Indian and Pakistani military leaders held talks on Monday intended to extend a tenuous cease-fire that has halted the most expansive fighting in decades between the two nuclear-armed states.
A sense of normalcy began to return on both sides of their border, two days after a U.S.-mediated truce ended their rapidly escalating military conflict.
Stock markets in both countries jumped on the first day of trading since the agreement was reached. India announced the resumption of civilian flights at over 30 airports in the north of the country, while in Pakistan, the authorities said that all airports were open.
The situation along the two countries’ extensive boundary, however, remained uncertain, with tens of thousands of people still displaced. There were no reports of a major breach on Sunday night, the second evening of the cease-fire. But on Monday, brief drone sightings and explosions were reported in parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir.
For most of last week, the two countries were engaged in intense fighting that brought cross-border shelling, drone warfare and claims from both sides that they had inflicted damage on the other’s military bases.
As called for in the agreement that stopped the armed conflict, military leaders from both sides on Monday discussed “issues related to continuing the commitment that both sides must not fire a single shot or initiate any aggressive and inimical action,” the Indian Army said in a statement.
“It was also agreed that both sides consider immediate measures to ensure troop reduction from the borders and forward areas,” the statement said.
On Saturday, President Trump announced that the two sides had agreed to a cease-fire with the help of U.S. diplomacy, continuing past patterns of outside mediation when tensions rise between India and Pakistan.
The president again addressed his administration’s diplomatic efforts on Monday, saying he had made a threat to both nations in pushing them to cease their hostilities.
“I said, ‘Come on, we will do a lot of trade with you guys. Let’s stop it, let’s stop it. If you stop it, we are doing trade. If you don’t stop it, we are not doing any trade,” Mr. Trump said. “All of a sudden, they said, ‘I think we will stop,’ and they have.”
The halt in the fighting, the president said, averted what could have been a nuclear war that would have killed millions of people.
While the Pakistani side has publicly acknowledged the American role in brokering the truce, the Indian government has insisted in its statements that it was reached only bilaterally with Pakistan. Privately, Indian officials acknowledge the role of U.S. diplomacy but have pushed back against suggestions that trade or anything else was used as pressure.
The Indian government’s sensitivity over the American involvement reflects its efforts for several years to portray its dispute with Pakistan, especially over the contested territory of Kashmir, as a small issue that it can handle directly.
If India’s strongman prime minister, Narendra Modi, were perceived as having caved to American pressure for a cease-fire against a weaker nation, it could cost him politically at home. Mr. Modi’s image rests in part on elevating India into a major power that would easily handle smaller nations in any conflict, and he raised expectations that India would deliver a decisive blow to Pakistan as tensions soared.
Mr. Modi, in his first address to the nation since the terrorist attack last month that ignited the standoff, said on Monday that India had “just suspended” its military strikes and would assess its next steps based on “what sort of attitude Pakistan will adopt.”
The prime minister accused Pakistan of engaging in “nuclear blackmail” and said that India would “strike precisely and decisively at the terrorist hide-outs developing under the cover” of that threat.
He described the initial strikes that his military carried in Pakistan early on Wednesday, which then escalated to a fierce aerial confrontation, as an “unwavering commitment to justice.”
Mr. Modi said that the attendance of senior Pakistani military officers at the funerals of people India had identified as terrorists and targeted in strikes was evidence of “state-sponsored terrorism.” Photographs of the funerals showed the Pakistani officers in attendance.
The recent conflict was set off by a terrorist attack that killed 26 people late last month on the Indian side of Kashmir, a territory claimed by both countries. New Delhi blamed the carnage on groups that it said were receiving support from Pakistan — an accusation Islamabad has denied — and vowed retaliation.
Two weeks after the massacre, which happened near the town of Pahalgam, India bombed what it described as terrorist facilities in Pakistan.
The two countries have fought several wars against each other and have engaged in periodic clashes closer to the line that divides Kashmir between them. But last week’s airstrikes hit the deepest targets that India had struck in mainland Pakistan in at least half a century.
Pakistan retaliated soon after. While the traditional artillery shelling along the border caused the largest number of civilian casualties, the face-off expanded rapidly in the skies, including the heavy use of drones and so-called loitering munitions to target each other’s military bases.
There was optimism in financial markets even before Monday’s announcement on continued military talks. Pakistani stocks soared, with the Karachi 100 index gaining almost 9 percent, a record. But trading was halted because the market rose so fast and by so much. The markets in India, which has an economy about 12 times the size of Pakistan’s, also jumped and more than erased last week’s losses.
The return to normalcy for those living along the line that divides Kashmir will be much more difficult.
People were still mourning the loss of loved ones, with about 20 civilians killed on the Indian side after days of cross-border shelling, and about 30 reported dead on the Pakistan side. Tens of thousands remain displaced from border villages.
“No shelling has taken place here after the cease-fire,” said Narinder Singh, a resident of Poonch, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. “But the sense of fear is still there. Some people are slowly getting back to their homes. But still, many people are living outside at safe places.”
Suraya Begum, whose family had left her village along the so-called Line of Control to seek shelter in a college building in the city of Baramulla, said they were fed up with how often their lives had been upended by cross-border tensions.
“If they want to fight forever, let them. But compensate us with land somewhere else, so that we can live a peaceful life,” she said. “Why should our children become sacrificial lambs for their politics?”
Alex Travelli contributed reporting from New Delhi, Showkat Nanda from Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Hari Kumar covers India, based out of New Delhi. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
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