By Uditha Devapriya
With India and Pakistan baying for each other’s blood and the media in both countries, and particularly in India, beating war drums, it would be futile to expect a lessening of tensions overnight. The problem is that this is not the world of 2016 or 2019: when disputes between the two countries heightened in those years, there was at least a modicum of diplomacy that could facilitate de-escalation in the short-term. Today, by contrast, the focus has been on saving face, on meeting attack with counterattack, at times regardless of consequences. This is a dangerous moment, the worst possible for further escalation.
India’s response to the April 22 attacks transpired two days ago, on Wednesday, May 7. Dubbed “Operation Sindoor”, the campaign targeted nine sites in Pakistan which the government claimed had been terrorist infrastructure. New Delhi described these attacks as being “focused, measured, and non-escalatory” and noted that it had not hit Pakistani military infrastructure. The press release added that India had “demonstrated considerable restraint” in both selection of targets and method of execution. Pakistan has predictably vowed retaliation, but beyond firing drones into India and issuing claims of downing Indian drones in its territory, the situation has more or less stabilized for now.
The Modi government will seek to go to the ends of the earth, to quote the Prime Minister himself, to search for the perpetrators. Not surprisingly, it has configured its optics in line with this approach. Thus, from the beginning, and typically for campaigns of this nature, Delhi planned Operation Sindoor to both achieve its military ends and win sympathy for the country. That the briefings have been chaired by not one but two Indian women officers – a Hindu and a Muslim – is not a coincidence. Nor, for that matter, is the choice of name for the campaign: Sindoor refers to a pigment worn by Hindu women on their foreheads to indicate their married status, and the emphasis here seems to be on the grief of those who lost their husbands to the April 22 attacks.
All this has rallied mainstream public opinion in India around the Modi government’s military maneuvers. The most unlikely people and groups have lent support for Delhi’s strikes against Pakistan, ranging from Shashi Tharoor to Kajol to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the latter the largest communist formation in the country. The CPI (M)’s official statement on Sindoor is a particularly dismal case in point: it recommends that pressure “be continued on Pakistan to hand over those responsible for the massacre of innocent people in Pahalgam and to ensure that no terrorist camps operate from its territory.” The emphasis here seems to be less on calling for peace than on saving Delhi’s face: a nationalist war cry one can argue seems to be a world away from the Marxist rhetoric of global solidarity.
Things appear to be no better in Pakistan. Islamabad continues to argue that it was not in any way directly responsible for the April 22 attacks, that it does not condone terrorism and that it is doing all it can to find out the perpetrators. Delhi has accused Pakistan of numerous cease-fire violations along the Line of Control, while Pakistan’s Information Minister has claimed that India is spreading disinformation. Speaking on CNN, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Rizwan Saeed Sheikh stated that “expecting us to sit back like sacrificial lambs and not responding is something they [India] shouldn’t have even thought of.” On the other hand, when asked about US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s call for Pakistan to “end any support for terrorist groups”, he replied, “What terrorist groups?”
Pakistan’s seemingly casual disregard for the issues at hand is as problematic as India’s militarist-chauvinist baying for blood. It is problematic because the dynamics have changed, for the worse, since 2019. The Narendra Modi government now has much control over the media, the corporate sector, and mainstream opinion, at a level almost unparalleled in post-independence India. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been unravelling and unfolding since 2022 and the jailing of Imran Khan. Its economy is in terrible shape, and it is dependent on trade and IMF assistance. With India banning all imports from Pakistan and Pakistan closing its airspace, there is bound to be a further shrinkage in its prospects. The suspension of the Indus Water Treaty is just one nail in what is now a fairly big coffin.
Against this backdrop, two questions need to be asked: the impacts the conflict can have on Sri Lanka and how Sri Lanka should respond, and the lessons India and Pakistan can learn from other regions in terms of de-escalating tensions.
The Sri Lankan government has been trying to be restrained in its comments on the issue, even if India is a factor it cannot easily discount. Following the April 22 attacks, Colombo swiftly adopted the rhetoric of anti-terrorism. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake called Narendra Modi and offered his sympathies. According to a Daily Mirror report, this did not go down well with Pakistani officials, who reportedly questioned why the government did not maintain neutrality by condemning the hijacking of an express passenger train by Baloch separatists in March this year. On the other hand, Sri Lankan defense officials met Pakistani officials days after the attacks, just a week after it cancelled a naval exercise with Pakistan at the behest of Indian authorities.
Speaking a day after Operation Sindoor took off, Cabinet Spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa stated that Sri Lanka would not get entangled in Indian Ocean geopolitical issues, adding that the country would follow a “non-aligned stance” and it did not approve of “terrorism of any form.” There is something of a contradiction here. Considering that there has already been a protest in front of the Pakistani High Commission in Colombo calling for Islamabad to discontinue its support for terrorism – a claim amplified by India and denied by Pakistan – Jayatissa’s statements may be taken by Pakistan as a sign of the Sri Lankan government’s support for Delhi’s campaigns, which Islamabad claims, not wrongly, are a violation of its airspace and sovereignty. In that regard, no matter how apolitical Colombo’s condemnation of terrorism may be, Pakistan can see, and frame, things differently.
These problems take on a new dimension when considering that Sri Lanka organizes military engagements with both India and Pakistan. Since 2022, of course, India has taken primacy over Sri Lanka’s economy. Pakistan’s relations with Colombo, on the other hand, have been sporadic at best, largely because of domestic issues: in particular, the political unrest that even now has not settled in the country. This is of course not the fault of either country, but given how India has become a priority for Sri Lanka, Colombo will have to tackle the difficult question of how to pacify Delhi without upsetting Islamabad. The best course of action would be non-alignment and neutrality, but non-alignment and neutrality in this day and age of shifting alliances and complex multipolarity is easier said than achieved.
Which leaves us with the elephant in the room, the issue of how India and Pakistan can best resolve these tensions. As The Guardian puts it, “the familiarity of military confrontation” between the two countries “is no cause for reassurance: this is the worst violence in years.” As the editorial makes it clear, Islamabad’s rhetoric on Kashmir over the last few years has not augured well for relations with its neighbor, an issue compounded by what some see as the growing unpopularity of the military top brass in Pakistan. Washington, for one, has been upfront in its criticisms of the military, especially of Army Chief Asim Munir, with one congressman calling on Pakistan “not to respond” to India’s actions.
One solution would be an outside mediator. Usually, this would fall on Washington, but the Trump administration has other priorities, even if the president has been issuing statements on the matter and Secretary of State Rubio has stated that the US is working around the clock to resolve the dispute. China, too, is hamstrung by its problems, and has so far not indicated how, or whether, it will intervene. As for Sri Lanka, we are a long way away from 1962, when Sirimavo Bandaranaike took a lead in resolving the Sino-Indian War. The Non-Aligned Movement has not outlived its purpose, but it does seem ill-equipped to deal with the matter, even as it celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference this year. As for SAARC, we have yet to hear from them on the conflict.
India and Pakistan can learn the lessons of other regions in addressing these tensions. Yet neither seems willing or able to do so. ASEAN offers a striking case in point: its success must be measured against the lack thereof in South Asia. Over the decades, despite the occasional brawl and dispute, ASEAN has consistently prioritized the region’s needs over narrow sectional interests. But South Asia, despite SAARC, is still far away from adopting anything comparable to ASEAN’s historic framework on dispute resolution.
One can, of course, cite historical and geographical reasons for this. But such reasons, or excuses, cannot conceal South Asia’s failure to integrate economically or politically, despite housing a quarter of the world’s population. What India’s actions, and Pakistan’s reactions, show is that blame-trading will continue, and while it may not escalate into a conventional or nuclear war, South Asia’s future, and its lack of destiny, will be dictated by brawling between these two countries – a fact not lost on the rest of the region, and the rest of the world.
Uditha Devapriya is the Chief Analyst – International Relations at Factum and can be reached at uditha@factum.lk.
Factum is an Asia-Pacific focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation, Strategic Communications, and Climate Outreach accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.
