As they say, loss is an orphan, while victory has a thousand fathers. Thus, it follows the short-lived but brutal war between nuclear-armed adversaries India and Pakistan, in which both sides noisily celebrate their victories while subtly downplaying their defeats.
Minutes after a truce mediated by the United States went into effect, the headline “Pakistan Surrenders” splattered across the screens of India’s feverish television news networks. India’s defense minister, Rajnath Singh, subsequently stated that the country’s military action against Pakistan, which was prompted by the murder of tourists in India-administered Kashmir last month, conveyed a daring message to terrorists.
People in Pakistan, meanwhile, flocked to the capital’s streets to commemorate what Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called “military history,” which was accomplished by “our brave army in a spectacular fashion.”
As an effigy of his Indian counterpart burnt outside, Sharif declared,
“In a few hours our jets silenced India’s guns in a way that history will not soon forget.”
Winners and losers cannot be clearly determined
But in this violent outburst between two neighbors with nuclear weapons, both sides delivered and took a lot of hits. In what would be a devastating embarrassment for the Indian air force, Pakistan has boasted of its aerial victories, claiming that its pilots shot down five Indian fighter planes in aerial engagements, including three sophisticated French-made Rafales.
A French intelligence source said that Pakistan had shot down at least one Indian Rafale, and CNN previously reported that two planes fell in Indian states that border Pakistan at the same time Pakistan claimed to have shot down the jets. However, Indian authorities continue to deny that any aircraft has been lost.
New satellite photos published by India, meantime, reveal significant damage to radar stations and airstrips at what Indian defense officials claim are many Pakistani military installations that have been severely damaged by Indian airstrikes.
In other words, there is no obvious winner in this fight, regardless of how the political and military authorities in India and Pakistan want to frame it. Even the truce, which US President Donald Trump abruptly declared on his Truth Social platform, was the result of discussions that were obviously mediated by the US.
Over the weekend, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance phoned military and political leaders on both sides, encouraging them to stand back amid a rapidly worsening security situation that threatened to spiral out of hand.
Officials from Pakistan conveyed their appreciation for the assistance. However, Indian authorities are downplaying the US’s involvement, claiming that India and Pakistan negotiated the truce directly. Indian authorities are reluctant to acknowledge that the United States forced or even mediated a truce on them, which is probably motivated by their sense of national pride.
Regarding the status of Muslim-majority Kashmir, a disputed region that is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety and has been at the heart of the most recent conflict with Pakistan, India has a long-standing policy of rejecting foreign mediation. India views this issue as strictly internal.
However, President Trump has promised to assist the two nations in reaching a permanent resolution “after a thousand years” about Kashmir, maybe encouraged by his swift victory in the truce. While India has rejected the notion, Pakistan has unavoidably embraced it. However, the offer serves as a sobering reminder that the US-brokered truce is really a band-aid solution that is unlikely to resolve the underlying concerns that are driving what is truly a decades-long debate over Kashmir’s status.
And if you think that both Pakistan’s and India’s claims of triumph seem a little flimsy right now, just wait until the long-simmering conflict over Kashmir eventually flares up again.
