‘We Can’t Pick Sides’: Top U.S. General Lauds Pakistan As Terror-Fighting Hero; India Sees A Betrayal

“We need to have relationships with both Pakistan and India. It is not a binary choice,” he said.

General Michael Kurilla

New Delhi: Stirring diplomatic undercurrents in New Delhi, a top-ranking U.S. military commander, who is set to retire this summer, just threw a political grenade into South Asia’s most volatile triangle. General Michael Kurilla, head of the powerful U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), has praised Pakistan as an “outstanding partner” in America’s war on terror. In the same breath, he urged the United States not to choose between New Delhi and Islamabad.

The timing could not be more explosive.

Just weeks after the brutal April 22 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, India has been ramping up its global campaign against Pakistan’s alleged hand in cross-border terrorism. Testifying before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, General Kurilla painted a far different picture – one where Pakistan is not the problem, but part of the solution.

“We need to have relationships with both Pakistan and India. It is not a binary choice,” Kurilla said, brushing aside the notion that the United States must choose sides.

The statement is raising eyebrows in India’s power corridors. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and other top Indian officials have consistently urged the international community not to blur the lines between victims of terror and its perpetrators.

Kurilla’s remarks, however, walk a delicate, and dangerous to many in India, tightrope.

The general did not stop at diplomacy. He doubled down with specifics and praised Pakistan’s aggressive operations against Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), a shadowy and lethal terror outfit operating out of Afghanistan.

According to him, Pakistani forces, aided by U.S. intelligence, have eliminated dozens of IS-KP operatives. At least five high-value targets, he claimed, were captured due to real-time intelligence sharing.

In what sounded like a moment straight from a geopolitical thriller, Kurilla revealed that Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir had personally informed him of the arrest and planned extradition of Mohammad Sharifullah alias Jafar –one of the masterminds of the 2021 Kabul airport bombing that left 13 U.S. servicemen dead.

The Pentagon is clearly betting on Pakistan’s help in containing the growing ISIS-K threat along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border – a region Kurilla described as becoming a safe haven for extremists displaced by the Taliban’s half-hearted crackdowns.

“Pakistan’s role will only grow more important as the Taliban struggles to maintain control inside Afghanistan,” he warned.

But in India, where wounds from the Pahalgam attack are still raw, these comments risk being seen as tone-deaf. Critics say Washington’s attempt to balance the India-Pakistan equation may end up appeasing terror sponsors under the guise of strategy.

In the high-stakes game of global counterterrorism, General Kurilla’s farewell message could not be clearer – for the U.S., friendship with India is vital but so is Pakistan’s cooperation. Whether that stance helps build peace or fuels fresh distrust is now a question echoing through diplomatic channels from Washington to New Delhi.