India, Pakistan, and Kashmir

You're invited to a conversation with Vivek Kelkar and Raja Muneeb

My father called me this morning to ask how worried he should be by the war between India and Pakistan.

The truth is, I don’t know. I’d be lying if I told you that in addition to everything else, I’m also an expert on Kashmir and the nuclear doctrines of the Subcontinent. I’m not going to fake expertise I don’t have.

So I spoke to CG cofounder Vivek Kelkar. I asked him how worried my father should be.

“Where is he?” he replied.

“Here, in Paris.”

“Why would he be worried? It’s me who should be worried.”

(This didn’t reassure me.)

Vivek really does know what’s happening there, though—more than anyone else I know—and he’s offered to come speak to us about it. He’s also asked his colleague, columnist Raja Muneeb—who is from Kashmir, and whose expertise Vivek esteems highly——to join us.

The only time we could find that suited us all is exactly the time of our usual ME201 meeting, this coming Sunday. I initially thought, “That can’t work,” then I asked myself why we couldn’t combine this with ME201. So this Sunday, at 4:30 pm Paris time, we’re going to treat India and Pakistan as part of the Middle East (and there’s actually a historical and cultural argument for thinking of them this way, although I usually wouldn’t). All of our readers are warmly invited, though; you don’t need to be part of the class.

Vivek thought it was important that he a Raja spend some time explaining the history of this conflict, which isn’t being explained in depth in most of the reporting we’re seeing. So he and Raja will first offer an overview of the conflict, from its origins, then we’ll have our usual open discussion.

He’s going to send me a short reading list for the class tomorrow; for tonight, he recommended you begin tonight with this article Raja just published:

Operation Sindoor: A decisive strike and a strategic success for India. Operation Sindoor reinforces the principle that peace in South Asia cannot be held hostage to the strategic calculus of those who use terror as an instrument of state policy:

… Among the most damning developments was the funeral ceremony for several top LeT operatives killed in the precision strikes. Leading the funeral prayers was Hafiz Abdul Rauf, a senior Lashkar-e-Taiba commander and the brother-in-law of Hafiz Saeed, himself a UN-designated global terrorist.

Shocking visuals and eyewitness reports confirmed that senior Pakistani Army officers and police officials were present at the ceremony, standing in solidarity with the slain terrorists. Their attendance was neither covert nor reluctant, it was one that was marked by official protocol, complete with security cordons and coordinated salutes. This public mingling of Pakistan’s military elite with designated terrorists is a stark indictment of the Pakistani state, further confirming that terrorism is not a fringe activity but a mainstream instrument of its state policy doctrine.

… What differentiates Operation Sindoor from previous actions is the surgical precision combined with strategic ambiguity. While India did not publicly declare the specifics of the operation initially, international intelligence agencies and media sources have independently corroborated the scale and effectiveness of the strikes. This controlled messaging has not only allowed India to maintain escalation control but has also placed Pakistan in a diplomatic dilemma, of denial becoming implausible, while admission would imply acknowledgment of terror infrastructure within sovereign territory.

I would add a few more articles that I’ve found helpful, but I suspect Vivek will tell me that the articles I thought were pretty good are in fact completely inaccurate, so I’ll wait for him to send me his reading list, which I’ll post separately when I receive it. I’ll just say for now that I was glad to see this:

Vivek also strongly cautioned me that “70 percent” of what we’re reading in the news—especially on social media—is misinformed, stupid, an exaggeration, or a deliberate lie. (That sounds about right.) So take anything you’re reading about this with a grain of salt.

As for “how worried we should be,” Vivek wouldn’t be putting this on his schedule for Sunday unless he thought the odds were good that he’d still be around, so he’s not expecting the imminent outbreak of nuclear war.

But it’s hairy. Come learn more about it on Sunday. The link is below the paywall.