(HT)
India unveiled a raft of punitive diplomatic measures against Pakistan on Wednesday, suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, downgrading bilateral ties, and shutting down the Attari checkpost, as it hit back at Islamabad over the brazen terror attack near Pahalgam that killed 26 tourists.
New Delhi’s retaliatory measures were decided at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi a day after terrorists gunned down a group of tourists in a picturesque meadow, marking the worst attack on civilians in the restive region in nearly two decades.
“It [CCS] resolved that the perpetrators of the attack will be brought to justice and their sponsors held to account. As with the recent extradition of Tahawwur Rana, India will be unrelenting in the pursuit of those who have committed acts of terror, or conspired to make them possible,” Misri said.
Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba’s proxy, the Resistance Front (TRF), has claimed responsibility for the attack that came during US vice president JD Vance’s visit to India.
Foreign secretary Vikram Misri announced the retaliatory measures that represented the first official response to the worst terror strike on civilians since the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, and clearly spelt out Pakistan as the target.
More measures could follow, an eventuality hinted at by Union defence minister Rajnath Singh who said India will not only hunt down the people who perpetrated the attack but will also trace those “sitting behind the scenes” who conspired to carry out the strike. The last big retaliatory strike by India against Pakistan was the 2019 Balakot air strike, which came 12 days after the Pulwama attack; the 2016 surgical strike also came 10 days after the Uri attack.
Misri’s late-night briefing came on a day Union home minister Amit Shah choppered into the Baisaran meadow from Srinagar for an on-the–ground briefing on the terror strike, Singh held a top level security meeting in Delhi, and teams from the army, the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) fanned deeper into the nearby mountain jungles in pursuit of the terrorists.
Misri said CCS directed all forces to maintain “high vigil” as he delivered prepared remarks at the briefing that lasted about five minutes and didn’t take any questions. However, his comments made it clear that the government had concluded there was Pakistani involvement in the worst terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir since the Pulwama suicide bombing of 2019 that killed 40 troops.
The CCS, Misri said, was briefed in detail on the attack, in which 25 Indians and a Nepali citizen were killed. CCS condemned the attack in the strongest terms and expressed its condolences to the families of the victims.
“In the briefing to the CCS, the cross-border linkages of the terrorist attack were brought out,” said Misri, who had participated in the CCS meeting along with external affairs minister S Jaishankar and national security adviser Ajit Doval.
Misri announced five retaliatory measures decided on by CCS in view of the seriousness of the terror attack, with the Indus Waters Treaty being “held in abeyance with immediate effect, until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”.
The army attache and the navy and air force advisors in the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi were declared “persona non grata”, diplomatic parlance for expulsion, and given a week to leave India. Five support staff of the attaches will be withdrawn from the Indian and Pakistani high commissions, he said.
Simultaneously, India will withdraw its army, navy and air force advisors from the mission in Islamabad. These posts in the respective high commissions were “deemed annulled”.
Misri said India’s integrated check post at Attari will be “closed with immediate effect”. He added: “Those who have crossed over with valid endorsements may return through that route before May 1, 2025.”
The overall strength of the high commissions in each other’s capitals will be brought down to 30 from the current figure of 55 by May 1, Misri said.
Pakistani nationals won’t be permitted to travel to India using visas under the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme (SVES). “Any SVES visas issued in the past to Pakistani nationals are deemed cancelled. Any Pakistani national currently in India under SVES visa has 48 hours to leave India,” Misri said.
The measures were announced in response to the chilling attack where a group of heavily armed terrorists emerged out of the woods at around 2pm on Tuesday and indiscriminately started firing at around 500 tourists who were present on the Baisaran grasslands. The attack, reminiscent of the heydays of militancy in the 1990s and 2000s and the worst to rock Kashmir since the abrogation of the region’s special status in 2019, appeared to be aimed at hurting the booming tourism economy.
These retaliatory measures will have a chilling effect on the few remaining strands in India-Pakistan relations, which have been at their lowest point since New Delhi scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August 2019.
At that time, Pakistan decided to downgrade diplomatic ties by not posting an envoy in New Delhi.
The two sides also snapped the few remaining trade ties at the time. The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, brokered by the World Bank to share the waters of cross-border rivers, had been the most durable pact between the two sides. However, in recent years, India sought a review of the treaty in view of what it said was Pakistan’s intransigence in handling disputes over dams on some rivers. At one time, India and Pakistan had the largest missions in each other’s capitals, but their strength was whittled down over the past two decades and the current figure of 30 will be one of the lowest ever.
The Attari-Wagah crossing is the only land border route between India and Pakistan that is currently operational, following the earlier suspension of cross-border bus and train services. It is mainly used by citizens of both countries who have relatives on the other side or are making pilgrimages to holy sites in India or Pakistan.
There have been calls for several years to scrap the SAARC visa scheme for Pakistanis, who already face enhanced scrutiny during regular visa applications.
Misri said CCS noted that the terror attack in Pahalgam “came in the wake of the successful holding of elections in the Union Territory and its steady progress towards economic growth and development”.
India, he said, has received strong expressions of support and solidarity from many governments around the world, which unequivocally condemned the attack. “The CCS recorded its appreciation for such sentiments, which reflect zero tolerance for terrorism,” he said.
Misri pointed to the recent extradition from the US of Tahawwur Rana, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin and one of the key conspirators in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Rana, a former Pakistan Army officer, had used him US-based immigration business to provide cover to David Coleman Headley, one of the main conspirators in the Mumbai attacks, to travel to India to survey targets that were later struck by a 10-member team of terrorists from Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Soon after India announced the retaliatory measures, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister Ishaq Dar said in a social media post that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had convened a meeting of the National Security Committee on Thursday to “respond to the Indian Government’s statement”.
Dar did not give further details.
Earlier on Wednesday, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif said his country had “no connection” to the terror attack in Pahalgam. Asif also sought to link the incident to a “revolution” and “home-grown” forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
