EDITORIAL: The brief but intense four-day Pakistan-India military conflict has underscored the volatile nature of relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, and the need for diplomatic engagement in the greater interest of regional peace.
After he brokered a ceasefire President Donald Trump had offered to work with both Pakistan and India to achieve a “solution” of the Kashmir dispute.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari — on visit to the US at the head of a delegation — have lauded the US President for deescalating the military confrontation, and once again, reached out to him for mediating talks with India. Said Bilawal in Washington, “if the US is willing to help Pakistan maintain this ceasefire, it is reasonable to expect that an American role in arranging a comprehensive dialogue would also be beneficial for us.”
India, however, denies President Trump helped bring about ceasefire. It also bristles at being re-hyphenated with Pakistan it had worked hard to unravel, insisting on its usual stance of rejecting third-party mediation on bilateral issues.
Its ultra-Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi is too embarrassed to admit that he had accepted mediation due to the unfavourable turn of events in ‘Operation Sindoor’ he had launched accusing Pakistan of orchestrating the terrorist attack in Pahalgam. He has called the ceasefire “a pause” but knows ending it won’t be easy, and that his side had miscalculated two vital factors: One, Pakistan’s conventional military capability reinforced by cutting edge technology, provided by Chinese friends, which helped establish its superiority even over his prized Rafale jets.
In fact, some military analysts have opined that it may take six months to a year for Pakistan better prepare and do a return favour to Modi regarding his ‘new normal’ doctrine. Secondly, India had attacked Pakistan blaming it for the Pahalgam atrocity without providing convincing evidence to the world. In so doing it failed to realise that the world has moved on since 2001, hence the unsubstantiated allegation won’t work. It had the support of only Israel and Afghanistan.
No less important is a latest development; Pakistan has been named Vice Chair of the Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee, which monitors implementation of Resolution 1373 (2001), a core component of the UN’s global counter-terrorism architecture.
Above all, an unindented consequence of Modi’s ‘new normal’ is that it has propelled the Kashmir issue to front and centre of international attention. In his previous term Trump had indicated an interest in resolving Kashmir ‘if’ the two sides were willing. He is more emphatic this time around. “I will work with you both, to see if, after a ‘thousand years’ a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir”, he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
There already exists blueprint of a draft agreement on Kashmir the late Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and president Gen Pervez Musharraf were preparing to sign when sabotaged by some hawks within the BJP. Later, Congress Party PM Dr Manmohan Singh had also tried to push the same out-of-box solution.
Narendra Modi, who came to power nearly 11 years ago, and his men need to get over their ego hurt and let President Trump’s offer be a stepping stone to a comprehensive dialogue process to settle the Kashmir question so that there is durable peace and stability in South Asia.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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