- 5/30/2025
Global Efforts are required to Counter Terrorism at Pakistan - Shashi Tharoor at New York USA
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00:00It was obviously a very moving moment for us, but it was also meant to send a very strong message
00:11that we are here in a city which is bearing still the scars of that savage terrorist attack
00:20in the wake of yet another terrorist attack in our own country. Unlike the U.S., I'm afraid
00:26we've had to endure a very much larger number of terrorist attacks in India, but we came
00:33both as a reminder that this is a shared problem, but also out of a spirit of solidarity with
00:44the victims, who included Indians, as Indra was reminding me, someone, a young Indian
00:49working in her own company was one of the victims of 9-11. Indians, Americans, and very
00:55many other nationalities who were affected. It's a global problem, it's a scourge, and
01:00we must all fight it unitedly. So that was a very important message to convey, and my colleagues
01:07and I did that by going to the memorial and leaving roses on some of the names around the
01:18memorial pool. And having done that, we are now proceeding, as has been mentioned already,
01:23to four other countries, before returning to the U.S., not to New York, but to Washington,
01:28D.C. on the 3rd of June, when Congress will come back from its recess as well.
01:34So our idea is very much to speak to a cross-section of public and political opinion in each of the
01:43countries we are going to, about recent events, which obviously troubled the number of people
01:52around the world, and which now have subsided. There is a reasonable amount of calm that's
01:59raining on the border within India and Pakistan today. But the fundamental underlying problem remains,
02:07and it's important that we try and enlarge your understanding of our thinking and our concerns
02:14about what's going on. So it's for us an opportunity. We will be in every country meeting members of the
02:21executive, meeting members of the legislature, meeting think tankers and influential foreign policy experts,
02:29and at the same time, interacting with the media and public opinion in every one of these places.
02:36We are on our way to Guyana tonight, where Independence Day celebrations are about to take place, and we will be seeing
02:43the President and the Foreign Minister and members of Parliament there, and we carry on on similar programs in these other countries.
02:51Vinaya had asked me to say a few words about what happened. By way of context, I mean, I think you're all aware that India has
03:02tried to be focused on a very different narrative from some of our neighbours. Our focus for some years now has been on
03:11being the world's fastest growing free market democracy, attempting to focus on the development of our economy, our
03:20high emphasis on technology and technological growth, and pulling large numbers of people from below the poverty line,
03:29not just into the 21st century, but into the world and the opportunities that the 21st century offers.
03:37And perhaps in that process, we had allowed ourselves in some ways to be complacent, complacent may be too unkind a word,
03:46but we had not perhaps braced ourselves sufficiently for the malign influences in our neighbourhood that did not want that story,
03:55that narrative to be told in an uninterrupted manner. We had been seeing in Jammu and Kashmir,
04:07which as you know, has for the long, long time been coveted by our neighbours on the other side, Pakistan,
04:14we had been seeing not just peace, but increasing prosperity. In fact, Vinaya gave me this wonderful nugget
04:23that the number of tourists in Kashmir last year was double the number of tourists in Aspen, Colorado last year.
04:30So that was the kind of, not just normalcy, but growth, prosperity that the people of Kashmir were enjoying
04:41as Indians and foreigners were flocking to Kashmir tourism. So some people decided that they would want, first of all,
04:49to attack that process of normalization. Second, to undermine the overall Indian narrative as well as the prosperity of the people of Kashmir.
05:02Third, by doing so in an atrocious manner, that is, it was not just a terrorist attack of somebody indiscriminately blowing up people with a bomb.
05:14It was a bunch of people going around, identifying the religion of the people before them and killing them on that basis,
05:21which was clearly intended to provoke a backlash in the rest of India, since the victims were overwhelmingly Hindu.
05:32In fact, 26 people died, 25 Indians and one Nepalese and the Nepalese happened.
05:39Of course, didn't get a chance to say he was Nepalese, but he was a Hindu.
05:44So he would have probably been killed anyway. And quite astonishingly, one person who wasn't killed was a Hindu professor
05:51who happened to be able to recite the Kalima, the first verse of the Koran, and therefore was not shot.
06:00It was a very interesting message. And it was very, very clearly, I mean, for us it was not that there was any doubt about the motives of these people,
06:09but it was particularly driven home. In many cases, the husband was shot and the wife was told to convey the message back that he was shot for his faith.
06:20And I'm very proud as an Indian to say that that did not happen, that there was no backlash, that Indians held together unitedly in the face of this atrocity.
06:32The Kashmiris, who are overwhelmingly Muslim, as you know, were not just completely distraught by what happened, but there was public rejection of this.
06:46The next day, the entire state downed its shutters. There was a public observance of support and solidarity for the victims, the state assembly as well, all shades of political opinion.
07:01One of the victims, I should have added, was a Kashmiri Muslim pony operator, who attempted not just to save the lives of his customers, but to snatch the Kalashnikov, one of the killers.
07:15And it was turned against him. But others, I mean, I had a victim from my state of Kerala, who was a 61 year old man who was walking in the meadow with his youngish daughter and her twin sons, age six, when they shot him.
07:34And I went to his home and called on his widow and his daughter and grandchildren.
07:41And it was it was very, very moving when this girl said that though she lost her father that day, she found two brothers and the two brothers were two Kashmiri Muslim men who took her to safety, protected her sons and eventually then accompanied her to the mortuary to identify her father's body.
08:03So I give these examples just to say there was an extraordinary amount of togetherness cutting across religious and other other divides that people have tried to provoke.
08:16But the message was very clear that there was a malign intent that I've just spelled out for you.
08:24And India sadly had no reason to doubt where it came from, because within one hour of the atrocity, a group called the Resistance Front had claimed credit.
08:36The Resistance Front was known for some years to be a frontal organization of the band prescribed Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is on the US designated terror list as well, as well as the UN sanctions committees.
08:53And India had gone to the UN sanctions committee with information about the Resistance Front in 2023 and in 24.
09:02And now, sadly, it had acted in 25.
09:06They repeated their claim the next day until, of course, global condemnation, I think, woke their handlers up to the dangers as represented.
09:16And then they deleted their claim on the third day.
09:19But by then, the claim had been made, recorded, registered and reported.
09:25And for us, therefore, the culpability lay not just with the five, four or five, we're not 100% sure, evil killers who came to Pahalgaam and did this atrocity,
09:42but also with those who had sent them, financed them, equipped them, trained them, guided them into doing this.
09:50And since we knew where Lashkar-e-Taiba is headquartered, it has its, not just a safe haven, but a rather generous 200-acre campus in a city in the heartland of Pakistani Punjab,
10:03we also knew where the responsibility lay.
10:07Sadly, Pakistan chose to follow its usual path of denial.
10:12In fact, Pakistan, with the help of China, succeeded in removing a reference to the resistance front from the resolution of condemnation that was drafted in the Security Council,
10:24press state contextually, not resolution, in the Security Council of the UN two days later.
10:30But though the name was not mentioned, it was, as I said, a matter of public record, and we knew what was happening.
10:37India replied immediately that we would not let this go unanswered.
10:43I don't work for the government. As you know, I work for an opposition party.
10:48But I myself authored an op-ed in one of India's leading papers, the Indian Express, within a couple of days,
10:54saying the time had come to hit hard, but hit smart.
10:57And I'm pleased to say that's exactly what India did.
11:00On the night of the 6th, 7th of May, it was 6th here, it was 7th for us.
11:06At 1.05 in the morning, a time chosen deliberately to avoid any risk of too many civilians wandering about or any collateral damage.
11:16Very precise and calibrated strikes took place on nine specific known terrorist bases, headquarters and launch pads.
11:27Those included those of the Lachkar-e-Tawbah in a place called Muridke.
11:31Those of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the organization that is responsible, amongst other things, for the murder of Daniel Pearl.
11:37Some of you knew in New York and others, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Bahawalpur.
11:43And in Muzaffarabad, which is in Pakistan, the Pakistani-occupied part of Kashmir, there were no less than three different terror organizations which had their bases there.
11:54Harkatul Ansar, Harkatul Mujahideen, others.
11:58And so India sent a clear message.
12:02Number one, that it was not going to take terror lying down.
12:06It would answer, but equally that by delivering very precisely calculated calibrated strikes on very specific targets.
12:18It was also sending a message that this was not meant to be the opening salvo in a protracted war, but just an act of retribution that we were prepared to stop with that act.
12:30In other words, not just in other words, it was officially conveyed.
12:36There is a regular hotline between the two directors general of military operations.
12:41The message was conveyed that this was the intent, that it was pointed out that no military targets, no civilian targets and no governmental targets had been hit, not even by accident.
12:54And that the message therefore had been delivered exactly and precisely to the terrorists and their handlers.
13:02Nonetheless, Pakistan chose to respond and respond, I'm sorry to say, with indiscriminate shelling across the border on the very first day and night.
13:13Which sadly killed 19 civilians and injured grievously 59 others, including Carmelite nuns in a convent, Sikhs worshipping in a gurudwara and others who happened to simply be in the line of fire because they lived in districts adjoining the Pakistani border.
13:39When this happened, India had no choice but to retaliate in kind.
13:46The matters got worse the next day as the Pakistanis followed up artillery shelling with a serious invasion of drones and missiles.
13:58India's air defences were able to hold them off.
14:02But in turn, India returned the compliment.
14:05And on the night of 9th, 10th May, India hit 11 Pakistani military targets, including a rather well known air base that's just one and a half kilometers away from military headquarters of Pakistan and Rawalpindi.
14:24The following morning, we got a call on our director of military operations, got a call from the Pakistani director of military operations saying they'd like to stop this.
14:34And we said, we've been saying all along, we didn't want to start anything.
14:39We were just sending a message to terrorists.
14:43You started, we replied.
14:44If you stop, we'll stop.
14:46And they stopped.
14:49There was an 88 hour war.
14:52We look back on that with a great deal of frustration because it needn't have happened at all.
15:02Lives have been lost.
15:04But at the same time, we look back on this experience with a steely and renewed sense of determination.
15:11There is now got to be a new normal.
15:14No one sitting in Pakistan is going to be allowed to believe that they can just walk across the border and kill our citizens with impunity.
15:26There will be a price to pay.
15:29And that price has been going up systematically.
15:32I'll just take you briefly through what happened.
15:34You may remember in 2015.
15:36Well, you may not remember because this is our problem, not yours.
15:39But in 2015, in January, there was an attack on an Indian air base, a place called Potankot.
15:44And our prime minister had just made a goodwill visit to Pakistan the previous month.
15:49On the 25th of December, he'd attended the birthday celebrations of then-Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,
15:54whose granddaughter's wedding was on the same day.
15:57He'd given gifts.
15:58So when this happened, he was so astonished that he actually called the Pakistani prime minister and said,
16:03Why don't you join the investigation?
16:05Let's solve who's doing this.
16:07And the Pakistani...
16:09You can imagine the horror of the Indian military establishment at this idea that Pakistani investigators are going to come to an Indian air base.
16:16But they came.
16:19And they went back to Pakistan and said, Oh, the Indians did it to themselves.
16:23That was the last straw.
16:25I mean, it was just the...
16:27We'd already gone through the horrors of 2008 in Mumbai when 170 people had been killed.
16:33And the Pakistani denials at that time were laid bare, not just by the fact that we caught one of the terrorists alive and his identity, his address, his family, etc. were identified in Pakistan.
16:45But equally because that drama took place over three days during which Western intelligence agencies trained their recording devices.
16:54Amongst other things on Pakistani, the chilling voice of the Pakistani handler giving minute by minute instructions to the killers in Mumbai.
17:04So the evidence was there.
17:05So the evidence was there.
17:06There had been denial.
17:07And that denial was proven to be completely false.
17:11And as you know, thereafter, the Pakistanis claimed not to know where Osama bin Laden was until he was found in a safe house right next to an army cantonment in a city dominated by the army.
17:25This is Pakistan.
17:26And I'm afraid for us, 2015 was the last opportunity for them to behave, to cooperate, to really show they were serious about ending terror as they claimed every time that they were.
17:40And since they did not do it in January, in September 2015, there was another attack in a place called Uri, also not far from the border.
17:49And this time India breached the line of control, which we had rigorously observed throughout in every previous skirmish.
17:57We had never crossed the line of control.
17:59We crossed it with a surgical strike in September 2015.
18:03That seemed to calm things down a bit.
18:06But unfortunately, in January of 2019, there was another terror attack in a place called Pulwama, killing 40 Indians at that point.
18:14And then India responded, not just by breaching the line of control, but also breaching the international border and striking with our air force a known terror training camp in a place called Balakot.
18:30Now, we have not just crossed the LOC.
18:33We have also crossed the international border.
18:35We have hit Pakistan in their heartland.
18:39And we have done so, as I say, only to send a message about terror.
18:45We are not interested and we still remain absolutely clear that we are not interested in warfare with Pakistan.
18:53We would much rather be left alone to grow our economy and pull our people into the world that they are getting ready for in the 21st century.
19:03We have no desire to have anything that the Pakistanis have.
19:08Sadly, we may be a status quo power.
19:10They are not.
19:11They are a revisionist power.
19:12They covet territory that India controls and they want to have it at any price.
19:18And if they can't get it through conventional means, they're willing to get it through terrorism.
19:23That is not acceptable to us.
19:25And that's really the message that we are here to give all of us, all of you in this country and elsewhere.
19:31We are determined now that there's got to be a new bottom line to this.
19:41We have tried everything, international dossiers, complaints to sanctions committee, diplomacy, even this joint investigation attempt.
19:50Everything has been tried.
19:52Pakistan has remained in denial.
19:55There has been absolutely no conviction, no serious criminal prosecution, no attempt to dismantle the terror infrastructure in that country and the persistence of safe havens.
20:06So from our point of view, this is it.
20:09You do this, you're going to get this back.
20:12And we have demonstrated with this operation that we can do it with a degree of precision and with a degree of restraint that the world, we hope, will understand.
20:22We have a right to self-defense.
20:23We've exercised that right.
20:25We have not done so irresponsibly and we have not done so in a way that would have warranted a wider conflagration.
20:32That's really the message I wanted to give you all today.
20:35I'm sure you have questions and comments and my colleagues represent, as I say, four parties amongst the five of us.
20:42And there's a wide span of views.
20:44We're all happy to join in conversation with you.
20:46Thank you all very much once again for coming and being with us today.