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Arab News
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
‘Precise, proportionate': Pakistan says only targeted Indian facilities involved in civilian killings
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan exercised restraint and only targeted Indian military facilities and entities that were involved in the killings of Pakistani civilians in this week's incursions, a Pakistani military spokesman said on Sunday, a day after the United States (US) brokered a truce between the nuclear-armed neighbors. Tensions between India and Pakistan over an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir escalated on Wednesday, when India struck multiple Pakistani cities with missiles, quickly followed by what Islamabad said was the downing of five Indian fighter jets. Both neighbors continued to attack the other's territory with fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery until Saturday evening, when US President Donald Trump announced a surprise ceasefire that has largely held, except for a few alleged violations in Kashmir. Briefing the media about operational details, Pakistani military spokesman, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said Pakistan hit 26 Indian military facilities and dozens of its drones hovered over major Indian cities, including India's capital New Delhi, in their counter-offensive against India. 'Pakistan's military response has been precise, proportionate and still remarkably restrained,' Chaudhry said, sharing details of 'Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos.' 'It was carefully calibrated to avoid civilian casualties and it exclusively targeted those entities and facilities which were directly involved in orchestrating and executing cold-blooded killings of Pakistani civilians.' Four days of fighting, the worst conflict between the neighbors since 1999, has killed nearly 70 people on both sides, with some residents of border villages still waiting to return to their homes. Diplomacy and pressure from the United States helped secure the ceasefire deal when it seemed that the conflict was spiraling alarmingly. But within hours of its coming into force, artillery fire was witnessed in Kashmir, which has been divided between India and Pakistan but claimed in full by both. A top Indian army officer said on Sunday the Indian military had sent a 'hotline message' to Pakistan about violations of a ceasefire agreed this week and informed it of New Delhi's intent to respond if it was repeated. 'Sometimes, these understandings take time to fructify, manifest on the ground,' Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai, India's director-general of military operations, told a media briefing, referring to the truce. 'The [Indian] armed forces were on a very, very high alert [on Saturday] and continue to be in that state.' The hostilities were triggered by the attack in Indian-administered Kashmir's Pahalgam resort town that killed 26 tourists on April 22. India accused Pakistan of backing the assault, Islamabad has denied it and called for a credible, international probe. The Pakistani military spokesman said Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos had been a 'great example' of coming together of all elements of Pakistan's national power to effectively counter the threat to national sovereignty and integrity, warning of a similar response to any such attempt in the future. 'No one should have any doubt that whenever our sovereignty would be threatened and territorial integrity violated, the response would be comprehensive, retributive and decisive,' he said. Pakistan and India have a history of bitter relations and have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1947. On Sunday, Trump said he would try to work with both India and Pakistan to see if they can resolve their dispute over the Kashmir territory, vowing to 'substantially' increase trade with both nations. 'While not even discussed, I am going to increase trade, substantially, with both of these great Nations,' Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, referring to India and Pakistan. 'Additionally, I will work with you both to see if, after a 'thousand years,' a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir,' he added.
Telegraph
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
How US pulled India and Pakistan back from all-out war
In a conflict characterised by a flood of misinformation, Muhammad Saleem knew something was really happening when he saw a missile pass over the roof of his home on Thursday night. Seconds later, the Indian projectile smashed into a Pakistani air force base in Rawalpindi, exploding in flames and igniting the most dangerous round of fighting yet between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. At around 3am local time, Indian jets launched missiles at Nur Khan and two more air bases, Murid and Rafiqi, with the defence ministry citing an earlier wave of Pakistani attacks in justification. Footage of blasts lighting up the night surged across Pakistani social media. On the ground in Rawalpindi, the garrison city that houses the headquarters of the Pakistani armed forces, crowds poured onto the street chanting 'Pakistan Zindabad', or 'victory to Pakistan'. 'I saw the missile from the top of my house,' Mr Saleem, who is in his late 40s, told The Telegraph. 'There were several explosions.' Like dozens of others, he headed towards the Nur Khan air base, originally built by the RAF and used in the Second World War. 'God is great,' shouted the nervous residents. With flames still burning, 'we saw a missile had hit the base area', Mr Saleem said. At a 3.30am press conference, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the spokesman for Pakistan's army, accused India of 'pushing the whole region towards a dangerous war with its madness'. Pakistan's air defences had shot down all but a few Indian missiles which 'sneaked in' but did not cause any damage, he claimed. Nur Khan hosts transport and signals-intelligence-collecting aircraft, rather than fighter jets. Shaky phone camera footage from a rooftop hundreds of yards away appeared to show something erupting in flames on impact. Ending his press conference, Mr Chaudhry issued a warning: 'India must now prepare for Pakistan's response.' After little more than an hour, Pakistani air force jets took off for the launch of Operation 'Bunyam um-Marsoos', a phrase taken from the Koran that translates as 'unbreakable wall of lead'. With several local Pakistani journalists briefed that the operation was underway before its targets were known, there was a moment when the region felt flung into the air – with where, and how hard it would come down, unclear. Islamabad issued a notice to airmen announcing the total closure of its airspace from 3.15am until noon on Saturday. 'Targets are acquired and locked,' one popular anonymous X account wrote, promising strikes that would 'send chills down their spines, instilling dread in seven generations'. The impact, AirlinePilotmax claimed, would 'reshape India's ideological core for decades'. Then the missiles hit. At 5.52am, state-run Pakistani media reported that the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) had struck air bases in Pathankot, Udhampur and a storage site in the Beas region for the long-range, supersonic Brahmos missile. An 'eye for an eye', said a statement from Pakistan's military. In Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir, residents took shelter from pounding explosions on their lower floors. 'Two loud blasts shook the ground. Dust filled the air. I thought jets had begun bombing the airport,' said Wasim Adhmad. 'We're used to gunfire and mines, but this is something else. It feels like death in the air.' Later, PTV claimed that an Indian S-400 air defence missile system, worth roughly $1 billion, had also been destroyed – but the report was swiftly denied by New Delhi. There were a few minutes to take stock; the damage looked more like tit-for-tat than armageddon. Both sides could claim wins. Civilian casualty numbers were not being bandied around. At 7am, Ishaq Dar, Pakistan's foreign minister, was making conciliatory comments in an interview with Geo News, a local TV channel. 'If they stop, so will we,' he said. Khawaja Asif, the defence minister, denied reports of an urgent meeting of Pakistan's National Command Authority (NCA), which oversees Islamabad's nuclear arsenal. In New Delhi, there were echoes. India's armed forces had given a 'befitting reply' to Pakistani strikes on schools and health facilities at India's air bases in Kashmir, said Colonel Sophia Qureshi. 'All hostile actions have been effectively countered and responded to appropriately,' added Wing Commander Vyomika Singh. Outside of Kashmir, the last time India and Pakistan targeted each other's military facilities with this level of ferocity came in the 1971 war, which ended with Islamabad's defeat and the breakaway formation of Bangladesh. Then, neither side possessed nuclear weapons. It may have been the prospect of an all-out war between two nations capable of destroying entire cities at the push of a button which roused Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, to personally intervene and call for calm. Under Donald Trump, Washington had largely stood aside as tensions rose. JD Vance, the vice-president, said the conflict was 'fundamentally none of our business'. Mr Trump had called the hostilities little more than 'a shame', adding: 'I get along with both, I know both very well, and I want to see them work it out.' Indian diplomats told The Telegraph there had not been the familiar descent of US officials on New Delhi and Islamabad, as there had been in previous rounds of fighting. Mr Rubio spoke with Dr S Jaishankar, India's foreign minister, as well as Mr Dar and Asim Munir, the head of the Pakistani army, who is the most powerful person in the country. According to a statement from the state department, Mr Rubio offered Mr Munir US assistance in starting 'constructive talks' towards peace. As so often happens, a United States seeking to disentangle itself from foreign conflicts appeared to be pulled back into one. On Saturday afternoon, Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, held a cabinet meeting where he sought to lay down a new red line in the region. Any terror attack on India would be considered an 'act of war' by Pakistan, government sources told the Times of India. For too long, Mr Modi and many Indians feel, the country has passively put up with massacres on its territory. Islamabad has failed to root out terrorists, they say – indeed at times it has indulged them. In the Pahalgam attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir last month, gunmen asked victims their religion before executing any Hindus. 'Tell your government. Tell Modi what we did,' one attacker told a woman after shooting her husband in the head at point-blank range. Mr Modi, a thoroughbred Hindu nationalist, promised to 'pursue [the terrorists] to the end of the earth'. Pakistan's fervent denials of any backing for the attack did not convince him, nor critics suggesting he should loosen repression of the largely Muslim population in Kashmir. With his speech to cabinet on Saturday, the prime minister both appeared to be drawing a line under the fighting ignited by the Pahalgam attack, and threatening a far more violent encore should it ever be repeated. It appeared that America's late-night return to pulling strings in foreign conflicts had paid off. At 5pm local time (8am in Washington), Mr Trump surprised the world by being the first to announce the agreement of a full ceasefire. The president, who had appeared disinterested, could claim to be a peacemaker. Few doubt such services will be needed again before long.
Arab News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Pakistan postpones PSL match after Indian drone shot down near Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium
KARACHI: The Pakistan Cricket Board has rescheduled the HBL PSL X match between Peshawar Zalmi and Karachi Kings after Pakistan shot down an Indian drone near the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium where the game was set to take place today, Thursday. The Pakistan military said on Thursday it had shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones launched by India at multiple locations. One drone was shot down over the garrison city of Rawalpindi, military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a televised statement. Rawalpindi is home to the Pakistan army's heavily fortified headquarters. The drone was shot down near the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium. 'The PCB will announce the revised date in due course,' the cricket board said, saying VIP Gallery and enclosures ticket holders could obtain refunds from TCS Express Centers while tickets bought online would be automatically reimbursed in the accounts used at the time of booking. The PCB's statement did not mention the drone attacks, but the postponement comes in the wake of violence between neighbors India and Pakistan, who this week have engaged in the worst direct military confrontation in decades. Fighting has escalated between the nuclear-armed neighbors since Wednesday when India said it struck nine 'terrorist infrastructure' sites in Pakistan, some of them linked to an attack by militants that killed 26 in Indian-administered Kashmir on Apr. 22. Pakistan said 31 people were killed in the Indian strikes and vowed to retaliate, subsequently saying it had shot down five Indian aircraft and a combat drone. On Thursday, the Pakistan army said India was 'attacking Pakistan with Israeli-made Harop drones in panic' while India's defense ministry said Islamabad had launched an overnight air attack using 'drones and missiles' before New Delhi retaliated to destroy an air defense system in the eastern city of Lahore. The Pakistani defense minister has rejected India's claims.
Japan Times
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
The Pakistan-Taliban divorce gets messy
The statement issued by Afghanistan's Taliban government denouncing the recent terrorist attack in the Indian resort of Pahalgam, in Jammu and Kashmir, was eye-opening. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs conveyed condolences to the families of the overwhelmingly Indian victims — 26 civilians — emphasizing that such attacks jeopardize regional security. The implicit rebuke of the terrorists' handlers in Pakistan has not gone unnoticed. This is hardly the first sign of the Taliban's growing estrangement from their erstwhile backers in Pakistan. In fact, by the end of last year, relations had deteriorated enough that Pakistan's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Muhammad Sadiq Khan, headed to Kabul for talks with senior Taliban leaders, ostensibly to ease tensions. But while he was there, on Dec. 24, the Pakistan Air Force carried out strikes against alleged Pakistani Taliban — officially known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — targets in Afghanistan's Paktika province, killing 46 people. The strike was viewed as retribution for a Dec. 21 TTP attack that resulted in the deaths of 16 Pakistani soldiers. Three days later, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, who leads Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations directorate, delivered a grim report: Some 383 officers and soldiers in Pakistan's security forces had lost their lives in counter-terrorism operations over the preceding year. He also claimed that approximately 925 terrorists, including members of the TTP, had been eliminated in around 60,000 intelligence-based operations. The TTP, he pointed out, had been targeting Pakistan and its citizens, while enjoying a safe haven in Afghanistan. The statement hung heavy with irony, given Pakistan's long history of providing logistical, military and moral support to both the Afghan Taliban and the associated Haqqani Network during their campaigns against the previous Afghan government and American forces, culminating in the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in 2021. What a difference a few years makes. (It is worth noting that India does not officially recognize the Taliban as representing the Afghan people.) On Dec. 28, the conflict escalated further with Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense announcing and claiming responsibility for attacks on multiple locations inside Pakistan in retaliation for the air strikes. Interestingly, the Afghan government refrained from explicitly acknowledging that it was targeting Pakistani territory, instead saying that attacks were being carried out beyond the 'hypothetical line,' a reference to the colonial-era border, known as the Durand Line, which no Afghan government has recognized. While things seem to have cooled off since then, the limits of Pakistan's influence over its former proxies are now starkly apparent. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency spent decades nurturing, sheltering, arming, training and financing the Taliban, which it used as a proxy of Pakistan's security establishment. Though the Pakistani military was aware of a certain intransigence among the Taliban, it consistently treated the group as a means of exerting control over Afghanistan and achieving 'strategic depth' against India. When the Afghan Taliban captured Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan celebrated with unconcealed glee. But as Dr. Frankenstein discovered, you cannot always control the monsters you create. For Pakistan, neither coercion nor diplomacy has proved effective. The problem is that Pakistan's military has been deemed insufficiently Islamist by the militants it has spawned. The TTP is now determined to do to Pakistan what its parent did to Afghanistan: take over the government and turn the country into an Islamist theocracy. And given their ideological affinities, the Afghan Taliban may well be helping the TTP pursue that goal. Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan has become strategic quicksand. So deep is the quagmire that, under growing public pressure, segments of Pakistan's government have suggested turning to the United States for assistance and even offering drone bases to the US to target militants in Afghanistan. The idea that sophisticated US drones and other weapons might help Pakistan confront an insurgency born from its own anti-American policies in Afghanistan is absurd. And yet, it is no longer unthinkable. Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, embodies his country's strategic confusion. An Islamist ideologue himself, he has urged the Afghan regime not to prioritize the TTP over their 'long-standing and benevolent brother Islamic country.' But he also once stated, 'When it comes to the safety and security of every single Pakistani, the whole of Afghanistan can be damned.' The tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan extend beyond cross-border terrorism; they are rooted in competing territorial claims and clashing national identities. The Afghan Taliban's support for the TTP, coupled with persistent disputes over the Durand Line, stoke Pakistani fears of irredentism. The Pakistani government is withholding recognition of the Taliban-led regime in Kabul, while seeking tangible measures against the TTP, which continues to pose an existential threat to Pakistan's stability and to the dominance of its military establishment. Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions — rooted in historical grievances, fueled by misguided policies and compounded by ideological conflict — are rising fast, with Afghanistan now serving not as a strategic asset for Pakistan, but as a grave liability. India must wait and watch how this drama on its western flank plays out. Shashi Tharoor, an MP of the Indian National Congress, was re-elected to the Lok Sabha for a fourth successive term, representing Thiruvananthapuram.© Project Syndicate, 2025
