'The fear of escalation between India and Pakistan is very real'.

Byline: Shazia Hasan

KARACHI -- 'Today is the 75th day of the brutal curfew in India-held Kashmir invoking a nuclear threat,' said Dr Rabia Akhtar, director of a policy research centre and a member of the prime minister's advisory council on foreign affairs.

She was speaking at a programme titled 'Kashmir: a Nuclear Flashpoint' at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs on Friday.

'Since February, when India attacked Pakistan in Balakot, people have been worried. But during the Balakot strikes, Prime Minister Imran Khan refrained from the 'N' word. Neither did the DG ISPR mention it,' she continued.

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'When the prime minister visited the United States earlier in July and met President Trump there, he told him about the Kashmir crisis. Then he comes back and faces the August 5 development there with India revoking the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier, it was Syria, Iran, the Turks and the Kurds whom the world watched and spoke about but India has internationalised Kashmir,' she said.

Dr Akhtar, who is the director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research (CSSPR), said that in a January 2002 interview, former adviser to Pakistan's National Command Authority and pioneer director general of the Strategic Plans Division retired Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai had mentioned four thresholds for Pakistan in case India attacked Islamabad such as the special threshold, the military, economic and socio-political threshold. 'At the time, our forces were on a 10-month stand-off,' she explained.

She said that literature written by Western scholars on the issue showed Pakistan as the weaker power that must maintain escalation dominance.

'They say that Pakistan will be first to use nuclear weapons,' she said, adding: 'But, there always used to be a third-party intervention in crisis termination until the Pulwama incident when Pakistan unconditionally released India's pilot. It was unprecedented behaviour from Pakistan.'

'Still, the Indian media said that it was Pakistan's weakness which made us do that. Not much credit has been given to Pakistan in crisis termination in the Pulwama and Balakot crisis but not only did we release...