Dr. Roxolana Zigón

Since a terrorist attack at Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir blasted a fragile twilight zone between war and peace on the 22nd of April 2025 and took away the lives of 26 tourists, there has been not a single arrow of accusation that was not piercing the back of Pakistan, torn apart by terrorist attacks for decades.
In the immediate aftermath of the horrifying incident the Indian media and its hyper nationalist warmongers created a hysteria and frenzy that has forced the decision-makers vent their anger and aggression against Pakistan by accusing it for supporting a terror attack in Pahalgam.
That was a grave error to loose media cannon and replace a process of enquiry and neutral investigation with media trial and relentless persecution of Pakistan. By giving a wrong and distorted perception of the terrorist attack ‘wind rose’ to the global media, India strived for preserving the initial pillars of the conflict between India and Pakistan intact and rotten.
India and Pakistan are no ordinary neighbors, no ordinary nations that do not cherish their history and roots, as well as the South Asia is no ordinary region but a blood-vascular system of the emerging world order. While getting closer to the red lines of the war conflict between two nuclear states there should be only one reigning thought in the minds of the decision-makers: no more blood must be shed on the altar of war between India and Pakistan as the waters of the Himalayas rivers drift and equally feed both countries and its people.
India should heed the voice of reason and revoke the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), signed between India and Pakistan in 1960, as this is an illegal act that may lead to the dangerous consequences. There is no provision for unilateral exit in the treaty. Moreover, it indicates India’s disrespect for international treaties and supports a negative global trend of demolishing the very basics of the international system and its institutions. Pakistan is an agrarian economy and any threat to the water supply is considered as a direct attack on the people of Pakistan and an economic terrorism.
By taking water from Pakistanis today it can turn out into taking clean air from the Indians tomorrow.
The starting point of preventing this scenario is to take as unquestionable bullet-proof ground that Pakistan is not guilty in the terrorist incident in Pahalgam and is not a breeder of terrorism.
Pakistan condemns terrorism and is itself a victim of this plague since achieving independence from the British rule in 1947. More than 70 000 Pakistanis were killed in fighting terror during last two decades, and nobody knows the pain and agony of losing innocent civilians than Pakistan. Its policy of ‘zero tolerance for terrorism’ has been always at the core of the political mindset of Pakistan. It allowed to successfully dismantle the networks of the terrorists on its territory and dispel the myth that Pakistan is not capable to control the terrorist movements and organizations on its territory.
In the meantime, India, being a beneficiary of the ‘International focus on terrorism,’ especially in the aftermath of 9/11, seemed to glorify and even celebrate terrorism in Pakistan.
It marginalized Kashmiris despite their decades long struggle for right of self-determination (as endorsed by the UN Security Council resolutions). The people of Kashmir have been subjugated and oppressed for over seven decades by the Indian forces. Instead of addressing the situation, India has attempted to internalize the issue. Resultantly, Kashmiris have risen through an indigenous form of struggle which continues to be ruthlessly stifled by the Indian occupation forces.
A massive hysteria of the Indian media, flied into a tantrum after a Pahalgam attack, and a stretched iron fist of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi towards Pakistan, created a strong incentive to give a critical assessment of his foreign policy that uses terrorism as an engine for achieving its strategic goals. It has a history of using such ‘incidents’ in order to introduce oppressive legal regimes.
Surprisingly, the above-mentioned ‘attacks’ occurred during high profile visits in India. It reminds the visits of the conductors that have arrived with a goal to fulfill ‘independent’ inspection of the grand orchestra before plotting a new strategic plan for the next war in the region. Unfortunately, the world of geopolitics is not familiar with such kind of thing as ‘strange coincidences.’ Every orchestra has a conductor, and every conductor has his own orchestra score.
While alleging Pakistan without any evidence, India refused a demand of Pakistan to give a space to the independent investigations as Pakistan has neither any connection to it, nor is potential beneficiary of Pulwama or Pahalgam terrorist attacks, as soon as it fully focuses on the economic recovery and perilous fight against terrorism. These accusations defy all logic.
A high amplitude of the political and military rhetoric of India mismatches with the protuberant Intelligence and Security failures. With presence of over 700 000 fully armed Indian occupation forces in Kashmir, how could the Pahalgam terrorist attackers stayed undetected?
There is not a shred of evidence of Pakistani connection to the terrorists. All allegations are based on the self-satisfying tenuous assumptions-TRF-LeT-Pakistan. If evidence exists then the Indian side should have represented it, let the international community verify it, share it with Pakistan and seek for cooperation in neutral investigation. But there was not even a hint or a sign for this action.

THE SHADOWS BEHIND THE SCENE
Evidently, there is a strong interest of the new grand narrative architects to shove the climber from the mountain (India), to сhoke the life, economic and military forces of its rivalry (Pakistan), and to trim the tail of the dragon in the South Asia region (China). To tame three sources of power by the sound of a single-pipe flageolet.
Additionally, after cooking up a new spiral of tension and creating chaos in the region, it may negatively affect Russia’s geostrategic interests in the Asia Pacific realm. Thus, it is significant to make all the parties aware that the crown of the global leadership will hardly be overviewed by the West as a supreme triumvirate. On every spiral of the new world order global scenario development this or another “privileged partner” will be employed on the chess board for a concrete geopolitical target and then roughly and inevitably removed from it.
The final objective of this scenario is to deprave the very ground of the multipolarity and any alternative to the new form of the global dominance and technofeudal dictatorship.
Being enlightened with this knowledge, the desire to enter this masterfully orchestrated trap and to accuse Pakistan for giving permanent birth to the terrorists under all kind of coverings and shades, should radically melt away.
DIPLOMATIC ACES OF RUSSIA
In the geopolitical play “Empowering Pakistan, Reasoning India, and De-escalating conflict” there are three groups of participants: the actors on the stage, the figures behind it, and the producers that run the show.
Russia can play an important role of changing a scenario of the play by implementing an independent ground of critical assessment of the inflamed ties between India and Pakistan.
It may effectively coin its diplomatic aces by giving a lifting elbow to Pakistan in its international efforts to get rid of the wicked stigmatization of a “terrorist” state applied on it by India, as well as to cool down India that has been enjoying a privileged strategic partnership with Russia for 15 years.
The masterhood of reasoning India can sound very straightforward: “If you start a war with Pakistan and ruin the strategic stability in the region, it will be overviewed as the loss of the “privileged leadership” position at the cutting edge of the new multipolar world order emergence.”
THE GAME IS AFOOT?
India launched “Operation Sindoor” in the early hours of Wednesday morning 7th of May in both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It carried out 15 missile strikes on Kotli, Bahwalpur and Muzaffarabad in the disputed Kashmir region. In return, Pakistan has responded to the aggression, had shot down five Indian aircrafts and vowed to retaliate in the worst clash in more than two decades between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
According to the Indian side, missile strikes were carried out on nine facilities associated with terrorists. However, as a result of the Indian attack, five settlements in Pakistan were affected. Hitting ‘imaginary terrorist camps,’ deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, including mosques, on the territory of Pakistan brought ‘collateral damage’. It martyred innocent men, women, and children.
India told more than a dozen foreign envoys in New Delhi that “if Pakistan responds, India will respond”, fueling fears of a larger military conflict in one of the world’s most dangerous – and most populated – nuclear flashpoint regions.
On May 5th, 2025, the Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin was monitoring the situation on the border between India and Pakistan and hoped for a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the countries. He noted that both countries were strategic partners for Russia, and Moscow valued relations with both New Delhi and Islamabad.
By provoking an escalation of the conflict, India has been crossing the Rubicon that made the voice of reason sound weaker and less convincing for all the international observers. That weakness will make the military trumpets diminish any diplomatic efforts driven towards peace between two warring states. The stakes are too high, and the threat of nuclear conflict increases every day of unrealized diplomatic will. It cannot help Russia prompting to demonstrate its diplomatic aces in a complex strategic alignment of cards and interests.
In the current diplomatic game of Russia, the “Sofia rule” can be applied that will allow the conflicting parties to end in a tie.
However, at the moment, the lack of the chess figures on the board makes a chance to win for one or another side rather impossible. That disposition is strategically beneficial for Russia as it expands the horizons of possibilities to strengthen its stabilizing position.
At the end of the day, a contextual, rather than a conventional, winner of the Indo-Pakistan conflict will determine a completely new trajectory of the security system development in the region of South Asia, and emerge as a reliable and visionary partner of Russia. That will be considered as a strategic privilege tested by the hard times and challenges.
Dr. Roxolana Zigón, an expert in geopolitics, global diplomacy, and IR, President & Founder of Diplomatic School, Polymath, ARFAIM, New Enlightenment, Foundation, Head of the International Scientific Center «Moscow: diplomacy of nations, partnership of civilizations, University of World Civilizations, Moscow, Russia, TV host, and writer. She can be reached at

diplomatrz@mail.ru