index
FROM the end of February until early May 2002, the news in India was
dominated by Gujarat: the burning of 58 Hindu zealots on a train at
Godhra as they were returning from the contested religious site of
Ayodhya. At that time, extremists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and
other allies of the BJP government in Delhi were agitating to rebuild
the temple at Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of Ram. This
renewal of Hindu fundamentalism was itself an opportunistic response
to a feeling that, following the 11 September attacks in the USA,
Islam was on the defensive, and now, if ever, was the time to strike.
Whether or not the Hindu travellers had insulted Muslims at the
Godhra station, the consequences of the burning of the Hindu kar
sevaks were fateful. After the outrage, Hindu mobs in Ahmedabad and
in towns and villages in Gujarat went on a spree of retaliatory
burnings, knifings and killings, displacing large numbers of poor
Muslims. The administration and police did nothing to stop the
bloodletting. Gujarat's BJP chief minister Narendra Modi stated that
the people of the state had been, in his estimation, remarkably
restrained in their response.
For two months, sporadic attacks against Muslims continued. Although
the police subsequently acted, curfews were imposed but until now no
one has been charged with any of the killings. It was reported that
while fear, silence and smoke hang over the Muslim slums of
Ahmedabad, on the other side of the Sabarmati river daily life goes
on as "normal", McDonald's functioning as usual, the multiplex cinema
doing brisk business. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee expressed
his confidence in Modi and, despite the protests of the secular
forces in India, refused to replace him.
The excesses of Gujarat - the place usually promoted as one of the
great success stories of India, with its high levels of foreign
investment and a modern prosperous state - spread worldwide. Gujarat
is now the only state still governed by the BJP. The Central
government had lost much popularity in the preceding years, having
shown itself to be as venal, incompetent and corrupt as the
governments which had preceded it.
Modi's response was a promise to hold fresh elections in Gujarat:
confident that the Hindu majority would maintain him in power, the
threat to communalise the electoral process would earn a popular
mandate for the laissez-faire which had allowed the killings in
Gujarat to rage unchecked by the law.
Foreign governments expressed their concern to New Delhi, which
declared that it had no need of lectures on communalism from former
colonial powers, particularly when these were themselves grappling
with the problems of racism and xenophobia in their own countries.
The reason for the BJP's existence is the pursuit of Hindutva, the
establishment of a Hindu State. This objective has been held in
check, both by the secular nature of the Indian Constitution and also
by the fact that the BJP does not have a majority, but must take into
account the susceptibilities of its secular allies. This has created
great tension. The unleashing of the Hindutva forces in Gujarat
offered the saffron Right in India a tantalising glimpse of what
absolute power might permit, but it also demonstrated the capacity
for violence and disintegration of a communalism that is never far
below the surface.
Since 11 September, new insecurities have been experienced by the
Muslim minority in India - a minority which, however, remains in
terms of numbers one of the largest concentrations of Muslim
populations in any country in the world outside Indonesia. The war on
terror, which caught up Pakistan in the coercive US coalition, had
two significant consequences for India. Since Pakistan and its ISI
outfit have encouraged, promoted and connived at terrorism in India
since the resurgence of tension in Kashmir 12 years ago, India saw
only hypocrisy in US support for Gereral Pervez Musharraf: the
military dictator was transformed overnight by the exigencies of
realpolitik into an ally against terror.
Second, the Muslim minority in India became increasingly tainted as
"anti-national", the enemy within, potential subversives,
infiltrators, owing their allegiance to the ubiquitous elsewhere of a
militant Islam.
The alienation of the Muslims was facilitated by a series of
spectacular terror attacks in India: the assembly in Jammu and
Kashmir was attacked in October and 40 people killed. The assault on
Parliament in Delhi in December was interpreted as an attempt to
destroy democracy, and an attack on the US Center in Kolkata.
Finally, there came on 14 May the storming of an army barracks at
Kaluchak near Jammu when terrorists shot not only soldiers but their
families, including children, leaving 30 people dead.
Ever since the December attack, India had been mobilising. The
3,310-km border with Pakistan had been mined, villages emptied of
their people, farmlands cleared. The military has been extensively
deployed along the whole frontier, particular concentrations in
Kashmir close to the Line of Control. The rhetoric of conflict at
this stage spoke of giving Pakistan a bloody nose, teaching Musharraf
a lesson, giving him a good hiding - euphemisms intended to minimise
the brutality and violence of war.
After 14 May, preparations for war completely eclipsed the horrors of
Gujarat. These became yesterday's news, overtaken by the greater
urgency of the threat against India. Government efforts to minimise
what had happened had earlier been greeted with outrage, as when
defence minister George Fernandes shrugged and said of the violence
against women in Gujarat that this was not the first time rapes had
occurred in India. But now the rhetoric shifted. It was no longer
"the image of India being tarnished in the world", it was a question
of the nation in danger. The old enemy, the mutilated entity of
Pakistan, had failed to rein in terrorists. India had handed the
Pakistanis a list of 20 terrorists wanted in India and had demanded
they be handed over. The time had come for action, punishment, to
prosecute India's own version of the war on terror.
Emboldened by the apparently easy US success in Afghanistan and
Israeli incursions into the West Bank, there were clearly models and
precedents for India to follow.
The Indian government sees a way of erasing the orgy of communalism
in Gujarat: the attack in Kaluchak provides the opportunity to focus
on the old enemy, which is, of course, only the external
manifestation, as it were, of the enemy within. But the great
advantage now is that a more general Indian nationalism can be
invoked to unite rather than divide the country. The maladroit and
murderous experiment in Hindutva in Gujarat is supplanted by an
appeal to an ostensibly secular patriotism. With the threat - or is
it a promise? - of war against Pakistan, Congress opposition leader
Sonia Gandhi sits down with Vajpayee and offers full support. The
fractious coalition parties fall silent; demands for Modi's removal
are no longer heard.
As the temperature rises - in every sense, in the torrid, parched
summer of Delhi, where this year the fevers of war are added to those
of the season - flags and banners are waved by crowds gathered in the
eerie light and heat created by duststorms over the capital.
Politicians cancel their holidays. The shopping trips to London and
Paris will have to wait. Visits to their children and their banks
overseas must be put on hold. Superintendence of their properties
abroad will have to remain in the hands of agents or relatives for a
little longer.
The government senses that where Hindu nationalism sowed only
discord, "secular" nationalism promises unanimity. Patriotism is to
be the vehicle in which the policy of Hindutva will be smuggled into
a reluctant India, just as infiltrators and militants are smuggled
through the porous borders of Pakistan, into Kashmir and elsewhere.
Despite the high risk, the policy is appealing - a swift victory over
Pakistan, then a re-election of a saffron government in the ensuing
euphoria, perhaps, for the first time, with an overall majority in
recognition of its triumph. Then the real business can begin -
nothing can stop the agenda of the Hindu Right.
>From the fire in Gujarat to fire-power against Pakistan. In any case,
despite the omnipotence ascribed by the Indian authorities to
Pakistan and its ubiquitous and Machiavellian ISI, Pakistan is in
fact in a state of virtual siege, caught between the fugitive
militants from Afghanistan and the coercive US embrace in the war
against terror. Musharraf is himself sheltering between the ruins of
economy and the debris of democracy. Now, if ever, is the time to
strike.
A strange recklessness is born: that Pakistan is in a state of
desperation and may be tempted to the nuclear option is, doubtless, a
constraint on India. Only the insomniac hatreds of half a century,
the frustrated extremism of a government whose anti-Muslim passion
lies at the core of its very reason for existence, may prove more
powerful inducements to act. The inspiration of the US in Afghanistan
and Israel against the Palestinians is appealing - surgical strikes,
a lesson taught, demolition of the structures of terror; but an
invitation to the nuking of Delhi is a high price to pay for the
victory which would doubtless follow.
But for the BJP, the opportunity is unlikely to present itself again
- victory under the benign cloak of Indian nationalism, then a
popular mandate and overall majority under which its dream of
Hindutva can be realised. The risks, however, are intolerable - the
blood and ashes of Gujarat magnified a thousandfold, the cities of
India reduced to a wasteland, and pollutants across the sub-continent
which no religious rituals of purification can ever cleanse. To
proceed or to back down - the fundamentalist wager is balanced
against the very survival of the two wounded entities of ancient
imperial divisions. In the surcharged emotional global atmosphere
following 11 September, who can be sure reason will triumph?
Ours has become the age of threats. India threatens Pakistan with a
"limited war'' and a complete nuclear annihilation if it uses nuclear
weapons first. Pakistan openly threatens India with a "first strike''
nuclear option if it as much as moves its forces one inch across the
Line of Control. The Hindu fundamentalists threaten the Muslim
citizens of India with annihilation if they do not behave. Israel
routinely threatens military force against Palestinians and
Palestinians threaten retaliation through suicide bombings. The
United States President, George Bush, the originator of all threats,
threatens the entire world - "if you are not with us, you are against
us'' - and specific countries and groups through his "axis of evil''
framework. And terrorists threaten innocents and their governments
around the world. Threats have then become a routine way of
conducting international affairs.
No longer do countries or groups express disagreements in the
language of law or even civilised politics. In a way, international
relations today resembles classic European state behaviour 200 years
ago when large powers bullied and threatened each other and peace was
the accidental by-product of alliances and balance of power. The
cosmopolitan internationalism of the late Victorian and post-World
War I period, embodied in a commitment to norms of non-aggression and
peaceful settlement of disputes and institutions of
dispute-resolution and peace making such as the International Court
of Justice and the United Nations Security Council, appears to be
seriously challenged. The threatening postures of major powers do not
elicit any condemnation from other powers as violations of the U.N.
Charter, which explicitly prevents threats as well as the use of
force in international affairs. Rather, aggression has been
thoroughly accepted as the normal way of conducting international
relations.
It is not just war that is being routinised. Mass killings of human
beings and brutalities are casually mentioned by would-be combatants
and major powers as if that is normal and legal. The New York Times
reported a Pentagon "estimate'' that between 7 to 12 million people
would die in case a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. On each
side, many Indians and Pakistanis are reported to be calling for
"finishing off'' the Kashmir problem once and for all. The
state-sponsored pogrom in Gujarat that saw the death of almost 2000
Muslims and the rape of countless women is being dismissed by Indian
leaders. The Defence Minister, George Fernandes, calls rape and
brutalisation of pregnant women as "nothing new'' on the floor of
Parliament while the head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad talks with
pride about what happened in Gujarat.
Pakistan has casually mentioned several times that it is prepared to
use nuclear weapons offensively against Indian cities while
justifying the mass killings committed by `jehadi' fighters as
"freedom struggle.'' On the other hand, Indian strategists calmly
discuss how India can "absorb'' a nuclear strike by Pakistan and
equally calmly discuss the destruction of the entire population of
Pakistan in retaliation. The tragedy in all this casual mass murder
talk is how it goes against the letter and spirit of existing
international law.
Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador is quoted in the New York Times as saying
that the U.N. Charter does not prohibit the use of nuclear weapons.
While this is textually correct, international law is not just the
U.N. Charter but includes the judgments of the ICJ as well as other
relevant treaties and customary international law. In its advisory
opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons in
1996, the ICJ clearly laid down that unless the very survival of the
state is threatened, the use of nuclear weapons is unlawful even in
defence.
Pakistan's stated "first strike'' policy would, therefore, entirely
violate international law.
India's assertion that it is entitled to use nukes in retaliation -
and use it massively - contradicts both its own stated position
before the ICJ in 1996 as well as the judgment itself. In its written
pleadings before the ICJ, India asserted that "even where a wrongful
act involved the use of a nuclear weapon, the reprisal action cannot
involve the use of a nuclear weapon without violating certain
fundamental principles of humanitarian law...
In view of the above, use of nuclear weapons even by way of reprisal
or retaliation appears to be unlawful.''
Given this position, how can India justify using nukes even in
retaliation? In the contest between "war talk'' and "law talk,'' the
former appears to be winning. If we are not to lose the entire
edifice of peace making that has been painstakingly built over more
than 100 years, we must begin opposing "war talk.'' This may be our
best chance of reviving "law talk'' in international relations and
more importantly, preventing the normalisation of war and total
destruction. The people of the subcontinent depend on it.
(The writer is Professor of Law and Development, and Director, MIT
Program on Human Rights & Justice, U.S.)
By Arlene Getz
May 29 - Are India and Pakistan on the verge of
nuclear war? The political temperature in the subcontinent continues
to rise as soldiers from the two regional powers today fired mortars
and machine guns across their frontier in the disputed territory of
Kashmir. Earlier this week, Pakistan test-fired another missile
capable of carrying a nuclear warhead-the third such trial in four
days -and India criticized as "dangerous" a bellicose speech by
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.
MUSHARRAF, IN TURN, has accused India of
creating "war hysteria" by blaming Pakistan for attacks on Indians in
Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region claimed by both nations and at
the center of two of the three wars fought between Islamic Pakistan
and mainly Hindu India since 1947. The current crisis was triggered
when five gunmen killed nine people in a December suicide attack on
India's parliament. Tensions worsened when raiders killed 32 people
in an Indian army camp in Kashmir on May 14. India, blaming
Pakistan-based militants for the attacks, is demanding that Pakistan
stop the infiltration. NEWSWEEK's Arlene Getz spoke to Asia expert
Radha Kumar, a senior fellow in peace and conflict studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York, about the latest
developments in the region. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: There are currently about a million troops massed on
the India-Pakistan border. How real is the threat of nuclear war?
Radha Kumar: India is downplaying it. I think
they're downplaying it a little too much. If there is a war that
breaks out, we cannot be sure that Pakistan will not go further than
simply deploying [nuclear warheads].
Many analysts believe it is just sabre-rattling?
At the moment I'd say it's sabre-rattling. But at the moment
there isn't a war yet.
So what could happen next?
It all depends. Supposing India were to launch these limited
strikes in Pakistani-held Kashmir. One of two things can happen:
either the international community comes down hard to persuade
Pakistan not to retaliate, or Pakistan retaliates. Once you set up
that cycle, the chances are it could easily escalate into a wider
war, partly also because the terrain is very inhospitable for India.
The Pakistani troops are the ones that command all the heights in the
area, so that means the Indian troops will always be at a huge
disadvantage if they're trying to just fight a very limited war in
the Himalayas.
But presumably a nuclear strike will be an absolute last resort?
Oh, yes. Let's assume-this is purely speculative-that it's not
going to remain at the limited strike. You're going to have
retaliation, India is pushed into further widening the geographical
area and then the temptation is for Pakistan to first begin the real
sabre-rattling, which is deploying-putting the nuclear warheads onto
some of the missile launchers and moving them into position.
Traditionally, Washington has not been that closely involved
in regional disputes between India and Pakistan. Is that changing in
the wake of Musharraf's decision to align himself with the United
States in its fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban?
Yes. We've seen the [United States] gradually get more and
more involved, and now they're actually there on the ground in
Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, so they have no option [but to get
involved].
Still, the United States has been accused of ignoring the
rising tensions in the subcontinent, and Secretary of State Colin
Powell has been criticized for not holding Musharraf to his
commitment to controlling Kashmiri militants. Are those fair
criticisms?
I think they are. It's unfortunate.
What should the United States be doing?
Again, it's so much crisis diplomacy. They need to-and they
have-deliver a fairly stern message to Pakistan on supporting the
militant groups that operate in Kashmir. It's difficult to know quite
how much leverage the U.S. has on that. One of the things they're
going to need to do is to set some clear target on what it is that
Musharraf or the Pakistani government can do.
Several governments, including Britain and Japan, as well as
the United States, are involved in trying to stave off a crisis. How
much pressurizing is going on behind the scenes?
I think quite a bit. We know that Bush has spoken to Musharraf
a couple of times, we know that Colin Powell has spoken to him at
least a half a dozen times if not more. And I'm assuming there's very
close coordination between the European Union and Britain and the
U.S. There's been an attempt to coordinate with China and with Russia
on it, as well.
How effective is this global pressure?
This is the difficult thing to know. Thus far we've had a lot
of pressure, but not really a thought-out policy. The pressure would
work if it was based on achievable targets and some way of ensuring
that whatever the process is, it's sustained. What we saw, for
example, was that on Jan. 12 Musharraf did make a pathbreaking speech
and he did crack down and arrest about 1,900 [militants], but then by
March he had already started released everyone. That kind of thing is
counterproductive.
How has Pakistan's new relationship with the United States
affected Washington's influence with India?
The Indians are rather nervous, and certainly the relationship
with General Musharraf and the U.S. has made them much more nervous,
so let's say the relationship [between India and the United States]
has got little areas of sourness.
Is there any chance India will turn its back on the United
States?
On the contrary, they're depending on the U.S. to help find a way
out.
Both sides have said they won't strike first. Is that just
posturing, or are they really trying to pull back?
Here we go into semantics. I think that India's view is that
if there isn't now some movement on reining in the militant groups,
and a long-term plan with milestones and targets and goals, the
pressure on them to attack is going to be huge. But what the Indians
say is that the militant groups have been waging war-with Pakistan's
backing-on India for many years. So in a sense that's what India
means about not making the first move. But what we do know is that
India will certainly not make the first move when it comes to
nuclearization.
How can we be so sure?
India has always been committed to no first use, they've never
begun on stage one of operationalizing in a crisis situation. They
haven't moved to test or fit warheads or move [them]. And Pakistan
has done so.
Musharraf made a speech on Monday which was criticized as
hostile and dangerous by India. Your thoughts?
I was very surprised, I thought it was quite an aggressive
speech, too. [But] the trouble is that every Pakistani leader always
escalates the rhetoric of belligerence and defense and war and
shedding blood when they're preparing to make compromises for peace.
If you take that reading, then you say [the speech is] actually quite
promising. And a lot of Pakistani analysts say what you should look
at is that he mentioned not allowing Pakistani soil or Pakistani
territory to be used for terrorism-four times. The problem is that if
you feel you've got to escalate your rhetoric when you're preparing
for a concession, then you're fooling your own people.
How much wiggle room does Musharraf still have, given his
politically risky alliance with Washington?
I thought his Jan. 12 speech was very popular, and I think he
has huge public support in trying to deal with the related problems.
That's not just domestic, I think he would have that support on
Kashmir, as well. It's within the army and the ruling echelon that
his wiggle room is limited.
There is said to be dissatisfaction among some elements of
Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. How important are they?
They must be very important indeed, because I can't see any
other reason why Musharraf would release all these people [the
arrested militants] and let them start all the training camps and
everything all over again.
The United States is helping Pakistan maintain the security of
some of its nuclear weapons. But given the indications that Al Qaeda
is resurfacing in Pakistan-as well as the reports of disaffected ISI
operatives-how worried should we be about those weapons falling into
the wrong hands?
It's such a precarious situation, it's very difficult not to
be worried. And it gets more and more precarious rather than less and
less. And if warheads are being moved they're much more vulnerable.
Absolutely. It really is risky. And that's where in a way a
more cooperative Indian approach to Pakistan would be helpful. For
example, after Musharraf did arrest those 2,000 people, if India had
tried to respond with some sort of diplomatic opening at that point,
they might have been able to move to the next stage of reining in the
militant groups. This time India really needs to be prepared to
respond quickly, not to wait and watch.
How much do we know about each nation's nuclear capacity?
The figures are vague. When you look at something that says it
could be between 25 to 150 [nuclear weapons] in the Pakistani case,
or 60 to 240 in the Indian case, it's just too huge a range. They've
tested some of their delivery systems, but we don't really know how
successful those tests have been. What we do know is that India is
way behind in terms of nuclear doctrine. They don't know how to
operationalize them. Technologically, they're quite a lot behind
Pakistan.
What is the next step-and the ultimate political solution-for
Kashmir?
First bringing down the levels of violence and getting rid of
some of the worst of the jihadi groups, the ones that are tied to Al
Qaeda and [the] Taliban. Then some kind of dialogue process between
Indians and Kashmiris and Indians and Pakistanis. At that point you'd
be talking also about how to decommission some of the other militant
groups that will remain. In that peace process, it seems that the
moderate Kashmiris see process as very important, as against an
immediate solution. They're saying [they] need to have some
restoration of law and order, and some kind of confidence building.
Before all of this, they were beginning to think of the elections
that were scheduled this fall for Kashmir as an opening to a peace
process. A lot of them were ready to participate in the elections if
the Indian government made it clear that the elections would be
followed by talks. That was very heartening, that they were willing
to consider a process of that sort. They also seemed to be ready to
move toward a kind of long-term solution of autonomy and a soft
border.
Is that window closing now?
Yes. The assassination of the Kashmiri separatist leader [on
May 21], the moderate Abdul Ghani Lone, has made it very difficult
for any Kashmiri moderate nationalist leader to participate in
elections. It was a direct threat. [And] the attack on the army camp,
and then the following week of attacks, were a threat to the
Kashmiri-based militant groups that have been looking for a way to
lay down their arms for two years now. They've been shut up, as well.
It's really tragic.
Is there a solution?
Now it's up to India and Pakistan to open that door again. The
impression one has is that Pakistan is opposed to those elections. If
they can be persuaded not to oppose them and not to allow these
attacks, then there is the chance that the moderate leadership will
again be in a position to take decisions on the election. In order
for them to do that, India needs to talk to the separatists.
How likely is that?
I'm very puzzled by why the Indian government hasn't done more
on that score already. It's been on the cards for a long time, but up
to now all these militant threats have stopped the talks.
This week as diplomats' families and tourists quickly disappeared,
journalists from Europe and America arrived in droves. Most of them
stay at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi. Many of them call me. Why are
you still here, they ask, why haven't you left the city? Isn't
nuclear war a real possibility? It is, but where shall I go? If I go
away and everything and every one, every friend, every tree, every
home, every dog, squirrel and bird that I have known and loved is
incinerated, how shall I live on? Who shall I love, and who will love
me back? Which society will welcome me and allow me to be the
hooligan I am, here, at home?
We've decided we're all staying. We've huddled together, we realise
how much we love each other and we think what a shame it would be to
die now. Life's normal, only because the macabre has become normal.
While we wait for rain, for football, for justice, on TV the old
generals and the eager boy anchors talk of first strike and second
strike capability, as though they're discussing a family board game.
My friends and I discuss Prophecy, the film of the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the dead bodies choking the river, the living
stripped of their skin and hair, we remember especially the man who
just melted into the steps of the building and we imagine ourselves
like that, as stains on staircases.
My husband's writing a book about trees. He has a section on how figs
are pollinated, each fig by its own specialised fig wasp. There are
nearly 1,000 different species of fig wasps. All the fig wasps will
be nuked, and my husband and his book.
A dear friend, who is an activist in the anti-dam movement in the
Narmanda Valley, is on indefinite hunger strike. Today is the twelfth
day of her fast. She and the others fasting with her are weakening
quickly. They are protesting because the government is bulldozing
schools, felling forests, uprooting handpumps, forcing people from
their villages. What an act of faith and hope. But to a government
comfortable with the notion of a wasted world, what's a wasted value?
Terrorists have the power to trigger a nuclear war. Non-violence is
treated with contempt. Displacement, dispossession, starvation,
poverty, disease, these are all just funny comic strip items now.
Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition against terror come and go
preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives to preach peace - and on the
side, to sell weapons to both India and Pakistan. The last question
every visiting journalist always asks me: 'Are you writing another
book?'
That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as
though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature, the
whole of human civilisation means nothing to the monsters who run the
world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for
just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That's what nuclear
bombs do, whether they're used or not. They violate everything that
is humane, they alter the meaning of life.
Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear
weapons to blackmail the entire human race?
WESTFIELD, Mass.
A group of women from India and Pakistan who came here for a peace
conference in April returned home to find their countries on the
brink of a nuclear catastrophe. One of the delegates wrote back to me
about the "horrific atmosphere of war," which can be averted, she
said, only through "sheer good luck."
Luck, of course, plays a magnified role in the lives of many on the
subcontinent who cannot rely on receiving the staples that most
Westerners take for granted. But sheer chance is not what anybody
wants to think is the only thing between rice-for-lunch-as-usual and
a nuclear conflagration that U.S. experts estimate could kill as many
as 12 million people.
Yet that is what the escalating political rhetoric has made women
like these believe -- that the tensions, the saber-rattling, the
missile tests and the brutal deaths on either side of the Line of
Control in predominantly Muslim Kashmir have less to do with the
hopes of the ordinary people than with the self-serving and mercurial
goals of their leaders. With a leader like President Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, who came to power in 1999 in a military coup, Pakistanis
fear all the more that their country's response will be a military
one. How ironic it was, one Indian delegate pointed out during the
conference, that with flights and overland travel between their
countries cut off, these women had to travel to the United States --
more than 7,000 miles away from home -- in order to meet face to face
with their counterparts.
The delegates had gathered at the conference, titled "Women of
Pakistan and India: Rights, Ecology, Economy and Nuclear
Disarmament," at Westfield State College just as the war clouds were
forming over the subcontinent. Tensions had been building since
January, when India accused Pakistan of supporting the Kashmiri
militants' attacks on its parliament in Dehli on Dec. 13 -- and
retaliated by massing its troops on the border. The potential for a
nuclear exchange has since been triggered by the Islamic militants'
attack on an army camp in mid-May. The raid killed more than 30
soldiers and family members. That's when Indian Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee rallied troops for an all-out war. In a show of
defiance, Pakistan tested three missiles last week (all of them named
after Muslim conquerors of India) that are capable of launching a
nuclear attack on the Indians. The United States is taking all of
this seriously, urging Americans to get out of India and withdrawing
all but essential embassy personnel.
For the 10 women from India and Pakistan, coming to Westfield was an
occasion to analyze how governments on each side had hijacked
discourse to portray the other as the "enemy." Growing up in
Pakistan, I was a witness to the constant hammering by
state-controlled television about "Indian atrocities in occupied
Kashmir." In fact, the phrase masla-i-Kashmir ("the problem of
Kashmir") has for me become a metaphor for any problem that can never
be solved.
I heard those thoughts echoed in the views of the Indian women at the
conference. Journalist Kalpana Sharma blamed her nation's worsening
relations with Muslims, and by association with Pakistan, on the rise
of the Hindu fundamentalists in India -- the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) and its coalition partner, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP). India, Sharma said, had buckled under fundamentalist pressure
and escalated its military budget after the disastrous conflict near
the Kargil area of Kashmir that nearly led to war in 1999. And the
costs for ordinary people are clear. India has cut back on the social
sector, she said, and instituted higher taxes on its people.
For Anis Haroon, director of a women's non-governmental organization
in Karachi, the U.S. support for Musharraf after Sept. 11 "had carved
out a permanent role for the army in Pakistan." This, she said, had
come with costs, strengthening the military crackdown on
demonstrations by political parties, civil liberties groups and women
protesting against discriminatory laws. In early May, for example,
Pakistani authorities arrested women gathering to oppose the Hudood
Ordinances, which demonstrators say end up punishing female victims
of rape.
Civil liberties have taken a beating inside India as well, agreed the
Indian women. Ruchira Gupta, a member of a women's group in Bombay,
pointed to the Indian parliament's passage of the Prevention of
Terrorism Act (POTA) on March 26 as an example. POTA was advocated by
BJP Home Minister L.K. Advani to counter what he called "the
terrorism" launched by Pakistan. But Gupta argued that the act would
cramp the press, militarize the society and lead to injustices for
Muslim minorities.
Both governments, these women believed, were responsible for recent
atrocities. The Indians blamed the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in
February following an attack on Hindus in a train on the "frenzy
whipped up by the BJP" which forms the central government in Gujarat.
The Hindu delegates said that organizations they belonged to had
visited the area to distribute food and clothing to Muslim victims.
Correspondingly, Pakistani delegates said that the Gujarat violence
had not resulted in reprisals against Hindus in Pakistan -- showing
that such violence is not supported by ordinary people.
Indeed, my experience shows that all too often it is the self-serving
leaderships in the two countries that thwart the people's desire for
peace. I saw this firsthand in 1995. As a journalist, I was invited
to join the official Pakistan delegation to the Fourth World Women
Conference in Beijing. The country was then ruled by Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto, who was keen to portray a liberal image at the
conference. But we were instructed by a male leader of our group to
counter the Indian delegates each time the subject of Kashmir came
up. I watched as the leaders of both the Indian and Pakistani
delegations engaged in allegations and counter-allegations over
Kashmir. Slowly the hall began emptying as U.N. delegates walked out
of a meeting that was supposed to unite the women of the world.
The discussions at Westfield did not fracture along these lines
because the women were not here to promulgate their governments'
policies. Instead, they discussed how Sept. 11 has caused India and
Pakistan to vie for U.S. attention over Kashmir. Even as India
conducts its propaganda war against militants, it stopped Kashmiri
women from attending our conference. The pressure was coming from the
Hindu right wing, who, as Indian delegate Urvashi Batalia noted, had
been cashing in on the "demonizing of Muslims."
U.S. dependence on Pakistan in its fight against terrorism appears to
have given legitimacy to the military government, argued Zubeida
Mustafa, a senior editor from Pakistan's daily Dawn newspaper. In
Pakistan's April referendum, journalists observed few voters at the
polling booths. A colleague wrotethat a polling officer he visited
had recorded only 125 votes by closing time. The officer told him
rather casually that he forged the remaining votes after deadline
because the local police directed him to show a voter turnout of
nearly 900 and to ensure a "yes" vote of around 98 percent, giving
Musharraf five more years in office.
With only the facade of being elected, Pakistan's military government
has not had to answer to its people about the failure to improve law
and order. Earlier this year, targeted killings of Shia doctors by
Sunni extremist groups forced physicians to flee the country.
However, no action was taken until last month, when a suicide bomber
killed 14 people in Karachi, including 11 French men working on a
submarine project. Under severe international pressure, the Musharraf
government cracked down on the Sunni militant groupLashkar-i-Jhangvi
-- which has been linked to the killings of Shia doctors. Later,
three members of this same group were accused in the brutal murder of
American journalist Daniel Pearl.
In December, when I last visited Pakistan, I was curious to see how
the Musharraf government would rein in Kashmiri militants. The
Islamic militants who were brought into the region by the United
States during the Cold War had turned to jihad in Kashmir after the
Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Since then about two dozen
militant Islamic groups fighting for Kashmir under the United Jihad
Council have established headquarters in Pakistan.
It's not as if Kashmiris welcome such support. One Kashmiri from
Srinagar, Farooq Lone, who now lives in Islamabad, told me that
Kashmiris are "fed up" with Pakistan-based militants who attack
Indian forces and leave the Kashmiris to face the vengeance of the
repressive Indian troops. More than 35,000 people have been killed in
Kashmir since the militants entered the fray 13 years ago. Lone's
family supports the All Parties Hurriyet Conference, whose moderate
Kashmiri separatist leader, Abdul Ghani Lone, was recently
assassinated. Although India has never allowed a plebiscite in which
the Kashmiris could decide their own fate, the Indian government had
been wooing moderates such as Lone for elections planned in Kashmir
in September. His murder deals a further blow to any peace prospects.
And it is a further example of the voice of the people being stifled.
The issue of Kashmir -- left dangling by the British in 1947 when
they divided India and then departed without forcing a plebiscite --
has come to haunt the United States almost 55 years later. It is an
issue that is not going be resolved by luck or through a U.S.
admonition to Pakistan to stop abetting militants. Instead, the
United States will have to throw its weight behind the United Nations
to enable the people of Kashmir to decide their own fate. That
appears to be the only choice if the world is to be successful in
fighting the roots of terrorism.
Nafisa Hoodbhoy, who worked for 16 years for Dawn newspaper in
Karachi, Pakistan, teaches at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, with a focus on women, politics and the media in Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Iran.
REUTERS [ SUNDAY, JUNE 02, 2002 11:55:50 AM ]
NEW DELHI: India would retaliate in the event of a nuclear strike by
Pakistan, and must be prepared for mutual destruction on both sides,
Defence Secretary was quoted as saying.
In an interview with the weekly magazine Outlook [*], which hit news
stands on Sunday, Yogendra Narain said India was prepared for
conventional war turning nuclear.
"But Pakistan is not a democratic country and we don't know their
nuclear threshold," he said. "We will retaliate and must be prepared
for mutual destruction on both sides."
On Saturday, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf sought to calm
international fears that a military stand-off with India could
escalate into nuclear conflict, saying it would be unthinkable.
With a million soldiers massed along the border, there are fears that
war could be triggered by another attack against India by
Pakistan-based militants.
In response to such an attack, Narain said surgical strikes by India
would be the "realistic option", not all-out war. And they could come
at three hours' notice.
Such strikes would target militant bases in the Pakistan occupied
Kashmir.
"Surgical strikes are the realistic option," Narain said.
"But we also know that there will be retaliation on other parts of
the border from Pakistan. It'll escalate and will not be confined to
one region." [...]
* Full text of the Interview is available at: outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020610&fname=cover+story+%28F%2
9&sid=4
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