India and Pakistan both said today that the ceasefire they agreed to on Saturday after four days of the most serious combat between them in decades is holding.
Senior military commanders from the two countries are scheduled to speak by hotline late today in a bid to solidify the truce.
Pakistan reopened all of its civilian airports on Saturday and India today reopened 32 civilian airports it had closed due to the fighting.
Markets in both countries recovered today, and Indians and Pakistanis living near the border began taking stock of damage from attacks and returning to their normal routines.
A cessation of hostilities was in the strong interest of both countries.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an ardent Hindu nationalist, was under strong pressure to retaliate for the massacre of 26 tourists in the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir on 22 April. The Muslim rebels who carried out the attack singled out Hindu men for murder.
Pakistani military chief Gen. Asim Munir, an avowed foe of India who is more powerful than Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, vowed to meet attack with attack.
India last Wednesday initiated the exchanges with airstrikes against what it called terrorist camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and neighboring Punjab, Pakistan’s richest and most populous state.
Heavy drone and artillery attacks, mostly along the Line of Control in Kashmir but also across the border far to the south, ensued.
The two countries also exchanged missile fire, with India escalating by hitting Pakistani military bases, prompting Pakistan to respond in kind.
Information about the fighting remains vague, and it will take outside experts months to ascertain details and piece them together.
But it is clear that the fighting was the deadliest between the two countries since they clashed on remote glaciers in the north of Kashmir in 1999.
It also is clear that the exchanges involved mutual attacks beyond Kashmir for the first time since the all-out Indo-Pakistani war of 1971.
During the fighting, each side talked tough while describing their military attacks as limited and proportional. A global diplomatic push helped them find an off ramp.
Yet until the moment the ceasefire was reached, there was a risk that the exchanges between the two nuclear-armed countries would spin out control, leading to total war.
The concern now is that Modi, who regards India as a rising regional and even world power, will be far quicker to resort to military action against traditional enemy Pakistan.
Pakistan is far weaker than India militarily and is in desperate economic straits. But it is backed by China, a strategic rival of India, and demonstrated in the four days of combat that it is no pushover.
Another eruption of fighting is all too conceivable.
Indo-Pakistani tensions should be monitored constantly.
Personnel in India should not come within 50 miles of any part of the border between the two countries.
Indian-controlled Kashmir should be avoided completely, and the Jammu region to the south should be visited only on important business after consultation with security professionals.
At the best of times, Pakistan should be avoided due to serious Islamic terrorism risks, with the exception of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, which may be visited given stringent security precautions.
