Branding of Pulwama mastermind Masood Azhar as an international terrorist by  United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is widely perceived as a long-awaited and hard fought diplomatic victory of India. The achievement is also sweet since China, who had been beating around the bush for over a long period of time over global terrorism in general and  Azhar issue in particular has now been brought to its knees. And the success comes at a time when terrorism is finding new lands to manifest itself, more viciously than before. In this sense, it can be said that this move should not be viewed in context of the sub-continent alone, rather, it should be observed as a global referendum against terrorism, a challenge confronting humankind and no less intense than the fight against hunger and poverty.

And if the whole episode, which involved a considerable amount of protracted negotiation period involving India and other stakeholders is dissected, it becomes amply clear how the subject matter of statecraft was stretched to its ultimate limits with professional manoeuvring skills to garner advantages. China’s roles no doubt will attract maximum attention. For the first time in 2009, it went against India’s efforts to get Azhar blacklisted by UN Sanctions Committee. Then again in 2016 and 2017, when moves were made taking US, UK and France into confidence, China as a veto-wielding permanent member, blocked the proposal once again. These repeated rejections expectedly resulted in accumulation of international pressure on it, and in resultant hostile atmosphere finding himself tightly cornered, it had perhaps no option but to succumb to India’s legitimate demand. Again, if the UN Security Council resolution is put under scrutiny, it becomes crystal clear how the most important facet, Pulwama terror attack, the one that perhaps triggered the entire furore, has been systematically omitted from the document. It’s also a sheer statecraft which China had somehow managed and will help him keep open the doors for future sinister collaborations, with an all-season ally named Pakistan, obviously to trouble India. It is thus clear that China, through this move had deftly played a nice balancing act. It had also paid due attention to the economic realities, where India is a huge market for their products and thus taken an ad hoc step of appeasement.

Keeping aside diplomacy,  that which hurts most is the stark apathy of the so called powerful nations in treating the issue seriously, beyond the narrow lanes of individual diplomatic gains. But it is a global issue as it affects all regions and continents of world, occurring almost every alternate weeks and months.

As of now, it can only be said that sanity has been restored. But its continuous ubiquity is essential for complete end to global terrorism.