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| India-Pakistan |
| Trump says there's "reasonably decent" news on India-Pakistan conflict, "hopefully" it's coming to end |
| 2019-02-28 |
| [Bloomberg] Risk of India-Pakistan War May Hang on the Fate of Downed Pilot As Asia’s most acrimonious rivals face off, the fate of a captured Indian Air Force pilot may hold the key to whether -- and how -- each side is able to step back from broader conflict. India and Pakistan, which have fought three major wars since the bloody partition of 1947, regularly exchange artillery and small-weapons fire across a disputed border. But the situation that flared up earlier this month escalated dramatically into Wednesday, with the loss of an Indian MiG 21 fighter jet and the pilot later paraded on Pakistani television. While the U.S., Russia and China are all calling for calm, domestic political pressures make it far from easy for either side in the conflict to back down. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi must contest a general election within weeks, while his counterpart, Imran Khan, faces a military that is seeking to assert its dominance when Pakistan is in the eye of a financial and economic storm. The full political fallout of the exchanges remains unclear, but it’s evident that the capture of a pilot “complicates matters and will heighten tensions,” said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist and Pro Vice Chancellor at Jain University in Bangalore. Still, in an address to the nation, Khan called for India-Pakistan talks to resolve the situation, saying that “better sense should prevail.” A Pakistani official in Washington said his country wants peace and dialogue with India to avoid escalation and confrontation, but he said India must help resolve the underlying conflict over Kashmir. That may in part reflect Pakistan’s greater exposure to the financial and economic fallout. Pakistan’s benchmark stock index plunged as much as 3.8 percent in Karachi, while India’s S&P BSE Sensex was down a mere 0.2 percent in Mumbai after gaining earlier in the day. Any sense of optimism in New Delhi at Khan’s conciliatory stance was undermined by the appearance shortly later of the downed Indian pilot on television, thanking the Pakistani Army for rescuing him from a mob. India’s Foreign Ministry promptly objected to “Pakistan’s vulgar display” of air force personnel “in violation of all norms of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Convention.” It demanded the “immediate and safe return” of the pilot. The Pakistani official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the pilot in custody is being treated well and isn’t under duress. Modi, who must contest a general election within weeks, is drawing political capital by using Pakistan as a punching bag, the official said. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #9 Guess those modified Mig-21s did the job. Noted. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2019-02-28 18:36 |
| #8 Rumor is that the Pakistan plane shot down was an F-16 (A or B). Pakistan acquired a number of these in the 90s. |
| Posted by: lord garth 2019-02-28 15:01 |
| #7 And in spite of all the cozying our government may have done with the Paks, we were not the ones who armed them with nukes. You can thank the Chinese for that. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2019-02-28 14:33 |
| #6 If the Paks are saying better sense should prevail I take that as meaning that, despite the captured Indian pilot, Paks got their butts kicked by the Indian air strikes. It doesn't mean they'll stop sending terrorist across the LoC and won't need any future butt kicking. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2019-02-28 14:29 |
| #5 good for depopulating two otherwise "way" overpopulated has been countries |
| Posted by: 746 2019-02-28 11:07 |
| #4 re: #3, I agree that a nuclear exchange would not be good in anyway. But re the US cozieing up to the Paks can we please not lose the history of the era, and the USSR cozying up to India and everyone else? All to often things that the US did historically are not put in the context of the Cold War. That was a very screwed up time all the way around. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2019-02-28 10:10 |
| #3 A nuke exchange might be a clarifying event. I'm sure the people like myself that have family in New Delhi and other parts of India would object. You know, it would have been helpful if the US hadn't cozied up to the Paki's all these decades. |
| Posted by: Shash Ebbimp4552 2019-02-28 09:32 |
| #2 i wish India would just kick the shit out of them. It's long overdue. |
| Posted by: chris 2019-02-28 09:21 |
| #1 This won't stop til the dysfunctional Paks quit exporting their terror. A nuke exchange might be a clarifying event |
| Posted by: Frank G 2019-02-28 08:32 |