One year after India-Pakistan conflict, ceasefire holds - but little else does Soutik BiswasIndia correspondentLightRocket via ImagesA man in Indian-administered Kashmir surveys his home damaged by cross-border shelling near the Line of Control during the 2025 conflictA year after the four-day India-Pakistan conflict brought South Asia to the edge of a dangerous escalation, the region has drifted into a brittle and deeply uneasy equilibrium.The crisis - triggered after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, and culminating in military strikes by India and retaliatory action from Pakistan - lasted barely 90 hours. But the conflict hardened political and diplomatic estrangement, leaving little space even for limited normalisation.Formal diplomacy is almost non-existent now. The border is shut, trade is suspended, cricket ties remain severed and the Indus Waters Treaty remains in abeyance."Relations remain in deep freeze," former Pakistani diplomat, Husain Haqqani, now a senior fellow at Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy and Hudson Institute, told the BBC.
"Neither side believes it needs to reach out to the other for either domestic or international reasons."There have been moments of poor relations in peacetime before too, but this is one of the longest periods of frozen ties," says Haqqani.Its aftershocks have spread far beyond the Line of Control (LoC) - the volatile de facto border that separates the two nuclear-armed neighbours. "The conflict meaningfully altered outside impressions of the regional balance," says Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow in the South Asia Program at The Stimson Center."Before May 2025, many outside observers believed that India enjoyed an overwhelming advantage against Pakistan. Many Indians believed the same.
"Pakistan's ability to weather the initial Indian onslaught played to its strategic advantage, even though it is less clear what would have happened if the conflict had continued," Markey told the BBC. via ImagesA mosque damaged by Indian air strikes in Pakistan-administered Kashmir during the conflictMost strikingly, the conflict seems to have restored something Pakistan had long lost: geopolitical relevance. Its emergence as an intermediary in the Iran war caught many by surprise."Pakistan has rebuilt relevance," says Christopher Clary, a security affairs expert at the University at Albany."Pakistani leaders are conducting shuttle diplomacy throughout the Middle East. The question is whether it is transitory and merely the product of the US president's idiosyncratic preferences."The revival has unfolded amid wider geopolitical churn.
How India and Pakistan de-escalated in the pastHow real is the risk of nuclear war between India and Pakistan?How Pakistan became mediator in the Iran warDonald Trump repeatedly claimed credit for brokering the India-Pakistan ceasefire and offered to mediate on Kashmir - a disputed region claimed by both countries. The remarks irritated Delhi, which has long rejected third-party mediation, and contributed to strains in India-US ties.Clary notes that Trump's "apparent affection" for Pakistan's army chief, now Field Marshal Asim Munir, significantly shaped the post-conflict environment."The US president has strong impulses that are not always easy to explain in terms of grand strategy," Clary says. "His desire to be seen as a peacemaker affected how he handled the May 2025 conflict."Michael Kugelman of The Atlantic Council think-tank says Trump appears to see Pakistan's wartime performance as a "David-versus-Goliath story" - helping explain, at least partly, "his admiration for Munir".At the same time, Pakistan used the Iran crisis and Gulf tensions to position itself as a useful intermediary between Washington, Tehran and Arab capitals.Yet, analysts caution against overstating Pakistan's gains.
Much of Islamabad's renewed prominence may prove contingent on Trump's highly personalised style of diplomacy and the temporary strategic importance of the Iran crisis."This is also a gamble for Munir," says Markey. "The shifting sands of Middle East politics are a dangerous game, and working with the Trump administration often brings surprises."AFP via ImagesA man sits beside a poster featuring Asim Munir, now chief of defence forces, in Pakistan-administered KashmirEven so, the conflict unsettled India's diplomatic assumptions. For years, Delhi believed its strategic partnership with Washington had transformed the regional equation.
But Trump's public embrace of Pakistan, repeated mediation claims and trade tensions with India injected new unpredictability into the relationship."The credibility of the US established since Kargil [the 1999 conflict between India and Pakistan] as a reliable interlocutor during crises has considerably gone down," says Ajay Bisaria, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan.Clary argues the deterioration in ties accelerated a broader recalibration already under way in Delhi."Since May 2025, and reinforced by the subsequent US-India mini-trade war, India has rebalanced its global portfolio of relationships to be somewhat less dependent on the US," he says. That has involved "moving closer to the European Union, accelerating diplomatic repairs with China, and resisting American pressure to sever ties with Russia".Still, India's larger strategic trajectory remains intact. "India is a big enough power," Clary says, "that disequilibrium does not imperil its continued rise."NurPhoto via ImagesTourists return to Pahalgam, where the militant attack that triggered the conflict took placeIf the diplomatic consequences remain contested, the military lessons are clearer.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
