{"id":1281,"date":"2025-05-09T09:29:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/how-india-is-trying-to-squeeze-pakistan-far-from-the-battlefield\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T09:29:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:29:34","slug":"how-india-is-trying-to-squeeze-pakistan-far-from-the-battlefield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/how-india-is-trying-to-squeeze-pakistan-far-from-the-battlefield\/","title":{"rendered":"How India Is Trying to Squeeze Pakistan Far From the Battlefield"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even as India was gearing up to use its military to strike at Pakistan this week, calling it revenge for a terrorist strike in Kashmir last month, the government was pursuing other forms of power projection as well: bloodless and more refined, and mostly aimed at Pakistan\u2019s economic vulnerability.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Friday, May 9, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund is scheduled to meet three blocks from the White House. Indian officials have suggested that they will make a new case there: that the Fund should refuse the extension of a $7 billion loan to Pakistan <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/en\/Countries\/PAK\/FAQ#Q9\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">described as crucial<\/a> to getting the country on more solid footing financially and to fund desperately needed services for its people. And though Indian officials will not confirm it, other potential sources of Pakistani aid may also be in India\u2019s sights, according to domestic media reports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In two weeks before its strikes against Pakistan on Wednesday, India was already testing new ways to aggrieve its old enemy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On April 23, India pulled out of a river-sharing treaty that has safeguarded Pakistan\u2019s vulnerable water supply since 1960. Pakistan called it an act of war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">India turned to its softer power, as well. As tensions rose after the terrorist attack in Kashmir, India tinkered with its internet controls to cut off Pakistani musicians and cricketers from their audiences on Indian social media, much as it blocked Indians from using Chinese-owned TikTok after a clash with China in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">India also announced that it would sever all trade between the two countries. In practice, there wasn\u2019t much to begin with. India exports mainly sugar, medicines and some other chemicals to Pakistan. Some Indian exporters said they never got a legal notice from the government \u2014 so they are still fulfilling contracts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Pakistan was only shipping a paltry $2.8 million per year in goods to India before this flare-up. The economic asymmetry between these unhappy neighbors is more striking than ever.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The more financial forms of pressure happen mostly behind closed doors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At a news briefing on Thursday, India\u2019s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, was relatively direct about lobbying the Fund. \u201cThe case with regard to Pakistan should be self-evident to those people who generously open their pockets to bail out this country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Sudipto Mundle, who served as the Asian Development Bank\u2019s chief economist in New Delhi, said that \u201cit would be surprising if India did not take a stance\u201d against loans to Pakistan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThese institutions have the appearance of corporate banks, but they\u2019re basically very political institutions,\u201d said Mr. Mundle, now the chairman of India\u2019s Center for Development Studies. Loans are supposed to be approved on the merits of a particular project, he said, but \u201cat the end of the day, the things get decided by which side the various members of the board are aligned with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Mundle remembers how the Asian Development Bank bank canceled a loan to India that was ready for approval in 1998, in response to India\u2019s test of a nuclear bomb. The United States and most other countries that mattered were angry at India for starting a nuclear rivalry with Pakistan, as they saw it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The same countries are more sympathetic to India these days, and not only as a victim of terrorism. Its economy has grown to 10 times the size of Pakistan\u2019s, and its workers and consumers appeal to strategists who yearn for an alternative to China.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Earlier on the very night of India\u2019s strikes against Pakistani targets, India and Britain announced a free-trade agreement that had been in the works for three years. India is working to seal deals with the United States and the European Union, too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But there are also reasons for financial organizations based in Washington to hesitate to indulge India in its effort to cut Pakistan off. Those institutions, recognizing Pakistan\u2019s economic vulnerability, may be reluctant to plunge the country into deeper instability after years of loans and programs aimed at improving its debt and currency stability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">India has contradicted a report that its finance ministry was lobbying the Asian Development Bank itself to reconsider lending to Pakistan. But it did not deny similar reports that it will try having Pakistan put back on a \u201cgray list\u201d maintained by a global anti-money-laundering and antiterrorism task force. The listing would threaten Pakistan\u2019s ability to get financial assistance, and the country had spent years struggling to get off it before finally succeeding in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">T.C.A. Raghavan, who served as India\u2019s high commissioner to Pakistan from 2013 to 2015, said the \u201cgray list\u201d is powerful, but that India\u2019s sharpest nonmilitary tools in this conflict are its relationships with other countries. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere the equations have changed very, very dramatically.\u201d In particular, India\u2019s relationships with the Gulf monarchies, in Europe and with the United States, \u201cthose relationships have changed a lot in the last 10 or 15 years,\u201d Mr. Raghavan said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He was working on Pakistani affairs before 2008, when Pakistan-sponsored terrorists raided Mumbai and killed 166 people. After that incident, Mr. Raghavan said, \u201cmost countries understood very clearly\u201d the nature of India\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even as India was gearing up to use its military to strike at Pakistan this week, calling it revenge for a terrorist strike in Kashmir last month, the government was pursuing other forms of power projection as well: bloodless and more refined, and mostly aimed at Pakistan\u2019s economic vulnerability. On Friday, May 9, the executive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[972,969,971,970],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-battlefield","tag-india","tag-pakistan","tag-squeeze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}