The US supports direct dialogue between India and Pakistan on issues of concern, a senior Biden administration official has said. There has been continued strain in ties between India and Pakistan on a number of issues including Islamabad’s continued support of cross-border terrorism and the Kashmir issue.

India has been maintaining that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan while insisting that the onus is on Islamabad to create an environment that is free of terror and hostility for such an engagement. India has also asserted that Jammu and Kashmir “was, is and will” always be part of the country. “As we have long said, we support direct dialogue between India and Pakistan on issues of concern. That has long been our position,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday at his daily news conference.

Miller’s remarks came two days after Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered to hold talks with India to address all serious and outstanding issues. Bilateral relations between Islamabad and New Delhi have been tense since August 2019 when India changed the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. On India’s ties with Pakistan, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that it is not possible for India to have normal relations with the neighbouring country until the policy of cross-border terrorism is abrogated.

“We can’t allow terrorism to be normalised; we can not allow that to become the basis for getting us into discussions with Pakistan. To me it is a fairly common sense proposition,” he said in June.

Every year on July 26, Kargil Vijay Diwas, also known as Kargil Victory Day, is celebrated to commemorate India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1999 war. The day remembers the courage and sacrifices made by Indian soldiers throughout the gruelling and protracted conflict.
In 1971, the two neighbouring nations engaged in a violent struggle that led to the creation of Bangladesh and ever since, tensions between the two nations have persisted. Although there haven’t been many direct battles, they have been setting up military outposts on the neighbouring mountain ranges in an effort to gain control of the Siachen Glacier.

When both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998, the situation worsened. They agreed to the Lahore Declaration, which sought a peaceful, bilateral resolution to the Kashmir problem, in order to reduce the tension. However, in the Drass and Batalik Sectors of Kargil, Ladakh, the Pakistani armed forces secretly trained and sent men to breach the Line of Control (LOC) and occupy fortified positions that overlooked NH 1A to gain control over local military and civilian movements.

Significance of the day

The Indian soldiers initially thought the intruders were terrorists or “jihadis” with a radical aim. But as things went on, it became clear that the attack was part of a bigger, more planned scheme. As a result, the Indian side was forced to strike back and send almost 200,000 Indian troops into the area. 527 troops from the Indian Army died during the Kargil War. On July 26, 1999, the Pakistani army was compelled to withdraw from their captured positions, indicating India’s victory. In order to respect and remember the ultimate sacrifice given by the soldiers during the conflict, this day has since been designated as Kargil conflict Diwas.