The two-front truce

LoC ceasefire offers New Delhi a unique opportunity to shift the dispute over Kashmir away from the border to the negotiating table

On February 10 and 11 respectively, Beijing and New Delhi announced that their troops would disengage immediately from a 10-month long confrontation near the Pangong Lake in Ladakh. Two weeks later, the Indian and Pakistani armies followed that up with a ceasefire announcement on February 24. In a matter of a fortnight, a worrying two-front conflict that had tied down India was unexpectedly transformed into a two-front truce.

There has been predictable speculation about the extent to which President Joe Biden’s newly-installed administration pushed China and Pakistan to de-escalate tensions with India, or whether these developments stem predominantly from back-channel negotiations