War clouds over South Asia
27 May 2017
While the attention of the Western press has been focused on Trump’s visit to the Middle East, which he used to threaten Iran, and the NATO summit, where he attacked Germany, relations between India and Pakistan, South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers, have gone from bad to worse.
New Delhi and Islamabad made rival boasts this week of provocative military action. On Tuesday, the Indian Army released video to support its claim that it had destroyed forward positions of the Pakistani military in the disputed Kashmir region with “punitive fire assaults.” Pakistan denied the claim, then posted its own video, saying that it showed it had inflicted even greater damage with its own artillery barrage across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Indian- and Pakistan-held Kashmir.
On Friday, India said its military had killed two Pakistani soldiers trying to infiltrate across the LoC. Islamabad denied there was any such incident.
Amid the claims and counter-claims, both countries are increasingly on a war footing. Pakistan has “operationalized” all its forward air bases, reputedly in response to a letter from the Indian military high command instructing 12,000 Indian Air Force officers to be ready for operations at “very short notice.”
Yesterday, the Pakistan-based Daily Times published an editorial titled “Looming Nuclear War?” It warned that were New Delhi to implement its Cold Start military strategy, which calls for India to mount a massive lightning strike on Pakistan’s heartland, Islamabad, due to its more limited conventional forces, “would appear” to have just one option—“use of nuclear weapons.” Pakistan’s defense minister has repeatedly vowed that an Indian invasion would be met with tactical nuclear…