Pahalgam attack was act of economic warfare: EAM Jaishankar

New York: The Pahalgam terror attack was an act of economic warfare meant to destroy tourism in Kashmir, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, asserting that India has made it clear that it will not allow nuclear blackmail to prevent it from responding to terror emanating from Pakistan.

India has had a string of terrorist attacks over the years emanating from Pakistan and in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, there was a sentiment in the country that “enough is enough,” Jaishankar said on Monday.

His remarks came during a conversation with Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad hosted at the publication’s headquarters at One World Trade Centre near the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan.

Jaishankar said that the Pahalgam attack “was an act of economic warfare. It was meant to destroy tourism in Kashmir, which was the mainstay of the economy. It was also meant to provoke religious violence because people were asked to identify their faith before they were killed.” “So we decided that we cannot let terrorists function with impunity. The idea that they are on that side of the border, and that, therefore, sort of prevents retribution, I think, that’s a proposition that needs to be challenged and that is what we did,” he said.

Jaishankar is on an official visit to the US and will travel to Washington DC to participate in the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Tuesday.

He commenced his visit by inaugurating an exhibition in the UN Headquarters titled ‘The Human Cost of Terrorism’, organised by the Permanent Mission of India to the UN.

He said that the terrorists based in Pakistan carrying out attacks against India do not operate in secret and these are terrorist organisations who have the “equivalent of their corporate headquarters in the populated towns of Pakistan." "Everybody knows what is the headquarters of organisation A and organisation B and those are the buildings, the headquarters that India destroyed” in Operation Sindoor, he said.

Operation Sindoor was launched to target terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians and for which The Resistance Front (TRF), a front for Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) had claimed responsibility.

"We are very clear there will be no impunity for terrorists, that we will not deal with them any longer as proxies and spare the government which supports and finances and in many ways, motivates them. We will not allow nuclear blackmail to prevent us from responding,” he said.

Jaishankar added that “we've also heard this for too long” that both India and Pakistan are nuclear countries and “therefore the other guy will come and do horrible things, but you mustn't do anything because it gets the world worried.

“Now we are not going to fall for that. If he is going to come and do things, we are going to go there and also hit the people who did this. So no yielding to nuclear blackmail, no impunity to terrorists, no more free pass that they are proxies. And we will do what we have to do to defend our people,” Jaishankar said amid applause from the audience.

Referring to the exhibition at the UN highlighting the devastating toll of terrorist attacks across the globe, including those perpetrated by Pakistan-based terror entities, Jaishankar said India believes that “terrorism is actually a threat to everyone, that no country should use it as an instrument to further its policies because, at the end of the day, it comes back to bite everyone.”   He stressed that the message to the world has to be that there should be zero tolerance for terrorism, that there should be no circumstances, no excuse, no justification under which a country would allow, support, finance or sponsor terrorist acts.

He said India has been dealing with terrorism emanating from Pakistan for several decades but it actually started from the time of the country’s independence in 1947 when within a few months, terrorists were sent into Kashmir and were described as proxies and tribal invaders.

“And then soon enough, the Pakistani Army followed. So we have battled terrorism, really intensive, for the last four decades and we've had some horrific cases,” he said, as he referred to the 2001 Parliament and 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

During a Q&A session that followed the conversation, Jaishankar was asked about President Donald Trump’s claim that he used trade to stop the recent conflict between India and Pakistan and whether that has affected trade negotiations between Delhi and Washington.

“No, I don't think so. I think the trade people are doing what the trade people should be doing, which is negotiate with numbers and lines and products and do their trade-offs. I think they are very professional and very, very focused about it,” Jaishankar said.

He said that there is a national consensus in India that “our dealings with Pakistan are bilateral.  “And in this particular case, I can tell you that I was in the room when Vice President (JD) Vance spoke to Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi on the night of May 9, saying that the Pakistanis would launch a very massive assault on India if we did not accept certain things.  “And the Prime Minister was impervious to what the Pakistanis were threatening to do. On the contrary, he indicated that there would be a response from us. This was the night before and the Pakistanis did attack us massively that night, we responded very quickly thereafter," Jaishankar said.

"And the next morning, Mr (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio called me up and said the Pakistanis were ready to talk. So I can only tell you from my personal experience what happened. The rest I leave to you," he said.