AS escalation appeared on the cards with tit-fortat missile and air attacks continuing between India and Pakistan, US President Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social media platform that a US-mediated `full and immediate` ceasefire had been agreed between the two nucleararmed South Asian neighbours.

In the hours, even minutes before the Trump announcement, fears were mounting of a major escalation with India`s missile attacks against nonmilitary targets followed by strikes against military bases in Pakistan and the latter`s retaliatory action targeting Indian military assets.

At that point, when the situation seemed poised on a knife-edge, the only certainty was that India`s attempt to set a new normal in carrying out attacks deep inside Pakistan after blaming the latter for its own security and intelligence and policy failures in held Kashmir had backfired spectacularly.

Whether among the five downed Indian warplanes, during the aerial fight with BVR (beyond visual range) weapons, after the first set of missile attacks on Pakistan earlier this week, were two French-made Rafale jets or three is immaterial.

What counts is that purchased at way over $250 million apiece, the state-of-the-art warplane, the perceived force multiplier, failed to project power as it was meant to and was effectively neutralised by weapons systems used by the Pakistan Air Force with stunning skill. The PAF`s most expensive J-10C fighter costs a fifth of the Rafale`s price tag.

PAF`s multiple kills seemed to have taken defence and modern aerial warfare experts by surprise. A cursory glance at the world media in general, and defence-related publications/ sites in particular, shows the fascination with how the Chinese-provided assets were used to lethal effect by the PAF.

It was this embarrassment that perhaps made immediate de-escalation difficult as India continued to talk of de-escalation while targeting Pakistani bases in the small hours of Saturday, provoking retaliation from Pakistan, which claimed huge successes in its missile/ air campaign including hitting the formidable Russianmade S-400 air defence missile site on an Indian Air Force base.

At a media briefing in New Delhi, the Indian military spokeswomen conceded `limited damage` at three of their bases, while again reiterating they wanted to `de-escalate`. More or less as thisbriefing was happening another high-explosive drone strike on a PAF base in Sindh, near Hyderabad, was confirmed. Casualties, including fatalities, were feared.

This prompted concerns that Pakistan would also be compelled to retaliate in a spiralling confrontation. In such a rapidly escalating military conflict, miscalculations can happen, leading to untold repercussions, given the two nations are said to together possess some 300 tactical and strategic nuclear warheads and also tested, diverse delivery systems.

As South Asia and possibly the wider world heaved a sigh of relief that a possible, even if improbable, nuclear exchange had been averted, what next was the question on many minds. Would it be back to the future, a repeat of the past so many decades when a terrorist incident in Indiablamed on Pakistan would lead to fears of war with troops locked in eyeball to eyeball stand-offs as they have many times, before de-escalation? Many Pakistanis and, I am sure, Indians, may have become accustomed to such recurrences every few years. But after the last round of tension triggered by the Pulwama attack in Indian-held Kashmir that left dozens of paramilitary soldiers dead in 2019 was the first instance of a `retaliatory` strike on Pakistan soil and the downing of an IAF fighter and the capture of their pilot, as the PAF responded.

But attacking a forested area in Balakot, adjacent to Azad Kashmir where hostilities routinely erupt, and claiming a win was one thing, launching missile attacks on civilian targets deep inside Pakistan this week after last month`s Pahalgam terror attack was a different matter.

Pakistan, it turned out, was determined to robustly resist this attempt by India to set a newnormal. The embarrassment of losing state-of-theart aerial assets drove India to launch missile attacks on PAF bases. And the Pakistanis who appeared prepared and determined to hit back, did so, as per their claims, with telling effect and forced India to agree to a ceasefire.

Now many readers in India would consider the use of the word `forced` unacceptable, given what they have been hearing in their government-controlled and dominated media and sanitised social media environment but they would do well to reflect what their government stance on talking to Pakistan has been.

After President Trump announced the ceasefire and congratulated both countries on displaying `common sense and great intelligence`, the more revealing and tell-tale tweet came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio who said Vice President J. D. Vance and he had engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials including the two prime ministers, the Indian foreign minister, the two national security advisers and the Pakistan army chief.

He commended the two prime ministers on their `wisdom, prudence and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace`. But the most significant part of his statement was that both the countries had agreed to `start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site`.

The timing or the place of these talks was not immediately known but whether these happen in Abu Dhabi, as was being speculated, or elsewhere, it wasn`t without significance that India shifted from its position of no talks with Pakistan `until the latter ends its support to terrorism`.

Like it usually happens between India and Pakistan, both will claim this as a win but it is clear that only one side moved from its stance on talks as Islamabad has repeatedly called on New Delhi to come to the negotiating table.

If a dialogue were to materialise indeed and India does not backtrack, then the real winners will be the people of the subcontinent, several hundred million of whom try and survive below the poverty line. A terrible war has hopefully been averted and perhaps the newly established balance of conventional power below the nuclear threshold will prevent future conflicts. • The wnter is a former editor of Dawn.

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