Going by the signals emanating from Almaty and Singapore, and from
Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, the level of official rhetoric
of India-Pakistan hostility has come down by a few decibels during
the past week. This must be heartily welcomed. But the lowering of
the pitch of hostility is not consistent and pervasive, nor yet
reflected on the ground. The military mobilisation at the border
remains as frightful as ever-with more than a million soldiers
eyeball-to-eyeball, and on high alert. Not only is this the greatest
military mobilisation anywhere since World War II. It has an
extraordinarily scary and unique nuclear dimension too.
Compounding this grim reality are shrill calls to discard all
diplomatic options in favour of 'decisive battles' to settle
India-Pakistan disputes 'once and for all'. These calls emanate from
official sources (e.g. Ministers Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Uma Bharati
and I.D. Swamy), political leaders (e.g. Jana Krishnamurthy and
Giriraj Kishore), and Right-wing commentators known more for
obsessive militarism than for wisdom. As if this weren't bad enough,
there is generalised smugness about the danger of a nuclear
catastrophe, whose very possibility is being denied.
Hopefully, if present trends continue, some of the war hysteria will
get diffused as the realisation sinks in of how seriously alarmed is
the rest of the world about a possible nuclear outbreak in South
Asia. The news of thousands of foreign nationals leaving, tourist and
hotel bookings being cancelled, business contracts being put on hold,
and the economy being badly hit will have an impact, favouring a
cooling of India-Pakistan tensions. As will the visits of Messrs
Rumsfeld and Armitage.
The best news, however, is that New Delhi says General Pervez
Musharraf finally seems to be acting on his assurance that he would
put an end to infiltration of militants into Kashmir. The Indian
government has intercepted messages to this effect. If this trend
holds, Pakistan will have substantively addressed the issue that
aroused India's anger and precipitated the present crisis in the
first place.
The time has come to defuse tensions, de-escalate the alert level and
demobilise troops. It is important to reiterate the argument against
war and even against 'limited strikes'. Politically, in the present
circumstances, war against Pakistan is an inappropriate and wrong
means to resolve the issue of 'cross-border terrorism'. There is no
doubt whatever that Islamabad has over the years fomented and
supported such terrorism. But there is plenty of doubt about its
involvement in recent incidents like the May 14 Kaluchak killings and
Abdul Gani Lone's assassination. No clinching evidence exists of
this. Pakistan's relationship to jehadi militants changed
post-September 11, especially after the stationing of US troops on
its soil. It makes little sense for Gen Musharraf to order the ISI to
conduct terrorist operations when he is under close US watch. If
rogue elements carried out such operations, it makes no sense for
India to punish the non-rogues. Militarily, war is a bad, high-risk
option. There exist no military targets close to the border, which
match specific political objectives and which can be attacked-without
provoking major retaliation, with a spiralling potential for
full-scale confrontation. There is some ambiguity even about the
existence of the 36 (or is it 70?) makeshift ìtraining campsî in
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Indian army itself believes many have
been disbanded. Hitting non-specific targets risks reprisal. There
are no crisis-limitation mechanisms, and no confidence-building
measures between India and Pakistan, to prevent limited engagements
from escalating to full-scale war.
Full-scale war spells a likely nuclear catastrophe. In nuclear war,
there are no winners, only losers. It doesnít matter if a nuclear
adversary has 15 or 60 atomic bombs. One bomb can produce a
Hiroshima-lakhs of deaths, and devastation lasting thousands of
years. Nuclear weapons are Great Equalisers. The damage they cause is
mind-boggling. Studies show that a single nuclear bomb is liable to
kill 800,000 people in Mumbai or Karachi, and poison vast swathes of
land, and water and vegetation, with over 200 radioactive toxins,
some of which won't decay for hundreds, even thousands, of years. For
instance, the half-life of Plutonium-239 is 24,400 years. And the
half-life of Uranium-235 is 710 million years!
There can be conventional wars that are just, e.g. against tyranny
and occupation, or for liberation. There can never be just nuclear
wars. There is no justice or legality in a war that kills
non-combatant civilians massively, and produces damage lasting a
number of generations. Yet, our hawks irresponsibly talk of 'calling
Pakistanís nuclear bluff'.
This is an extraordinary proposition. Pakistan isn't bluffing. There
is no doubt that it possesses nuclear weapons and the means to
deliver them to many big Indian cities. By teasing, chiding or
challenging Pakistan to use them, our hawks are in fact threatening
millions of us citizens with genocide. This is morally sickening. It
is irrelevant that India has a second-strike capability and Pakistan
lacks it. Retaliation against a first strike can only be an act of
senseless revenge, not one of gaining security.
A second reason why hawks like K. Subrahmanyam and Brahma Chellaney
cavalierly dismiss Pakistan's nuclear threat lies in their fond hope
that the US will somehow 'neutralise' Islamabad's arsenal before it
can be used. The assumption is that the US knows where each missile
and warhead is stored, and can safely, reliably, destroy these with
its own weapons. Alternatively, Gen Musharraf will voluntarily hand
America the key to his arsenal.
This assumption is dangerously wrong. No Pakistani ruler will give up
control over that jealously guarded strategic 'asset' or 'trump
card'. There have been credible reports since October that Islamabad
has been looking for (and found?) sanctuaries for its nuclear
weapons, possibly in China. It has also dispersed them within its own
territory. The US cannot find or destroy such weapons without risking
a catastrophe. The costs of American failure in this regard will be
colossal. Clearly, our hawks' uninformed but wildly wishful thinking
knows no bounds.
Diplomatically, India has not exhausted all its options to impel
Pakistan to sever links with Kashmiri 'freedom-fighting' terrorists.
It hasn't even attempted to move the UN Security Council invoking
Resolution 1373 which obligates all states to act against
terrorism-on pain of punitive sanctions. New Delhi has only practised
'coercive' diplomacy based on nuclear brinkmanship. This is now
working against it, just as it is working against Pakistan. There is
all-round condemnation the world over of 'irresponsible South
Asians' the caption of a New York Times editorial-for causing today's
stand-off.
The exodus of diplomats and citizens of many major states from South
Asia will have damaging consequences. Aid cut-offs and sanctions
could follow if the standoff continues. Gen Musharraf seems to have
understood this and ratcheted down his bellicose rhetoric. Mr
Vajpayee too must read the writing on the wall-especially because
there is action on the ground, via interception of militants'
border-crossing.
This is not a plea for trusting Pakistan and naively accepting that
the interception is permanent. This must be rigorously verified. The
verification should be done not by the US, the UK or NATO, as is
being proposed by the Americans. It is best done by a neutral,
independent multilateral agency on an institutionalised long-term
basis. The road-map for troop demobilisation and restoration of full
diplomatic relations should now be clear:
India and Pakistan should thin out their troops and withdraw from the
International Border and the Line of Control. They must immediately
hold a summit to formalise a solemn commitment to oppose terrorism
and violence in all its forms, to negotiate serious
confidence-building measures, to sanitise their border, and discuss
all disputes and differences in the spirit of the 1972 Shimla Accord
and the 1999 Lahore agreement. Above all, they must move towards
reducing the nuclear danger either through bilateral
denuclearisation, or by creating a nuclear weapons-free zone in South
Asia, which all major states respect and guarantee.
Perhaps the greatest lesson from the present crisis is that there is
no alternative to ridding this part of the world of nuclear weapons.
So long as these weapons exist in South Asia-the world's sole region
to have experienced a continuous hot-cold war for half a century
between the same two contiguous rivals, there will always be a danger
of nuclear catastrophe. Preventing one is the legitimate business not
just of India and Pakistan, but of the whole world. The consequences
of nuclear war are global. The global community has every right to
prevent such a war.
New Delhi and Islamabad must not wait until such nuclear-restraint
arrangements are put in place. They must return to the Shimla-Lahore
agenda after rapidly restoring diplomatic relations and communication
links. A Shimla-II will, of course, demand will and boldness on the
part of Messrs Vajpayee and Musharraf. In India, Mr Vajpayee must be
pressed by all political leaders and the public to shed the sectarian
sub-agenda behind the border build-up related to the BJP's narrow
political calculations-of diverting attention from misgovernance and
the Gujarat carnage, while fomenting communalism.
We the undersigned invite you to add your name to our Statement of
Shared Concern, in the belief that we can collectively achieve what
may not be possible individually. In the words of the
musician-prophet, John Lennon: "Imagine all the people living life in
peace."
STATEMENT OF SHARED CONCERN
To the leaders of all countries that currently possess, or aspire to
possess nuclear weapons, we submit the following statement and
petition.
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan is unthinkable, for the
people of both nations, the region, and the world. We therefore call
on the governments of India and Pakistan to renounce the use of
nuclear weapons; abolish nuclear weapons from their respective
countries; and seek political solutions to the conflict over Kashmir.
Furthermore, a two-tier world in which some countries destroy their
nuclear arsenals while others maintain them is an inherently unstable
world. We therefore call on the United States, which bears the
primary responsibility for global nuclearisation, and the other
nuclear weapons states, to take the same steps: renunciation of
nuclear weapons; and the unilateral, verifiable and unconditional
abolition of nuclear arsenals. Until these steps are taken by all
nuclear weapons states around the world, the survival of humanity,
and of all life on earth, is threatened.
Background
In the interests of life, of democracy, of feeding the hungry,
healing the sick, protecting the young, and sharing a healthy planet
with all non-human species; and in the belief that where governments
endanger the very survival of their citizens, those citizens must
lead; we call for a global campaign for the unilateral, independent
and unconditional abolition of nuclear weapons.
We cannot wait for political systems, institutions, and leaders to
institute change at a glacial pace. We have seen that this amounts to
opting for the status quo, with extended multilateral negotiations
and mothballing for future use, rather than the immediate destruction
of all nuclear weapons. We are motivated by the current military and
political crisis between India and Pakistan, and the nuclear threats
being delivered by both sides. The crisis reminds each of us that the
use of nuclear weapons would not simply represent another way of
waging war. Nuclear weapons remain the most dangerous of all weapons
of mass destruction, harming human generations yet unborn, and
destroying the ecological foundations upon which any future peace
could be built.
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan is unthinkable - for the
inhabitants of those countries, for the region, for the world. It is
estimated that twelve million people in India alone - and millions
more in Pakistan - would die immediately in a full-scale nuclear war.
Many, many more would die in the following days, weeks, and months.
We call on the governments of India and Pakistan to seek political
solutions to the conflict over Kashmir, solutions, which respect
democratic and human rights of the people in the region. And we call
on the governments of India and Pakistan to immediately renounce the
use of nuclear weapons, and to implement a process leading to the
abolition of those weapons from both countries.
The situation between India and Pakistan cannot legitimately or
effectively be addressed in isolation from the rest of the world. The
threat posed by nuclear weapons world-wide is a dual one: from the
arsenals of the original nuclear powers - the United States, Russia,
China, Great Britain, and France - which collectively possess some
35,000 nuclear weapons; and from the ongoing spread of nuclear
weapons around the globe.
Although the U.S. is urging the Pakistani and Indian governments to
step back from the nuclear brink and seeks the role of regional
policeman, what credibility can those efforts have, in the eyes of
its own people, of Indians and Pakistanis, of the world? More than
any other country, the United States, with its active plans for
continued development and deployment of nuclear weapons, and its
pursuit of military, political, and economic hegemony, serves as the
primary catalyst for the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.
More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. is finding
new justifications to maintain and modernize its nuclear arsenal. The
U.S. has proposed a policy of "offensive deterrence," under which it
threatens preemptive attack, including possible nuclear attack,
against nations that acquire or threaten to acquire weapons of mass
destruction.
The Moscow Treaty signed by Presidents Bush and Putin in May 2002 is
pure political theater: it does not require the destruction of a
single nuclear warhead, nor does it constrain or eliminate tactical
nuclear weapons or short- and medium-range nuclear delivery vehicles.
What better definition of "state-sponsored terrorism," or "rogue
state" could there be than the nuclear policies of the current
American administration? Russia, China, Great Britain, and France
also bear heavy responsibility for the spread of nuclear technology
and delivery systems, such as advanced aircraft and missile
technologies to countries in South Asia and the world.
The actions of the United States and other nuclear weapons states do
not excuse the pursuit of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass
destruction by other countries. But if the United States truly wishes
to lead, in the conflict between India and Pakistan and elsewhere, it
ultimately can only lead by example.
We call on the governments of the United States and all the nuclear
weapons states to abide by their obligations under international law
and Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty by renouncing the use
of nuclear weapons, and taking immediate, unilateral and verifiable
steps toward abolition of their nuclear arsenals. Further, we demand
that the United States sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and
continue as a signatory to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
We also call on the United States and the other nuclear weapons
states to cease the global trade in conventional weapons because it
promotes the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as regional
arms races that could make the use of nuclear weapons more likely.
Any campaign calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons that does
not acknowledge the permeable boundary between the military and
so-called peaceful uses of nuclear energy, will fail. We call on the
United States and all other nuclear states to phase out their
civilian nuclear power programs that contaminate the earth for
generations, and replace them with non-nuclear renewable energy
sources.
Whatever risks there may be in pursuing disarmament are completely
outweighed by the risks inherent in continued global nuclearisation.
Living under the threat of nuclear cataclysm undermines the dignity
of human life. Indeed, all life on earth is betrayed by the existence
of nuclear weapons. We call on all citizens to join us, in the belief
that change will come because, finally, we will make it come.
Signatories
Mrs. Lalita and Admiral L. Ramdas, Retd. Chief of Indian Navy and
Chairman, National Committee, Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and
Peace, India
Harsh Kapoor, South Asians Against Nukes
Achin Vinayak, New Delhi, India
Bittu Sahgal, Editor, Sanctuary Magazine, Mumbai, India
Jennifer Scarlott, Sanctuary Magazine, New York, USA
Philip Carter, Vancouver, Canada
Debi Goenka, Bombay Environment Action Group, Mumbai, India
Nityanand Jayaraman, Corpwatchindia, India
Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh, Pune, India
Hugues Vitry, Republic of Mauritius
Ajit Kaujalgi, Intach, Pondicherry, India
Ann Leonard, Director Multinationals Resource Center, USA
Vijay Crishna, Mumbai, India Jyoti Punwani, Mumbai, India
Nicholas Claxton, London, U.K.
Lata P.M., Mumbai, India
Pervin Jehangir, Mumbai, India
Sarosh Framroze, Mumbai, India
Rao Tarte, India
Shashi Mehta, India
Rajni Bakshi, India
Dr. Udayan Desai, India
Dr. (Mrs.) Rajani Desai, India
Kush Singh, India
Mayank Gandhi, India
Sudipt Sen, K-West Citizen's Association, Mumbai
Joanne Landy, New York
To add your name to the petition, please email info@sanctuaryasia.com
There is a tall brick gateway on each side of the border. One side
proclaims in Hindi, "Mera Bharat Mahan." Our India Is Great. On the
other side, the sign is written in Urdu: "Pakistan Zindabad." Long
Live Pakistan.
I had arrived in Lahore a few days before, on a Pakistan
International Airlines jet. Passport in hand, I took my place in a
line before a row of desks where customs officials sat. Two men in
mufti fell in beside me, and one of them asked for my papers. He had
recognized my Indian passport. His right eye was filmy, and it
remained fixed on something to my left while he questioned me about
my itinerary: where I was going, where I would stay, how I knew my
hosts. I looked up to notice that the line had disappeared. An
official waved me over, ignoring the plainclothes policemen. "Welcome
to Pakistan," he said.
It's a forty-minute drive from Lahore to Wagah, where the border
lies. The road to Wagah wends its way through small pastoral villages
full of brick kilns, buffaloes, and mustard fields. There were boys
playing cricket in dusty plots by the roadside. There were gaudily
decorated buses -- one of them had an F-16 painted on the driver's
side, with the word "Pilot" emblazoned underneath. There were cattle,
bullock-carts, and turbaned men on foot. Every few minutes, we passed
another emaciated dog, barking insistently, guarding its stretch of
broken highway. I was just thinking how similar this was to the
landscape on the other side of the border when Anwar Muhammad, my
driver, asked, "Do you have wide roads like this in India, too?" I
lied and said no. I was trying to be friendly to each and every
Pakistani. I was going to the border, after all.
Suddenly, Anwar pulled over. We would have to walk the rest of the
way. Anwar explained that the only vehicle allowed to cross the
border was a bus that ran between New Delhi and Lahore. The route was
opened in early 1999, and Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister of
India, had made the inaugural trip. The words "Sada-e-Sarhad" (Call
of the Border) were painted on both sides of the bus. Vajpayee had
greeted his Pakistani counterpart, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, here
at Wagah. But only a few months later, war broke out. The fighting
was once again along the Line of Control that functions as the border
in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The battle was fought in and
around a town called Kargil, among snow-covered Himalayan peaks. Soon
after the cease-fire that ended the fighting in Kargil, Sharif was
deposed in a military coup. Still, the bus soldiers on, rolling
through the gates at Wagah four times a week. When we got out of the
car to walk, I noticed that Anwar was carrying a light machine gun.
As I approached the border post, a young Pakistani guy walked just
ahead of me, cigarette in hand. Two men were sitting on chairs by the
side of the road. One of them gestured sternly at the cigarette. The
azaan, the call to prayer, had just sounded from a nearby mosque.
"It's Ramzan," the man said in Urdu. The smoker quickly stamped the
cigarette out. The man on the chair told Anwar to remove the magazine
from his gun and give it to the guards farther up the road.
After passing under the arched gateway, you walk for a long stretch
toward a guard who protects a white line across the tar road. This is
the Zero Point. The border between India and Pakistan is
approximately 1,250 miles long, but the Zero Point is the only place
where you're allowed to cross. White arrows point at the line from
either side, as if you could miss it.
* * *
Wagah. Throughout the subcontinent, that single word conjures
memories of Partition, the monumental act that carved Pakistan out of
India in 1947. The idea of a separate Muslim state, free from Hindu
domination, had first been voiced in 1930 by the poet Mohammed Iqbal.
Seventeen years later, when the idea became a reality, the creation
of a new country for Indian Muslims was accompanied by unimaginable
violence. More than a million people died. Partition precipitated the
largest exodus in recorded history. How many migrated across the
brand new border? Fourteen million? Eighteen million?
The British, preparing to grant India its independence, had announced
the plan in June of 1947. Three weeks later, they set up a Boundary
Commission to separate the Muslim-majority areas from the
Hindu-majority ones. In a matter of weeks, the British had created
Pakistan. Little thought was given to the millions who lost their
homes overnight. People who had only just won their freedom from
Britain were now told that they were refugees. The principal
architect of Partition, Cyril Radcliffe, had never been to India
before. He knew nothing about it, save what he picked up in five
weeks in a New Delhi office, studying unreliable maps and outdated
census statistics. The day before Independence, Radcliffe wrote to
his nephew:
Down comes the Union Jack on Friday morning and up goes -- for the
moment I rather forget what, but it has a spinning wheel or a
spider's web in the middle. I am going to see Mountbatten sworn as
the first Governor General of the Indian Union at the Viceroy's house
in the morning and then I station myself firmly on the Delhi airport
until an aeroplane from England comes along. Nobody in India will
love me for the award about the Punjab and Bengal and there will be
roughly 80 million people with a grievance who will begin looking for
me. I do not want them to find me. I have worked and traveled and
sweated -- oh I have sweated all the time.
When you go to Wagah and stand near the white line that divides the
two countries, it is impossible not to think of Radcliffe. Perhaps
it's too easy to blame the British. The novelist Khwaja Ahmad Abbas
once asked, "Did the English whisper in your ears that you may chop
off the head of whichever Hindu you find, or that you must plunge a
knife in the stomach of whichever Muslim you find?" And yet Indian
nationalism was a response to British rule. The ideology of
nationalism is an ideology of difference, a return to roots, a vision
of wholeness. That's why so many visitors to Wagah seem to take
comfort in a white line painted on the ground. The line assures the
viewer that the border exists, clearly defined and zealously
protected. The line returns more than one-sixth of the world's
inhabitants to a moment in their history, more than fifty years ago,
when they awoke to freedom.
Those who seek such reassurance are severely tested by other lines.
I'm thinking of the lines composed by Urdu and Hindi writers who
write about Partition. Many of those visiting Wagah are familiar with
Saadat Hasan Manto's classic short story "Toba Tek Singh." It tells
of Bishan Singh, an old inmate of a lunatic asylum, who is also
called by the name of his village in Punjab: Toba Tek Singh. When he
is told about Partition, Singh exclaims, "Uper the gur gur the mung
the dal of the laltain." That is neither Punjabi nor English nor
Hindi nor Urdu -- it's just gibberish. In the story, no one seems to
know whether Toba Tek Singh belongs in India or Pakistan, and his
insanity becomes a mirror that reveals the fundamental absurdity of
maps and nations. "Toba Tek Singh" ends with an aerial view of its
eponymous character.
There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more
barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of
earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.
Where did Toba Tek Singh lie? If the painted line is the border, then
where is the "bit of earth" in between? In Wagah, that's what the
young man who'd been asked to extinguish his cigarette wanted to
know. He addressed his question to a Pakistani Ranger. At that
moment, the guard was showing me the hobnailed soles of his
standard-issue sandals. He looked up at the young man and gestured
vaguely toward the barbed wire.
* * *
A week later, I was at a literary festival in Delhi, listening to
Gulzar, an Urdu poet and filmmaker from Bombay. Born in a village
called Deena in what is now Pakistan, Gulzar crossed into India by
train during the riots in the months before Partition. As he
remembers it, "I was still a child then, and I had to step over the
corpses." At the festival, Gulzar sat on a panel devoted to Partition
literature, and he had invited me because he knew that I had just
been to Pakistan. The meeting was held in a sunlit brick
amphitheater, with strings of marigold hung from the surrounding
trees; mustard flowers waved in the fields beyond. Gulzar read a
series of works, concluding with a poem entitled "Toba Tek Singh."
Gulzar's poem is faithful to the details of Manto's story: the poem's
narrator wants to go to Wagah in order to tell Bishan Singh that the
ordeal of Partition still continues. There are hearts that have yet
to be divided; 1947 was only the first partition. Bishan's Muslim
friends have succeeded in crossing the border, though some only as
corpses. Bishan's daughter used to visit him once a year, an inch
taller each time; now she is diminished by an inch with every passing
year. The poem opens with the narrator hearing the call from Wagah:
I have to go to Wagah and meet Toba Tek Singh's Bishan
I have heard that he is still standing on his swollen legs
exactly where Manto had left him.
He still mutters "Uper the gur gur the mung the dal of the laltain."
Listening to Gulzar read his poem, my thoughts returned to the young
man in Wagah. The truth is, there is no neutral territory between
India and Pakistan. In his new book Amritsar to Lahore, Stephen Alter
writes:
One of the great disappointments of my own journey was to discover
that there is no such thing as a no man's land. At both the railway
and road crossings, the territory of each country is entirely
contiguous. Nothing separates these two nations, except for manmade
structures like fences and gates. . . . Pakistan ends precisely where
India begins.
So why is the myth of the no man's land so persistent? I think it has
something to do with the power of literature. Alter himself admits
that Toba Tek Singh came to mind when he visited the border. Indeed,
for many readers, Toba Tek Singh has long been the symbol that
captures the meaning of Partition. Bishan is the fool who does not
know whether he belongs to India or to Pakistan, and his no man's
land is a limbo of existential doubt and despair. But I think another
reading is possible. Maybe Bishan is staking a claim to the "bit of
earth which had no name." Maybe he is saying yes to both nations. And
maybe a no man's land is the only place where he can do that.
* * *
On May 11, 1998, three explosions rocked the desert wastes of
Rajasthan. Hours later, Prime Minister Vajpayee held a press
conference, announcing that the world's largest democracy had
conducted a test of its nuclear weapons. Of course, this was no mere
scientific experiment; the test was a threat, intended to intimidate
Pakistan. Newspapers and governments around the world denounced the
detonations, but India was unbowed. By the end of the month, Pakistan
had exploded its own nukes, realizing the dream of an "Islamic bomb"
and answering India's challenge in kind. When fighting in Kargil
erupted the following year, Indian and Pakistani leaders exchanged
nuclear threats no fewer than thirteen times. The most remarkable
thing about the contest of tests was the rhetoric, a kind of medieval
machismo. Bal Thackeray, leader of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena
Party, was positively exuberant: "We have proved that we are not
eunuchs any more." India had named its missile system Prithvi, Hindi
for "earth." But Pakistan assumed the Prithvi in question was Prithvi
Raj Chuhan, a twelfth-century Hindu king who resisted the Afghan
invader Shahabuddin Ghauri, founder of the first Muslim kingdom in
India. As it happened, Pakistan had just named one of its own missile
programs after the aforementioned Afghan invader.
To all appearances, the two countries were more divided than ever.
And yet despite all the military posturing, ambivalence about
Partition runs deep. Indeed, even as they flaunt their nuclear
arsenal, the ultra-nationalists of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) harbor fantasies of erasing the border: their dream is to
reunite the territories, by force if necessary, in order to create an
undivided India. Theirs is a dream of unity -- albeit a murderous
dream. The dream exists on the other side of the border, too. In
Pakistan, a militant Islamic group recently resolved to wrest Kashmir
from Indian control and then use the province as a beachhead for a
jihad against the whole of India. No one better embodies this
Pakistani dream than Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the militant
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen group, who was released from an Indian jail on
New Year's Eve 1999 in exchange for hostages from a hijacked Indian
Airlines flight. Azhar has warned India:
Allah has sent me here, and if you cast an evil eye towards my
beloved country, I will first of all enter India with 500,000 of my
mujahideen, inshallah. That is why I am touring almost the whole
nation these days. Half a million are ready, and according to the
messages I am getting from across the country, I have many more
mujahideen than these. The mothers are giving me their sons and
asking me to make them like Bin Qasim [the Arab conqueror of Sind in
710 A.D.], not the worshippers of the West. The sisters are handing
me their brothers and asking me to convert them into the warriors of
Islam. The elders are telling me that our beards are white but even
today we are ready to take up guns and come with you.
For fundamentalists on either side, the present is just a prelude to
the past. Both sides dream of rolling back the clock -- and rolling
back the border.
These competing fantasies of unity have bred a new kind of affinity
on the subcontinent. As the filmmaker and peacenik Anand Patwardhan
puts it, "Cross-border solidarity has been the only silver lining in
the mushroom cloud." We were sitting in a makeshift editing room in
Patwardhan's Bombay apartment. As we talked, I looked at a
freeze-frame on his monitor. It showed a famous Bollywood
personality, mouth open, in the midst of uttering a patriotic inanity
about how each bit of dirt is sacred to Indians. Patwardhan
continued: "Ever since India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in
1998, relations between peace activists in India and Pakistan have
blossomed." While much of the country was celebrating the first
nuclear blast, he explained, Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace
and Democracy deepened a dialogue between citizens who want to work
for peace in both countries. In seven years, the forum has sponsored
four successful conferences, and peace activists now gather every New
Year's Eve at Wagah for a candlelight vigil at the border.
Do good fences make good neighbors? The peace activists certainly
want better relations between India and Pakistan, but they aren't
lobbying for unification. Although they are eager to ease
restrictions on travel and trade across the border, they nevertheless
want the border itself to remain intact. In a better world, they
suggest, borders won't mean so much; indeed, the nuclearization of
the subcontinent reveals the arbitrariness of the division. Who needs
armed guards and a white line when you can exterminate a city with
the push of a button? The white line at Wagah seems almost obsolete,
an artifact from an era when fighting a war meant moving troops
across a border.
* * *
The metal gates on both sides are pulled shut at sunset, at the same
precise instant, by opposing teams of guards. This evening ceremony
is called Beating Retreat, and it's the most popular tourist
attraction in Wagah -- on the night I saw it, there were visitors
from all over the world. Soldiers from both India and Pakistan
present arms. Then the national flags are lowered amid much blowing
of bugles. Commanders from the two border patrols march up to one
another and shake hands. The tourists applaud. Before the event is
over, spectators on both sides are allowed to rush forward and gaze
at each other from a distance of about fifteen feet. Throughout this
ceremony, the guards mirror each other perfectly: their
goose-stepping, their aggressive gestures, their shouted commands,
all in sync. But the two enemies make sure not to cross the line that
holds them apart. So how do they learn to perform this intimate
dance? How well do we know each other? How hard do we work to remain
enemies?
Related links: Background Analysis of the Indo-Pakistani Standoff, March 2002 (PDF format)
Just when it seemed that the
Indo-Pakistani military standoff had begun to show signs of de-escalation,
tensions have flared up again. In response to the recent terror attacks
(April-May, 2002) by Pakistan-based insurgent groups in Indian controlled
Kashmir, India's Vajpayee government has threatened to prosecute a limited
conventional war against Pakistan to punish Islamabad for what New Delhi
describes as "cross-border terrorism." Pakistan has denied
culpability in the terror attacks. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf
claims that his government lends only moral and political support to disaffected
Kashmiri militants fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir. However, New
Delhi and the international community disagree. Exasperated with
Pakistan's mendacity, the Indian government has threatened strikes against
militant camps and related infrastructure in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
In turn, Pakistan has expressed alarm at
the threat of war and warned India of a ferocious response. In late May,
Musharraf threatened that if attacked, Pakistan would take the war into Indian
territory. More ominously, Pakistani government representatives have made it
plain that if pushed into a corner by its larger and more powerful neighbor,
Pakistan would not hesitate to use its nuclear arsenal in
self-defense.[1] To reiterate this point,
Pakistan conducted a succession of ballistic missile tests in the last week of
May. Although the tests were aimed primarily at a domestic audience, they once
again highlighted the dangers of larger conventional war in South Asia and how
such a war could easily take a tragic nuclear turn.
However, military tensions that peaked in
the last week of May now appear to be winding down. International pressure has
forced Pakistan to back down in the crisis; the Musharraf regime has capitulated
before Indian demands to end the cross-border insurgency. Both India and
Pakistan are now taking steps to defuse military tensions. In an acknowledgement
that Pakistan is indeed taking positive steps to halt cross-border
infiltrations, India has lifted the overflight ban imposed on Pakistani
commercial jets following the attacks on the Indian parliament in December 2001;
the naval armada massed in the North Arabian sea has also been ordered back to
its home base. India is also expected to upgrade diplomatic relations with
Islamabad and shortly undertake other steps that would signal a symbolic stand
down from war time alert.
This paper begins
by presenting a brief overview of India's and Pakistan's
respective narratives on the post-1989 Kashmir insurgency. Next, it
explains the rationale behind India's compellance strategy and how the
Indo-Pakistani crisis is viewed in Washington. After reviewing the twists and
turns in Pakistan's post-September 11th Kashmir policy, this paper
concludes that Islamabad's apparent decision to accept war termination in
Kashmir on New Delhi's terms essentially implies that India may have
finally called Pakistan's nuclear bluff over Kashmir.
Although the international
community is focused on the prospects of another war in South Asia, India and
Pakistan have actually been at war for nearly 12-years. For more than a decade,
Pakistan has preyed on India's political mismanagement in Kashmir to
finance, train, and arm Kashmiri and foreign civilian combatants to wage a
low-intensity or sub-conventional war against Indian security forces in Kashmir.
The sub-conventional war in Kashmir is a spin-off of Pakistan's success in
using Mujahideen proxies to defeat the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan in the
1980s; it is also part of a policy of deploying semi-autonomous radical Islamic
groups to achieve foreign policy and strategic goals abroad.
Pakistan supports the insurgents in Kashmir
for several reasons. First, it argues that India is responsible for "state
terrorism" in Kashmir and military pressure alone will force New Delhi
into granting the "oppressed Kashmiri Muslims" their right of
"self determination." Second, the insurgents tie down a
disproportionate number of Indian military and paramilitary forces in domestic
fire fighting operations, which erodes India's overall conventional edge
against Pakistan. And finally, Pakistan hopes that the defeat of the Indian
military in Kashmir will be sweet revenge for New Delhi's role in
Pakistan's break up after the 1971 Bangladesh War. More significantly,
Pakistan's prosecution of the sub-conventional war against India has been
facilitated by the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability since the late
1980s. The military establishment in Rawalpindi until very recently believed
that its nuclear arsenal would deter India from widening the war and force New
Delhi to fight the insurgency in Kashmir on terms determined by Pakistan.
India admits that the root causes of the
insurgency are the consequence of myopic policies pursued by successive
governments in New Delhi since the 1950s. But it blames Pakistan for the
insurgency and the endless spiral of violence, which in its view has prevented
India from negotiating with the disaffected groups and restoring normalcy in
Kashmir. In India's view, misgovernance is not confined to Kashmir per
se; it is a tragic consequence of the poor quality of Indian democracy,
which affects other Indian provinces as well. New Delhi also blames Pakistani
sponsored militants for destroying Kashmir's syncretic culture (a blend of
Sufi-Islam and Hinduism), ethnically cleansing the region of its Hindu-Pundit
minorities, and promoting a Talibanized brand of Islam. The Indian army is also
tired of fighting a reactive war of attrition against a hostile population that
it cannot possibly win. The 12-year war has sucked in nearly 200,000 Indian
military and paramilitary troops. New Delhi has estimated its military and
civilian casualties during this period between 35,000-70,000. Cumulatively,
these losses exceed the combined losses of all four conventional wars that India
has fought Pakistan during the last five decades.
As a result, New Delhi has concluded that
it cannot resolve the Kashmir problem politically short of terminating the
insurgency in Kashmir. Since the insurgency cannot be defeated by fighting the
civilian combatants in a reactive campaign in Indian-controlled Kashmir alone,
India must take the battle into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. This can be
achieved in two ways. First, India can either politically coerce Pakistan by
threatening war to end support to the insurgents in Kashmir. Or alternatively,
India can change the terms of the insurgency in Kashmir by initiating a limited
conventional war to raise the costs of the sub-conventional war for Pakistan to
a point where they become unsustainable.
The meaning of the limited war strategy is
that India has reached a point where it is willing to test Pakistan's
nuclear resolve over Kashmir
The Indian government has
essentially capitalized on the political opportunity created by the September
11th terrorist attacks on the United States and the Bush doctrine against
international terrorism to resort to a high-stakes strategy of coercive
diplomacy to compel Pakistan into making a U-turn on its Kashmir policy. The
events of September helped create a favorable environment for India to act in
three ways.
First, the attacks by Al Qaeda
highlighted the role of Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies in
supporting the Taliban and other radical Islamic militant groups in Afghanistan
and Kashmir. U.S. pressure forced Pakistan into abandoning the Taliban. As there
was an organic link between Pakistan's support for radical Islamic groups
in Afghanistan and Kashmir, India succeeded in framing Pakistan as part of the
problem of terrorism.
Second, the war
against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan created a strategic convergence
between the United States and India as both countries saw terrorist-related
national security threats from radical Islamic groups operating out of
Afghanistan and Pakistani-controlled territories. India and the United States
were thus able to apply joint pressure on Islamabad to abandon support for such
groups.
Third, the events on September 11th
blurred the distinction between terrorists and "freedom fighters."
The magnitude of the violence unleashed by Al Qaeda swung international opinion
behind governments fighting radical non-state actors, especially when the
targeted state was a democracy. In particular, India was able to frame the
insurgency in Kashmir as a war between a multicultural democracy and
"monocultural" sectarianism.
Although the Indian government is prepared
to allow coercive diplomacy to run its course, several Indian leaders believe
that Pakistan's diplomatic isolation, economic bankruptcy, and
conventional military inferiority have created a strategic space where India can
successfully fight a limited conventional war with Pakistan short of an all out
conflict or nuclear exchange. Such nonchalance in the face of Pakistan's
nuclear threats might be part of an Indian strategy of nuclear brinksmanship.
Alternatively, the Vajpayee government may have concluded that Pakistan would be
unlikely to escalate to the nuclear level due to fears that the United States
would effectively restrain Islamabad from using nuclear weapons. Likewise,
India's national security managers have probably also accurately
calculated that in the event of a limited conventional war, the United States
would intervene to either terminate or limit any shooting war between India and
Pakistan to safeguard its strategic objectives in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
India's current belligerence stands
in sharp contrast to its diffidence in the early and mid-1990s. At the time
Indian elites feared that an Indo-Pakistani war would internationalize the
Kashmir dispute and generate pressure on India to cap and roll back its
strategic nuclear and missile programs. In the present strategic environment,
however, Indian leaders are confident that the great powers including the United
States share India's perceptions of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism
and sympathize with New Delhi's stance on Kashmir. In fact, in the present
crisis, great power intervention has favored India as the United States,
European Union, Japan, and Russia have applied unremitting pressure on Islamabad
to stop cross-border infiltrations into Indian territory. Similarly,
India's growing strategic partnership with the United States and relative
success in persuading Washington to accept its case for a minimal deterrent have
provided the Vajpayee government added confidence that the diplomatic
repercussions of a limited conventional war in South Asia can be kept within
tolerable limits.
As tensions simmer in South
Asia, the United States has emerged as the principal mediator between India and
Pakistan and led international diplomatic efforts aimed at conflict avoidance.
While the U.S. alliance with Pakistan is tactical, the growing partnership with
India is based on a longer term post-Cold War convergence of strategic
interests. Washington is well aware of Pakistan's past involvement with
the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and its present role in aiding and abetting the
cross-border insurgency in Kashmir. But it also believes that President
Musharraf's regime is perhaps the best antidote to Islamic militancy in
Pakistan. Therefore, the United States has attempted to safeguard its emerging
partnership with India by leaning on Pakistan to terminate support for the
Kashmir insurgents in a manner that avoids humiliating President Musharraf
publicly or compromising his domestic credibility. Above all, Washington has
sought to prevent a nuclear conflagration in the region.
The United States regards Pakistan as an
important ally and frontline state in the battle against global terrorism. There
is much appreciation in Washington for Pakistan's role in helping
"root out" the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Following the
exfiltration of Al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan into the
"no-man's-land" that constitutes Pakistan's tribal
areas, the Musharraf regime has taken the unprecedented step of deploying the
army and paramilitary forces to arrest them despite considerable tribal
opposition. Pakistan's security agencies are also cooperating with the
United States in trying to net Al Qaeda leaders who are presumably taking
shelter in Pakistani
cities.[2]
The
Bush administration is justifiably concerned, therefore, that a war in South
Asia and continuing military tensions with India could distract the Pakistani
army from its operations along the Afghanistan border; withdrawal of Pakistani
forces from the tribal regions could allow Taliban and Al Qaeda forces to
regroup.[3] Indeed, one theory circulating is
that Al Qaeda members are collaborating with militant groups in Kashmir to
create incidents to provoke an Indo-Pakistani war; the rationale being that such
a war would release pressure from the Pakistani army to hunt them
down.[4] Similarly, domestic turmoil in Pakistan,
a consequence of a potential war against India, could undermine the Musharraf
regime, and seriously constrict its capacity to combat Islamic militant groups
at home. Senior U.S. officials also fear that in the worst case scenario, a war
might force the United States to evacuate its forces from
Pakistan.[5] Such a move would invariably break
the momentum and possibly disrupt U.S. military operations against the Taliban
and Al Qaeda leaders hiding in the treacherous mountainous terrain along the
Pakistan-Afghan border.
The official and
unofficial view in Washington is that the concept of a limited conventional war
under nuclear conditions is a dangerous proposition. There are no guarantees
that such a war could be kept limited; wars have a momentum of their own, and
there exists a high risk that such a conflict could soon spin out of control. As
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage put it bluntly in a recent
interview, "the problem is once the iron starts to be engaged between the
two sides, then reason and logic seem to go out of the
window."[6] The U.S. understanding is that
nuclear deterrence in South Asia is based on crude nuclear arsenals and delivery
systems that are relatively vulnerable and unstable, rudimentary command and
control, weak communications, and poor intelligence. At the same time, both
India and Pakistan are geographically proximate, have a history of misperceiving
each other's intentions and resolve, and have scant understanding of the
nuclear "red lines" on either side of the border. Under such
circumstances, New Delhi and Islamabad could end up in a nuclear war
accidentally, or through inadvertence or miscalculation. Should such an
eventuality come to pass, it would create a human and environmental disaster on
an unprecedented scale and set Indian and Pakistani societies back by several
decades.[7]
But despite these concerns, the United
States has implicitly and explicitly accepted India's argument that
Pakistan is part of the problem of terrorism, and has rejected Islamabad's
claims that it lends only moral and political support to the civilian combatants
in Kashmir. During the first phase of the Afghan campaign (October-December
2001), senior Bush administration officials were guarded in their public
criticism of Pakistan's role in fomenting the sub-conventional war in
Indian-controlled Kashmir. That was largely because Islamabad's logistical
and intelligence support were critical for the success of the campaign against
the Taliban. At the time, the United States also wanted to avoid embarrassing
and undermining President Musharraf, who was then facing considerable heat from
Pakistan's religious parties and Islamic militant groups who opposed his
decision to abandon the Taliban and support U.S. war-related efforts.
But as India and Pakistan stand on the
brink of war, senior Bush administration officials from the president on down
have publicly admonished President Musharraf and demanded that he deliver on his
promises to stop cross-border activities of civilian combatants into
Indian-controlled Kashmir.[8] High-level
diplomatic emissaries from the United States, Britain, and the European Union
have unanimously made the point that the onus lies on Pakistan to reduce the
political temperature in South Asia.[9]
Washington has also made it plain that it will no longer countenance the
Pakistani government's characterization of the militants fighting the
insurgency in Kashmir as "freedom fighters." Instead, the United
States expects Pakistan to dismantle the camps and related infrastructure for
these groups permanently; the United States will also independently verify this
using national technical means.[10] Should
Pakistan fail to comply with U.S. demands, it risks jeopardizing its
post-September 11th relationship with Washington.
Simultaneously, the United States has
exercised considerable diplomatic pressure on India to exercise restraint and
let diplomacy run its course before initiating any military action. Bush
administration representatives have urged that once Pakistan begins to dismantle
the insurgent training camps, and levels of cross-border infiltrations decline,
the Vajpayee government should reciprocate by demobilizing its forces currently
deployed along the border. India should also reciprocate by restarting a
diplomatic dialogue with Pakistan on all issues, including Kashmir. More
significantly, India should hold free and fair elections in Kashmir, and begin a
serious dialogue with Pakistan, with U.S. and international facilitation if
necessary, to find a political and peaceful resolution to the Kashmir
dispute.[11]
Pakistan's Kashmir policy
has clearly failed. Despite waging a sub-conventional war against India for more
than a decade, Islamabad is nowhere close to its goal of wresting Kashmir from
Indian control. To the contrary, Pakistan is now confronted with the possibility
of a conventional war with India, a war that it does not want, and one that it
cannot win. And despite the overall alienation of the Kashmiri Muslims from
Indian rule and India's record of human rights abuses in the region, the
international community has rejected Pakistan's Kashmir policy. Equally
significant, the international community has made it plain to Islamabad that
regardless of the moral legitimacy of Pakistan's claims on Kashmir, its
policy of waging a sub-conventional war using Islamic fundamentalist proxies in
Indian-controlled Kashmir is unacceptable.
Pakistan was forced to make the first
U-turn in Afghanistan in September 2001 after U.S. pressure forced it to abandon
the Taliban. At the time it was clear that Pakistan would sooner rather than
later have to end its policy of arming insurgents in Kashmir, given the organic
link between its Afghanistan and Kashmir policies. In both cases,
Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment deployed militant Islamic
proxies to achieve foreign policy and strategic goals. But the generals in
Rawalpindi and Pakistan's radical Islamic parties and groups refused to
pay heed. In September last year, President Musharraf disingenuously attempted
to defend the military establishment's ignominious failure in Afghanistan,
especially the abandonment of its Taliban ally, by arguing that it was done to
safeguard the Kashmir cause.
In January
2002, President Musharraf responded to international pressure and India's
military buildup by making a seminal speech in which he spelled out his vision
of Pakistan as a moderate Islamic state.[12]
Musharraf boldly declared his government's resolve to stamp out Islamic
militancy in Pakistan. He also made public assurances that Pakistan would not
allow its territory to be used for terrorist activities anywhere in the world,
including Kashmir.[13] Pakistan's
international interlocutors interpreted this statement as a signal that
Islamabad would finally begin reigning in the militant groups waging
sub-conventional war in India. But these assurances turned out to be false.
Although cross-border infiltration into Indian- controlled Kashmir showed a
visible decline in January and February, after March 2002, they bounced back to
their earlier levels; according to preliminary data, the number of violent
incidents against Indian security forces between March and early May 2002
actually exceeded the number of similar incidents in April-May
2001.[14]
Perhaps
the military establishment in Rawalpindi genuinely believed that as long as
Pakistan cooperated with the United States against the Taliban and Al Qaeda,
Washington would turn a blind eye to Pakistan's policy in Kashmir. Or in
other words that the Bush administration would continue to paint the Taliban and
Al Qaeda with the brush of terrorism, but accept the civilian combatants trained
and abetted by the Pakistani military to fight the insurgency in
Indian-controlled Kashmir as "freedom fighters." This proved to be a
grave miscalculation.
Even worse for
President Musharraf, Pakistan's domestic elites stand divided on his
Kashmir policy. Although the Islamic parties want him to continue the supposed
Jihad in Kashmir, mainstream opposition parties and liberal intellectuals
have made a strong case for terminating the insurgency. The latter have
forcefully argued that perpetual confrontation with India has financially
bankrupted the Pakistani state; the policy of carving a political space for
radical Islamic militants in Pakistan's civil society has led to the growth of
militant Islamic sectarianism within Pakistan. These liberals and several
mainstream politicians maintain that so long as the military-intelligence
establishment continues to allow such groups to operate from within Pakistani
territories and arms them to wage wars abroad (as in Afghanistan and Kashmir),
Pakistan will be unable achieve domestic and external
peace.[15]
Slowly
though inexorably, the Musharraf regime has begun to change Pakistan's
decade-old Kashmir policy.[16] There are
indications that in the last week of May, President Musharraf finally ordered
his military to reign in militant groups operating from Pakistani-controlled
territories. Militants have been advised to stand down and desist from crossing
into Indian territories; their wireless communications have been cut off; and
camps where militants were housed and trained are being
dismantled.[17] Those militant leaders
resisting the Pakistani army's diktat have been placed on a watch list and
implicitly threatened with arrest.[18]
The two key questions now are whether
Musharraf can successfully implement a U-turn on Kashmir and contain the
subsequent domestic fall out without jeopardizing the stability of his regime.
And second, whether Pakistan's army and intelligence agencies can actually
force the Islamic militant groups to do their bidding and halt insurgency
operations in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Domestically, doing an about turn on
Kashmir will be a tough sell for President Musharraf. Last year, when the
Musharraf regime abandoned the Taliban and cracked down on the Islamic political
parties and groups protesting that decision, it enjoyed extensive support from
Pakistan's silent majority and the mainstream political parties. However,
after Musharraf imposed himself as president for a period of five years in May
2002 through the instrument of a rigged referendum of doubtful constitutional
legality, he stands politically isolated. The liberal elites and mainstream
opposition parties who applauded Musharraf enthusiastically for his bid to reign
in Islamic militancy in Pakistan, now stand united in their opposition to his
rule. Hence, Musharraf is now trapped between the devil and the deep sea. On the
one hand he risks war and possible national ruin for Pakistan; on the other, he is
vulnerable to accusations of being a national sell-out.
At present the Musharraf regime is engaged
in a war against Islamic militants on two fronts. It is assisting U.S. forces in
their fight against the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership, which
has melted into Pakistani cities and most likely taken shelter in the
mountainous terrain along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Simultaneously, it is
battling militant Islamic sectarian groups and terrorists at home. The regime is
now confronted with the onerous responsibility of reigning in the militant
proxies fighting the Indian security forces in Kashmir. In the last six months,
Al Qaeda and domestic terrorist groups in Pakistan have carried out a series of
murderous terrorist attacks in retaliation against the military's
crackdown on militant Islamic groups as part of the U.S.-led global campaign
against terrorism.[19] There is now the very
real possibility that the militants trained by Pakistan's military and
intelligence agencies for insurgency operations in Kashmir could ally themselves
with these terrorist groups to wage a war against the Pakistani
government.[20]
There is also the question whether Pakistan
can effectively control the militant proxy groups to do its bidding. The
militants trained and armed by Pakistan's army and its intelligence
agencies are not entirely creatures of the Pakistani state. They are
semi-autonomous in nature and often pursue their agenda independently of the
priorities and policy shifts in Islamabad. After receiving state patronage for
nearly two decades, the militant Islamic groups have developed deep roots in
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan's civil society in general.
Indeed, some banned militant groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba have
vowed to continue the fight in Indian-Kashmir, regardless of any changes in
Islamabad's agenda.[21] The possibility
that such renegade groups might continue receiving help from the middle ranks
within Pakistan's military-intelligence agencies is also not far fetched.
There is also the possibility that some groups or individuals might team up with
remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in India
with the goal of sparking an Indo-Pakistani war.
Hence Musharraf needs a political cover to
cloak his retreat in Kashmir. Thus far, the Indian government has refused to
oblige. If India ends up humiliating the Musharraf regime by desisting from
making any reciprocal concessions such as demobilization, or restoring the
dialogue to discuss a political solution to the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan,
then the Musharraf government might find its credibility at home entirely
compromised. There would then be the danger that the Islamic political parties,
alienated Kashmiri militant groups, and the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda
leadership might regroup and exploit the discontent within Pakistan's
civil society and sections of the military establishment to destabilize the
Musharraf regime. In the worst case, Musharraf might himself become the victim
of assassination or be toppled in a coup from within the army ranks.
Pakistan will therefore have to make
careful domestic and foreign policy choices in the next several months. If
President Musharraf and the Pakistan army deliver on their promise to reign in
the militant groups waging war against Indian security forces in Kashmir, they
will win economic and political support from the international community. The
onus will then be on India to grant political autonomy to its alienated
Kashmiri-Muslim populace and more significantly, to negotiate a political
solution to the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. However, should Pakistan's
military leaders renege on their assurances and return to their earlier policy
of waging a sub-conventional war with India, they will risk international
political isolation, economic sanctions, and possibly war with India.
The crisis in South Asia
that reached its peak in the last week of May 2002 now appears to be winding
down. India has publicly acknowledged that President Musharraf is making good on
his promises; during the first week of June, cross-border militant infiltrations
have declined substantially. According to the Indian foreign ministry, the shift
in Pakistan's policies marks the beginning of a "promising
process." India's foreign minister Jaswant Singh has also declared
that if General Musharraf's pledges are "converted on the ground
into action...India will reciprocate in a manner that is
befitting."[22] This statement is being
viewed as an indication that India will shortly reciprocate Musharraf's
actions by both upgrading its diplomatic relations with Islamabad and as well
taking symbolic steps to signal a reduction in military tensions before U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visits the
region.[23] Similarly, across the border,
President Musharraf has also acknowledged that the chances of a war in South
Asia are now
"minimal."[24]
Prime
Minister Vajpayee has proposed that India and Pakistan follow up by establishing
joint military patrols along the line of control (LoC) to monitor cross-border
infiltrations.[25] Although Pakistan was
initially cool to the idea, it has not rejected it out of
hand.[26] Pakistan would prefer the deployment
of UN monitors along the LoC. Islamabad is also receptive to the idea of having
a joint U.S.-U.K. border patrol. But India has rejected both proposals. New
Delhi believes the LoC is too vast to be policed by a small international force.
But more to the point, India does not want to internationalize the Kashmir
dispute and prefers that both India and Pakistan reach a modus vivendi on
Kashmir bilaterally.[27]
However, regardless of Indian
sensitivities, the Kashmir dispute has become internationalized. In the
recent crisis, the great powers -- United States, Britain, European Union,
and Russia -- played a significant diplomatic role in conflict prevention.
And despite public noises to the contrary, India welcomed international
diplomatic efforts aimed at pressuring Pakistan into changing its decade-old
Kashmir policy. So whether India likes it or not, the great powers are likely to
take a greater interest in the Kashmir dispute than in the past. Although it is
unlikely that the United States will follow up with a major peace initiative
like in the Middle East, a low-key effort on the part of the Bush administration
to facilitate an Indo-Pakistani dialogue is a possibility.
Ironically, this crisis demonstrated that
the internationalization of the Kashmir issue favored India and not Pakistan.
Historically, it was Pakistan that has always tried to internationalize the
Kashmir issue in the hope that third-party mediation would counterbalance
India's greater strength. From the early 1990s, it was Pakistan that beat
the drum of a potential nuclear war over Kashmir to try and draw the attention
of the international community to pressure India into accepting international
mediation efforts and into making good on its promise for a plebiscite. However,
as it turned out, the U.S. campaign against Islamic fundamentalism and
Washington's new approach of "zero tolerance" towards
terrorism turned the tables on Pakistan. Much to Islamabad's chagrin,
international pressure focused on Pakistan to end cross-border infiltrations.
Similarly, the threat of a larger conventional war in the region and
Pakistan's nuclear first-use doctrine brought international pressures on
Islamabad to back down in the crisis. Worse, Pakistan's international
image has taken a beating. Pakistan is now not only regarded as the
"problem child" in South Asia, but is also viewed as a revisionist
as well as an irresponsible nuclear power.[28]
The Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment's decision to end cross-border infiltrations and ultimately
dismantle the militant training camps and related infrastructure, marks the
logical end of policies initiated following the September 11th terrorist attacks
on the United States last year. In the first phase, Pakistan abandoned the
Taliban in Afghanistan. In the second phase, Islamabad initiated a crackdown on
Islamic militancy within Pakistani territories. Now it has decided to stop
radical Islamic militants from waging sub-conventional war in Indian-controlled
Kashmir. Although the Pakistani government might not admit it, all three
decisions are organically tied to one another. These decisions cumulatively mark
the beginning of an attempt to reform Pakistani society domestically; they also
constitute an attempt to rethink and recast Pakistan's national security
goals. General Musharraf's decision to end Pakistan's two-decade old
policy of using the instrument of Islamic radical proxies to achieve foreign
policy and strategic goals now offers the best hope for his regime to crush
Islamic militancy domestically as well as to achieve a viable and lasting peace
with both India and Afghanistan.
Pakistan's capitulation to Indian
demands to end the cross-border insurgency constitutes a triumph of
India's strategy of compellance. Islamabad has tacitly acknowledged that
India's threat to wage war was credible; that there probably existed a
strategic space between a sub-conventional war and a full-fledged conventional
war, where India might have been able to fight a limited conventional war in
Kashmir effectively. Should this latter conclusion be borne out by subsequent
evidence, it could mean that India has finally called Pakistan's nuclear
bluff over Kashmir.
The international
media's hype notwithstanding, it was probably never India's
intentions to either inflict a major defeat on Pakistan's military or
occupy a substantial part of Pakistani territory. Rather, New Delhi's goal
all along was to raise the costs of the sub-conventional war in Kashmir for
Pakistan to the extent where they would become unsustainable. India achieved
this by first imposing the huge cost of war mobilization on Pakistan, which
strained an already overburdened Pakistani economy. When this strategy began to
yield diminishing returns, New Delhi threatened to attack militant camps and the
Pakistani army's assets and infrastructure in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
In effect, India threatened to lock Pakistan's military into a limited war
of attrition in which India could exploit its numerical superiority.
India's national security managers also calculated that Pakistan's
conventional military inferiority, financial bankruptcy, domestic political divisions,
and international isolation would give it very little space for maneuver. The
other side of that assessment was that U.S. stakes in Afghanistan and the
stability of the Musharraf regime as well as fear of a potential nuclear
conflict, would invite severe international pressure on Islamabad to retreat
before India's threat of war. Indeed, the initial outcomes of this crisis
have validated the accuracy of these calculations.
Although India has emerged from this latest
standoff successfully, the Vajpayee government will now have to think through
the various possible endgames in Kashmir. Until now, India's approach has
focused disproportionately on ending the problem of Pakistani-sponsored
insurgency operations in Kashmir; little attention has been paid to meeting the
aspirations of the alienated Kashmiri populace. Now that Pakistan has decided to
terminate support for the cross-border insurgency, international pressure will
focus on India to restore the democratic process in Kashmir and negotiate a
political solution to the dispute with Pakistan. Unless India can alleviate the
alienated Kashmiri-Muslims' sense of grievance against Indian
misgovernance and find some way to satisfy Pakistan's irredentism, the
possibility of another Indo-Pakistani conflict will remain, and peace will elude
South Asia.
Sources:
[1] Dharam Shourie,
"Defiant Pakistan threatens to use nukes," Rediff on the Net,
30 May 2002,
http://www.rediff.com
[2]
"U.S. issues fact-file on Pakistan's assistance," Dawn,
28 May 2002,
http://www.dawn.com
[3]
The Associated Press, "Pakistan Shifts Troops From Border With
Afghanistan," New York Times, 30 May 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[4]
William Safire, "Al Qaeda Provoking War," New York Times, 30
May 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[5]
"Plan to protect U.S. soldiers in Indo-Pak war," Daily Times,
8 June 2002,
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/
[6]
"Kashmir is a bilateral issue: Armitage," Rediff on the Net,
4 June 2002,
http://www.rediff.com
[7]
Tom Shanker, "12 Million Could Die at Once in an Indo-Pakistan War,"
New York Times, 27 May 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[8]
Elisabeth BuMiller and Tom Shanker, "Bush Presses Pakistan and Orders
Rumsfeld to Region," 31 May 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[9]
Saukat Piracha and Imtiaz Gul, "Freedom fighters are terrorists:
Straw," Daily Times, 29 May 2002,
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/
[10]
Sridhar Krishnaswami, "Make action evident, U.S. tells Musharraf,"
Hindu, 8 June 2002,
http://www.hinduonnet.com
[11]
C. Raja Mohan, "Musharraf vows to stop infiltration: Armitage,"
Hindu, 8 June 2002,
http://www.hinduonnet.com
[12]
"In Musharraf's Words: 'A Day of Reckoning',"
New York Times, 12 January 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[13]
Ibid.
[14] Jim
Hoagland, "Misreading Musharraf," Washington Post, 23 May
2002,
http://www.washingtonpost.com
[15]
"Change of regime can avert war, Benazir," Dawn, 26 May 2002,
http://www.dawn.com; Irfan Husain,
"Giving peace a chance," Dawn, 1 June 2002; Shafqat Mahmood,
"Rethinking national priorities," The News International
Pakistan, 7 June 2002,
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/
[16]
Celia W. Dugger and Tom Shanker, "Indians See Hope as Pakistan Halts
Kashmir Militants," New York Times, 8 June 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[17]
Munir Ahmad, "Kashmir Militants Say Camps Shut Down," Washington
Post, 7 June 2002,
http://www.washingtonpost.com
[18]
Mohammad Imran, "32-top jihadi leaders put on govt. watch list,"
Daily Times, 7 June 2002,
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk
[19]
Karl Vick and Kamran Khan, "Al Qaeda Tied to Attack in Pakistani Cities:
Militants Joining Forces Against Western Targets," Washington Post,
30 May 2002,
http://www.washingtonpost.com
[20]
Dexter Filkins, "Kashmiri Militants Angry At Being Blocked From
India," New York Times, 9 June 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[21]
Ibid.
[22] C.
Raja Mohan, "Musharraf's pledge a 'step forward,' says
Jaswant," Hindu, 9 June 2002,
http://www.hinduonnet.com
[23]
Ibid.
[24]
"War threat minimal, says Musharraf," Dawn, 9 June 2002,
http://www.dawn.com
[25]
The Associated Press, "India Proposes Joint Patrol of Disputed Kashmir
Border," New York Times, 5 June 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com
[26]
"Proposal be formally conveyed, Pakistan," Dawn, 6 June 2002,
http://www.dawn.com
[27]
Vladimir Radyuhin, "India rejects foreign participation in foreign
patrol," Hindu, 7 June 2002,
http://www.hinduonnet.com
[28]
"World 'cannot tolerate' Pak. stance on nukes: Straw,"
The News International Pakistan, 7 June 2002,
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/
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