Border trouble

The animosity between Pakistan and India continues to grow. It has now attracted international attention. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern over the situation and escalation of cross-border firing over the Line of Control dividing both sides of Kashmir. The number of deaths this year from the firing has continued to rise steadily, with a new incident reported along the Working Boundary near Sialkot on Tuesday when Indian helicopters flew close to ground, creating panic among people. Mortar firing also killed at least one person in the same area. There are also reports that US Secretary of State John Kerry called Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to discuss the issue though Pakistan has provided no details beyond confirming the call. It is, however, a welcome step that the world is taking notice of a persistent problem which could flare up into an incident giving rise to wider violence and making it more difficult to build the peace and regional stability that is so badly needed. The lack of this stability in a volatile part of the world is of course something that will cause alarm in many capitals.
Against this backdrop, with Pakistan’s Advisor to the Prime Minister on National Security and Defence Sartaj Aziz due to meet the Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on the 23rd and 24th of this month, Pakistan has been discussing strategies on what will be a key meeting. The prime minister who met with key officials including the chief of army staff has said the matter of firing across the LoC and the promotion by India of terrorism in Pakistan needed to be strongly taken up. We must hope this meeting will bring positive results. It is vital that Islamabad and New Delhi discover a means to lessen the tensions. The fact that New Delhi appears to display no willingness to do so is disturbing. Indeed, it has been an extremely acrimonious stance as far as Pakistan goes in all its dealings. The occasional words promising peace that come in from Indian Prime Minister Modi do not seem to translate into real action. Accusations of Pakistani intervention in Kashmir have continued to come in from Indian ministers and all these matters will need to be taken up at the meeting of the national security advisors. There are also forecasts that the two prime ministers could meet again later this year at the sidelines of international summits and we must hope that this will lead to something tangible emerging before it is too late to salvage what seems to be a rapidly worsening situation. We cannot afford to allow it to worsen any further; and neither can the rest of the world which for now continues to watch with some anxiety.