ISLAMABAD- Ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night and runningaway. Obscene phone calls. Cutting off power and water supplies. Carchases, aggressive confrontations and children intimidated.

It might sound like an acrimonious neighbourhood dispute, and in some waysit is. But the neighbours in this case are the nuclear-armed geopoliticalrivals India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since the partitionof India in 1947 and still trade fire across a de facto border in disputedKashmir.

In recent days, the foreign ministry of Pakistan has alleged these things*link>*—and even the school-age children of high commission staff. The incidentshave involved allegations of doorbell-ringing at 3am, diplomats beingtailed by security services and confrontations with unknown assailants whofilm the encounters.

Drivers had been stopped and a high commission counsellor’s children werefollowed and “intimidated”, the Pakistan statement said. A naval adviserwas “aggressively chased” while a political counsellor was “evicted from acab and harassed by unknown persons, who used abusive language, threatenedhim and filmed the whole incident with impunity”, it added.

“The total apathy and failure of the Indian Government to put a halt tothese despicable incidents, sparing not even young children, indicates botha lack of capacity to protect foreign diplomats posted in India or a morereprehensible, complicit unwillingness to do so,” the Pakistani foreignministry said.

India said it was examining the issues. “At the same time, you know thatour high commissioner in Islamabad is facing a litany of issues that havenot been resolved for several months,” India’s foreign ministry spokesmanRaveesh Kumar said at a briefing on March 15.

Both India and Pakistan regularly haul in their rival’s senior diplomats tocomplain about a host of issues, and sometimes expel high commission staffon accusations that they’re spies.