Pakistan will exploit UNSC opportunity to allege Indian hand in terrorism in Balochistan: Michael Kugelman

India is really shocked and outraged that Pakistan now heads two committees at the UNSC that have been set up through very tough anti-terrorism resolutions. Pakistan is now the chair of the Taliban Sanctions Committee and vice chair of the Counter Terrorism Committee. Is there not a huge contradiction in handing over these committees to a country that is the address for so many of these groups and individuals designated by one of the terrorism committees as global terrorists?

It certainly might seem ironic, but this is essentially how the United Nations works. As you know, Pakistan is currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council. It’s got a two-year term, not for the first time that Pakistan has had this role. And when you have that position, it gives you influence and the ability to have an opportunity to serve on, if not lead, some of these committees. This comes about through essentially discussions and a consensus among the members of the Security Council. If you look at the list of countries that are currently non-permanent members, that’s a group of countries from Europe and the Global South. None of them have serious tensions with Pakistan. And one could argue that the five permanent members of the Security Council have friendly relations with Pakistan. Obviously, China stands out in that regard.

This is not the first time. There have been some notorious human rights offenders that have served on human rights committees in the United Nations. I think it’s just a reflection of how the UN works, wanting to give members an opportunity to be in various places. But absolutely, particularly in the context of what’s happened over the last few weeks in the region, it certainly seems ironic, contradictory, and certainly I could understand why this would be seen as such an upsetting thing for so many in India and beyond.

What is the importance of these committees? The Taliban now run a country, and many of the Taliban have actually been delisted. So, what is really the point of these groups now?

These committees report to the permanent members of the UN Security Council. They make recommendations and report their deliberations to the permanent members. I would not argue that their clout and influence is unlimited, but certainly there is that influence.

I would make one point about how Pakistan specifically is benefited by its role on the Taliban sanctions committee. For many years, the Taliban was essentially Pakistan’s asset, and it worked with Pakistan very closely. Pakistan’s relations with the Taliban have been quite tense since the war ended, mainly because Pakistan lost its leverage over the Taliban because the Taliban no longer needs to rely on it for wartime support. I think that Pakistan is now in a position where it might now have some leverage because it knows that the Taliban is keen to find ways to get off sanctions lists, and Pakistan might think it could try to exploit or capitalise on its role on this committee to try to get some things that it wants from the Taliban.

What are the other benefits for Pakistan?

Pakistan is trying to push back against this notion that India is isolating it globally on the world stage. The UN is a particularly difficult place to try to isolate Pakistan or any country, just because this is one of the few forums where Pakistan is able to exert leverage and influence. It’s able to bring its Kashmir concerns, complaints, and grievances to the table on a regular basis, especially now, being a non-permanent member of the UNSC. The fact that it has leadership roles in these committees is a clear indication that it’s not being isolated. It’s always going to be a difficult thing for India to do—it’s even hard to do that regionally. What’s happened at the UN is a reflection of how difficult a task that is for New Delhi.

India’s relations with the Taliban are particularly good at this point. In fact, the Taliban regime in Kabul was one of the two entities that actually supported India’s strikes inside Pakistan. Will Pakistan be seeking to alter that optics?

Indeed, isn’t it something that it’s the Taliban along with Taiwan and Israel that were fully behind India in this recent conflict? Quite a trio. But absolutely. We’re already seeing how Pakistan is trying to respond to these considerable developments in India’s relations with the Taliban. And that’s a great example of what I would describe as a very nimble and agile and practical foreign policy on India’s part.

We’ve seen in recent weeks [that] Pakistan has held a series of talks with the Taliban. In the last round, some of them were mediated by China. So, Pakistan is definitely trying to get back in the good graces of the Taliban. But it has another reason to try to reduce its tensions with the Taliban, not just trying to push back against what India is doing, but also the broader regional geopolitical state of play. For more than four years, the LoC [Line of Control] was relatively calm because you had that truce that was concluded in 2021. But now India-Pakistan relations are extremely tense. After this conflict, we don’t know what’s going to happen down the road with the ceasefire. Pakistan wants to ensure that as many of its borders as possible are less tense so that it doesn’t have to be quite as concerned about the one with India.

Is there something more that India should have done or can do to convince the world that terrorism from Pakistan and the groups based there are not just India’s but the world’s problem?

I believe it was a member of the Indian delegation in Washington, DC, who said that this is essentially the world’s fight, not just India’s fight. And that by trying to bring attention to this issue, India is really helping the world, not just India. That’s an important point to make.

Unfortunately, people have short memories in many Western capitals and might not remember that the Mumbai attacks in 2008 killed not just dozens of Indians, but also Americans and Canadians. If you look at the nature of what some of these groups that threaten India, Jaish[-e-Muhammad] and LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba], these are global threats for sure. They don’t only pose direct threats to India. So it was quite smart for members of the Indian delegation to bring attention to that fact.

But the problem is the way things have worked out: when you have these terrorist attacks in India, India responds with military force in Pakistan, you then have a crisis, a military conflict, and then it’s only natural for the world to look at two nuclear-armed countries engaging in a conflict and starting to worry about things beyond terrorism, including nuclear escalation risks. And this is the challenge for India. When you have two countries with nuclear weapons that fight against each other, a bilateral dispute quickly becomes an international one. And in that sense, the focus is going to be on global stability, and the focus gets away from the terrorism issue, which tends to provoke or trigger these crises and these conflicts. So that’s India’s challenge—how to redirect the world’s focus to the terrorism issue.

So, you are saying that the Indian military strikes inside Pakistan took away attention from the horrific nature of the terrorist attack in Pahalgam and focussed attention on what could quickly develop into a nuclear war?

Not initially. The initial Indian strikes—I think you had many countries around the world, certainly Washington [DC], Beijing as well, expressing support for India in the immediate aftermath of the Pahalgam attack. I think that many key capitals would have seen this decision on the part of India to stage strikes as a counterterrorism imperative, but after the initial Indian strikes, once things escalated and Pakistan responded, that’s when the global attention shifted more toward concerns about regional instability and indeed the nuclear escalation risk issue.

You talked about the delegations, the Indian delegation in Washington, DC. Who’s listening? Who are they speaking to?

I think the main audience here is one back home. It’s quite clear that both in the case of the Indian and the Pakistani delegations, this is a political exercise for domestic consumption. I’m not saying that there are not very concerned, interested folks around the world that are keen to engage with these delegations. But you look at how this is carried out: India and Pakistan wanted to take their positions in the aftermath of this conflict, which enjoy considerable support across the board in both their respective countries, to a global audience, and show back home that they are taking these positions to influential global audiences. That, in itself, can have political advantages for both governments.

Each set of delegations met with different types of folks. Both sides met with members of Congress and key congressional committees. There were some meetings with the administration. India won out in that sense. They got a meeting with the Vice President, the Pakistani delegation met with a senior State Department official. But beyond that, interestingly, the Pakistanis only have two delegations to India’s seven, and they’re only going to five capitals to India’s 33 capitals. But while in Washington, DC, the Pakistani delegation had a packed schedule. There were multiple engagements with think tanks, with very small niche organisations like Americans for Tax Reform. Whereas the Indians, it seemed to be more targeted with fewer meetings.

One question that I’ve had for both of these delegations is, how do you actually measure success? The Indian side wants its interlocutors around the world to remember that this really comes down to terrorism, and the threats that India and the world face from it. And the Pakistanis have a very different type of message. They’re trying to deliver this message that essentially India is untrustworthy and an aggressor, that it breaks treaties, and so on. India doesn’t need to travel the world to get the world to understand and sympathise with India’s concerns about terrorism. Pakistan doesn’t need to travel the world to get the world’s concerns about regional stability and nuclear risks. It’s going to be very difficult to go to Paris or Washington or Brussels or London and get people to start looking at India as an untrustworthy actor. Western capitals have very close relations with India. So, the simple answer to your question is the main audience here is a domestic one.

So has this whole episode—the Pahalgam incident and India’s response to it, and now this diplomatic outreach by both countries—actually ended up doing the very thing that India does not want to do, which is to internationalise the Kashmir issue?

Yes, absolutely that’s the case. Going back to what we were discussing about escalation dynamics, you have a terrorist attack in India-administered Kashmir, India responds with strikes, you then have a Pakistani response, and then suddenly, what might have been a regional bilateral dispute becomes an international one because people around the world start worrying about the regional and the global stability implications. And that then gives Pakistan an opportunity to come in and make this pitch that they’ve always made—that this is going to continue to play out unless the Kashmir issue is settled. So, it really provides openings for Pakistan to internationalise the issue.

But I would also argue that India, by deciding to send all these delegations around the world to talk about these issues, is also internationalising the issue. I understand India’s position that it wants to refocus the issue on terrorism and Pakistan-based, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. But in doing so, you invariably bring attention to these broader issues like Kashmir, that Pakistan would like to be front and centre on the international agenda.

Pakistan also becomes the president of the UN Security Council for a month, starting July 1. Is Pakistan likely to bring up what it has always alleged—that India is behind the insurgency in Balochistan? Do you think this is going to be an opportunity for them to bring up that issue?

Absolutely. The timing could not be better for Pakistan with these positions it finds itself in at the UN right now. Given what’s happened in the last few weeks, holding these key positions with these committees and then presiding over the Security Council for a month, the timing could not be better for Islamabad. And certainly, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge for New Delhi.

Pakistan will fully exploit this opportunity to push this argument about India sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan. This would essentially be an extension of the argument that its delegations are making, and that is essentially that Pakistan’s a victim of terrorism, not a perpetrator of it, and then bringing attention to its allegations against India. It’s going to use this very prestigious platform and prominent platform that it’ll have at the UN to push this argument out there. This is what UN members do, especially countries like Pakistan that don’t have the level of global influence that the likes of India do. They will use this bully pulpit to the full extent that they can. Whether they get anywhere with this is another story. But for Pakistan, just to be able to have the opportunity to put these ideas and these allegations out there, that’s a victory in itself.

One of the things that surprises Indians is that there was this whole examination of Pakistan’s terrorist finances by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Why has the international organisation not been successful in actually getting Pakistan to remove these groups completely?

What FATF tries to do is put together these missions or work plans for countries targeted by it. If the country does what they’re asked to do, the boxes are ticked off and then FATF moves on. And what we have seen with Pakistan is that it does do certain things. But then, when the attention shifts elsewhere, Pakistan reverts. So, Pakistan might be willing to target certain terrorists with arrest or seizing their assets or whatever the case may be. But then, once they get off the grey list or once they get out of the attention of the international community, they then just step back and let things play out as they have.

The FATF’s job is not to essentially order a country like Pakistan to fully dismantle its terrorist infrastructure. It’s focussed very specifically on these terrorist financing issues. It does have the capacity to get a country like Pakistan to do the things that are stipulated in a very specific, narrowly focussed way in these work plans. But clearly no one has had that capacity, whether you’re talking about an international actor or a country, no one has had the clout to compel Pakistan to fully shut down and dismantle its entire infrastructure of terrorism.

So what should the world do? What should India do?

It seems that India is trying to take a number of steps, some of them unprecedented, to raise the cost for Pakistan of continuing to hold back from doing certain things that could remove this problem once and for all. I think we have to look at these things that India did right after the Pahalgam attack, shutting down trade, closing the border, suspending the Indus Waters treaty. And now we’re starting to see India try to urge Pakistan’s funders to stop providing as much assistance.

Some critics would argue that other countries have to get involved, too, including the US, such as placing sanctions on leaders of the Pakistani military. Given the nature of the US-Pakistan relationship, those are not seen as realistic tactics. But I sense that India is trying to play a long game. It recognises you’re not going to see results anytime soon. And that you have to hope that over time, through pressure and through essentially attempts to squeeze Pakistan through non-military means—and here, suspending the Indus Waters treaty could be very impactful. That is something that clearly could have significant implications for Pakistan, not now, but down the road in terms of water security in a country that has significant levels of water insecurity.

But you could also argue that this would all backfire, and it would actually compel Pakistan to double down on the very things that have concerned India for so long. We remember some years ago when Lashkar-e-Taiba members would threaten to attack India because of Pakistan’s water theft. So now that you actually have India having suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, it could actually take those steps over time to make it more difficult for water to get into Pakistan. The terrorists themselves could be galvanised by these moves that India is making.

How is the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty by India being seen in Western capitals?

I would argue that many policymakers are probably not familiar with the Indus Waters Treaty. They wouldn’t know the full context, certainly wouldn’t know issues about Pakistan’s water security. But I do think the fact that it is a World Bank-mediated treaty is something that got the attention of many. Indeed, those who are aware of the context would know that this is a rare success of transboundary water management between India and Pakistan. It’s one of the few cases of transboundary water treaties in South Asia that has essentially lasted and endured.

One of the tasks of the Pakistanis is to essentially make the West understand the significant serious long-term implications. Some might have seen Pakistan’s initial reaction when they said that if India follows through on this, that it would be an act of war. Some in the West might have thought that was just sabre-rattling and hyperbole. But Pakistan is going to want to make that case that you have to understand how serious this could be over the course of time. But I don’t think we’re going to see this major international campaign to pressure India to come back into the treaty. Many people around the world aren’t really familiar with the Indus Waters Treaty, its importance, and the long-term implications of India stepping away from it.

To sum up, how would you rate Indian diplomacy and Pakistani diplomacy in the post-Pahalgam weeks? Which has been more effective in getting its message out?

I would give each country an average grade. Each country’s been able to essentially double down on getting the type of support that it already had been getting, in the sense that India got support from the international community on its concerns about terrorism. Pakistan’s been able to get the international community’s support about regional stability issues, nuclear escalation risks, but on other fronts, not necessarily as much success.

I don’t necessarily think that more is better, [say] in the case of India travelling to 33 capitals puts it at an advantage over Pakistan only going to five capitals, especially because the Pakistanis really packed their US schedule in ways that I don’t think India did. But basically, each country gets an average grade in terms of its diplomacy. But in terms of their political performance and how it’s regarded back home, each country gets a pretty high grade.