LAHORE: Significant progress regarding a Pakistan-India ceasefire is expected Monday (today), after both nuclear powers had agreed last Saturday to silence their guns, and go for yet another ceasefire since 1949.
Following an alleged terror attack in Indian-Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) and subsequent military actions, American President Donald Trump had tweeted that he had managed to broker a peace accord between the two warring countries.
But this is not going to be the first time when Pakistan and India would be sitting across the table in search of an armistice. The “Washington Post” had written: “The first Indo-Pakistani war ended in 1949 after the United Nations brokered a ceasefire agreement, establishing a border that split Kashmir into two parts.”
The 1965 Indo-Pakistani war had ended with the Tashkent Declaration in January 1966, following mediation by the erstwhile Soviet Union.
The 1965 ceasefire accord saw Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Pakistani President, Ayub Khan, agreeing to pull back to pre-war positions.
Coming to the 1999 Kargil War, various American media houses have often claimed that after sensing the risk of a full-scale war and nuclear confrontation, US President Bill Clinton had stepped in behind the scenes. On July 4, 1999, the then Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif had flown to Washington, DC, for a crucial meeting with President Clinton.
The Kargil conflict had sparked just months after both countries had conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and, notably, after the Lahore Declaration — a peace initiative signed by then Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in February 1999.
Annals of history reveal that although truces have often proved temporary and have not necessarily led to a lasting peace, they did provide some respite from conflicts.
According to the 68-year-old “Journal of Conflict Resolution,” published by the California-based Sage Publications, between 1989 and 2020, there were at least 2,202 ceasefires across 66 countries, in 109 civil conflicts.
In 1914, according to the London-based Imperial War Museum’s archives, British and German soldiers met in no man’s land and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football. But the friendship was shortlived and they had to aim for each other’s heads upon orders from their respective high commands.
The “Journal of Conflict Resolution” writes: “Ceasefires are arrangements through which conflict parties commit to stop fighting. They are a common part of intra-state conflict, each year occurring in about 30% of conflicts. There is no agreed upon definition of “ceasefire” in the academic nor in the policy domain, meaning the term is not used consistently. Ceasefires, generally speaking, can be traced back to as early as 776 BC, when in ancient Greece a truce often accompanied the Olympic games to ensure that the athletes and spectators could take part without fear of attack.”
It reveals: “In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church used a truce of God to suspend warfare on days of religious significance. Over time the sporting and religious connotations were lost. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, ‘truce’ and ‘armistice’ were both used to refer to periods in which hostilities were suspended, though any differences between the two terms were applied inconsistently.”
In July 2020, the United Nations Security Council echoed the Secretary General’s call for a worldwide ceasefire, to combat the Coronavirus pandemic that had already claimed more than half a million lives by then. Not fewer than 170 UN Member States and Observers had signed a non-binding statement in support of the appeal, rising to 172 on 25 June 2020, and on 1 July 2020, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding a general and immediate global cessation of hostilities for at least 90 days.
The 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was announced by United States President, Joe Biden, on November 26, 2024, but we all know how short-lived it was!
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