LISTEN SUG, DON’T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS: Nuclear-Armed India and Pakistan Come to Blows.
India launched early morning missile strikes on both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered parts of Kashmir this morning, while the Pakistan government claimed it had shot down five Indian Air Force jets in “self-defense.” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described the attack as “an act of war” and ordered his country’s military to enact “self-defense” with “corresponding actions.”
On April 22, Islamists massacred 26 Indian tourists in Pahalgam, a town in Kashmir — the largest number of civilian casualties in a terrorist attack in India since the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
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Unsurprisingly, the Indian government rejects this accusation and accuses the Pakistanis of waging war against them through terrorist proxies. Indian Foreign Secretary Shri Vikram Misri, in a statement this morning:
India had given inputs about [The Resistance Front] in the half-yearly report to the Monitoring Team of the United Nation’s 1267 Sanctions Committee in May and November 2024, bringing out its role as a cover for Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Earlier too, in December 2023, India had informed the monitoring team about LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad operating through small terror groups such as the TRF. Pakistan’s pressure to remove references to TRF in the April 25 UN Security Council Press Statement is notable in this regard.
Despite a fortnight having passed since the attacks, there has been no demonstrable step from Pakistan to take action against the terrorist infrastructure on its territory or on territory under its control. Instead, all it has indulged in are denials and allegations. Our intelligence monitoring of Pakistan-based terrorist modules indicated that further attacks against India were impending. There was thus a compulsion both to deter and to preempt.
Earlier this morning as you would be aware India exercised its right to respond and pre-empt as well as deter more such cross-border attacks. These actions were measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible. They focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and disabling terrorists likely to be sent across to India.
What’s that, India? You say you must send military forces across the border to hunt down a terrorist who murdered your people, hiding in Pakistan’s territory, with no sense that the local government is even trying to do anything about it? Fellas, we know exactly how you feel.
Flashback: Pakistani Ambassador to U.S.: Don’t Worry, Extremism Will Be ‘Completely Eliminated’ in Coming Months.
—Nicholas Ballasy, PJ Media.com, December 13th, 2015.
(Classical reference in headline.)