - India’s total GDP is 4.19 trillion dollars with 705 billion dollars foreign exchange reserves against Pakistan’s 1.99 trillion dollars (purchasing power parity) and 14 billion dollars projected by end of the current fiscal year (though roll-overs by friendly countries are 16 billion dollars); but this does not imply that the cost of the engagement on India is not prohibitive as the replacement cost of downing one Rafael jet is over 7 billion dollars.
Irrespective of these differences, the two countries have already fought three wars, which bears ample testimony to the fact that the Pakistan army is more than willing to take up the challenge.
The equalizer or what many argue is the deterrent dates back to May 1998 when the two rival countries became nuclear powers, and it is relevant to note that while India’s policy is a no-first-use policy Pakistan has no such policy, a difference that is no doubt indicative of a tacit acknowledgement that Pakistan may not have the conventional arsenal to deter India’s well-documented hegemonistic designs in the region. Be that as it may, neither country hinted or threatened the use of nuclear weapons, symptomatic of a sense of responsibility; and one would hope that this sentiment continues to prevail.
Pakistan is currently on a severely rigid and upfront International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme and while India’s Foreign Secretary threatened, in response to a question, that India would seek a review of loans to Pakistan at the next Fund board meeting the approval of the next tranche release as expected was secured.
However, in the current instant what remains of much greater concern to Pakistan is Modi’s declaration that the Indus Water Treaty is in abeyance and that, as was revealed in a WikiLeaks document (attributed to the then US Ambassador in India) would be tantamount to a declaration of war – a sentiment that was recently echoed by Khwaja Asif. Just as Israel has weaponised starvation of the Palestinians for Pakistan, water is being weaponised by India because of its abrogation of the IWT. Talks between the two countries are scheduled to start today, and one would hope that the Pakistani negotiators convince Modi to reverses this decision.
It is extremely disturbing that a few hours before India attacked Pakistan (Tuesday last week), instead of showing solidarity with the people of this country two of our key economic players left the country to attend a two-day investment conference in London at the taxpayers’ expense: (i) Muhammad Aurangzeb, the finance minister, the economic team leader, who has the challenging task of seeking assurances from the IMF; and (ii) Muhammad Ali, Chairman of the Privatization Commission, a key position given the critical time bound, and structural benchmarks agreed with the IMF with respect to state owned entities. Such tours were taken in the past though never with any success, however no minister in any previous administration had ever taken such a tour during active conflict with India.
There is of course a solution to the periodic terror attacks in Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and that, as per Professor Mearsheimer of Chicago University, a leading proponent of offensive realism, is for India to deal with Kashmir politically rather than militarily for the weaker side has no option but to engage in acts of periodic violence.
To conclude, political solutions are the only way forward as is evident from the Irish Republican Army and the UK government Good Friday Agreement which ended a conflict that cost hundreds of thousands of lives over decades. India would do well to deal with the festering Kashmir issue politically, though sadly there appears to be little chance of that as long as Modi is the Prime Minister.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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