Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, smug in the belief that he had ‘struck back’ at the Indians, made conciliatory noises on Wednesday and asked India to engage in a dialogue. As he underscored the need for de-escalation, he tried to put the country’s retaliation in perspective. ‘‘Our action was only intended to convey that if you can come into our country, we can do the same…
From here, it is imperative that we use our heads and act with wisdom,” Khan said in a televised statement. Giving PM Modi a window, so that the two sides can backtrack, Imran said in his televised address: “I ask India: With the weapons you have and the weapons we have, can we really afford a miscalculation? If this escalates, it will no longer be in my control or in Modi’s.”
The veiled reference was to the hostilities spiralling out of control and escalating into a nuclear standoff. “We invite you for dialogue… better sense must prevail,” he added.The offer for dialogue came after Pakistan retaliated, hours after it warned that it would respond at a “time and place of its own choosing”. As he had asserted, the tensions ratcheted up further on Wednesday with damage on both sides.
An F-16 jet of the Pakistan Air Force was shot down by the IAF and India lost a MiG fighter jet, whose pilot has been captured; with that, the equations and the narrative has changed. Experts said the ball is now in PM Modi’s court: he should try and secure an assurance form Imran Khan on the terror apparatus, which can be a pre-condition for dialogue.
“All wars are miscalculated, and no one knows where they lead to. World War I was supposed to end in weeks, it took six years. Similarly, the war on terrorism was not supposed to last 17 years,’’ insists Imran. The former cricketer continued in the same vein: “We understand the grief that you have suffered in Pulwama and are ready for a probe and dialogue.
Let’s sit together and settle this with talks. “…We have been the victims of war for decades. We know what war means. Since the beginning, we have asked India to share actionable evidence with us. It is nowhere in the interest of Pakistan for it to be used as a base for militancy,” he said.
Let sanity prevail, let’s think sensibly, Imran added, underscoring that war has its own unmanageable dynamics. Profound words, but it is time he wondered why the two nations are engaged eyeball to eyeball – almost on brink of war.
