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Tensions between India and Pakistan that threatened to boil over during the weekend have now settled back to a simmer. The two countries have been striking at targets inside each other's borders since last Wednesday. It's the worst fighting between these two nuclear powers in half a century. But now they appear to have reached a fragile truce.
So what you saw with this conflict was really the closest that India and Pakistan have come to it all at war since possibly the nineteen seventies.
Dan Strump is a Bloomberg senior reporter based in India's capital of New Delhi. He says the hostilities are the latest phase of a long standing territorial dispute over the border region of Jammu and Kashmir.
It's one of the most contested regions the world. Really, Both India and Pakistan have claimed this region as their own going back to the time of independence.
But what might look to outsiders like a regional issue has serious international implications. Both Indian and Pakistan are nuclear powers. India's one of the world's largest economies and the most populous. Then there's China, which has been working to grow its influence in the region. These factors appear to have drawn in the Trump administration. US President Donald Trump surprised the world by announcing a ceasefire in a social media post
over the weekend, but not everyone's happy about that. The surprise announcement may have upstaged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
There's a real sort of sense of dismay and anger that you see among Indian politicians and ordinary Indians as well. This really throws a ranch in Modi's political standing right now in India.
Welcome to The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wanha. Every week we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today in the show, a conversation between Rebecca Chung Wilkins and Bloomberg reporter Dan Strump about the increasingly intense conflict between India and Pakistan, how the conflict changed in recent days, and the roles the US and China have been playing in the background.
India said that it has conducted military strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan, on the other hand, said they have downed five Indian fighter jet planes and this is an escalation of the two nuclear armed nations. The tensions have been similar for the last few days ever since twenty six people were killed.
Dan, Hello, it's been a very busy few weeks for you.
It's been very busy for all of us here in India and Pakistan.
And I want to get straight into the conflict and what's been keeping you so busy.
So the current conflict goes back about three weeks on April twenty second, to a terrible attack that took place in Indian Administered Kashmir in a region known as Pahalgam, which is a sort of beautiful mountainous meadow region in Kashmir. A large group of tourists were vacationing in the meadow and armed gunmen came out of the forest and gunned down twenty six people. All of them were civilians, mostly tourists,
mostly Indians. So in the immediate aftermath of this event, India very quickly blamed Pakistan for the disaster in Kashmir. Pakistan very quickly denied any involvement.
And where exactly is Kashmir? Because geography really matters.
In this case, geography does really matter. So Kashmir is a large region that sits on the northern tip of India bordering Pakistan, and it's about the size of the UK. It's one of the most contested regions in the world. Really, Both India and Pakistan have claimed this region as their own going back to the time of independence.
And dan, how did Kashmir become so contentious between India and Pakistan?
So the conflict essentially dates back to the independence of
both countries from the British in nineteen forty seven. The British colonial administration essentially left the region in a hurry, leaving a whole host of territorial disputes unresolved, and the most front dispute of all came to be Kashmir, and Kashmir became this sort of touching off point for the very first war that the two countries fought immediately after independence, and it's been a source of multiple wars over the years ever since.
How did we see the two sides respond in the immediate aftermath of this event, So.
It's about two weeks of posturing. Nothing really happened until about a week ago when India announced that it had undertaken a series of air strikes on the Pakistani side of Kashmir. Pakistan responded with its own strikes. The two sides traded artillery fire, small arms fire, and eventually missile fire and drone and aircraft attacks were involved as well on both sides.
Right, So that was the military response we've seen from the two sides. Were there any changes in terms of diplomacy and policymaking.
So in addition to military strikes, India suspended what's known as the Indus Waters Treaty, which is a treaty that essentially governs the use of the Indus River and its vast number of tributaries. It's so essential to both of these countries their reliance on the water that comes from this vast sort of river basin. After India suspended this treaty, that really raised the fears that the flow of water from India to Pakistan, which lies downstream from India, could
be under threat. And what Pakistan said very quickly after the suspension of this treaty was that if its waterflow is threatened, it would treat that as an act of war.
You mentioned that Kashmir is a region no stranger to conflicts and skirmishes. So we've seen violence throughout the two thousands and further escalations in twenty nineteen. How is this time different from what we've seen in the past.
I think it's important for us to point out that what we saw in the last week or so is far from the sort of full blown wars that defined the conflicts that took place in the last century. Over Kashmir, what we saw was a major escalation in violence in comparison to what we've seen in recent decades. This conflict hit much closer to populated civilian areas, hit much closer to some of the locations of some of the highest
levels of government, at least on the Pakistani side. On the military side, you saw air skirmishes taking place outside of Kashmir along the conventional border between Pakistan and India. You saw artillery fire traded on both sides. You saw the introduction of new types of weaponry, things like Kamikazi drones, Chinese made fighter jets on the Pakistani side, French made
fighter jets on the Indian side. What several people have told us is essentially this conflict resets rules of the game it expands the theater around which future conflicts might take place and also expands the range of weaponry that might be involved.
Now, tell us about the ceasefire. When did it happen and how was it actually reached.
So, this ceasefire as we know it came over really just the course of a few hours of phone calls starting from the White House on Friday and Saturday and into the weekend. And those phone calls took place between Marco Rubio and Vice President Jade Vance and a number of high level players on the both Indian and Pakistani side.
What took everybody by surprise was Trump's post on truth Social on Saturday morning in Washington Saturday afternoon here announcing that a ceasefire had taken place and it was a done deal.
After the break, Rebecca and Dan talk about India's reaction to the Truth and to Trump's announcement, and what role China is playing in this conflict. India and Pakistan aren't the only countries disputing control of Kashmir. China claims a part of the region as well, and as a conflict between India and Pakistan unfolded in the back of everyone's minds, have been the ongoing trade negotiations that both China and
India are conducting with the US. Meanwhile, the US approach to the tensions between India and Pakistan has been inconsistent. Last week, Vice President J. D Vance told Fox News that the conflict was quote fundamentally none of our business. Then Trump surprised everyone over the weekend by announcing a ceasefire. On social media, Rebecca Chung Wilkins asked Bloomberg's Dan Strump how each side is reacting to foreign intervention.
Each side views the prospect of foreign intervention in the su conflict a little bit differently. On the Indian side, there has been a very deep seated resistance to any foreign intervention in the Kashmir conflict. India have used this conflict as an issue between Pakistan and India to be
sorted out bilaterally. And this is a position that goes back decades now, and that in some part is because India has viewed foreign intervention and foreign mediation in this conflict as being something that might be sympathetic to Pakistan. I think the Indian side is finding it hard to not see this as having lost some ground in a way by especially being backed into accepting some kind of US role in any kind of ceasepire that is now
taking hold. So in that sense, there's a real sort of sense of dismay and anger that you see among Indian politicians and ordinary Indians as well.
And conversely, how is the US's involvement viewed by Pakistan Now?
Pakistan, of course, has taken the opposite perspective. It wants foreign intervention in this conflict. It wants foreign brokerage and foreign mediation and has sought as much in various forums around the world, including the United Nation, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and directly appealing to third party countries as
well for mediation in this conflict. There's a real sense of jubilation and that by bringing in a third party like the United States this broker a ceasefire, that this is a real victory for Pakistan. And now the two sides have future issues to discuss, and there's going to be third parties mediating and potentially laying a roadmap for conversations that could take place over well who knows how long.
Now. One of the reasons why the US felt like they had to intervene was because they were worried that things could take a term for the worst if neither side ended up de escalating. Can you tell us why the US was so concerned about a full scale war breaking out in this part of the world.
So this conflict for decades now has taken place against the backdrop of possible nuclear weapons use. Both countries have nuclear weapons. India maintains a no first strike rule. Pakistan is ambiguous on how it might or might not use nuclear weapons. At the same time, is a very strong incentive for neither country to push the conflict too far.
It's also a reason why you do see foreign powers who might not otherwise be welcome or have any business in this conflict stick their nose in, like we just saw in just the last couple of day. So it really is the greatest fear that underlies this whole conflict.
So we're speaking on Monday, May the twelfth. Now, what are the economic implications for both countries if the ceasefire doesn't hold.
Pakistan remains mired in a real economic crisis and is in the midst of trying to obtain access to I think around seven billion dollars worth of loans from the International Monetary Fund and it badly needs that money. Now. On the Indian side, this conflict really was not a priority of the last couple of years for India anymore. India was under the impression that it was largely not quite settled, but a conflict that was more or less under control and wasn't really at risk of flaring up again.
And so as a result, you had India really turning its attention elsewhere. Mody had really spent a lot of time in the last couple of years trying to bolster relationships with Europe within the lease, of course, with the US, and arguably the most pressing item on Modi's international agenda was negotiating a trade deal with the US until this conflict broke out. And on the date that the conflict
broke out, Mody was actually hosting Vice President JD. Vance in India, where the two talked about a number of things, but talked about this trade deal that the two countries are trying to hammer out. It's been a real distraction, you could say, for both sides, which is probably a pretty good incentive for the two to also hold the ceasefire and try to put the conflict behind them, at.
Least for now you mentioned Vice President JD. Vance was in India during the Kashmir attack. He visited India actually with his family and dined with Prime Minister Modi at his residence, and last week he said that the conflict was fundamentally none of the US's business, but that then did appear to change. So how should we see the US in this relationship. Do you see the US taking a back seat if this co develops further, or do you see it taking a more interventionist role from here?
It's hard to see how the US, how the Trump administration can take a backseat. Now after all of the sort of tweets and posts and proclamations online, I think the US has fully inserted itself into this conflict, whether it wants to be or not. And that is potentially a problem for the US and for the Trump White House, which is really stretching itself as it tries to play peacemaker in all these different conflicts around the world. Trump, of course, pledged from day one to solve the Ukraine
Russia conflict that's still ongoing. The conflict in Gaza is still ongoing, and now you've got Trump sticking his nose into this conflict as well. You know, now it remains to be seen what shape exactly this purported US mediation is going to take. And as I said, a lot of people on the Indian side have really just rejected the idea of US intervention at all. So we'll just have to see exactly how this looks.
And what about China, who has been such a supporter of Pakistan, where do you see its role potentially in this dynamic.
China has been one of those countries that from the beginning has been calling for both sides to de escalate, but it's also made very clear that it is on the side of Pakistan in this dispute, and that backing has really increased in the last couple of years in the form of foreign investment in weapons sales as well. And you saw the introduction of some of that on the battlefield in just the last couple of days. And you know, that's a real complicating factor for India because
India and China don't get along. India Pakistan don't get along, the US and China don't get along, and now you have the US in India increasingly getting along. So this is very quickly turning into a sort of However, many ways fight in this part of the world, so it does make the world look, at least on the margin, a little bit more risky and a little bit more dangerous.
Dan, thank you so much for making time, Thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much.
This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wan ha. This episode was produced by Young Young and Naomi mm. It was edited by Patty Hirsch and Daniel tan Cap and fact check by Bloomberg's editorial team. It was mixed and sound designed by Alex Suguiera. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponzo. Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster Bower. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
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