Thanks to Alex Knapp of Heretical Ideas for the link to this, which says that peace may have broken out between India and Pakistan. They aren’t yet talking to each other about it, but touch wood, for the time being, they’re doing it.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India said on Thursday it had begun pulling back its soldiers from the border with Pakistan and that the withdrawal would take about six weeks.
“The process has begun. This will take about one-and-a-half months. We are trying to do it faster,” Defense Minister George Fernandes told reporters after addressing a conference of coast guard commanders.
The withdrawal will end the longest and biggest peacetime deployment in India’s history. Pakistan has also announced it would withdraw its forces in response to the Indian decision.
The two countries massed nearly a million troops along their common border after a deadly raid on India’s parliament last December that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants fighting its rule in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir.
I seem to recall not a disagreement exactly, more like a friendly exchange of his fears and of my hopes which both of us shared – “I hope I’m wrong”, “I hope I’m right”, that kind of stuff – between me and David Carr about India and Pakistan. The trouble with predicting peace and of then getting (a little slice of) it is that peace isn’t very newsworthy. War, on the other hand, gets absolutely everyone who ever told us so saying I told you so.
So anyway, I told you so.
Cue a nuclear attack by India. The Indians were withdrawing their forces because they didn’t want to bomb them. No, please, no.
This is certainly a hopeful sign. I hope that everybody can keep the peace, but that requires constant vigilance. Peace is something that’s hard to defend when tensions are high, while war is easy to start.