External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar at an UNSC meeting. (Representative image)
Credit: PTI File Photo
For nearly a decade, driven by big terrorist strikes in Kashmir, India's approach on Pakistan has been focused on isolating the country in the international community by projecting it as a sponsor of terrorism in India, and thus a threat to regional stability. It is clear that effort has failed.
The coup de grace was delivered when the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council elected Pakistan, a non-permanent member for 2025-2026, to chair of the Taliban sanctions committee, and vice-chair of the counter-terror committee of the United Nations Security Council. The chair and vice-chairs are appointed for a year. But all decisions in a committee require the consensus of all 15 members.
Pakistan's UNSC coup came at a time when India's all party delegations were touring the world to spread the message that its western neighbour needs to be made accountable for terrorist actions emanating from its territory. It happened within a month of the military strikes against the headquarters of the Laskhar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan's Punjab province, and other alleged terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), while New Delhi found no international backers for its military operations inside Pakistan.
That Pakistan gets to sit at the top of two committees born from resolutions against Al Qaeda (one in 1998, and the other after 9/11) and Osama bin Laden, who was found and killed in Pakistan by US forces after a decade-long hunt, is perhaps just another sign of a broken UN system that badly needs to change. Taliban are a creation of Pakistan. The regularly updated 1267 list (of the Al Qaeda and Daesh sanctions committee) is a living document of how scores of designated terrorists and individuals either have a Pakistani address, a Pakistani passport, or are Pakistani nationals.
While the world may not see the absurdity of putting Pakistan in charge of cleaning up the world of terrorists and terrorism, when it has been unable and unwilling to do so within its borders, it is also true that the committees themselves are running on empty.
The Taliban now rule over a country, and although they have not been recognised by the UN as a legitimate state, the Kabul regime is one of three international supporters – Israel and Taiwan are the other two – that India found for Operation Sindoor. Many of the Taliban's who's who have been delisted by the sanctions committee. The resolutions under which these committees were formed came because the US came under attack by Al Qaeda at home and abroad. But US President Donald Trump is happy to rub shoulders with Ahmed Al Shaara, the ruler of Syria, designated as a global terrorist by the Al Qaeda and Daesh sanctions committee in 2013.
Still, Pakistan, which is also set to become the president of the UNSC for a month starting July 1, could make a meal of its new international roles. It will certainly try to leverage the Taliban committee to improve relations with Kabul. It will use its month-long presidency to bring up its allegations about India’s role in Balochistan.
In India, domestic audiences, fed for a decade on how Modi, ably guided by his external affairs vizier, had cut enemies to size with an ‘aggressive’ foreign policy, and won the world over with his statesmanship, are aghast at how it has all turned out. The delusion had gone so deep that in some RSS circles, the talk was about how India would join hands with China and Russia to take charge of the world while Trump made the US irrelevant.
Instead of backing for the military strikes, New Delhi was counselled by one and all – including Russia and Ukraine – to talk to Pakistan. India's neighbourhood was quiet. Even Nepal, which lost a national in the Pahalgam terror attack, made no statement about Operation Sindoor. Trump showed that the US continued to remain relevant by stating that he mediated the May 10 ceasefire between India and Pakistan, and repeated it several times, even saying he had threatened both countries that if they did not agree to a ceasefire, he would cut off trade with both. Trump further offered to help resolve the Kashmir issue. This is what Pakistan ultimately desires – international attention on Kashmir, and forcing India to the dialogue table.
Caught flat-footed by the apparent return of the hyphen between India and Pakistan, New Delhi's first reaction was denial. So, even the ceasefire is not a ceasefire, but a ‘stoppage of firing’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself declared that the operation had not ended. India had only agreed, at Pakistan's request, he said, to a “pause”.
The second reaction was to send out all-party delegations across the world to spread the word about Pakistan's use of terrorism as an instrument to achieve strategic goals in the region. While what the delegations achieved is not clear, the government has clearly been more successful in the other unstated aims of these missions, such as blunting criticism by the opposition parties at home, and unsettling the Congress by seeming to detach Shashi Tharoor from the party.
India's aim of isolating Pakistan is at a dead end. China was the shadow over Operation Sindoor butIt's anyone's guess what India's China policy is today. India’s friend Russia and Pakistan are negotiating a multi-billion dollar to revive an old steel plant in Karachi. India's attempts to get something out of trade talks with the Trump Administration have not yielded a deal so far.
Pakistan, meanwhile, took the fast lane to access the Trump deal making room through a young Pakistani cryptocurrency entreprenneur. It was India that seemed isolated.. That is why the invitation to Modi to attend G7 summit in Canada, after some anxious moments in New Delhi over a seeming delay – as a rising economy India’s Prime Minister has attended the gathering since the time of Manmohan Singh's first term -- now seems such a big deal.
Nirupama Subramanian is an independent journalist. X: @tallstories.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.