President Trump offered to mediate on Kashmir. This is the time to do so as situation deteriorates there and along… https://t.co/7ouXBZcPwW — Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) 1564914897000

NEW DELHI: In the midst of unusually heavy military exchanges on the LoC, Pakistani PM Imran Khan on Sunday pushed the “mediation” button yet again. Criticising India for using “cluster munitions”, Khan tweeted: “President Trump offered to mediate on Kashmir. This is the time to do so as situation deteriorates there and along the LoC with new aggressive actions being taken by Indian occupation forces. This has the potential to blow up into a regional crisis.”This came after some heavy exchange of fire over the past few days.The LoC lit up a few days after the Khan-Trump meeting in Washington, where Trump offered to mediate between India and Pakistan , inadvertently linking this with the expectation that Pakistan should “extricate” the US from Afghanistan . Within a few days, the LoC witnessed heavy firing and infiltration attempts by Pakistani teams. India read this as attempts by Pakistan to create a crisis that would provoke an Indian military response.This could be used by Pakistan to call for international assistance and increased global pressure on India to force it to sit with Pakistan to negotiate the future of J&K. Pakistan has always linked the resolution of Kashmir to its presence, investment and actions in Afghanistan. Top government sources confirmed that India expects more Pakistani action on the LoC in the coming days. Sources said the ongoing developments in J&K featured in the conversation between foreign minister S Jaishankar and his US counterpart Mike Pompeo last week.For years after 9/11, this was Pakistan’s stock response to anybody who asked Islamabad to ramp down its support and sanctuary to the Taliban and al-Qaida. India was the bogey Pakistan was chasing in Afghanistan. But the essence of Pakistan’s argument remained the same — if the West wanted Pakistan to do the right thing in Afghanistan, India had to be forced to come to the table on Kashmir. That didn’t happen. Instead, Pakistan’s complicity in creating terror infrastructure to target Afghanistan and India became more pronounced.There could be a couple of scenarios that might explain the current flare-up. First, with Trump’s statement, Pakistan found another opportunity to push the envelope on Kashmir and international mediation. Second, and less likely, Pakistan’s intelligence-terror establishment may have been planning this anyway, the timing was just propitious. But this flies in the face of recent developments: in the past couple of months, Indian security officials reported lower infiltration by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists, reduced exchanges on the LoC, even removal of some terror launch pads from across LoC. In fact, Pakistan could have played a different game altogether to get India to concede to opening some lines of engagement.