India and Pakistan are both losing in the current confrontation

Current Affairs

Every aspect of the current confrontation between India and Pakistan -- which, I fear, may not be over yet -- was avoidable. The initial attack on Indian paramilitary soldiers, in which 40 of them died, was claimed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist group which has been allowed to thrive by that country’s military establishment. The attack itself required sophisticated organisation and hundreds of kilograms of explosives. Not preventing it was an Indian intelligence failure for which nobody has yet been held accountable.

After the attack, some form of retaliation was always on the cards, but the Indian government made the particularly risky choice of ordering airstrikes on a target within Pakistan proper. Although it claimed the strikes were a failure, Pakistan nevertheless chose to retaliate in turn. When it did, its front-line fighters had to be engaged by Indian warplanes that included the MiG-21, which many Indian aviation experts worry is too outdated for such duties. In the process, an Indian pilot was shot down and taken prisoner. While the pilot is being sent home, we in South Asia now live in a region in which two nuclear-armed adversaries send planes to bomb each other’s territory. This is a profoundly disturbing turn of events.


 Pakistan is busy congratulating itself on how things have turned out so far. This is unwise and premature. Premature because there is no reason to suppose that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- who on Thursday called the airstrikes a “pilot project,” implying they would be scaled up in the future -- will be satisfied with anything other than the total rhetorical victory his camp followers in the Indian media have already promised voters. And it is unwise because the world’s reaction to the Indian airstrikes, unprecedented though they were, was notably unfriendly to Pakistan. Pakistani leaders -- or, more precisely, the generals in Rawalpindi that really run the country -- have few friends left. Even the People’s Republic of China urged only that “sovereignty should be respected” -- criticism, in its way, of both sides and not just India.grouping to rescind the invitation to Swaraj...Read More

Terrorism due to distortion of religion, misguided belief: Swaraj tells OIC

Current Affairs

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday raised the issue of terrorism at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting and said the menace is caused by "distortion of religion" and "misguided belief".

Swaraj, who attended the inaugural plenary of the two-day meeting here as the guest of honour, said the fight against terrorism is not a confrontation against any religion.

"It cannot be," she said.

Swaraj's did not name Pakistan in the address.

"Just as Islam literally means peace, none of the 99 names of Allah mean violence. Similarly, every religion in the world stands for peace, compassion and brotherhood," Swaraj told the 57-member powerful grouping.

Her remarks came amid heighteneed tensions between India and Pakistan following the February 14 terror attack on Pulwama by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed that left 40 CRPF personnel dead.
It is for the first time that India has been invited to a meeting of the OIC, an influential grouping of 57 Islamic countries, as the guest of honour.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi did not attend the meeting over the failure of the grouping to rescind the invitation to Swaraj.


 "Terrorism and extremism bear different names and labels. It uses diverse causes. But in each case, it is driven by distortion of religion, and a misguided belief in its power to succeed," she told the leaders of the major Muslim countries...Read More