Ms. Yoana Barakova (EFSAS) analysing recent Indo-Pak tensions during the 40th Session of UNHRC
13-03-2019, Geneva
Ms. Yoana Barakova (Research Analyst EFSAS) speaking at a Seminar, ‘Human Rights in South Asia’, during the 40th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Geneva.
Ms. Yoana Barakova (EFSAS) speaking at a Side-event, ‘Human Rights in South Asia’, during the 40th Session of UNHRC
She explained how the ghastly terrorist attack in Pulwama in Indian Administered Jammu & Kashmir on 14 February that killed 44 personnel of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force and injured scores of others appeared to have scaled the brink of India’s forbearance with neighbouring Pakistan. According to her, the string of terrorist attacks launched in recent years by terrorist outfits Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, which are sheltered on Pakistani territory by the Pakistani military establishment, has inflamed passions in India.
Ms. Barakova further narrated how the Indian military response that had been anticipated as part of India’s comprehensive strategy to address the plague of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism directed against India took the form of telling air strikes on the 26 February that obliterated a major Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist camp in Balakot in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
She explained how Pakistan’s botched attempt at retaliation through an airstrike targeting Indian military installations on the morning of 27 February was repulsed by the Indian Air Force near the Line of Control that separates the two countries across a major part of Jammu and Kashmir. She further argued that amidst calls for de-escalation of tensions, the international community stressed on Pakistan that it must deny safe haven to terrorist outfits operating from its soil; therefore, it has been made clear that only immediate and verifiable action by Pakistan against terrorists and terror groups operating from territories under its control would be acceptable and not simply talks on terror without any significant concessions.
Ms. Barakova concluded by saying that whichever turn the current situation takes, one fact on which there is little ambiguity is that India has definitively changed the rules of the game as far as its response to Pakistan-backed terrorism is concerned.
