India, Pak agree on ceasefire along LoC
The Indian and Pakistani armies announced on Thursday that they had begun strictly adhering to a ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir from the midnight of February 24 – the apparent outcome of behind-thescenes contacts between senior security officials of the two countries.
A joint statement issued by the two armies said the move followed a discussion between India’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), Lt Gen Paramjit Singh Sangha, and his Pakistani counterpart, Maj Gen Nauman Zakaria, over their established telephone hotline. People familiar with developments said on condition of anonymity that the DGMOs spoke on February 22.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s key adviser on security affairs, Moeed Yusuf, said in an audio statement issued to journalists in Islamabad that the agreement on the ceasefire was the outcome of “behind-the-scenes” contacts and “more roads will open” in the future. Yusuf didn’t elaborate on the nature of these contacts.
The move comes at a time when the Indian military is largely focused on the standoff with China in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which emerged in the open in May last year, though there has been no let-up in counterterrorism operations in Jammu and Kashmir.
During their discussion on the hotline, the two DGMOs “reviewed the situation along the Line of Control and all other sectors in a free, frank and cordial atmosphere”, the joint statement said. India and Pakistan had agreed to a ceasefire on the LoC in November 2003. Though the truce largely held over the years, it came under strain after bilateral ties hit a low following the Pulwama suicide attack in February 2019 and India’s decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August 2019, and troops from the two sides regularly traded fire.
The DGMOs also “agreed to address each other’s core issues and concerns which have propensity to disturb peace and lead to violence” in the interest of “achieving mutually beneficial and sustainable peace along the borders”. The two sides added that existing mechanisms of hotline contact and border flag meetings will be used to “resolve any unforeseen situation or misunderstanding”.
External affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a regular news briefing that the ceasefire agreement didn’t amount to a change of India’s position on key issues related to Pakistan. “India desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan. We have always maintained that we are committed to addressing issues, if any, in a peaceful and bilateral manner,” he said.
The joint statement issued by India and Pakistan on Thursday on the ceasefire agreement between their top military commanders may have surprised many but it comes months after National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and his counterpart in Islamabad initiated back-channel conversations to ensure peace along the tense border, people aware of the matter said on condition of anonymity.
NSA Doval and Moeed W Yusuf, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s special assistant on National Security Division and Strategic Policy Planning, have been in touch directly and via interlocutors from the intelligence community, one of these people confirmed.
The joint statement is the first outcome of these conversations that included at least one face-to-face meeting in a third country, the person cited above said, without naming the location. He added that only a small group of top government leaders including the Prime Minister, home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh and external affairs minister S Jaishankar were aware of the details of the talks.
Late on Thursday evening, however, Yusuf tried to distance himself from the talks in a series of tweets. “No such talks have taken place between me and Mr. Doval...The welcome development on the LoC is a result of discussions through the established channel of DGMOs,” he said. Thursday’s joint statement, issued in New Delhi by the defence ministry, said DGMO of the two armies had agreed to “strict observance of all agreements, understandings and cease firing along the Line of Control” from Wednesday midnight. The two top commanders also “agreed to address each other’s core issues and concerns which have a propensity to disturb the peace and lead to violence”.
To be sure, this is not the first time that the two top army officers have agreed to hold peace along the border. They signed off on a similar pact in 2018 when they pledged to strictly adhere to the terms of the ceasefire understanding of 2003 in letter and spirit. That wasn’t to be, though. Officials said Thursday’s joint statement could be the first of the many steps that the two countries take over the next few months to normalise relations, one step at a time.
National security planners said there were five developments over the last month or so that indicated a nuanced shift.
The first sign that the backchannel conversations were on track came earlier this month. Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in a departure from his strident pitch against India after the Balakot air strike in 2019, on February 2 spoke of Islamabad’s commitment to what he called the ideal of mutual respect and peaceful co-existence and said: “it is time to extend a hand of peace in all directions”. The second was the toned-down statements that emerged from Islamabad three days later, on February 5, which is observed by the Pakistani establishment as Kashmir Solidarity Day. “I found it unusual,” said a counter-terror official who wasn’t in the loop on the secret talks and who asked not to be named. The third was a decline in the ceasefire violations along the border in J&K.
A top government functionary said Gen Bajwa’s much-publicised peace proposal, a decline in ceasefire violations and Pakistan’s toned-down rhetoric were clearly linked to the quiet conversations taking place.
The fourth sign of a possible thaw in the relations was Pakistan steering clear of the Kashmir issue at last week’s South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Faisal Sultan, special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Health restricted himself to the issue at hand, a sharp contrast to Pakistan’s previous attempt to raise the Kashmir issue at the Saarc meeting held in March last year. The fifth indicator, an official said, was New Delhi’s gesture of allowing Imran Khan’s special aircraft to use Indian airspace en route to Sri Lanka on Tuesday. PM Khan’s Pakistan Air Force jet flew along India’s coastline and over the Lakshadweep archipelago before landing in Colombo.