SINGAPORE:
Pakistan and India are close to reducing the troop buildup along their border to levels before conflict erupted between the nuclear-armed neighbours this month, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza told Reuters on Friday.
However, he warned the crisis had increased the risk of escalation in the future.
Both sides used fighter jets, missiles, drones, and artillery in four days of clashes, their worst fighting in decades, before a ceasefire was announced.
The recent clashes between Pakistan and India arose following the Pahalgam attack on April 22 in the Indian-Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) that killed 26 people.
New Delhi blamed the incident without evidence on Pakistani elements, a charge denied by Islamabad, which sought an independent probe into the incident.
On May 7, India launched missiles at civilian sites. This prompted a defensive response from Pakistan and a subsequent troop buildup by both countries along the frontier.
General Mirza said the two militaries had started the process of drawing down troop levels. “We have almost come back to the pre-April 22 situation… we are approaching that, or we must have approached that by now,” said Mirza, the most senior Pakistani military official to speak publicly since the conflict.
India’s Ministry of Defence and the office of the Indian Chief of Defence Staff did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on the remarks by Mirza.
Mirza, who is in Singapore to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue forum, said while there was no move towards nuclear weapons during this conflict, it was a dangerous situation.
“Nothing happened this time,” he said. “But you can’t rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time, because when the crisis is on, the responses are different.”
He also said the risk of escalation in the future had increased since the fighting this time was not limited to IIOJK.
“This (conflict) lowers the threshold between two countries who are contiguous nuclear powers…in the future, it will not be restricted to the disputed territory. It would come down to (the) whole of India and (the) whole of Pakistan,” Mirza said. “This is a very dangerous trend.”
Reuters has reported that the rapid escalation of hostilities ended in part because of behind-the-scenes diplomacy involving the US, India, and Pakistan, and the key role played by Washington in brokering peace.
India continues to deny any third-party role in the ceasefire and said that any engagement between India and Pakistan has to be bilateral.
But Mirza warned that international mediation might be difficult in the future because of a lack of crisis management mechanisms between the countries.
“The time window for the international community to intervene would now be very less, and I would say that damage and destruction may take place even before that time window is exploited by the international community,” he said.
Pakistan was open to dialogue, he added, but beyond a crisis hotline between the directors general of military operations and some hotlines at the tactical level on the border, there was no other communication between the two countries.
Mirza said there were no backchannel discussions or informal talks to ease tensions.
He also said he had no plans to meet General Anil Chauhan, India’s chief of defence staff, who is also in Singapore for the Shangri-La forum.
“These issues can only be resolved by dialogue and consultations, at the table. They cannot be resolved on the battlefield,” Mirza said.
