New Delhi: US vice president J D Vance’s announcement that his country will not intervene directly in the ongoing Indo-Pakistan conflict is being seen by many as a snub to Pakistan. According to sources, Pakistan had sent feelers to Washington, seeking a direct intervention by the US, so it may exit the situation without facing further embarassment.
Even since India launched Op Sindoor on May 7, Pakistan has escalated the situation by pounding civilian areas along the Line of Control (LOC) with artillery fire and attacking India with missiles and drones. While its artillery barrage has caused loss of innocent lives and property, not a single missile or drone has been able to get past India’s formidable air defence mechanism.
India’s response has been severe though, with her missiles and attack drones causing severe damage across several Pakistani cities. The air defence system at Lahore is said to have been totally destroyed in the high-precision strikes. At the same time, given the economic condition in the country, the common man in Pakistan is facing severe crisis.
Under the circumstances, Pakistan is desperately looking for a route to wriggle out of the situation somehow.
“Pakistan had clearly misjudged the situation. It believed that India would come under tremendous international pressure and back away. This would then give the Pakistani military establishment an opportunity to say that they were ‘winning’ till the conflict came to an end abruptly. They have done this in the past,” a source in India’s Ministry of External Affairs said.
On Thursday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio called up his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar, seeking de-escalation. Jaishankar is known to have told him that India simply reacted in a measured manner against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) after the Pahalgam terror attack. The Indian external affairs minister also told Rubio that it was Pakistan that had escalated the situation. Rubio then spoke to Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Vance, who was in India when the Pahalgam massacre occurred, has made it clear that the ongoing conflict is “none of America’s business”.
In an interview with Fox News, Vance stressed that while the United States would encourage de-escalation through diplomacy, it would not get involved militarily.
“What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit. But we’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it,” Vance said, adding to Pakistan’s misery.
