Islamabad, Pakistan – Eleven days after armed men killed 26 dead in the picturesque valley of Baisaran in the Pahalgam, India and Pakistan of the Indian cashmere.
Nuclear neighbors have each announced a series of steat-to-range steps since the attack on April 22, that India implicitly blamed Pakistan, even if Islamabad denied any role in the killings.
India has suspended its participation in the Industry Water Treaty which applies a water sharing mechanism that depends. Pakistan threatened to move away from the 1972 Simla agreement which committed the two nations to recognize a previous ceasefire line as a control line (loc) – a de facto border – between them in cashmere, a contested region that they each control, but which they both claim in its entirety. The two nations also expelled the citizens of the other and reduced their diplomatic missions.
Despite a cease-fire agreement since 2021, the current climbing has been the most serious since 2019, when India has launched air strikes on Pakistani soil following an attack on Indian soldiers in Pulwama, cashmere administered by the Indians, who killed 40 soldiers. In recent days, they have exchanged shots through the loc.
And the region is now at the forefront, in the midst of increasing expectations that India could also launch a military operation against Pakistan.
However, the two countries have also hired their diplomatic partners. On Wednesday, on Wednesday, the Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, called the Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jaishankar, urging both parties to find a path to de-escalation. The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, called his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh on Thursday to condemn the attack and offered “strong support” to India.
Sharif met envoys from China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three of the allies closest to Pakistan, to ask for their support, and urged the ambassadors of the two Nations of the Gulf to “impress India to defuse and defuse tensions”.
To understand how the Pakistani strategists who worked on links with India view what could then happen, Al Jazeera spoke with Moeed Yusuf, who was advisor to the national security of Pakistan (NSA) between May 2021 and April 2022 under the former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Before his role as NSA, Yusuf also worked as Khan’s special advisor on national security issues from December 2019, four months after the Indian government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked the special Kashmir status administered by the Indians.
Based in Lahore, Yusuf is currently vice-chancellor of a private university and is the author and has published several books on South Asia and regional security. His most recent book, Broking Peace in Nuclear around: Us Crisis Management in South Asia, was published in 2018.
Al Jazeera: How do you assess the movements made by both sides so far in the crisis?
Moed Yusuf: India and Pakistan have long fought in terms of crisis management. They do not have a mechanism for managing the bilateral crisis, which is fundamental concern.
The crisis management tool number one used by both parties was dependence on third parties, the idea being that they would try to retain them both and help defuse the crisis.
This time, I think the problem that India has encountered is that they have followed the old game book, but the most important third party chief, the United States, did not show up to support India.
It seems that they have so far taken a neutral and intervention position, as President Donald Trump indicates a few days ago. (Trump said that he knew the leaders of India and Pakistan and believed that they could resolve the crisis by themselves.)
Pakistan’s response is directly linked to the Indian response, and it is historically as it was, the two countries that become with each other. This time also, a number of punitive steps have been announced.
The problem is that these are easy to set in motion but very difficult to reverse, even when things improve, and they can wish.
Unfortunately, in each crisis between them, the stages of reprisals become more and more substantial, because in this case, India has decided to contain a Treaty of Indus in suspense, which is illegal because the treaty does not provide such a provision.
Al Jazeera: Do you believe that a strike is imminent and if the two parties indicate the preparation for a confrontation?
Yusuf: In such moments, it is impossible to say it. The action of India remains plausible and possible, but the window where imminence was a real concern has passed.
What is usually happening in crises is that countries collect troop or logistics movements, or that their allies inform them, or that they count on the grounds on the ground to determine what could happen. Sometimes they can be poorly read and can lead the offensive side to see an opportunity to act where none exist or the defensive side to believe that an attack can happen when it is not.
Pakistan must naturally show its commitment to prepare for any eventuality. You don’t know what’s going to come, so you have to be ready.
That said, I don’t think we are going to see a major war, but in these circumstances, you can never predict, and a little misunderstanding or a bad calculation can lead to something major.
Al Jazeera: How do you see the role of third parties such as American states, China and Gulf in this crisis, and how would you compare it with previous cases?
Yusuf: My latest book, Brokerring Peace (2018), was on third-party management in the Pakistani-Indian context, and it is such a vital element for both because they have internalized it and built in their calculation that a third country will inevitably enter.
The idea is that a third -party mediator will intervene, and the two nations will agree to stop because that’s what they really want, instead of degenerating more.
And the chief of the pack of third countries has been the United States since the 1999 Kargil War. (Pakistani forces have gone through the loc to try to take control of strategic summits in Kargil du Ladakh, but India finally managed to resume territory. The president of the US-American, Bill Clinton, is credited with the end of this conflict.)
Everyone, including China, ultimately supports the American position, which favors immediate de -escalation above all during the crisis.
This has changed somewhat in the 2016 surgical strikes and the 2019 Pulwama crisis when the United States has strongly relied on the side of India, perhaps even encouraging it to act in 2019.
(In 2016, the Indian troops launched a cross -border “surgical strike” that New Delhi said that armed fighters were planning to attack India, after armed men killed 19 Indian soldiers in an attack on an army base in Uri, the Kashmire of Uri, Indian, three years later. You are.
However, this time, you have a white house president who turned and told Pakistan and India to understand him themselves.
I think that has more harmed India than Pakistan, because for Pakistan, they had reduced the possibility of significant American support in recent years, thinking that they have gotten too close to India because of their strategic relationship.
But India would have hoped that the Americans would lower the foot and pressure from Pakistan, which did not really materialize. The telephone call of Secretary of State Marco Rubio plays again in the middle, where they tell the two countries to get out of the war.
So what they have done, curiously, played a role in the restraint of India so far, because India has not felt (so far) so embarrassing to act that they could have during Pulwama in 2019.
Gulf countries have played a more active role than before. China has also made a detention declaration.
Al Jazeera: How have Pakistan’s relations with India evolved in recent years?
Yusuf: There was a sea change in the relationship between the two countries. When I was in office, despite serious problems and unilateral movements from India to cashmere in 2019, we saw a cease-fire agreement on the control line as well as the rear channel talks.
We have tried to move forward and reduce the incitement of India to destabilize Pakistan, but I think that India has lost this opportunity because of its own intransigence, pride and an ideological fold which continues to force them to lower and threaten Pakistan.
This has also led to a change in Pakistan, where leadership is now convinced that the restraint policy has not delivered, and India has abused and abused Pakistan dialogue.
Opinion is now that if India does not want to speak, Pakistan should not plead either. If India reaches out, we will probably answer, but there is no despair in Pakistan.
It is not a good place to be for one or the other country. I have long believed and supported in the end, so that Pakistan arrives where we want to go economically, and for India to arrive where it says that it wants to go regionally, it can only happen if the two improve their relationship. For the moment, however, with the current Indian attitude, unfortunately, I see little hope.
Al Jazeera: Do you plan direct talks in India-Pakistan at any level during or after this crisis?
Yes-I don’t know when it is, nor who will be through or with it, but I think that one of the main lessons that the Indians could probably leave once it is all over, is that the attempt to isolate Pakistan does not work.
Treaty of the in suspense industry? The potential suspension of the Simla agreement? These are major decisions, and the two countries will have to speak to settle them, and I think that at some point, they will get involved.
But I also don’t think that Pakistan moves to rapprochement, because we have offered opportunities for dialogues so many times recently in vain. As I said, the atmosphere in Pakistan has also focused on this issue.
In the end, Indians must essentially decide whether or not they want to speak. If they go out, I think Pakistan will always answer it.
* This interview has been modified for more clarity and conciseness.
