‘Don’t see a major war with India, but have to be ready’: Pakistan ex-NSA

Islamabad, Pakistan – Eleven days after gunmen shot 26 people dead in the scenic valley of Baisaran in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam, India and Pakistan stand on the brink of a military standoff.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have each announced a series of tit-for-tat steps against the other since the attack on April 22, which India has implicitly blamed Pakistan for, even as Islamabad has denied any role in the killings.

India has suspended its participation in the Indus Waters Treaty that enforces a water-sharing mechanism Pakistan depends on. Pakistan has threatened to walk away from the 1972 Simla Agreement that committed both nations to recognising a previous ceasefire line as a Line of Control (LoC) – a de-facto border – between them in Kashmir, a disputed region that they each partly control but that they both claim in its entirety. Both nations have also expelled each other’s citizens and scaled back their diplomatic missions.

Despite a ceasefire agreement being in place since 2021, the current escalation is the most serious since 2019, when India launched air strikes on Pakistani soil following an attack on Indian soldiers in Pulwama, in Indian-administered Kashmir, that killed 40 troops. In recent days, they have traded fire across the LoC.

And the region is now on edge, amid growing expectations that India might launch a military operation against Pakistan this time too.

Yet, both countries have also engaged their diplomatic partners. On Wednesday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, urging both sides to find a path to de-escalation. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, on Thursday to condemn the attack and offered “strong support” to India.

Sharif met envoys from China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three of Pakistan’s closest allies, to seek their support, and urged the ambassadors of the two Gulf nations to “impress upon India to de-escalate and defuse tensions”.

To understand how Pakistani strategists who have worked on ties with India view what might happen next, Al Jazeera spoke with Moeed Yusuf, who served as Pakistan’s national security adviser (NSA) between May 2021 and April 2022 under former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Prior to his role as NSA, Yusuf also worked as a special adviser to Khan on matters related to national security starting in December 2019, four months after the Indian government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Based in Lahore, Yusuf is currently the vice chancellor of a private university and has authored and edited several books on South Asia and regional security. His most recent book, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis Management in South Asia, was published in 2018.

Al Jazeera: How do you assess moves made by both sides so far in the crisis?

Moeed Yusuf: India and Pakistan have for long struggled in terms of crisis management. They don’t have a bilateral crisis management mechanism, which is the fundamental concern.

The number one crisis management tool used by both sides has been the reliance on third parties, with the idea being that they would try and restrain them both and help de-escalate the crisis.

This time, I feel the problem India has run into is that they followed the old playbook, but the leader of the most important third party, the United States, didn’t show up to support India.

It appears that they have so far taken a neutral and a hands-off position, as indicated by President Donald Trump few days ago. (Trump said that he knew the leaders of both India and Pakistan, and believed that they could resolve the crisis on their own.)

Pakistan’s response is directly linked to the Indian response, and that is historically how it has been, with both countries going tit-for-tat with each other. This time too, a number of punitive steps have been announced.

The problem is that these are easy to set into motion but very difficult to reverse, even when things get better, and they may wish to do so.

Unfortunately, in every crisis between them, the retaliatory steps are becoming more and more substantive, as in this case, India has decided to hold Indus Water Treaty in abeyance, which is illegal as the treaty provides no such provision.

Al Jazeera: Do you believe a strike is imminent and if both sides are indicating preparedness for a showdown?

Yusuf: In such moments, it is impossible to say. Action from India remains plausible and possible, but the window where imminence was a real concern has passed.

What usually happens in crises is that countries pick up troop or logistics movements, or their allies inform them, or they rely on ground intelligence to determine what might happen. Sometimes, these can be misread and can lead the offensive side to see an opportunity to act where none exists or the defensive side to believe an attack may be coming when it isn’t the case.

Pakistan naturally has to show commitment to prepare for any eventuality. You don’t know what will come next, so you have to be ready.

Having said that, I don’t think we are going to see a major war, but in these circumstances, you can never predict, and one little misunderstanding or miscalculation can lead to something major.

Al Jazeera: How do you see the role of third parties such as the US, China and Gulf States in this crisis, and how would you compare it with previous instances?

Yusuf: My last book, Brokering Peace (2018) was on the third-party management in Pakistan-India context, and this is such a vital element for both as they have internalised and built it into their calculus that a third-party country will inevitably come in.

The idea is that a third-party mediator will step in, and the two nations will agree to stop because that is what they really want, instead of escalating further.

And the leader of the pack of third-party countries is the United States since the Kargil war of 1999. (Pakistani forces crossed the LoC to try to take control of strategic heights in Ladakh’s Kargil, but India eventually managed to take back the territory. Then-US President Bill Clinton is credited with helping end that conflict.)

Everybody else, including China, ultimately backs the US position, which prioritises immediate de-escalation above all else during the crisis.

This changed somewhat in the 2016 surgical strikes and 2019 Pulwama crisis when the US leaned heavily on India’s side, perhaps unwittingly even emboldening them to act in 2019.

(In 2016, Indian troops launched a cross-border “surgical strike” that New Delhi said targeted armed fighters planning to attack India, after gunmen killed 19 Indian soldiers in an attack on an army base in Uri, Indian-administered Kashmir. Three years later, Indian fighter jets bombed what New Delhi said were bases of “terrorists” in Balakot, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, after the attack on the Indian military convoy in which 40 soldiers were killed. India and Pakistan then engaged in an aerial dogfight, and an Indian pilot was captured and subsequently returned.)

However, this time, you have a president in the White House who turned around and told both Pakistan and India to figure it out themselves.

This, I think, has hurt India more than Pakistan, because for Pakistan, they had discounted the possibility of significant US support in recent years, thinking they have gotten too close to India due to their strategic relationship.

But India would have been hoping for the Americans to put their foot down and pressure Pakistan, which did not exactly materialise. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s phone call again is playing down the middle, where they are telling both the countries to get out of war.

So, what they have done has, oddly enough, still played a role in holding India back so far, since India didn’t (so far) feel as emboldened to take action as they may have during Pulwama in 2019.

Gulf countries have played a more active role than before. China, too, has made a statement of restraint.

Al Jazeera: How has Pakistan’s relationship with India evolved in recent years?

Yusuf: There has been a sea change in the relationship between the two countries. When I was in office, despite serious problems and India’s unilateral moves in Kashmir in 2019, we saw a ceasefire agreement on the Line of Control as well as back-channel talks.

We have tried to move ahead and reduce India’s incentive to destabilise Pakistan, but I think India has lost that opportunity due to its own intransigence, hubris and an ideological bent that continues to force them to demean and threaten Pakistan.

That has led to a change in Pakistan as well, where the leadership is now convinced that the policy of restraint did not deliver, and India has misused and abused Pakistan’s offers for dialogue.

The view now is that if India doesn’t want to talk, Pakistan shouldn’t be pleading either. If India does reach out, we will likely respond, but there isn’t any desperation in Pakistan at all.

This is not a good place to be for either country. I have long believed and argued that ultimately for Pakistan to get to where we want to go economically, and for India to get to where it says it wants to go regionally, it cannot happen unless both improve their relationship. For now, though, with the current Indian attitude, unfortunately, I see little hope.

Al Jazeera: Do you anticipate any direct India-Pakistan talks at any level during or after this crisis?

Yes – I don’t know when it will be, or who will it be through or with, but I think one of the key lessons Indians could probably walk away with once all this is over is that attempting to isolate Pakistan isn’t working.

Indus Water Treaty in abeyance? Simla Agreement’s potential suspension? These are major decisions, and the two countries will need to talk to sort these out, and I think at some point in future they will engage.

But I also don’t think that Pakistan will make a move towards rapprochement, as we have offered opportunities for dialogues so many times recently to no avail. As I said, the mood in Pakistan has also firmed up on this question.

Ultimately, the Indians need to basically decide if they want to talk or not. If they come forth, I think Pakistan will still respond positively to it.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.