NEW YORK, Apr 27 (APP): India “appears to be building a case for military action” against Pakistan since the armed attack in Indian-occupied Kashmir, The New York Times reported Sunday, citing four diplomatic officials aware of the briefings given at the foreign ministry .
In a dispatch from New Delhi, the newspaper said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to more than a dozen world leaders since April 22 , but that effort is “largely not about rallying help to de-escalate India’s dangerous face-off with Pakistan.”
Without naming Pakistan, Modi in a speech on Thursday promised severe punishment and the razing of terror safe havens.
The report said the situation in the region remains “volatile”, noting that In Kashmir, Indian forces have also begun a sweeping clampdown, arresting hundreds, as they continue their hunt for the perpetrators.
Earlier, India declared its intention to disrupt the flow of water to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Pakistani irrigation system depends largely on upstream rivers. It also ordered the immediate departure of some staff members at Pakistan’s diplomatic mission as well as of Pakistani citizens visiting India.
Pakistan, for its part, has said it will suspend participation in bilateral treaties, including the Simla agreement that affects the “line of control” in the disputed Kashmir region.
Anti-Muslim sentiment in India is also intensifying, with Kashmiri students studying in other Indian cities in particular facing widespread harassment and many of them feeling compelled to return home, Times Correspondent Mujib Mashal said in the report.
Pointing out that even five days after the assault, in which gunmen killed 26 civilians, the report said India has not officially identified any group as having carried it out, nor has New Delhi publicly presented any evidence to support its claim that Pakistan was behind the incident. The Pakistani government has denied involvement.
In the briefings to diplomats at the foreign ministry, Indian officials have described Pakistan’s past patterns of support for terrorist groups targeting India, it said, citing diplomatic officials. The Indian officials have said their investigation is continuing, and made brief references to technical intelligence tying the perpetrators of last week’s attack to Pakistan, including facial recognition data.
The lack of strong evidence offered so far, analysts and diplomats, cited by the Times, pointed to one of two possibilities: that “India needs more time to gather information about the terrorist attack before striking Pakistan, or that — in a time of particular chaos on the world stage — it feels little need to justify to anyone the actions it plans to take.”
A military confrontation between India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons, runs the risk of rapid escalation that could be difficult to contain, the Times said. “But India is largely unrestrained by any global pressure to limit its response, and it has become quicker to flex its muscles in recent years as its diplomatic and economic power has grown.”
The governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia have spoken to the two sides, and Iran’s foreign minister has publicly offered to mediate. The United Nations and the European Union have called for restraint and dialogue. But major powers, including the United States, are distracted by other crises, and the Times said India is interpreting the expressions of support by many countries for its pursuit of justice as a green light for any measures it takes.
Trump administration officials have voiced strong backing of India’s fight against terrorism. President Trump has said he is friendly with both India and Pakistan, while noting that they have long been at odds.
But it is unclear how involved Washington will get in the current clash. Three months into his term, Trump has still not named an ambassador to India, a sign of where South Asia ranks in his list of priorities.
Even if the United States or other powers did try to insert themselves into the conflict, they may have limited influence, it was pointed out.
The initial response from Washington has been similar to how the first Trump administration dealt with the last major flare-up over Kashmir, in 2019, Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, was quoted as saying in the dispatch.
That confrontation was spurred by an attack that killed dozens of Indian security forces. The affiliation of the attackers — a militant group called Jaish-e-Muhammad — was more clear, it said.
At that time, the Trump White House signaled support for India. The administration increased its diplomatic pressure for restraint only after India had gotten a punch in on Pakistan, with a cross-border airstrike.
The strike’s damage was disputed, th Times said. Afterward, as Pakistan moved to retaliate, it got into a dogfight and shot down an Indian jet. The pilot was taken prisoner.
To make up for that fumbled response, all signs this time indicate a desire by India to do “something spectacular,” Mr. Markey said. Pakistan has vowed to match and exceed any strike by India.
“The tit-for-tat cycle could move rapidly, and the Indians and Pakistanis have inflated assessments of their own ability to manage escalation,” Markey said.
Unlike with the 2019 terrorist attack, the claims of responsibility for last week’s slaughter have been murky, with information even on the exact number of attackers less than concrete. A little-known group calling itself the Resistance Front emerged on social media to say it was behind the massacre, according to Indian news outlets. Indian officials, in private, say the group is a proxy for Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“The lack of clarity may help explain why India has pointed largely to Pakistan’s past support of terrorism in Kashmir to make its case for a military reprisal now,” the report said. “But that approach, before India has laid out its evidence even in private diplomatic discussions, has raised some eyebrows considering the gravity of the escalation.
“One diplomat privately wondered: Do you want to go to war with a nuclear-armed neighbor based just on past patterns?”
Shiv Shankar Menon, a former national security adviser in India, was quoted as saying that Modi had little choice but to take military action after responding with strikes against Pakistan both in 2019 and in 2016, after another attack in Kashmir. The Indian government is under pressure to respond to a major security lapse in a troubled area that it was projecting as transformed in recent years and where it has been encouraging tourism, according to the report.
But Menon said the tit-for-tat between the two adversaries was unlikely to get out of hand.
“I’m not hugely worried,” he said, “because they’re both quite happy in a state of managed hostility.”
APP/ift