India and Pakistan are dispatching competing delegations around the world in an effort to bolster sympathies and press their view of this month’s conflict, the worst fighting in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
New Delhi this week began sending teams of officials to Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa and east Asia to argue that Pakistan is a sponsor of cross-border terrorism and a danger to global stability.
The latest fighting was sparked by an attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April that killed 26 people, and which India believes Pakistan was behind, allegations Islamabad has denied.
Pakistan, meanwhile, will focus on Washington, Paris, Brussels and London, and will seek to paint India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a warmonger who risks nuclear catastrophe and New Delhi as a regional bully that has cut off a crucial water treaty and carries out extrajudicial killings abroad.
Officials involved in Pakistan’s delegation said the diplomatic roadshow also offered a chance to try to drive a wedge between India and western nations, which are courting New Delhi as a rising superpower and economic hedge against China.
The rival diplomatic offensives reflect India and Pakistan’s efforts to advance their side in their long-running feud, and their fears of international allegiances shifting towards their rival. They have also focused on the US, after President Donald Trump interceded this month to announce a ceasefire, and who both sides see as receptive to their cause.
“India would say the conversation needs to be the about Pakistani military and intelligence services’s endemic involvement in terrorism, which threatens the world, not just India,” said Walter Ladwig, a senior lecturer at King’s College in London.
“Pakistan would say, once again India blames us for legitimate internal problems in Kashmir . . . and until we solve that problem we will never break this cycle,” he added.
India’s delegation, led by former diplomat Shashi Tharoor, will include opposition politicians and members of the country’s Muslim minority in an effort to present a united front in the wake of the attack in Kashmir, which sent shockwaves through the country and galvanised broad support for retaliation.
“The salience of terrorism in the west has been reduced over the years because it’s not seen as the threat that it was after September 11,” said Syed Akbaruddin, a former Indian envoy to the UN, who is involved in the diplomatic outreach. “But in countries like ours, it’s a recurrent feature and you can’t ignore it.”
New Delhi launched missile and drone attacks, which it said targeted terrorist infrastructure. They penetrated deep into Pakistani territory, hitting military installations and killing dozens of civilians, according to Pakistani officials.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has cast itself in the conflict as a victim of aggression for a crime it did not commit, and has called for a neutral investigation. Former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will lead the country’s delegation, which will be more modest and is set to begin in early June.
“Our objective is to explain how belligerent and roguish India has been,” said Hina Rabbani Khar, another former Pakistan foreign minister who is also part of the delegation.
“Most western partners are sympathetic to India’s terrorism concerns,” said Christopher Clary, a professor of political science at the University at Albany in New York state. But their primary concern, he added, is that “Pakistan is not bluffing and a major war could turn nuclear”.
In India, anger at Pakistan whipped up by nationalist media has soared. Grievances are mounting against an international community many see as too willing to trust Islamabad, including the US, with which New Delhi is building closer defence and economic ties.
India plans tell foreign politicians that it will maintain the suspension of a critical water treaty until Islamabad drops its support for terrorism, according to officials.
Officials were also incensed by Trump claiming credit for the ceasefire and dismayed by his offer to mediate talks over Kashmir, which they say equated the world’s largest democracy with what it perceives as a rogue military regime.
“It does take two to tango,” Trump said on Friday.
Pakistan denies supporting terrorism, and says it provides only moral and diplomatic support for the cause of self determination in Muslim-majority Kashmir, which the countries have fought over since 1947.
It has also accused India of supporting transnational assassinations, including on its soil. Canada has linked India to the slaying of a Sikh activist in 2023 and the US foiled a similar plot in New York last year.
New Delhi has denied involvement in both incidents, as well as Pakistani accusations of supporting militant groups in its restive border provinces.
Pakistani officials said they would also push back against India’s efforts to isolate them economically at the Financial Action Task Force, which removed Islamabad from its watch list for money laundering and terrorism financing in 2022, as well as the IMF and Asian Development Bank.
Rajnath Singh, India’s defence minister, warned last week that $2.4bn in IMF funds that were signed off in the midst of the fighting would “certainly be utilised to fund terror infrastructure”.
Pakistani officials were encouraged by Trump’s intercession, and hope to make headway with a US leader who styles himself as a peacemaker. They also see Trump’s fear that the conflict came close to nuclear war as a potential point of leverage.
“The Trump administration doesn’t seem to be beholden to Washington’s usual hawkishness about Pakistan,” said Madiha Afzal, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank.
For Islamabad, she added, the Trump White House could be “a breath of fresh air [and] an opportunity to try to reset relations”.