One of the first events to hit the headlines in 2019 was a terrorist attack in Kashmir’s Pulwama region in February, which changed the contours of the India-Pakistan relationship. It was the first time since the 1971 India-Pakistan war that New Delhi ordered its fighter jets to cross the border into Pakistan. The message is that any terrorist attack in India will have a cost for Pakistan and, hence, it had rewritten the rules of engagement. Second, it has broken the cycle followed in the past—a peace dialogue process whose momentum is broken by a terrorist attack and then resumed only to be stalled by another terrorist attack. What the move also did was to effectively change the contours of any future talks with Pakistan over Kashmir.

Source: Mint December 30, 2019 19:07 UTC