Meanwhile, Delhi government leaders and the army chief have kept raising the ante, talking of surgical strikes and calling "Pakistan's nuclear bluff." After a recent Kashmiri resistance fighters attack on a military camp that left five soldiers dead, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman threatened "Pakistan will pay for this misadventure." In a predictable response, her opposite number in Pakistan, Khurram Dastgir, issued a statement saying "any Indian aggression, strategic miscalculation, or misadventure regardless of its scales, mode or location will not go unpunished, and shall be met with an equally and proportionate response." Such exchanges amidst an unprecedented escalation in violence across the LoC and the WB can easily lead to eruption of a major confrontation between the two nuclear-armed countries, with catastrophic results no one in this region or the wider world would want to see.
Before things spin out of control, the world powers need to stop acting as indifferent bystanders. As per the Security Council's resolutions, the UN recognizes Kashmir as a disputed territory and maintains its Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan. That places special responsibility on it to prevent outbreak of an all-out war by helping resolve the cause of rising tensions. Unfortunately, although the UN Secretary General has been expressing concern over the grave human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir, offering to send a fact-finding mission but only to throw up his hands because of India's refusal to allow any intercession. That does not square with UN's role in similar situations in other parts of the world. As AJK President Sardar Masood Khan pointed out during a recent address to a convention of British councillors and lord mayors in London, the UN had intervened in South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, Yemen and Libya without waiting for the consent of the parties to the conflict, posing the very valid question why should the Secretary General be deterred by India's non-compliance? It is time the UN and international community recognized the dangers inherent in the present situation and helped resolve the core issue of contention between the two countries.