Handshake Hurrah To Hawks

Talks with China and the BRICS declaration on terror are promising. Coupled with Trump’s Afghan policy, it’s significant.

- Pranay Sharma

Diplomatic breakthroughs rarely come overnight. Yet, the fast-paced developments which took place from Doklam to Xiamen last week seem to have brought dramatic chan­ges in India-China relations. In recent months, bilateral ties between the two Asian giants had been fraught with, if not open hostility, then with staunch rivalry, playing out often through the Pakistani prism.

Therefore, it is not without significance that until late last month, the two Asian neighbours, whose soldiers were facing each other in a 73-day long stand-off at the Himalayan plateau of Doklam, are now making common cause with each other and world powers to name Pakistan-based terror outfits Lashkar-­e-Toiba and Jaishe-e-Mohammed as founts of violence and instabil­ity. Both Lashkar and Jaish has been valued ass­ets of the Pakistani ‘deep state’ and are often used to carry out terror strikes in India. Past attempts to highlight their activities and pressure Pakistan at regional and international fora have failed, mainly because of China’s active reluctance to do so.

But, in a dramatic shift in stand at the BRICS Summit in Xiamen from September 3-5, host China joined other member countries—Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa—in condemning Lashkar and Jaish along with other terrorist organisations.

The BRICS stand comes at a time when the United States under the Donald Trump presidency has star­ted putting pressure on Pakistan for its rel­uctance to take action against terror outfits ope­rating from its soil, going to the extent of even threatening to cut financial and military assistance Washington regu­l­arly gives Islamabad. Significantly, this is perhaps the first time that all ­major world powers—the US, Russia and China—seem to stand behind India on terrorism emanating from Pakistan.