Flirting with nukes: India, Pakistan have become captives of own propaganda

Someone has to break this dangerous cycle. Ensuring that Pakistan's latest crackdown on jihadists is for real is the best place to start.

Business Standard : If you had to name the man most likely to spark a nuclear war, who would you pick? Kim Jong Un? Here’s another candidate: Masood Azhar, the founder of the Pakistani jihadist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Mohammed.

After three weeks of dramatically escalating tensions, India and Pakistan appear to have pulled back from the brink of war—for now. But the larger question remains: What does the Pakistani army’s longstanding policy of nurturing jihadist groups mean for stability in South Asia? As an increasingly nationalist India grows more assertive, Pakistan’s jihadists could inadvertently trigger a catastrophic war.

JeM stands at the center of the continuing confrontation between the two nuclear-armed nations. It flared up with a Valentine’s Day suicide car-bombing in Indian Kashmir that killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. On Feb. 26, Indian warplanes retaliated by bombing a JeM training camp in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the first attack across the international border since the 1971 war that turned East Pakistan into independent Bangladesh.

On Feb. 27, the Pakistani air force bombed Indian targets in Kashmir but did not cause material damage—exercising deliberate restraint, in Pakistan’s telling. In the scramble that followed, Pakistan downed an Indian MiG-21 and captured its pilot. His return two days later cooled temperatures somewhat, but the countries continue to exchange artillery fire along the line of control, the de facto border that divides disputed Kashmir.

More than a week after India’s airstrikes, the facts remain fuzzy. Citing commercial satellite images, international experts have cast doubts on Indian claims that its airstrikes hit a terrorist camp and eliminated “a very large number of JeM terrorists.” Pakistan’s government says India’s bombs hit a clump of trees. The Pakistani media gleefully reported that India martyred an unfortunate crow.

So far, India has also failed to provide credible evidence that one of its Soviet-era MiG-21s shot down a Pakistani F-16. Virtually nobody outside India believes the more lurid stories, tom-tommed by ruling Bharatiya Janata Party politicians, of hundreds of hapless jihadists vaporized by India’s high-tech, Israeli-made bombs. Nor has Pakistan backed up its boast of downing an Indian Sukhoi-30 fighter.

The details matter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election prospects in a few months hinge partly on his image as a strongman, unafraid to take India’s fight against terrorism to Pakistan. A tale of eliminating 250 bloodthirsty jihadists obviously plays better than one of accidentally felling a pocket of forest.