EOn Wednesday morning, India carried out air strikes in the Pakistani province of Punjab and the cashmere administered by Pakistan. In a press release, New Delhi said They targeted the terrorist infrastructure and that strikes were in retaliation for the attack on April 22 which killed 26 tourists in cashmere administered in India, that New Delhi accused Pakistan. As I wrote for time several days ago, a type of Indian military action was widely expected.
While New Delhi describe The operation as an escalation is clearly not how Pakistan – which denies any involvement in the attack on April 22 – consulted them. He denounced The most intense strikes in Pakistan since a 1971 conflict, as an “act of war”. He claimed They have reached civilian targets, including a mosque, and killed at least 31 people.
Pakistan immediately launched an answer, including intense bombings on the Indian side of the de facto border, which, according to the army of India, had killed at least 15 civilians. Pakistan also claims to have shot down several Indian planes to the cashmere administered by India (Indian officials recognized The accident of three Indian planes, but they say that the reasons are not clear).
The risks of climbing are extremely high, given the scale of hostilities and dark moods in the two capitals. India has struck Punjab – the most populous and prosperous province in Pakistan, and which houses the headquarters of the capital and military – Pakistan can choose to strike objectives beyond the cashmere administered by India. This then increases the risk of additional Indian strikes on Pakistan, including military sites – and especially if the initial Pakistani response, as Islamabad said, continued after Indian military targets. In such scenarios, it would be difficult not to worry about the risk of nuclear climbing.
With the crisis that evolves so quickly, speculations on the next movements and following counter-motives have a limited utility. The best question to ask is what it takes to achieve de -escalation. Many key capitals – Washington, London, Riyadh, Doha, Abu Dhabi – are in friendly terms with India and Pakistan and will work on phones in the coming hours and days to urge both parties to return from the brink. But it will only be effective if they can convince New Delhi and Islamabad that their interests are better served by opting for ramps out of its tests.
During the last crises in India-Pakistan, in 2016 And 2019Degasador came relatively quickly. But the scale and intensity of hostilities was not as high as today. In the end, so that the two parties agree to end, they will have to be able to win a victory that allows them to save the face.
India might believe that its initial strikes constitute this victory. Her declared objective was to degrade the militant infrastructure which, according to her, facilitated the attack on cashmere. Its military operations have struck the areas, especially in Punjab, known to house the two most powerful anti-Indian jihadist groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed (Jem) and Lashkar-E-Taiba (Let). (CBS News would have got A declaration by Jem chief, Masood Azhar, saying that the strikes of India killed 10 of his family members and four “close associates”. While in 2019, India took heat from Pakistan and independent analysts who supported This strikes in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkwa intended to hit Jem's targets instead of simply hitting trees.) New Delhi may think that this may indicate the extent of today's strikes, and their location, to justify this to the Indian public as a mission accomplished.
The criteria of Pakistan to be able to claim victory are more difficult to decipher. Ideally, he will want to get to a point where he believes that he has narrowed the deterrence against the type of actions that New Delhi has taken on Wednesday morning. It can also be satisfied with a more concrete achievement which represents a considerable blow for the Indian army; If the Indian jets who crushed have proven to have been killed by the Pakistani army, this could provide a potential outing ramp to Islamabad to kiss. But given the play of play, Pakistan having described Indian strikes as an act of war, Islamabad may seek to perform more against India. And if Pakistan accelerates its answer, India can no longer be content to call it one day after its initial operation.
Today, India and Pakistan are undoubtedly closer to war than in recent years. The risk is not just that of climbing. It is also the fear that it takes dangerously for a long time for each party to be encouraged to continue de -escalation.
