AA Edit | Standoff Won’t End Until Pakistan Abjures Terror By Proxy

In his first days in office in his second term, US President Donald Trump introduced his shock and awe campaign promising to reshape America and destroy what he considered were unfair obstructions to his agenda. As he crossed 100 days in office, his radical agenda has been repulsed on many fronts.

Even before taking office in January, Trump had claimed victory in bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza and forecast that within a day of becoming President he would have the Ukraine war stopped. Both wars are raging as Israel keeps bombing Gaza and Russia rains rockets on major cities and taking more Ukrainian lives, much to the chagrin of Trump who is looking on helplessly.

It is as well then that the US President held forth the most simplistic view that the standoff between India and Pakistan in the wake of the horrific Pahalgam terror attack would be figured out by the two countries themselves, hinting that they could do this on their own and without his intervention.

Trump had, however, unequivocally condemned Pakistan for the terror incident, terming it “very bad”. And he has stood his ground despite uttering the opinion that there have been tensions for 1,500 years — he must have meant the tensions that may have been caused by some historical invasions of India that, perhaps, date back much further in time.

At least it is clear that this is a standoff that the United States will not be attempting to intervene in and that it would be left to the two post-Partition neighbours to sort it out. Offers of mediation, besides a gratuitous offer by the Pakistan Prime Minister to assist an independent probe, have been heard and ignored.

Given the history of recent “invasions” of India by Pakistan proxy terrorists — the 26/11 Mumbai attack in 2008, strike aimed at the Pathankot air force base in 2016 and attack on a brigade HQ in Uri the same year, the blasting of a convoy of security personnel in Pulwama in 2019 that led to a surgical strike on Balakot and now the Pahalgam terror incident — it is on the cards that the doors to any talks are even more firmly shut than they have been in the years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi dropped in on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s daughter in Lahore in 2014.

The rushes of Jhelum water in Muzzafarabad in PoK is being seen now as the first sign of a new normal in which India will not share any data on the Indus waters nor hand out warnings on water releases, etc. And India will be asserting its right to abandon the Indus Waters treaty of 1960, which it has placed in abeyance for now, until and unless Pakistan renounces terror attacks on India by proxies.

In his Mann Ki Baat programme, Prime Minister Modi reiterated India’s condemnation of terror and the nation’s commitment to bring the culprits to book and act against their handlers. So long as no action precipitates this crisis into a full-blown war, India must consider every option to get the message across to Pakistan that it must not only accept its defence minister’s admission that the country trains and sponsors terrorists but also convince its army brass and the ISI that aiming terror at India solves nothing and only stokes greater ill will.

In a first sign of a modicum of normalcy returning to the Valley, tourists are braving the atmosphere of fear and suspicion of Pakistan-exported terror and landing in Jammu & Kashmir. India’s resilience is too well-known. Life must go on for the locals who are the worst hit economically by any dip in tourism and most of them condemn terror much more than Pakistan may imagine.