Understanding the India-Pakistan War through Peace Theory

A terrorist attack, a military counterstrike, a few days of cross-border conflict, and an eventual ceasefire - this has been the story of India and Pakistan spanning over the last few weeks. It all started with the attacks against civilians in Pahalgam, and a fortnight later, India responded with a series of precision strikes against hostile terrorist hotbeds inside the territory of Pakistan. What followed was a few days of military conflict, very characteristic of India and Pakistan - with a lot of misinformation floating around, heightened perceptions of hostility and mistrust, the surfacing of latent public sentiments, and the threat of nuclear escalation. 

A ceasefire understanding was reached, albeit a fragile one, as Pakistan violated the terms in just a matter of a few hours. While a conventional military threat could be countered by well-planned strategic military operations and could yield the desired objectives for the belligerent parties, the real challenge begins after the cessation of hostilities. In a post-conflict understanding, the states are faced with the fundamental questions underlying the covert conflicts. In the case of India and Pakistan, these potent questions deal with the territorial dispute of Kashmir, the consistent threat of cross-border terrorism essentially funded through illicit drug and arms trade, water disputes now heightened by the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance and the lack of persistent diplomatic dialogues between the two sides to counter the state of distrust and to bridge the gap between competing foreign policies. 

The strategic calculus between the two countries is even further complicated by the presence of nuclear weapons and the willingness, on both sides, to engage in constant modernisation of arsenals to develop a credible minimum deterrent - presents a risk that could only be mitigated through careful dialogue and communication. 

The challenge of terrorism, as the recent turn of events showed, is perhaps the most crucial one for the two states to tackle. While India, throughout history, has been on the receiving end of terrorist activities, Pakistan has, time and again, failed to show a strong willingness to counter the non-state terrorist infrastructure that exists within its territory. This gap has further complicated the preconditions for bilateral cooperation on counter-terrorism measures. 

The delicate state of negative peace

Even though the two states have reached an ‘understanding’ to cease military operations against each other, a well-crafted agreement has not yet taken place. Some semblance of normalcy was witnessed in the regions previously on high alert, but India has not let its guard down yet. Pakistan’s violation of the ceasefire is evidence enough that this understanding is as fragile as it can get unless followed up by consistent dialogues and bilateral engagements at different levels of diplomacy. 

The presence of nuclear weapons in this equation does not just create a threat of nuclear escalation in the conflict, but more than that, it influences how the two sides deal with the conventional matters of security under the nuclear shadow. Pakistan has, time and again, attempted to push the nuclear rhetoric further to gain leverage over conventional matters of conflict and perhaps also attempt to deter India from engaging in an all-out war with it. This way, the Pakistani establishment can keep up the image of ‘successfully countering India’ while also avoiding a full-scale war that it itself cannot afford at the moment.  

Pakistan’s internal situation is very precarious; the economy is in shambles, and it can only depend on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout to keep itself afloat. The current diplomatic fissures with India have created another front of a water management and sharing crisis that requires precise negotiation and diplomatic engagement to resolve. Resorting to military action would not work for Pakistan in this case.

Figure 1 : Johan Galtung's conceptualisation of negative and positive peace

A negative peace scenario would be defined by a halt in the manifested forms of conflicts- which in the case of India and Pakistan will refer to direct military action- the absence of direct violence would then create conditions for peacekeeping, which would indicate the stationing of forces along the Line of Control to monitor the effectiveness of any ceasefire agreement. It is, however, the positive peace that requires robust policymaking and consistent advancements of structural solutions. Positive peace occurs when the latent aspects of conflicts are successfully dealt with. For India and Pakistan, as indicated above, the latent aspects of the conflicts exist in the deep-seated issues of territorial disputes, and structural hostilities which hinder the much longer process of peacemaking between the two countries. 

The situation of peace between India and Pakistan rests entirely on very unstable grounds, thereby creating conditions for a fragile or a ‘negative peace’.

A negative peace exists when there is a cessation of hostile activities on both ends and yet the underlying issues of conflict still persist. In the case of India and Pakistan, various agreements, diplomatic dialogues, and bilateral engagements have failed to successfully bring the core issues on the table. India has made it clear in the past that bilateral engagements with Pakistan would only be conducted if Pakistan decides to lead credible and verifiable counter-terrorism actions against the non-state actors operating from its soil. 

Even though the current actions by the Indian armed forces are being hailed as precise, decisive, responsible, and non-escalatory, it needs to be noted that once the precedent of a military action has been set in response to terrorist threats, it alters the dynamics of non-conventional and conventional military threats in South Asia. This is precisely the reason, peace brought about by military action has to be followed up with diplomatic engagements. 

Proper channels of communication are needed not only to keep conventional conflicts within the nuclear threshold but also to develop terms of agreement on long-standing issues. In the case of Pakistan and India however, reaching this state of diplomatic streamlining may prove to be much more difficult. As long as there is a lack of willingness to develop bilateral cooperative structures to target broader issues suggests that this kind of fragile negative peace will continue to exist in the subcontinent for the time to come.