With regard to a news item published in Dawn on Oct 19, about a talk by Dr Rabia Akhtar, the scholar has clarified that some of the points made by her then had been misquoted. The original portions of her speech are being reproduced here for clarity:

• The Spatial Threshold: India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory.

• This is the first time in 71 years that India has managed to internationalise the Kashmir issue. The headlines in every leading newspaper and editorials are that of human rights violations in Kashmir. But come another day, and Kashmir is overtaken by what is happening in Syria, with the Turks and the Kurds, in the Middle East, between the Iranians and the Saudis and then President Trump himself steals the limelight with his incredible tweets. So if the world needs to be kept interested in Kashmir, the scare needs to be maintained and nothing scares more than the ‘N’ word.

• Pakistan is dealing with an India which is high on Hindutva ideology, which is on an agenda to saffronize India and suffocate the minorities that reside there. We don’t know this India.

• Not only did we release the pilot, we deliberately chose targets across the LoC where casualties were not intended so as to keep the proportionality of response intact, and through these strikes Pakistan signalled its resolve and capability to fight Indian conventional attack with a conventional response without invoking the nuclear threat.

The error is regretted.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2019