Triumph of India's diplomatic crusade against terror

New Indian Express

19 hours ago

Another vital goal was to impress on our international interlocutors Pakistan's complicity in such acts of terror and its malign nurturing of terror groups, weaponised against India as an instrument of state policy. The ultimate objective of this outreach was to garner global support for India's counterterrorism efforts—all while driving home the point that the perpetrators of terror and the victims of it must never be spoken of in the same breath, let alone be the object of mediation, as if terrorists and their victims could be placed on an equal plane.
But even while these delegations where on their missions, conflicting views surfaced in our congested (and often confused) news space on the question of their success, with some dismissing it as a drain on taxpayers' money. The truth is that we have succeeded, emphatically and evidently, in what we set out to do. As the leader of one of the seven delegations, these are my reflections on some of the achievements of our outreach across five nations in South, Central, and North America: Guyana, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, and the US.
In all these five countries, our delegation was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm and regard for India's democratic, inclusive, and united approach to this crucial national security concern. With our diversity—of political affiliation, faith, mother tongue and native region—on ample display, yet speaking the same language of resolve and righteousness, we undertook a series of high-profile engagements. Notably, we met the President of Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali; Prime Minister of Guyana, Brigadier Mark Anthony Phillips; Vice President of Brazil, Geraldo Alckmin; and Vice President of the US, J D Vance.
To ensure that our message resounds in the highest decision- and law-making forums of these countries, we provided thorough briefings on Operation Sindoor and India's evolving counterterrorism policy to government officials and lawmakers—including the heads of external affairs committees in all five countries, presidents of the national assembly in two, and in the US, the Senate foreign relations committee, House foreign affairs committee, and the India Caucus). To shape public discourse in these nations, we extensively engaged with the media and policy experts, participated in think tank deliberations—as with the Council on Foreign Relations in the US— and brought the Indian diaspora up to speed with developments back at home, providing them with accurate information to serve as advocates for India's position. Though our target audience was those concerned with foreign policy who could make an impact and we had no unrealistic expectations of mass media attention in a crowded news space, our outreach was positively covered by major outlets in the countries concerned. While anchored in the core issue of terrorism, our engagements also spanned broader domains of strategic, technological, defence, trade and economic cooperation, serving to deepen our bonds with the five nations.