South Asian Security: Day 1

Today began the first of many meetings concerning the India-Pakistan cyber-attacks. The passionate arguments from all present countries at the South Asian security meeting proved to come from all sides and reflect many courses of action. One theme that was generally accepted across the board by many countries was the insistence upon remaining as neutral as possible in this matter due to their tight economic and diplomatic ties with both India and Pakistan. However though this stance resonated with most countries, several countries, such as Israel, Pakistan, India, and South Africa. Since Israel and Pakistan have had bad past relations concerning its statehood, Israel took an extreme Pro-India stance. Being that they were the main countries involved in the whole situation, India and Pakistan firmly supported the innocence of their countries, both demanding an apology from the other, though the source of the cyber-attacks is still unknown. However perhaps the most surprising view came from the non-involved nation of South Africa, who throughout the entire simulation was in strong support of there being an investigation by the National Criminal Court and that peace keeping forces and economic sanctions be set into place.


As the initial phases of the meeting were complete, the debates shed light on how the rest of the country felt in terms of holding investigations on the cyber-attacks and how to go about such. There was a decent amount of support for South Africa’s idea of holding an investigation to find the perpetrator of the actual attacks and Germany and the U.K. supported this proposal as well. The basic perimeters of this motion included talks between Indian and Pakistani diplomats as well as a ceasefire agreement which would lead to economic sanctions if an agreement could not be reached. Though the bill was not passed on the grounds of the economic sanctions having a reverse negative effect and instead hurting more than helping the situation by negatively affecting other nations. Playing on the failures of the South African proposal, Russia brought up the idea of having a more transparent cyber-attack investigation with no sanctions and 7 neutral countries on the committee with the goal of finding a guilty party. As the meeting drew to a close there was no clear resolution in sight and the topic that caused the most unrest was still economic sanctions.