The escalation of tensions and conflict between Pakistan and India has by now assumed alarming proportions. First and foremost, India's claim of an air raid in Balakot that destroyed a training camp of Jaish-i-Mohammad (JeM) and purportedly killed 300 fighters including the commander in retaliation for the Pulwama attack has been questioned if not refuted by reports from the area and the authorities that in fact the intruding Indian aircraft were repulsed by our scrambled jets and forced to retreat within four minutes, in the process dumping their payload in scarcely populated territory without any casualties or damage. Now the latest reports speak of the downing of an Indian fighter and the capture of a pilot. Artillery duels have broken out on the Line of Control (LoC) and the reported toll so far is four civilians killed and 11 wounded in Azad Kashmir. Inevitably, the top civilian and military leadership have met in the National Security Committee and considered the highly dangerous and escalating situation. Prime Minister Imran Khan has reiterated his offer of talks to India, an approach echoed in DG ISPR Major General Asif Ghafoor's press conference in which he underlined the fact that Pakistan did not want war but could not escape the necessity of a response that would convey to India Pakistani defensive capability and the high risks involved in any military adventurism against Pakistan. While here the government and opposition seem in rare harmony on the need to join hands in defence of the country, in India the hysteria being whipped up by the media and Hindutva brigade has all but drowned out rational, sober voices, to the detriment of peace. Internationally too alarm is rising at the rapidly deteriorating situation given the possibility of military exchanges blowing up into a full scale war with both countries possessing nuclear weapons. Ironically, while received wisdom holds nuclear weaponised countries do not go to war with each other, in the case of the old historic rivals Pakistan and India, all bets are off.
The shrill condemnation by India of the Pulwama attack was misplaced concreteness. Both the timing and size of the attack (and its attendant casualties) do not make sense from Islamabad's point of view when it was welcoming a de facto Saudi ruler. If the JeM claim of responsibility is accepted for the sake of argument, this puts the Pulwama incident in a very different light to show how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have interpreted it. Major-General Ghafoor too argued that proxy jihadists were a thing of the past and Pakistan should not therefore be blamed for responsibility for the Pulwama incident. The implication being that groups like JeM are 'spoilers' who act when even a hint of dialogue between Pakistan and India is mooted. It may be recalled that among the JeM's 'exploits' are counted the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 that brought the armies of the two countries to an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. Then there are reports that JeM attempted to assassinate the then president, Pervez Musharraf, in 2003. Both instances point to attempts to so sully the atmosphere that the two countries turn back from efforts at peace and normalisation towards confrontation and conflict. Modi, the BJP, the hysterical Indian media and the wider jingoistic campaign ongoing there must think again, rationally and coolly. War between Pakistan and India, with its concomitant possibility of a nuclear war, would be suicide for both countries. It is therefore in the interests of both, the region and the world that restraint be adopted, further tit-for-tat escalation be stopped, the militaries on either side step back from the brink of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and find ways and means to prevent falling into the trap set by organisations whose vested interest lies in Pakistan-India confrontation and even war, since a turn to dialogue and peace would drive them out of 'business'.