By Asghar Ali Mubarak
The United Nations report on the latest India-Pakistan crisis lands like an uncomfortable mirror held up to South Asia’s most enduring fault line. Stripped of nationalist slogans and battlefield bravado, it lays out a stark legal and moral assessment: Pakistan was not proven to be involved in the Pahalgam attack, while India’s military action of 7 May crossed a clear red line under international law. For a region accustomed to competing narratives, the significance of this finding lies not merely in who is blamed, but in what it says about power, restraint and the fragility of peace between two nuclear-armed neighbors.
The report, compiled by five UN special experts and dated 16 October before emerging publicly in mid-December, condemns the killing of civilians in Pahalgam while noting Pakistan’s categorical denial of involvement and its call for an impartial, transparent investigation. Crucially, it states that India has failed to present concrete evidence linking Pakistan to the attack of 22 April, in which 28 civilians were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir. In diplomatic terms, that absence matters. Accusation without substantiation may satisfy domestic audiences, but it does not meet the threshold required to justify cross-border military action.
Yet it was precisely such action that followed. On 7 May, India launched missile strikes inside Pakistani territory under the banner of “Operation Sindoor”. According to the UN experts, this constituted a clear violation of the UN Charter. The use of force across an international border, without Security Council authorization and absent an imminent armed attack attributable to the target state, has no recognized legal basis. International law, the report stresses, does not allow for a unilateral right to use military force simply by invoking terrorism. The human cost of that decision is laid out with grim clarity. Pakistani authorities report that 40 people were killed, including women and children, and more than 120 were injured.
Populated areas were struck, religious sites were damaged, and mosques in Ahmedpur Sharqia, Muzaffarabad, Kotli and Muridke were hit. These are not abstract violations but lived tragedies, families shattered in the dark hours of the night. Even for those inclined to view South Asian crises through the prism of strategic rivalry, the targeting of civilian neighborhoods and places of worship should give pause. The report also notes that India did not formally inform the UN Security Council before launching its strikes, further weakening its legal position. Pakistan, for its part, condemned the attack and notified the council that it reserved the right to self-defence under the UN Charter.
What followed was a rapid escalation: drone incursions, artillery exchanges along the Line of Control, competing claims of aircraft shot down, and an atmosphere thick with the possibility of catastrophe. For several days in May, the subcontinent edged closer to a wider war than it had seen in decades. That this crisis eventually subsided owed less to bilateral wisdom than to intense external pressure. The ceasefire announced on 10 May, brokered with heavy involvement from the United States and supported by a flurry of regional and international diplomacy, underscored an uncomfortable reality: when India and Pakistan lose control of escalation, others rush in to prevent disaster. The fact that the US president publicly announced the ceasefire before either capital did so spoke volumes about where leverage lay.
Beyond the battlefield, the UN report casts a harsh light on India’s decision to suspend elements of the Indus Waters Treaty, one of the world’s most enduring water-sharing agreements and a rare example of sustained cooperation between the two rivals. The experts warn that withholding water or undermining treaty mechanisms is not a legitimate countermeasure and risks violating fundamental human rights. The burden of such actions, they note, falls not on governments but on ordinary Pakistanis whose access to water underpins agriculture, livelihoods and survival itself. The treaty’s deterioration did not begin in May. Annual meetings of the Indus Commission have not been held since 2022, data exchanges have been obstructed, and dispute-resolution clauses have been challenged.
India’s reluctance to engage in arbitration and mediation strikes at the heart of an agreement designed precisely to withstand political crises. Undermining it may offer short-term leverage, but at the cost of long-term regional stability. President Asif Ali Zardari’s response to the report reflects Islamabad’s view that international law has, at last, spoken clearly. He welcomed the findings as confirmation that unilateral force across borders is a grave violation of sovereignty and warned of the human rights consequences of weaponizing water. For Pakistan, the report reinforces a narrative it has long advanced: that India’s growing willingness to act outside established legal frameworks reflects a broader pattern of hegemonic behavior.
(The writer is a senior journalist covering various beats, can be reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
