US nudges Pakistan to assuage India concerns

There has been much discussion in India on the steps to be taken after February 14’s brazen attack on a Central Reserve Police Force convoy in Jammu & Kashmir’s Pulwama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has personally been in the forefront of preparing the public for military action against Pakistan after Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based terror group, owned up to the attack.

Pakistan, however, has not gone beyond mundane, defensive, rhetoric.

Its status as a safe haven for terrorists and terror groups like JeM was highlighted Thursday when a unanimous resolution passed by the 15-member UN Security Council urged the international community to come to India’s aid by doing everything they could to end terrorist violence like the one that occurred in Pulwama. The resolution named JeM as well as Jammu and Kashmir (which was not referred to as being a “disputed” territory). Such was the force of the moment that Pakistan’s “all-weather friend” China tried to stall the resolution and have the wording changed, but failed to do so.

It is this which alerted Pakistan that it must be seen to do something constructive in order not to attract any further international ire. Its eyes would have been on what steps the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the United Nations monitor whose deliberations influence financial aid to Pakistan, might take.

Consequently, news came from Pakistan that the operating base of JeM, a madrasa-cum-mosque complex at Bahawalpur in southern Punjab, had been taken over by the state government. There was also news that Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which was organically linked to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), and its charity front had been proscribed.

It is doubtful if any of this has real meaning, given the history, but it was at least a constructive formal response to the condemnation in the Security Council. But a statement by Pakistan information minister Fawad Chaudhry on Saturday dilutes the import of this. The minister called the news “fabricated”. Perhaps the Pakistan government does not wish to give the impression of doing anything in response to international pressure.

But it may soon find that its room for manoeuvre is limited. US President Donald Trump has said at a media interaction that it is “a very dangerous situation” between India and Pakistan after the Pulwama outrage as India is considering “a very strong response”. The United States is unlikely to be in favour of conflict breaking out, and is probably nudging Pakistan to do something concrete to assuage India’s security concerns, and simultaneously urging India to  de-escalate to ensure against military confrontation.

It is in this context that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words at a rally at Tonk, Rajasthan, on Saturday gain some significance. Mr Modi said he was waiting to see what Pakistan PM Imran Khan would do to deliver on his promise of being “truthful” and “acting honestly”.