Behind the scenes of ceasefire: Calls from Pakistan, Washington

NEW DELHI: It was shortly after 9am that India’s director general of military operations, Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai, got a call on the hotline from his Pakistani counterpart Maj Gen Kashif Abdullah.

Abdullah sounded Ghai out on a ceasefire and, it is learned, referred to the conversation US secretary of state Marco Rubio had with Pakistan Army chief Gen Asim Munir, in a clear indication that the feelers were coming from his boss. Ghai briefed his bosses on the development but got no instruction from them to engage with Abdullah.

Foreign secretary Vikram Misri made no mention of the contact made by Pakistan in the media briefing he held at 10.50am, where he disclosed the losses that IAF had inflicted on Pakistan’s airbases. IAF had stepped up attacks by the time Rubio called foreign minister S Jaishankar around 11am.

In fact, IAF kept pressing on the escalation pedal after the conversation with Jaishankar where the latter, going by his post on X, appears to have maintained that "India's approach has always been measured and responsible and remains so".

If Rubio had insisted on immediate de-escalation, his pitch certainly did not have much resonance at the meeting PM Modi held with defence minister Rajnath Singh, NSA A K Doval, Chief of Defence Staff Anil Chauhan and the three service chiefs - Gen Upendra Dwivedi, Adm Dinesh Tripathi and Air Chief Marshal AP Singh - and chiefs of IB and RAW, Tapan Deka and Ravi Sinha.

Sources said the participants were unanimous on consolidating the upper hand that India had - something that was acknowledged also by Pakistan when it reached out for ceasing hostilities.

The meeting also took into account the advantages India would have had going forward: high morale of forces, adequate firepower, comfortable fiscal situation, international sympathy and the ace in the form of 'blue water' Indian Navy.

No wonder, when India and Pakistan reached an understanding just a couple of hours later, it came as a surprise to many who scrambled to find clues to the sudden turn.

CNN cited defence sources to say it was US vice-president J D Vance's call to Modi on Friday where he shared US intelligence about Pakistan's plans for a dangerous escalation: perhaps shorthand for use of nukes, which made India relent.

But that also seemed to be an inadequate explanation. For one, Pakistan has always talked brazenly about its willingness to use its nukes. For another, India had steadily moved higher on the escalation ladder for the full 24 hours after Vance's purported counsel. In fact, it had on Saturday mocked Pakistan when it called a meeting of the National Command Authority, the body which deals with its nuclear arsenal, only to call it off.

The absence of any response on the pause in hostilities from Modi, home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, even BJP, only deepened the puzzle.
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