In a blunt admission that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, a former chief of India's external intelligence agency has conceded that New Delhi's long-running campaign to diplomatically isolate Pakistan has fallen apart. Amarjit Singh Dulat, who led the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) from 1999 to 2004, told Geo News this week that India's strategic narrative on Kashmir and cross-border terrorism had failed to resonate globally, while Pakistan's diplomatic outreach, particularly its role as a mediator, had gained unexpected traction. That's not just a setback for India. It's a tectonic shift in how South Asia engages with the world.
The backdrop: a decade of diplomatic trench warfare
Since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, India has waged a relentless campaign to isolate Pakistan diplomatically. It pulled out of the 2009 SAARC summit in Islamabad after the carnage in Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. It leaned on Washington and Brussels to blacklist Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders. It even tried to brand Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). And for years, it worked, until it didn't. The turning point came in 2019, when India's airstrike on Balakot backfired politically. That strike, meant to punish Pakistan for the Pulwama attack, instead showed up on global news feeds as escalation rather than deterrence. The UN Security Council called for restraint. The US distanced itself from the operation. Even close allies like France and Russia refused to endorse India's narrative unconditionally. By 2023, Pakistan had secured a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and brokered the Saudi-Iran détente with barely a whisper of protest from New Delhi.
Which brings us to Dulat's candor. The former spy chief didn't mince words. "We tried to tell the world that Pakistan is a terrorist state," he said. "But the world isn't listening anymore." Instead, he argued, Pakistan's ability to position itself as a mediator, first in the 2021 Afghan crisis, then in the regional energy crunch, has burnished its image far more effectively than India's hardline posture ever could. The message is clear: isolation is a two-way street. You can't keep your neighbor out of rooms it's invited into.
A historical echo: when the isolated became the indispensable
To understand how quickly fortunes can flip, look back to the 1971 Bangladesh war. Pakistan, then led by Yahya Khan, had hoped to isolate India diplomatically after its crackdown in East Pakistan. Instead, India's support for the Mukti Bahini turned it into the de facto leader of the non-aligned movement. By December 1971, Pakistan found itself diplomatically boxed in, its allies, China and the US, too distracted by Cold War maneuvering to intervene meaningfully. Today, the roles are reversed. Pakistan is no longer the pariah; it's the broker. And India, once the rising power courted by Washington and Brussels, now finds itself playing defense in corridors where it once set the agenda.
That's not to say Pakistan is out of the woods. Its economy remains fragile, its political elite divided, and its military still wrestles with the ghosts of Afghanistan and Baloch separatists. But on the global stage, Islamabad has clawed back space it once surrendered. The question is whether India can adapt before the damage becomes irreversible.
South Asia at the crossroads: what this means for the neighborhood
For Pakistan, the immediate dividend is diplomatic breathing room. In March 2024, Saudi Arabia and Iran, once bitter rivals, reopened embassies in Islamabad, a symbolic nod to Pakistan's newfound role as a regional stabilizer. That matters more than sanctions or travel bans ever did. For India, the cost is both strategic and economic. New Delhi's push to isolate Pakistan has coincided with a slowdown in regional trade. In 2023, India-Pakistan bilateral trade hit $2.5 billion, down from $4 billion in 2011. Meanwhile, Pakistan's trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia has surged, with the Chabahar port alternative, once touted as India's gateway to Central Asia, struggling to compete with Pakistan's Gwadar hub. Even Bangladesh, long a close Indian partner, has started hedging its bets, exploring deals with Pakistan's navy for port access.
Then there's the Kashmir factor. Dulat's admission that "Kashmir unrest and uncertainty continue" is an understatement. Since August 2019, India has revoked Kashmir's autonomy, flooded the valley with troops, and jailed political leaders. Yet, the world's reaction has been tepid at best. The UN Human Rights Council issued a report in 2020, but it was swiftly buried under pandemic headlines. The EU Parliament's 2021 resolution condemning India's actions was watered down to a non-binding call for dialogue. Even the US, which once saw India as a bulwark against China, now treats Kashmir as a bilateral issue rather than a flashpoint requiring intervention. That's not isolation for Pakistan. It's isolation for India's own narrative.
Where do we go from here?
The next moves will likely come from three arenas: the battlefield, the boardroom, and the backchannel. On the military front, Pakistan's recent drone strikes into Indian-administered Kashmir, claimed as "preemptive" counterterrorism, signal a new phase of low-intensity conflict that neither side can afford to escalate without global blowback. Economically, India's decision to boycott the 2023 SAARC summit in Islamabad was a gamble that didn't pay off. Regional trade blocs like BIMSTEC and the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) are sputtering, while China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) rolls forward, leaving India on the sidelines. The only place left is diplomacy, and here, both sides will be tempted to test the other's resolve.
One scenario sees a cautious thaw. India might soften its stance on Kashmir in exchange for Pakistan reining in anti-India militant groups. Another sees a dangerous stalemate, where both countries double down on domestic nationalism at the expense of regional stability. But there's a third possibility, and it's the one Dulat hinted at: a slow, grudging acceptance that neither side can win this fight alone. That would mean reviving the 2007 Composite Dialogue, or something like it, before the next crisis forces the issue.
What's certain is that the old playbook is dead. India's failure to isolate Pakistan isn't just a diplomatic blunder. It's a reckoning with the limits of hard power in a region where soft power, mediation, and economic leverage now dictate who sits at the table, and who gets left out in the cold.
