Sunday, April 27, 2025

FIST-FIGHTS IN THE AIR

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While it could be argued, or admitted, that Pakistan had taken a hit vis-à-vis the Modi government’s historic steps in Jammu and Kashmir, this is time for reconciliation on both sides. For India, here was a step forward in the matter of national integration; and for Pakistan, a step backward in its decades-long attempt to get this part of Kashmir to its side. Weeks later, Pakistan is still in a mood to flex its muscles and browbeat its rival.

Pakistan’s move at the UN, with ally China, did not help. Its attempt to draw in the US to browbeat India too failed. The world community stood by India’s steps in Kashmir; and this was only to be expected in view of the strong will by world leaders against the scourge of terror, which has its epicenter in and around Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan understands as much.

Test-firing a surface-to-surface Ghaznavi missile in itself meant little to India, but such acts could strengthen feelings that Pakistan is preparing for a war with India. At the minimum, this could be an attempt to raise global concerns that the two nuclear-armed rivals could set the clock back in terms of the global campaign for nuclear deterrence. Pakistan, followed by India, already raised the bar and made it clear that the long-held “no first use” nuclear policy is not the last word. At the same time, this is no time for a war for Pakistan, caught as it is in a serious economic crisis – Imran Khan himself failing even to pay electricity bills and facing the prospect of being a “powerless” PM.

The army brass in Rawalpindi is conspicuous by their silence for now; yet there’s no guarantee that they would not take things too far. They were in the forefront of the pro-Kashmiri, anti-India crusades staged through proxy agencies like JeM and LeT, which drew their strength from the military’s notorious ISI. A threat from a Pakistani minister is that his nation would resort, again, to closure of its airspace to Indian flights – which would require flights to India from the western sector taking a detour, costing them more in terms of fuel expenses and time.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy’s prescription is to effect a similar closure to ships heading for the Karachi port via the Arabian Sea. All these and worse scenarios are possible, but who suffers in the end is the big question.

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