This bilateral meanness

Poonch should not derail trade breakthrough. Trade should prevent Poonch.

In the first week of August, India reported a Pakistani intrusion across the Line of Control (LoC) into the Poonch district of India-administered Jammu and Kashmir, in which five Indian troops were killed after an ambush. The official Indian version said the intruders were wearing Pakistani uniforms, a palliative that made the intrusion "unofficial", but Indian army circles insisted the ambush was laid by "Pakistani troops along with a few heavily armed and highly trained militants".

Pakistan denied any such operation had taken place. Since then, the Indian army has shelled the Pakistani areas lying close to the LoC, giving rise to casualties. This in turn has caused the Pakistani side to shell a number of Indian posts. The bilateral meanness that haunts the LoC — which was "made safe" through a ceasefire agreement in 2003 — is back again. Barring a few sane voices on both sides, nationalism is tilting into battle-cries once again. Both states wear the warpaint anyway in August, because they won their independence in this month and immediately went to war in 1947 in Kashmir.

India saw protest demonstrations from people outraged by the "ambush", not all of them spontaneous. The media squared off on both sides. Greenhorn anchors in Pakistan's proliferating TV news channels vomited platitudes about the "baniya" wickedness of India; and politicians tilted into shameless populism on both sides. Senior Pakistan politician and leader of the Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, began his statement well by saying he smelled "milli bhagat" (collusion) between the two armies, but quickly recanted his rather innovative comment by adding that he would never accept the "supremacy" of India.

This year has seen a lot of bilateral meanness between the two nuclear-armed nations. In January, India accused the Pakistan army of sending killers across the LoC who beheaded Indian troops. The incident coincided with the powerful Defence of Pakistan Council (comprising non-state actors) demonstrations on the roads in Pakistan, shouting defiance of the PPP government's intention of awarding India the most favoured nation status. Then, India hanged a mid-level Kashmiri leader in May; Pakistan pleaded innocence when some "patriotic" prisoners retaliated by killing an Indian spy languishing in a Pakistani jail, supposedly secure, on death row. Indian prisoners did the same to a Pakistani prisoner on the other side.