Published May 8, 2025
Dawn
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
INDIA and Pakistan are being driven, inexorably, towards a confrontation that neither side wants but neither side can avert. The drivers of conflict have multiplied, the limits tested by these episodic stand-offs have been stretched, and the points of contact between their militaries during the kinetic manoeuvres in each of these stand-offs has multiplied.
From the first such stand-off, perhaps in 1990, till today, there is an unmistakable trajectory of escalation. What is driving this?
One of the big drivers is India’s attempt to end its difficulties in occupied Kashmir using a violent development model that has lain behind the rise of Narendra Modi. The model was born in the early 2000s that saw two pivotal developments in both India and Pakistan. Up until 9/11, Pakistan was being pushed increasingly towards global isolation and its economy was depleted to near breaking point. The country had undergone three rounds of debt rescheduling and just finished a gruelling, short-term Stand-by Arrangement with the IMF that left the populace battered with unemployment and sharply rising energy costs. There was no further growth path for Pakistan in those years other than deeper structural reform, which was proving too heavy a burden even for a dictator with near absolute power.
However, 9/11 changed all that overnight. Instantly, Pakistan went from being an international pariah to a front-line state in a superpower’s war, and was eventually crowned with the status of ‘major non Nato ally’. The volume of money that poured into the country, coupled with the generous terms of debt rescheduling extended by the Paris Club in December 2001, impacting a total debt stock of $12.5 billion, allowed the regime of Gen Musharraf to pump growth to unprecedented levels, creating a bubble economy that made more fortunes for more people than any similar period in the country’s history.
Modi’s model of development rested on the ability to efficiently dispossess people and take land required for large-scale projects.
This sudden reversal of fortunes in Pakistan came as a rude shock to our neighbours in India. Over the course of the 1990s, India and Pakistan were locked in a stand-off over Kashmir, which left India increasingly embattled by the uprising in the occupied territory and Pakistan in the grip of sanctions and isolation. India accused Pakistan of sponsoring the uprising in occupied Kashmir, and of providing training and cover to militants in the troubled valley. At one point, Pakistan came close to being placed on the State Department’s list of sponsors of terrorism, a designation that would have had far-reaching implications for the country had it come to pass.
By 2001, India’s policy of imposing a crushing isolation on Pakistan was finally bearing fruit when 9/11 came along and reversed it all. This was a big shock to the Indian foreign policy establishment, which had shouldered a tremendous cost in men and materiel for repression of the uprising in occupied Kashmir, under the hopes that pressure on Pakistan would eventually cause the uprising to die down. All those hopes were dashed once Pakistan became a superpower favourite again.
The Congress party had seen its fortunes sag throughout the 1990s, losing power to the BJP by the end of the decade. But in 2004, it scored a surprising victory at the polls and renewed its electoral strength again in 2009 by increasing its seats in the Lok Sabha from 153 to 206.
Yet trouble brewed behind this double movement in the early 2000s, which had seen the return to power of the Congress party in India and a reversal of Pakistan’s fortunes. This was when Modi made his appearance on the big stage of Indian politics with the Gujarat riots in 2002, cynically using communal hate and violence as a tool to grab power. Once in power, Modi unrolled a model of violent development, which fused rent-seeking alliances with billionaires at the federal level, with high levels of public expenditure on infrastructure projects to promote ports, power plants, luxury urban housing developments and more. This model of development rested on the ability to efficiently dispossess people and take land required for large-scale projects, high levels of government spending and a close, symbiotic relationship between wealthy elites, the party apparatus and the government machinery of India.
Fortunes changed following the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. The Congress party was at a loss for ideas on how to restart growth in India, and Musharraf’s growth bubble burst comprehensively while Pakistan’s troubles with the US mounted. As Pakistan sank once more into its pre-9/11 state of isolation coupled with a depleted economy, the Congress party hurtled towards its most stunning electoral defeat ever in 2014. That was Modi’s year, when he also brought this model of violent development as his party’s vision for achieving a final resolution of New Delhi’s long-running Kashmir problem.
Two ideas were central to this vision, and both have a pedigree in India’s policy conversation going back at least to the early 2000s. One was to revoke Kashmir’s special status granted under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. The second was to cast off the constraints of the Indus Waters Treaty. With both these done, the government would be in a better position to use public funds to initiate large-scale infrastructure projects through which to select winners and losers within Kashmir. The idea was to reward those who would play ball with the government, and crush those who wouldn’t.
These are the broad developments that imparted such inexorable momentum to the episodic return of stand-offs between India and Pakistan. Modi’s India wants to make Kashmir its own, regardless of the wishes of Kashmir’s inhabitants. Pakistan is determined to thwart this ambition, regardless of the cost it has to pay along the way. Neither side can win in this situation. Yet none can afford to lose either.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
INDIA and Pakistan are being driven, inexorably, towards a confrontation that neither side wants but neither side can avert. The drivers of conflict have multiplied, the limits tested by these episodic stand-offs have been stretched, and the points of contact between their militaries during the kinetic manoeuvres in each of these stand-offs has multiplied.
From the first such stand-off, perhaps in 1990, till today, there is an unmistakable trajectory of escalation. What is driving this?
One of the big drivers is India’s attempt to end its difficulties in occupied Kashmir using a violent development model that has lain behind the rise of Narendra Modi. The model was born in the early 2000s that saw two pivotal developments in both India and Pakistan. Up until 9/11, Pakistan was being pushed increasingly towards global isolation and its economy was depleted to near breaking point. The country had undergone three rounds of debt rescheduling and just finished a gruelling, short-term Stand-by Arrangement with the IMF that left the populace battered with unemployment and sharply rising energy costs. There was no further growth path for Pakistan in those years other than deeper structural reform, which was proving too heavy a burden even for a dictator with near absolute power.
However, 9/11 changed all that overnight. Instantly, Pakistan went from being an international pariah to a front-line state in a superpower’s war, and was eventually crowned with the status of ‘major non Nato ally’. The volume of money that poured into the country, coupled with the generous terms of debt rescheduling extended by the Paris Club in December 2001, impacting a total debt stock of $12.5 billion, allowed the regime of Gen Musharraf to pump growth to unprecedented levels, creating a bubble economy that made more fortunes for more people than any similar period in the country’s history.
Modi’s model of development rested on the ability to efficiently dispossess people and take land required for large-scale projects.
This sudden reversal of fortunes in Pakistan came as a rude shock to our neighbours in India. Over the course of the 1990s, India and Pakistan were locked in a stand-off over Kashmir, which left India increasingly embattled by the uprising in the occupied territory and Pakistan in the grip of sanctions and isolation. India accused Pakistan of sponsoring the uprising in occupied Kashmir, and of providing training and cover to militants in the troubled valley. At one point, Pakistan came close to being placed on the State Department’s list of sponsors of terrorism, a designation that would have had far-reaching implications for the country had it come to pass.
By 2001, India’s policy of imposing a crushing isolation on Pakistan was finally bearing fruit when 9/11 came along and reversed it all. This was a big shock to the Indian foreign policy establishment, which had shouldered a tremendous cost in men and materiel for repression of the uprising in occupied Kashmir, under the hopes that pressure on Pakistan would eventually cause the uprising to die down. All those hopes were dashed once Pakistan became a superpower favourite again.
The Congress party had seen its fortunes sag throughout the 1990s, losing power to the BJP by the end of the decade. But in 2004, it scored a surprising victory at the polls and renewed its electoral strength again in 2009 by increasing its seats in the Lok Sabha from 153 to 206.
Yet trouble brewed behind this double movement in the early 2000s, which had seen the return to power of the Congress party in India and a reversal of Pakistan’s fortunes. This was when Modi made his appearance on the big stage of Indian politics with the Gujarat riots in 2002, cynically using communal hate and violence as a tool to grab power. Once in power, Modi unrolled a model of violent development, which fused rent-seeking alliances with billionaires at the federal level, with high levels of public expenditure on infrastructure projects to promote ports, power plants, luxury urban housing developments and more. This model of development rested on the ability to efficiently dispossess people and take land required for large-scale projects, high levels of government spending and a close, symbiotic relationship between wealthy elites, the party apparatus and the government machinery of India.
Fortunes changed following the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. The Congress party was at a loss for ideas on how to restart growth in India, and Musharraf’s growth bubble burst comprehensively while Pakistan’s troubles with the US mounted. As Pakistan sank once more into its pre-9/11 state of isolation coupled with a depleted economy, the Congress party hurtled towards its most stunning electoral defeat ever in 2014. That was Modi’s year, when he also brought this model of violent development as his party’s vision for achieving a final resolution of New Delhi’s long-running Kashmir problem.
Two ideas were central to this vision, and both have a pedigree in India’s policy conversation going back at least to the early 2000s. One was to revoke Kashmir’s special status granted under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. The second was to cast off the constraints of the Indus Waters Treaty. With both these done, the government would be in a better position to use public funds to initiate large-scale infrastructure projects through which to select winners and losers within Kashmir. The idea was to reward those who would play ball with the government, and crush those who wouldn’t.
These are the broad developments that imparted such inexorable momentum to the episodic return of stand-offs between India and Pakistan. Modi’s India wants to make Kashmir its own, regardless of the wishes of Kashmir’s inhabitants. Pakistan is determined to thwart this ambition, regardless of the cost it has to pay along the way. Neither side can win in this situation. Yet none can afford to lose either.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
Unwarranted aggression
Dawn
Published May 8, 2025
IT is a time of great peril in the subcontinent. India’s provocative attack targeting several locations in Azad Kashmir and Punjab early on Wednesday comes after two weeks of sabre-rattling by warmongering officials and media personnel in that country following the tragic Pahalgam episode.
It appears that the danger has not passed, as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told the nation last evening that India would “suffer the consequences” of its ill-advised moves. Earlier, there was a welcome show of political unity in the National Assembly, while the day began with a meeting of the National Security Committee, which dubbed New Delhi’s perilous actions as “acts of war”.
The deadly aggression against Pakistan has put both neighbours on the path to more conflict, unless a negotiated end to this dispute — and to the core issue of Kashmir — is found. Pakistan has responded to the blatant violation of its sovereignty resolutely, with the state saying that five Indian warplanes were downed during the hostilities. It is hoped that the message been understood in New Delhi, and that the latter’s shenanigans will not be repeated.
Aside from sites in Azad Kashmir, locations in Punjab were also hit. At least 31 people in Pakistan were killed in India’s so-called Operation Sindoor, according to the DG ISPR. This reckless act on India’s part could have resulted in more casualties had the intruders not been confronted in time. The Indian military’s claim that the attacks were “non-escalatory in nature” defies belief. Violating a country’s frontiers, hitting its cities and towns and murdering its people is not just escalatory; these are very much acts of war. Moreover, if the Indian state says only the ‘terror infrastructure’ was targeted, then how would New Delhi explain the fact that civilian neighbourhoods, as well as the Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project, were attacked? The fact is that the Indian state took this ill-conceived action to cover up for its massive security lapse in Pahalgam. What happened in the held Kashmir tourist spot was indeed deplorable, and the guilty should be brought to justice. Yet the BJP government has used the tragedy to create war hysteria against Pakistan, without any proof of this country’s involvement in that attack.
If India has solid evidence against Pakistan, why has it failed to make it public? Using Pahalgam as a casus belli against Pakistan seems to be a manoeuvre by the Modi regime to boost its standing domestically, and throw its weight around in the neighbourhood. This foolish gambit has failed and has brought the nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink of war.
Following the Indian attack, there has been a crescendo of global voices calling for restraint and de-escalation, with several states offering their good offices to mediate. Pakistan has shown itself ready to accept such offers, but will India respond positively to prevent the slide towards all-out war? The events of the past few weeks have once again demonstrated that the Kashmir dispute remains a global flashpoint. While India may believe its own fiction that the Kashmir dispute has been ‘resolved’, Pakistan, the Kashmiris as well as the world community continue to acknowledge the fact that the region remains disputed. Pakistan and India have fought several wars over Kashmir, and are on the precipice of a fresh conflict due to it.
Therefore, in order to establish long-term peace in South Asia, both states need to talk to each other, frankly and meaningfully. This may be a bitter pill to swallow for the Hindu revivalist BJP regime, which has never stopped dreaming of ‘Akhand Bharat’. But it would be to its own detriment if it does not shed its ideological fantasies and come to the table with Pakistan and the Kashmiris to achieve a solution acceptable to all. The alternative is perpetual hostility. In the immediate future, the global community must step up efforts to de-escalate, and media and civil society on both sides should stop fanning the flames of war.
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
The phoney peace
Published May 8, 2025
Dawn
INDIA’S true enemy is not Pakistan: it is hubris, the arrogance of a born-again bully.
India emerged as a unified nation-state in 1947, the People’s Republic of China two years later. Both boast a heritage that is more than 5,000 years old. Yet each has spent the past seven decades struggling to resolve unfinished business left by divisive powers — Great Britain and America. In India’s case, this included the disputed former kingdom of Jammu & Kashmir. In China’s case, it was the renegade island of Taiwan.
Today, China and India are determined to straddle the 21st century. They have hegemonic ambitions. India aspires to dominate its subcontinent; China, the rest of the world.
China is a post-1972 enemy of US’s making, just as Russia (once an ally against Germany) is a product of Europe’s post-1945 paranoia. Meanwhile, hostility in the subcontinent, has brought Pakistan and India yet again to the edge of an abyss.
Tensions following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22 are simmering. It is a sign of the BJP government’s insecurity that it should have reacted so quickly and so pointedly after that incident. It accused Pakistan (without naming it) of masterminding the attack. It unleashed punitive measures such as an unwarranted suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, banning overflights, sealing borders, expelling Pakistani nationals, freezing trade, and appealing to the IMF and ADB to stop aid to Pakistan.
Even Dr Goebbels would have admired the jingoism of Indian media anchors.
It released a barrage of transparent propaganda aimed at winning the sympathy of the international community. Even Dr Goebbels would have admired the jingoism of Indian media anchors, chained all too obviously to the mothership of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Their aim is to convince their compatriots that India has won the phoney war. Realists know that both countries will have to revert (hopefully sooner rather than later) to a state of phoney peace — the period of uneasy relations that followed the Tashkent Agreement of 1966, the Shimla summit in 1972, and the Lahore Declaration of 1999.
Analysts meanwhile are busy calculating who has gained what, and who lost how much from this latest India-Pakistan confrontation?
Had this country carried out an attack at Pahalgam, it would have had everything to lose: the sympathy of the beleaguered Kashmiris, damage to its precarious solvency, its credibility with the IMF, agricultural dehydration, diplomatic isolation, and political schism within. And unlike 1999, there would have been no Bill Clinton in the White House to rescue it from a Kargil-type incursion.
India on its side has gained less than it had planned. It has dented the front-fender in its drive to obtain a seat in the Security Council. It enjoys less credibility in international circles than it assumed. It does not have the United Nations in its back pocket. Its blunderbuss diplomacy has backfired. It will have to admit that water is not an India-owned natural resource, and that impetuous repudiation of international agreements is bad policy.
Indian governments have yet to learn that anti-Pakistan patriotism is an obsolete, outworn tool with which to start a fire.
I had written this much when news came that very early on May 7, India had unilaterally attacked five targets in Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan, including Muridke, which is 55 kilometres from where I live. I drove around my neighbourhood. Everything appeared calm as the city woke up to another cloudless morning.
Since then, throughout the day, reports of attacks and counterattacks have inundated news channels. The phoney war has turned serious and in ea-rnest. Not quite the conventional war yet with sirens and air-raid shelters and a run on the banks, but an aerial-cum-cyber war with strategic objectives like airports, com-mand centres, possibly even dams. The Indians have made the first strike. Any escalation will be at a time and place of Pakistan’s choosing.
I recall after the 1965 war M.M. Ahmad (then adviser to president Ayub Khan) talking to the Americans who feared an escalation, involving other allied countries. He told the US ambassador that for Pakistan it was already a world war.
Since those who start wars never ask for a public mandate before declaring hostilities, they should listen to voices outside their own minds. They should heed the advice of persons who fought wars against wars. “War does not determine who is right,” the philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell warned, “only who is left.” And the British prime minister Stanley Baldwin’s chilling advice to the living: “War would end — if the dead could return.” All sides should keep his warning in mind as they contemplate their next move.
The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
Today, China and India are determined to straddle the 21st century. They have hegemonic ambitions. India aspires to dominate its subcontinent; China, the rest of the world.
China is a post-1972 enemy of US’s making, just as Russia (once an ally against Germany) is a product of Europe’s post-1945 paranoia. Meanwhile, hostility in the subcontinent, has brought Pakistan and India yet again to the edge of an abyss.
Tensions following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22 are simmering. It is a sign of the BJP government’s insecurity that it should have reacted so quickly and so pointedly after that incident. It accused Pakistan (without naming it) of masterminding the attack. It unleashed punitive measures such as an unwarranted suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, banning overflights, sealing borders, expelling Pakistani nationals, freezing trade, and appealing to the IMF and ADB to stop aid to Pakistan.
Even Dr Goebbels would have admired the jingoism of Indian media anchors.
It released a barrage of transparent propaganda aimed at winning the sympathy of the international community. Even Dr Goebbels would have admired the jingoism of Indian media anchors, chained all too obviously to the mothership of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Their aim is to convince their compatriots that India has won the phoney war. Realists know that both countries will have to revert (hopefully sooner rather than later) to a state of phoney peace — the period of uneasy relations that followed the Tashkent Agreement of 1966, the Shimla summit in 1972, and the Lahore Declaration of 1999.
Analysts meanwhile are busy calculating who has gained what, and who lost how much from this latest India-Pakistan confrontation?
Had this country carried out an attack at Pahalgam, it would have had everything to lose: the sympathy of the beleaguered Kashmiris, damage to its precarious solvency, its credibility with the IMF, agricultural dehydration, diplomatic isolation, and political schism within. And unlike 1999, there would have been no Bill Clinton in the White House to rescue it from a Kargil-type incursion.
India on its side has gained less than it had planned. It has dented the front-fender in its drive to obtain a seat in the Security Council. It enjoys less credibility in international circles than it assumed. It does not have the United Nations in its back pocket. Its blunderbuss diplomacy has backfired. It will have to admit that water is not an India-owned natural resource, and that impetuous repudiation of international agreements is bad policy.
Indian governments have yet to learn that anti-Pakistan patriotism is an obsolete, outworn tool with which to start a fire.
I had written this much when news came that very early on May 7, India had unilaterally attacked five targets in Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan, including Muridke, which is 55 kilometres from where I live. I drove around my neighbourhood. Everything appeared calm as the city woke up to another cloudless morning.
Since then, throughout the day, reports of attacks and counterattacks have inundated news channels. The phoney war has turned serious and in ea-rnest. Not quite the conventional war yet with sirens and air-raid shelters and a run on the banks, but an aerial-cum-cyber war with strategic objectives like airports, com-mand centres, possibly even dams. The Indians have made the first strike. Any escalation will be at a time and place of Pakistan’s choosing.
I recall after the 1965 war M.M. Ahmad (then adviser to president Ayub Khan) talking to the Americans who feared an escalation, involving other allied countries. He told the US ambassador that for Pakistan it was already a world war.
Since those who start wars never ask for a public mandate before declaring hostilities, they should listen to voices outside their own minds. They should heed the advice of persons who fought wars against wars. “War does not determine who is right,” the philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell warned, “only who is left.” And the British prime minister Stanley Baldwin’s chilling advice to the living: “War would end — if the dead could return.” All sides should keep his warning in mind as they contemplate their next move.
The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
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