Crisis India-Pakistan:
Achtergrondinformatie, analyse en nieuws
uit de Indiase, Pakistaanse en internationale media.

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Yahoo! India News, January 30, 2001

Bangladesh has role in creating nuke-free South Asia: Indo-Pak forum

By Ershadul Huq, India Abroad News Service

Dhaka, Jan 30 - A forum of Indian and Pakistani experts has said that Bangladesh as one of the founders of the seven member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) can play a significant role in making South Asia a nuclear free zone.
A delegation of the non-official Pakistan-India People's Forum (PIPF), comprising former Indian Navy chief Admiral (retired) L. Ramdas and Pakistani physicists A.H. Nayyar and Zia Mian, now here to drum up support for this cause, said the five smaller SAARC countries -- Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives - could urge India and Pakistan to give up their arms race.
The team told reporters that these countries should make Islamabad and New Delhi realize that the challenges facing the region are hunger, poverty and malnutrition - problems, which could not be addressed by a nuclear arms race.
Such a move has succeeded in South America where all states except Argentina and Brazil had signed a nuclear arms-free zone treaty, the forum members said. Argentina and Brazil, which initially had nuclear aspirations, felt the moral pressure and subsequently joined them.
Nuclear power did not help the United States win the war against Vietnam nor had the former Soviet Union succeeded in subduing Afghanistan, which did not have nuclear weapons, the members added.
Research on solar energy, which was abundant in South Asia, could yield more dividends than investment in nuclear power generation. So far Russia and the U.S. had about 400 nuclear accidents, major and minor, the members said.
They said that in India, there have been accidents and emergency shutdowns of nuclear plants on many occasions. Any error -- human or mechanical -- could spell disaster at any time.
The campaign against the nuclear arms race in India and Pakistan picked up after a series of nuclear explosions by the two countries in May 1998. The forum has been conducting a campaign in the two countries since then. The members of the current mission are to meet local citizen's groups and organize a similar campaign in Bangladesh.

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The Boston Globe, January 29, 2001

A potential intifadah on India's border

By H.D.S. Greenway

NEW DELHI
In India the Middle East is called South Asia, and the Arab-Israeli controversies that take center stage in the United States are off the front page here. That's because Indians have their own festering sore that is a year older, has caused almost as many wars, and in world terms is even more dangerous, because miscalculation could lead to a nuclear exchange.

The open wound is the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which was ceded to India after the British partition of 1947 instead of to the Muslim state of Pakistan because the Hindu Maharaja chose India even though the majority of the population was, and is, Muslim. Pakistan immediately sent troops into the territory and captured much of the high and icy northern and western parts while the Indians hung onto the more fertile and populated south. A second Indo-Pakistan war was fought in 1965, and there have been frequent clashes along the 1948 cease-fire line, the last one occurring in 1999 in the snowbound, 17,000-foot uplands of Kargil. A UN resolution has long called for a plebiscite to express the wishes of the people, but the Indians have insisted that all Pakistani irregulars first quit the territory. Neither has ever taken place.
Since 1989 there has been a serious uprising among the Muslim population against Indian rule reminiscent of Palestinian uprising. Mirroring the Israeli experience, India's brutal attempts to squash the revolt has simply engendered more enemies for India. Pakistan's support for the rebels has internationalized the problem, and when India first, and then Pakistan, both tested atomic bombs in 1998, Kashmir became the match that could ignite a nuclear holocaust on the subcontinent.
There is, however, a third actor in the Indo-Pakistan imbroglio. It is Pakistan's old ally China. India's entry into the nuclear club may have infuriated the United States, which was trying to stop nuclear proliferation, but it truly alarmed China, especially when India's defense minister, George Fernandes, said China represented the greatest threat to India's security. In 1962 China attacked India in two border regions and handed India a humiliating defeat. China still sits on those captured territories. Even worse, China is seen here as abetting Pakistan's development of nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver them.
Beyond India's perceived threats from Pakistan and China there is a psychological factor at play. India wants to be considered a great regional power, like China, and thinks that nuclear weapons are a way to achieve status. Indians will point out to you that all of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are nuclear powers, overlooking the fact that in the post-Cold War world, economic, technological and societal strengths trump bombs, to which the sorry state of Russia attests.
In recent weeks tensions have lessened because of a highly successful visit by China's number two leader, Li Peng, and a unilateral Indian cease-fire in Kashmir, which was extended for a month last Tuesday despite the fact that Kashmiri rebels have not stopped their attacks. Peace feelers between India and Pakistan continue.
The United States is the only country that can influence all three players in the Asian nuclear game, and the Bush administration could play a constructive role in bringing much-needed stability. Bush can build on former President Clinton's efforts to improve relations with India while at the same time calming the fears of abandonment on the part of Pakistan, once America's closest ally in the region.
The first thing Bush could do is put his anti-ballistic missile defense plans on hold, because an ABM system, even if it doesn't work, would provoke China to increase its missile strength, which would provoke India to follow suit, which would, in turn, provoke Pakistan, and the destabilizing regional arms race that everyone fears would be off and running.

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Kashmir Images (Srinagar, India), January 28 - February 3, 2001

Let Them Visit Pakistan

Kashmir is both political as well as an emotional issue, not only for the people of Kashmir but for both India and Pakistan as well. This is perhaps why, despite the Vajpayee's "Ramazan Gift" extending well beyond the Ramazan and already in the third month, there hasn't been much headway in the peace process. Kashmir was bleeding before the cease-fire and Kashmir continues to bleed even today and all that is being said and done vis-a-vis peace has remained confined within the rhetorical limits. India is not ready to concede to the demands of Pakistan or to those of APHC and Pakistan too has displayed little beyond exercising the "maximum restraint" at the LOC. As for the Kashmiri people, National Conference (NC) has already shown its discomfort at Hurriet's involvement in any negotiated settlement (if there is any) and Hurriet on its part is yet to make clear whether it is a party to the dispute or merely a channel of communication, a mediator between India and Pakistan.
In June 2000, when Hizbul Mujahideen came up with its cease-fire offer, the move generated enough hopes both within and outside Kashmir. In fact the reciprocation the move received too was satisfactory enough to point towards the fact that all was not lost; there was still some hope of a peaceful and negotiated settlement, provided the parties concerned displayed their maturity and approached the issue with an open mind and heart. But given the hawkish approach of certain quarters, the initiative didn't last long and was aborted for the garb of normal policing continued its counter-insurgency operations. If the latest spurt in the custodial killings are any indication, then it goes beyond any doubt to say that it is only the central security forces and the army that have somewhat shown any respect for Vajpayee's offer, while the state police has rejected it much like the militant groups, with the only difference that latter has publicly rejected it while the former has displayed its dis-obedience through practice. Hurriet has all-along been demanding that it should be allowed to visit Pakistan to consult the militant leadership there but India is reluctant to allow them go. Why? If government of India is courageous enough to come up with a unilateral cease-fire and then extend it not once but twice despite its failure to receive desired response from militants groups, why is it not displaying the same courage and same guts in facilitating Hurriet's visit to Pakistan? If at all the Hurriet is allowed to visit Pakistan, what is there for the government of India to loose in the bargain?
As claimed by Hurriet that their visit to Pakistan will facilitate the peace process in Kashmir, why not give them a chance to prove their claims? Or at least by allowing them go; yet another option vis-a-vis peace can be explored. Kashmir is so complicated an issue that it can't be solved unless approached with sufficient degree of imagination.
Recently when A G Lone was to visit Pakistan in connection with his son's marriage there, Government of India initially displayed its fear in allowing him go, perhaps for the same reasons they have, for not giving the green signal to Hurriet's delegation now. But once in Pakistan, A G Lone was not the same person who had welcomed Taliban in Kashmir.
Instead in Pakistan, Lone, not only denounced the role of foreign militants in Kashmir but also did a lot of spade-work that has helped in clearing the mists of ambiguities between India and Pakistan to a large extent. In totality, Lone's Pakistan visit, if it hasn't helped India, it hasn't done it any damage either. Thus all the fears that India had allayed with Lone's visit proved a mere hoax and thus were proved wrong all those think-tanks and intelligent brains in Indian policy and bureaucracy who are responsible for sowing the seeds of such unseen and uncalled for fears.
In context of Hurriet's Pakistan visit, it is again the same "fear mongers" in Indian establishment who have created such a fear psychosis in New Delhi, that they are not ready to clear the travel documents of Hurriet to facilitate their visit. New Delhi as well as the state Chief Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah have been saying that Hurriet leaders are in continuous touch with Pakistan through their embassy in India and need not to visit Pakistan. But then every country has its High Commission in every other country, but the why is it that people have to physically visit places to negotiate deals and pacts. If Hurriet wants to visit Pakistan, it must be allowed to go in the larger interest of the peace in the subcontinent in general and valley in particular. If India has nothing to gain out of Hurriet's Pakistan visit, it has nothing to lose as well. Instead if the Hurriet delegation is allowed to go to Pakistan, there is every possibility that the visit will cast a dye for some more positive developments that will automatically follow their visit. If nothing much, by clearing the impediments in Hurriet's visit, government of India will be doing its bit in confidence building which will restore peoples' faith in India that this time they mean business. Otherwise extending the cease-fire will hardly serve any purpose if it is not followed by the measures that will help in rebuilding the broken bridges of faith and trust.
As long as the concerned parties remain rigid and stubborn in their respective ideologies and standings over the issue there are little or no chances of any headway. Instead peace has any chance only when the concerned parties display some sort of flexibility in their approach. Till yesterday government of India as well as all other mainstream parties and the intelligentsia in India blamed Hurriet for their rigidity; but now when Hurriet has shown some maturity and rising to the occasion, expressed its willingness to sort out issues through negotiations, government of India has made their proposed visit to Pakistan a major stumbling block.

Despite Dr. Farooq Abdullah's crying that he is not averse to peace in Kashmir, he is yet to display in practical terms his eagerness for a peaceful and negotiated settlement, particularly if it involves Hurriet. Dr. Farooq Abdullah or his NC is a party to the dispute for they are the "elected representatives" of the people, but at this juncture he cannot claim to represent Kashmiri people. Given the fact that NC subscribes to the Indian claims and ideology over Kashmir, it is the Government of India that automatically represents him and his party. Similarly for those who subscribe to the Pakistan's claims on Kashmir, they too will be representd by Pakistan. And for Kashmiri representation, it is the people or the parties who can formulate and articulate the pure Kashmiri sentiment, they only have a right to represent Kashmir and Kashmiri people. At present juncture, NC has no problem with India neither have all other mainstream political and religious groups; therefore it is a bit premature for them to claim their pound of flesh now. Instead whenever there are any peace talks between India and the people of Kashmir, it is only those people from Kashmir who have problems with India that must be roped in for dialogue. In this context, if at all there is any group India can begin talks with, it is the Hurriet, particularly because they are yet to publicly subscribe to Pakistan's views on Kashmir.


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Rediff.com, January 26, 2001

Dilip D'Souza on the Kashmir Ceasefire

Bury It, Still Hissing, Under A Rock

by Dilip D'Souza

What better tribute to Republic Day, to the men who shaped this nation whom we only find platitudes for these days, than to extend the cease-fire in Kashmir? You can have the parades down Rajpath. I'll nurture the flicker of hope in my breast the cease-fire brings. Hope for peace and an end to the constant killing in our northern reaches. Hope that instead of an endless war, we can buckle down to building the country our Constitution envisaged.
So yes, I fully believe we must extend the cease-fire. I am glad Vajpayee and his government have done it and I hope they will have the wisdom and courage to stay the course. The way I see it, this cease-fire is the PM's greatest achievement by far. He needs to be applauded for it, encouraged to keep it alive. And if it does lead us ultimately to a lasting peace, it would indeed be a far finer tribute to the Republic than any number of parades are.
Of course there are the doom-merchants on both sides, who would lose a major reason to exist if peace came to Kashmir. That there are always people who will violently oppose an end to hostility seems something of a war truism to me, even if I have never been close to a war.
Which is why you find columnists frothing at a time like this. "The fire-spitting PM," Mr Arvind Lavakare tells us, "is suddenly displaying the meekness of the old and the infirm." And all this, because of Vajpayee's "unilateral cease-fire against Pakistan's terrorism." Men like AL know that if the bogey of Pakistan dissipates tomorrow, they will have their task cut out, finding the next evil bogey.
Far easier to work us all up into hostile hysteria, to ridicule peace as the weak-kneed effort it decidedly isn't.
Which is why, too, the death-merchants of the Lashkar e Taiyba and its assorted cousins have stepped up their carnage: nearly 350 (122 civilians, 74 security personnel and 146 militants, according to The Indian Express of January 25) have died at their hands since the cease-fire began last November. For its part, the LeT knows that peace in Kashmir will render them irrelevant, and what will they then do? Far easier to keep trumpeting the jihad, to drive more and more ordinary youths into suicidal assaults in the name of some always-elusive greater glory.
I want to emphasise that word "easier." For keeping hostility raging is truly the easier, the things-as-they-are, way. There is all this macho bluster about battle, but by now it should be clear to anyone who is willing to think. The real courage, the real fibre, lies in bringing an end to war that has crippled two countries, over a sixth of humanity, for half a century.
So the real test for people who want to find peace is to ignore the opponents. To show that they are, by definition and inclination, the greatest threats to peace.
This is why two particular aspects of this cease-fire are so gratifying.
First, that our current army chief, General S Padmanabhan, welcomes it. On January 12, he told a New Delhi press conference that the cease-fire is "a good thing" and it has produced a "huge burgeoning of hope [in Kashmir]. He hopes that the cease-fire "will lead to something more hopeful and concrete." Padmanabhan has also spoken elsewhere about how Kashmir needs a "political" solution, not a "military" one.
How refreshing to hear words like these from the highest-ranking soldier in the country. I believe he says them because he recognises and agonises over what the rest of us pay so little attention to: the daily bleeding in Kashmir. For it is not just the occasional Kargils in which soldiers die.
Padmanabhan's brave men die every single day, as do more ordinary people in the state. Look at it this way: if 350 have been killed since the cease-fire began, that's almost six a day. Which means it's a good bet that somebody died violently in Kashmir as you read these very words. If that's the situation during a cease-fire, how much more awful must it be when there isn't one?
It's easy to say that our soldiers are defending our borders, and because they are, the rest of us can live the lives we choose. It's easy to applaud them for doing their jobs so well. But how many among us are willing to question these words of supposed glory? How many are willing to ask, why has this gone on for 53 years? When will we measure glory not by mourning the soldiers who die for the country, but in terms of how many live for the country? For us? That is the spirit, it seems to me, in which Padmanabhan spoke about Kashmir.
Second, there's an astonishingly revealing little quote I found in a Times of India article (January 24). Siddharth Varadarajan writes that over the last two months [the period of the cease-fire], several Pakistan-based militant commanders acknowledged [to Varadarajan] that their movement had indeed become weak. ... They, however, were confident that "Indian atrocities" would solve this problem.
Think for a moment about what's being said here. According to militants themselves, the cease-fire has meant that ordinary Kashmiris are losing faith in the militants ("their movement had indeed become weak"). Yet these commanders are sure that India will resume its "atrocities", which they think will renew popular support for the militants ("solve this problem", if you please).
To me, there couldn't be a stronger reason to keep the cease-fire going. As people see that the violence they suffer from comes from only one side -- the militants -- that side inevitably, inexorably, will lose popular support. If the militants are actually waiting for "Indian atrocities" to "solve" this problem of dwindling support, taking away even the chance to accuse Indians of atrocities -- which a cease-fire does by definition -- will unerringly undermine them.
In short, the cease-fire is the surest way to destroy the militants.
Besides, this is really what Padmanabhan meant by speaking of a political solution in Kashmir. By now, it should be clear: for every terrorist who goes down to our guns, there are several more apparently willing to follow in his footsteps, blow themselves up in a suicide attack, set off bombs in the middle of Srinagar. How do you fight such a battle militarily?
Faced with the Hydra that sprouted two or three new heads every time he crushed one with his club, Heracles found his answer eventually. He "severed the immortal head ... and buried it, still hissing, under a heavy rock" (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths). Just a myth, no doubt, but the lesson Heracles learned in his battle is simple enough to be mightily relevant today. Another of those war truisms: cut your adversary off at the root and you defeat him. Chop off the militants' very reason for being -- the support they think they have among the people of Kashmir -- and we defeat them. That, by the militants' own admission, is what this cease-fire is doing.
Half a century of fighting fire with military fire, as we have done, has only left Kashmir burning and bleeding. It's time to look for other answers. Today, we have a not-so-common combination of an enlightened army chief and leaders in both countries whose political compulsions, whatever they are, make them think of a cease-fire in Kashmir. This is too good an opportunity to miss. We do need another answer, yes. Persisted with despite the peddlers of hostility, this cease-fire is that answer.

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The Times of India, January 26, 2001

Agni to be inducted into Indian Air Force soon

The Times of India News Service

BANGALORE: The successfully tested Agni missile will be inducted into the Indian Air Force by the year end, scientific advisor to defence minister A K Aatre said on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters here, he said the Agni missile was now in its final configuration and getting ready for induction. ``It is in operational configuration,'' he added.
Asked if the Agni missile will be fitted with a nuclear war head, Aatre said ``Obviously''.
Aatre, who is also the Secretary of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said the pilot-less Lakshya from the Air Force, the Arjuna tank and Prithvi missile from the Army, electronic warfare equipment meant for deployment in Kashmir and the newly developed radars will be on display at the Republic Day parade in Delhi.
Aatre said the Aircraft Surveillance Platform (ASP) will be on flight display at the Aero India show in Bangalore. Also on flight display will be the Nishant unmanned aircraft.
The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) is also likely to be on flight display at the Aero India show, but a final decision on flying the LCA will be taken in the first week of February.
Aatre said India was looking for partnership to develop Research and Design for transport aircraft and 100-seater passenger aircraft in the future. Russia and some European countries have evinced interest in the project.
India is also holding discussions with Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore for partnership in production of transport and passenger aircraft. The Hindusthan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) will be the major player in the develpment of these aircraft.
Aero India 2001 being held in Bangalore between February 7 and 11 will also have a two-day international seminar on aerospace technologies - developments and strategies.
Already, 12 Air Chiefs have confirmed their participation at the Aero India show. Defence Minister George Fernandes will inaugurate the seminar to be held on February 8 and 9. Air Chief Marshal A.Y.Tipnis will deliver the address on `Trends in the Development of Air Power in the 21st century' and former administrator of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.James Baker, will address on `Planet Earth : View from Space 2001'.
Aatre admitted that India had invited the US military establishment to participate in the Aero India show, and had also extended an invitation to the US Air Chief to participate personally, but the US, which has imposed sanctions on India has refused the invitation. However, the private companies from the US are participating in the air show.

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Asia Times, January 26, 2001

Pakistani groups launch anti-US offensive

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - While the Pakistani authorities have agreed to comply with UN sanctions on Afghanistan's Taliban militia, radical Islamic groups within Pakistan are gearing up to launch an anti-United States offensive against these curbs. Action will include destruction of US-based goods and calls for a trade boycott.
Demonstrators plan on Friday to set fire to consumer goods made in the United States, in this northwestern Pakistani city in a symbolic show of protest to the punitive measures initiated by the UN Security Council on the Taliban. The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islami, a forum of Islamic scholars, has also prepared a list of 28 US-made goods, including Coke and Pepsi, which it will ask shopkeepers not to sell.
The decision was taken at a January 22 meeting of the Ulema. According to an Ulema official, Jalil Jan, anti-US rallies will be organized across the country. Earlier, 35 Islamic religious groups, in a rare show of unity, denounced the UN sanctions on the Taliban. Taliban representatives also attended the meeting, which described the fresh UN curbs as "a conspiracy hatched by the United States, the Western world, Russia and India, against Islam".
The UN sanctions, imposed after the Taliban refused to hand over Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, include an arms embargo, closure of Taliban offices overseas and a ban on their travel abroad. The sanctions are for a period of one year and can be renewed if the Taliban still fails to meet the UN's terms till then.
The recent Islamic gathering was hosted by Islamic leader Samiul Haq who is known to have close links with the Taliban. His sprawling seminary, known as Darul Uloom Haqqania, has been one of the main producers of Islamic religious fighters. Every year, hundreds of Taliban fighters, including Afghans, pass out of this seminary.
The religious groups set up a Defense of Afghanistan Council, which has been asked to devise strategies to tackle the sanctions and set up a fund to help rebuild war-torn Afghanistan. The council will also raise funds for supporting the Taliban militia.
Islamic leaders in Pakistan have said they will not allow UN observers to be posted in Pakistan. "Let the Americans come to Afghanistan, then we will see how they take Osama away," Azam Tariq Amir of the Islamic militant group Sipah-i-Sahaba, told the conference.
"We can constitute a huge army of volunteer tribesmen through which we can ensure that no monitors are posted here," added Qazi Abdul Lateef, a former Pakistani lawmaker and a religious figure.
Meanwhile, others in Pakistan are opposing the sanctions, though not out of sympathy for the Taliban. "These sanctions will add to the miseries of poor, war and drought-stricken people of Afghanistan," said a resolution adopted at a January 22 meeting of the Pakistan National Conference, an alliance of minor political parties.
Pakistan's main political parties, which are said to be fighting for their survival against the over year-old military rule, have tended to remain silent on the issue.
Since capturing Kabul more than four years ago, the Taliban has taken control of 95 percent of the country. Pakistan is one of three countries to have recognized the Taliban regime, besides Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
(Inter Press Service)

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Time (Asia), January 25, 2001

Conversations: 'Our Differences Have To Be Resolved Peacefully'

Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar on the political gridlock with India

By Hannah Bloch

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar met with TIME correspondent Hannah Bloch at his office in Islamabad to discuss his country's troubled relations with India and prospects for peace after six weeks of encouraging developments. Edited excerpts:

TIME: A lot has happened in the past few months. How did Pakistan get to a point where it was willing to declare a unilateral cease-fire on the Line of Control (LOC) and encourage the participation of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference [an umbrella organization of Kashmiri rebels] in talks with both Pakistan and India? These things would have been hard to imagine a year ago.
Abdul Sattar: I think we must distinguish between changes of substance and changes of atmosphere. The Hurriyat itself has been advocating a process of dialogue and we have encouraged them in this process. The Indian cease-fire [against Kashmiri militants] was a good step. It was not expected by anyone. Then we looked at what we could do to encourage further progress. So we made our offer. We did it to try to initiate a political process, and we are still at it. The Line of Control is quiet. The cease-fire is stable. Efforts are afoot to begin the process of consultations. The statement by [Indian] Prime Minister [Atal Behari] Vajpayee on Jan. 1 was extraordinary, that Kashmir is the No. 1 legacy problem and needs to be resolved. After Oct. 12, 1999 [when Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf took power in a coup], the government of India not only cut dialogue with Pakistan but also tried to isolate Pakistan and project the nation as a supporter or sponsor of terrorism. We continued to make efforts for dialogue, but you can't talk if the other side is not willing.

TIME: Where do you envision things going from here? What sorts of proposals do you have?
Sattar: We've tried to avoid unproductive and sterile debates, as has the Hurriyat itself, on issues such as the final settlement. The focus has to be on reducing violence and repression and creating an environment for political discussion and dialogue. We want to know from the Kashmiris what they consider acceptable. The flower of Kashmiri youth has been liquidated by Indian forces: the Hurriyat say 75,000 Kashmiris have died since 1989. We have tried very deliberately and consciously to listen to the voice of the Kashmiris. The Hurriyat has shown dedication and commitment and won credibility inside the state. They can be credible interlocutors. They have been sagacious in framing their views. A discussion of a settlement is very academic and theoretical because India has to be persuaded to be part of the settlement. This is why we say India should talk with these people. So we hope this process will start. They [Kashmiris] don't want Pakistan or India to talk for them, which is understandable. We are open, but will India be open?

TIME: After the Lahore summit in February 1999, India and Pakistan sent unofficial representatives to behind-the-scenes meetings to facilitate a Kashmir settlement. How important is this "back channel" process to the peace process?
Sattar: We are moving in a very transparent fashion. We have no back channels. The back channel process has its advantages but the problem is the other side can disown it. We hope our diplomats will become more active. Our New Delhi High Commissioner is one of the ablest diplomats we have. Let us begin with these professionals, let them play a role. Later on perhaps there will be foreign secretary visits. In matters so sensitive as Kashmir, you can't have a backroom deal. If we reach an agreement and the Kashmiri people are not in favor of it, it will be an exercise in futility. The process demands transparency.

TIME: As this process continues, are you concerned about a possible negative reaction among extremists in Pakistan who don't support the notion of peace with India?
Sattar: So long as the process remains transparent and the [Kashmiri] representatives remain involved, there can be no allegations of a backroom deal. No political group can argue that we've ignored the wishes of the Kashmiri people. And there is no backroom discussion or deal with India. As we proceed further, the Kashmiri leaders must directly involved. We don't have an arbitrary settlement in our mind. We envisage forward movement, step by step, with all the parties involved in the discussions so no one will have the chance to say their views were being ignored.

TIME: Pakistan is in a difficult position, though, because on one hand, the government talks about promoting better relations with India, but on the other hand, militant groups supported by Pakistan can undermine the peace process. Lashkar-e-Taiba [a militant group supported by Pakistan] recently attacked the Red Fort. How do you reconcile Pakistan's need for peace with its support of militant groups?
Sattar: Pakistan condemns such things [as the Red Fort attack]. India has been engaging in a diversionary interpretation of the situation in Kashmir, saying all problems in Kashmir are created by Pakistan. But that's not true; there are 75,000 dead Kashmiris. The [Kashmir] movement was almost entirely political. Then India sent in its forces and closed the political road, leaving no option for Kashmiris but to go underground. We need to walk backwards. There has to be a political process that generates hopes that the freedom struggle can be waged by political means. As that road opens, militancy should decline. It moved to a militant phase after the political road closed. The perception that Pakistan uses militants as leverage is not correct. The movement came about because of oppression. As we move toward political change, I think you will see violence decline. There are extremists everywhere and the effort should be to contain extremism and encourage moderation, not only in words but also in deeds. Let us hope the political process will move forward and that will be an incentive for a decrease in militancy.

TIME: How concerned are you about the possibility of war between Pakistan and India?
Sattar: I think we exaggerate -- and perhaps for good reason -- the possibility of war. It should be unthinkable to have a war now that both countries have nuclear capability. It is best not to think in terms of war at all. Our differences have to be resolved peacefully.

TIME: In the past, that has proved difficult.
Sattar: Our problem is that these two countries never succeed in resolving bilateral differences in negotiations. There is not one example in the last 53 years. There's something wrong! And it's India seeking constantly to leverage power disparity in order to impose its own preferences on Pakistan. The use of power superiority cannot lead to friendship. You have to appreciate and accommodate each other's views. Sir Creek [in the Rann of Kutch] remains disputed after 32 years. India and Pakistan cannot even settle the boundary of a creek. Somehow we have to graduate from a culture of stalemate, this constant failure to reach agreement. It is very difficult to see how to resolve the Kashmir question. It will require recognition that we have to break new ground. In the past, whenever we have gotten together, we have both traded accusations. It has not been a very positive exercise.

TIME: Are there areas in which Pakistan would be willing to compromise to resolve the Kashmir issue?
Sattar: We've not thought in terms of compromises at all. I am averse to a discussion of theoretical options. If we start by contemplating final settlements, we are liable to come to the conclusion that nothing is possible. For the time being, one is best advised not to think of a final outcome. The logic of the situation demands a step-by-step process without focusing on issues that are known to be divisive and on which there is no agreement.

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Yahoo! India News, January 25, 2001

Pakistan warns on dangers of U.S. missile shield

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Pakistan warned on Thursday that a proposed U.S. missile defence shield could heighten tensions between major powers and lead to a build-up of arsenals.
In a speech to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, Foreign Secretary Inamul Haq said "most countries" remained unconvinced that deployment of a National Missile Defence would enhance security anywhere.
He backed thorough debate on the issue and urged the Geneva forum to launch global negotiations on a treaty which would ban weapons in outer space, the "province of all mankind".
Haq also called for reaching a peaceful solution with India to their long-standing dispute over Kashmir and for a halt to the "nuclear and conventional arms build-up in South Asia".
His remarks drew no response from the U.S. disarmament delegation. But India's new disarmament ambassador Rakesh Sood took the floor to reaffirm New Delhi's commitment to dialogue on Kashmir, where a ceasefire was renewed this week.
The five official nuclear powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States) and nuclear-capable arch-rivals Pakistan and India are among the 66 member states of the world's only multilateral disarmament negotiating forum.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton left a decision on whether to build and deploy the so-called "Son of Star Wars" -- a system aimed at intercepting incoming missiles in space which has an estimated price tag of $60 billion -- to his successor.
President George W. Bush has signalled he will proceed with the missile umbrella.
Haq sounded a warning against abrogating or watering down the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM), a major strategic stability treaty between the United States and Russia which prevents deployment of ballistic missile defences.
"Most countries, and the international disarmament community, remain unconvinced that abrogation or amendment of the ABM Treaty and deployment of National Missile Defences are the advisable course to enhance international or national security," Haq told the Conference on Disarmament.
"If one or more states decide to create 'shields' against ballistic missiles to protect their national territory, or that of their allies and clients, other states are likely to respond by improving and adding to their 'lances'," he added.
Haq concluded: "Missile defences, both National Missile Defence (NMD) and Theater Missile Defence (TMD), could therefore heighten tensions between major powers, jeopardise the global strategic balance and turn back the disarmament clock."

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The Economist, January 25, 2001

Russia breaks its word

If it goes ahead with its plans to sell nuclear reactors and uranium fuel to India, Russia will be in clear breach of its anti-proliferation promises

TO HEAR President Vladimir Putin tell it, Russia leads the world in its efforts to rein in weapons of mass destruction and - glaring hard at America and its proposed missile defences - to prevent a new arms race. Last year it ratified the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty that America's Senate had rejected, and that China's parliament is still pondering. It also belatedly ratified the Start-2 nuclear-reductions treaty with America. And, after a lot of American chivvying about dodgy nuclear- and missile-technology exports by Russian firms, new export controls were published. So why is Russia proposing to drive a nuclear-propelled coach and horses through the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) and its commitments to other members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by selling up to four nuclear reactors to India, plus uranium fuel for a fifth?
If Russia goes ahead, it would break no actual treaties. In 1993 the NSG, an informal group that includes Russia and most major suppliers of nuclear equipment, decided to ban all nuclear trade with countries that did not have international safeguards on all their nuclear facilities, thus committing its members to action well beyond their existing export controls on goods that might help a country build nuclear weapons. Two years later, most NPT members reached a similar agreement. India refuses "full-scope" safeguards, has never joined the NPT, which legally requires them, and in 1998 conducted five nuclear-weapons tests.
Russia claims that the "full-scope" rule does not apply to its proposed sale of nuclear reactors to India, since the idea had come up in the late 1980s - that is, before the NSG ban. That is wholly disingenuous. The contracts being negotiated break the rule. So does what is presumably the sweetener for the deal: the supply of uranium fuel for India's Tharapur reactor. America stopped supplying its fuel after India's first, supposedly "peaceful", nuclear explosion in 1974; France pulled out to comply with the "full-scope" rule; only China, outside the NSG, has in recent years helped India find nuclear supplies it could not get elsewhere.

Fission for compliments
Part of the explanation for Russia's nuclear dalliance with India lies in the fissile nature of its own politics. Russian firms, following up old Soviet connections and often with the connivance of officials who are supposed to police them, have been implicated in illegal transfers of missile and nuclear technology to several countries. Russia's minister for atomic energy has a foreign policy all his own: he wanted to sell laser enrichment technology that could help in bomb-making to Iran (which has signed the NPT but barely disguises its weapons ambitions). Already building one reactor in Iran, Russia hopes to build more. Foreign-ministry officials who see the dangers are overridden in the drive for contracts, as they were recently by the arms industry's desire to sell conventional weapons to Iran, despite Russia's promise not to do so.
In their defence, Russia's nuclear bureaucrats claim the best way to influence nuclear programmes in countries like Iran, and also India, is to work with them. More likely, when scientists sit down together, what gets passed on is not restraint, but skills and know-how of direct use in bomb-making. That is how India first got started on its bomb.
Mr Putin seems intent, for now, on making life as uncomfortable for America as possible - in India, Iran or anywhere else. India would prefer nuclear help from France or America, and hopes the bait of its deals with Russia may eventually draw them in. But India could just as easily get caught in the crossfire on this issue between the bigger powers.
If Russia is determined to go ahead, can anything be done to stop it? Another of Russia's commercial wheezes is a plan to build an international repository for spent nuclear fuel. Already controversial, given the lousy safety record of Russia's nuclear industry, this could be made a non-starter if Russia's nuclear co-operation with countries like India and Iran causes America and others to lean hard on potential customers. But pressure must also be put directly on Russia itself. It is threatening to turn its commitments on nuclear export-controls into a cheater's charter. Countries that care about proliferation should not let it get away with it.

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The Hindu, January 25, 2001

Nuclear dialogue with Pakistan

By V.R. Raghavan

PAKISTAN HAS been consistent in its stand that a dialogue with India should commence at the earliest. This desire for an inter-governmental negotiation has been expressed a number of times by its Chief Executive. In his eagerness for a dialogue with India, General Pervez Musharraf has offered to set aside all conditions and is prepared to commence the dialogue process at any level, place and time. These are bold offers and have created a deservedly favourable response in many circles in and outside India. The Indian Government has responded by indicating its willingness to join the dialogue process. It has demanded that violence being perpetrated by militant groups based in Pakistan be brought down. The possibility of a meaningful dialogue has been explored at different levels through intermediaries and back channels. A dialogue has also been attempted between experts in the nuclear weapons field. The experience has revealed the enormous difficulties involved in translating the intent for a dialogue into the content of its process.
There is no disagreement on the risks inherent in the lack of transparency in the subcontinent on the nuclear arsenals, command and control structures, and doctrines. The two countries had agreed that nuclear ambiguities and risks should be addressed to avoid a nuclear conflict between the two countries. They had unequivocally committed themselves to a dialogue on the nuclear weapons issues through the MOU signed as part of the Lahore Declaration. The nuclear dialogue was therefore perceived by both countries as one which should be begun despite obstacles which were holding up interaction on other issues.
Kargil changed the political condition in Pakistan and the new leadership turned its face on the Lahore Declaration. In his interview to this paper, General Musharraf clearly indicated his disdain for the Lahore spirit by arguing that the Declaration had not laid enough importance on Jammu and Kashmir. He went so far as to say that confidence building measures are mere cosmetic arrangements and implied that they do not help in keeping peace. He has apparently changed his perception in the time that has since elapsed. In a meeting with a team of the Delhi Policy Group on January 14, Pakistan's suave and skilful Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdul Sattar, averred favourably on the issue. He asserted that all agreements and accords signed by Pakistan with India were operative and affirmed his country's commitment to them. This commitment did not, however, get demonstrated in the nuclear dialogue which commenced the next day in Islamabad. The obstacles to continuing a meaningful dialogue soon became apparent in the exercise.
A nuclear risk reduction dialogue has been attempted since last year between the Delhi Policy Group and the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The initiative for the dialogue came from the latter. The dialogue was commenced after a mutual understanding that the subject be discussed outside the ambit of the issues and conflicts affecting relations between the two countries. This was necessary to ensure progress by isolating the nuclear related issues from the complexities involved in resolving other issues, especially those concerning Jammu and Kashmir. The first meeting held in New Delhi in August last year adhered to these principles, and proved fruitful in improving understanding and laying the groundwork for continuing the dialogue. There was confidence built on the modalities of the dialogue and the discipline needed to make progress on the subject.
The meeting in Islamabad was structured on specific issues related to nuclear risks and measures to reduce them. The subjects and issues were mutually agreed upon before the teams met in Islamabad. The affirmation of Mr. Abdul Sattar of Pakistan's commitment to the Lahore declaration and the MOU was, therefore, a good start to the dialogue. The MOU had, in fact, stated the need for a dialogue on nuclear issues with considerable emphasis. The Islamabad dialogue from the Indian side was led on the specific issues agreed upon in advance. On the Pakistan side the issues were addressed mainly by senior retired members of the Foreign Service. The Pakistani case was painstakingly built on the linkages between nuclear weapons and the ongoing conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. It became apparent that the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir issue was being made a condition for moving forward on the nuclear issue. This was also the central Pakistani theme in an open forum discussion before a large audience. On the other hand, there was a sizable segment of participants at both meetings, who felt that combining the nuclear issues with Jammu and Kashmir would derail the dialogue process.
The two contrasting positions notwithstanding, it was possible to find some areas of convergence on nuclear issues. That this convergence could be obtained is indicative of the possibilities and opportunities that lie ahead. It was apparent that progress cannot be made without a determination to seek solutions on the merits of the case. In matters concerning nuclear weapons, merit and logic are not matters to be won from or denied to the other. Nuclear deterrence and the risks inherent in them have a merit and logic of their own. If a solution is to be had it can only be through sharing the understanding and logic of nuclear weapons risks. Adding a conditionality to reducing nuclear risks can therefore only enhance such risks with unpredictable and catastrophic consequences.
It would appear from the meetings in Islamabad that there are two views operating in Pakistan. There is the view that any dialogue with India must be predicated upon obtaining concessions from it on Jammu and Kashmir. It is the view of that major part of the establishment which interprets India's joining a dialogue, as a sign of its compulsions in the face of continuing conflict in the State. This Pakistani view is also connected with a belief now being assiduously built about the meaning and relevance of `Jehad'. The team from the Delhi Policy Group was given an extensive interpretation of the subject in a presentation at the Institute of Strategic Studies, whose interests would have otherwise been expected to rest elsewhere. The notion of `Jehad' has also received a fillip after General Musharraf chose to place an interpretation on it, in relation to Jammu and Kashmir. This part of the establishment misses an important point by linking `Jehad', Jammu and Kashmir and nuclear weapons. There has been a view that Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons had much to do with Jammu and Kashmir. In other words, it intends to use nuclear weapons as instruments to influence political outcomes. Apart from the dangerous implications of such beliefs, the idea confirms the many fears on Pakistan's ability to fathom the fears which should otherwise drive its nuclear policies.
The other view in Pakistan is of those who prefer to see a focus on economic growth and global engagement. They are aware of the damage to the polity and international image of Pakistan by the presence of extremist groups operating from its territory. They reflect on the meaning of Pakistan getting recognised as the centre stage of international terrorism. There is understanding in this element of the perilous linkages between the economic stagnation, the Afghanistan connection of arms and narcotics, the fundamentalist roots in the country, and the risks of nuclear brinkmanship. This saner view also prevails in part of the establishment, which to its credit ponders on the possible but difficult ways out of the situation.
In Pakistan, Jammu & Kashmir has been made into an alibi for its many problems. Even its internal challenge of militant extremism is beginning to be viewed as a consequence of Jammu and Kashmir. The insistence on Jehad does not make matters any easier for the Pakistan establishment to better manage the affairs. A dialogue which is sought with India at every level and forum gets embedded in the fixation on Jammu and Kashmir.
Unfortunately the logic of nuclear deterrence is also sought to be distorted by the connecting them to Jammu and Kashmir. Yet the counterparts of the nuclear dialogue in Islamabad were keen on continuing it. It remains to be seen if future efforts at nuclear risk reduction would be free from the polemics of `Jehad' and Jammu and Kashmir.

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Tehelka.com (India), January 24, 2001

A tale of two Kashmirs: bridging the great divide

Masood Hussain

To ease tension, for people on either side of the LoC in Kashmir who crave for meeting and communicating their kin, security forces are adopting confidence building measures, writes Masood Hussain

Srinagar, January 24

In a bid to ease tension in Jammu and Kashmir, efforts are underway to manage interaction between the leadership of the two Kashmirs divided by the Line of Control (LoC). But there are quite a few right thinking people who seem to be interested in bringing the two sides-separated by a most unfortunate hostile political divide, more than the physical one actually-closer not by opening the border but at least connecting the two sides by telephone.
Apart from around 2,000 Kashmiri youth, mostly militants, in various camps run by different militant outfits, there are more than 20,000 Kashmiri civilians, who migrated or were coerced to flee across the state since 1989. There they are living the life of refugees, hardly ever being taken care of or noticed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission or any other world organisations who espouse the cause of the Chakma, Afghan, Tibetan and other refugees living in exile in India and Pakistan.
These refugees have no contact with their former homes or places of residence whatsoever. No letters, neither any telephone calls. At best, they can get information either from professional guides who frequently cross over the border or from newspapers which are seldom available to them.
Communist leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami and Peoples' Democratic Party leader Ms Mehbooba Mufti have separately demanded that the position on the LoC be eased so that the people who have migrated to Pakistan can return to their homes.
For the first time in the past 11 years, many Kashmiris visited their migrated kin when they went to attend Abdul Gani Lone's son's marriage in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). The situation was so pathetic there, said one of the visitors that Abdul Gani Lone had to take up the issue with the PoK government. Lone asked the PoK government to offer the refugees quality education if it is not able to give them a better living.
One report said that the refugees are so home sick that most of them are ready to return if granted permission. Most of them, it may be recalled here, have migrated leaving behind all movable and immovable property. And most of them are doing menial jobs to sustain their families. "The only people who are living luxurious lives are the Hurriyat representatives who have got palatial bungalows, imported cars and mobile phones besides a lot of clout," said an editor who attended Lone's son's wedding, adding, "In the militant lot only those from the Hizb ul Mujahideen are better managed."
At the marriage ceremony, said another journalist, the wife of Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Nambiar became an instant VIP. "Mrs Nambiar remained almost gheraoed for the time she was there and believe me, those who encircled her were the wives of top militant commanders. They gave her telephone numbers of their relatives, and their names pleading that if they seek a visa, it should not be rejected," he said.
In this environment, if the two governments provide better communication between the people on two sides, the situation may get better with every passing day. Perhaps this fact was understood by sections of the armed forces posted in the border areas in north Kashmir here.
After the areas witnessed calm following ceasefire, the people are in a better mood. Understanding that the people are craving to see their relatives gone across the LoC, the troops have permitted them to at least go down near small rivers separating the two Kashmirs and weave towards their relatives living on the other side.
Reports reaching from Baramulla said that the troops have permitted the residents of Lachipora, Gohalta, Nambla, Silikote and Kamalkote hamlets in the Uri belt to reach the local stream that almost is the de facto LoC. On the other side too, the people have been able to wave towards their relatives across the divide.
Similarly, in Keran belt from where over 1,047 people have migrated so far, the troops also permitted the locals to reach one of the banks of the Kishan Ganga river to have a glimpse of their relatives. Perhaps this was because of this exercise that Babu Bhat of Keran returned home after 10 years. He however was taken into the police custody immediately after he crossed over to this side early this week.
Nevertheless, these developments are stated to be part of the confidence-building measures started by the security forces to ease tension along the LoC. These small gestures could actually act as beacon for policymakers at Delhi and Islamabad.
Last fortnight when Union Information Technology (IT) Minister Pramod Mahajan stated that he would manage the introduction of mobile phone in the state, he was responded by a thunderous applause by a gathering watching the formal inauguration of the state's first Software Technology Park (STP) at Rangreth, 10 km from Srinagar. "They (authorities) were telling me that its (mobile) introduction will increase militancy but when it (militancy) increased without its introduction, I think it is not good to prevent its use," Mahajan said, adding, "I am at it and very soon it will be here."
But neither the state government nor anybody attending the meeting sought the IT minister's help in re-establishing telephone links between Kashmir and Pakistan. The connections stand frozen for the past many years as the security authorities believe this helps in curbing militancy. Nobody can dial any Pakistani number ever since the Department of Technology installed the digital Trunk Automatic Exchanges.
While militants have no problem in talking to their mentors and leaders in Pakistan through their most modern communication systems, hapless people wishing to talk to their relatives have to travel to Pathankot, the nearest Punjab town, over 550 km from Srinagar. For most of the time they have to face uncomfortable questions from the Punjab police after they find out that the Kashmiris have made a call to Pakistan.
However, there is no problem for anyone to dial any Kashmir number from Pakistan. Hundreds of calls from Pakistan are being made to Kashmir every day. Militant leaders from Pakistan are able to dial the number of leaders belonging to the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) in Srinagar, but there is no reverse possibility. The APHC leaders in fact have to fly to their Delhi office to have discussions with their contacts in Pakistan.
The state, it may be recalled here, got divided in the post-partition era after the UN had enforced a ceasefire. While one-third came under the control of Pakistan and is know as Azad Kashmir or PoK, two-third remained with the Indian Union. Families with intimate relations got divided. They could not maintain the ties in the subsequent decades although there were migrations from Kashmir in 1949, 1965 and in 1971.
Besides, the state government also deported scores of families to the PoK in its efforts to root out the pro-Pakistan elements and pro-reunification elements in Jammu & Kashmir. However, the onset of militancy in 1989 witnessed the worst demographic upheavals in the border belt. To fight the massive infiltrations, the security forces introduced the mechanism of dusk-to-dawn curfew. When it failed, the 5-km security belt running parallel to the LoC was created in which literally no civilian life exists.
Excessive measures on the part of the Indian government coupled with the onslaught of Pakistani propaganda continued to lead to massive migrations. While the exact number of civilians who have migrated to the other side is not actually known, estimates put their population at over 30,000. According to reliable sources, the PoK government is providing some kind of relief to over 2,500 families who are putting up at Ambore, Barakote, Kamsur, Demishi, Hir Kotli, Karka, Mamik Pian, Athmuqam Kel, and Hattian in Muzaffarabad district. Besides, there are Kashmiri refugees in Chatter, Khutta Plangi (Bagh), Gulpur Kotli Solhwan (Kotli) and Hajira Madarpur of Rawalakote district. The PoK government provides around Rs 2000 per family every month.
Although the PoK government's department of rehabilitation is supposedly taking care of this population, the refugees are far from satisfied. The education of the refugee children is suffering and adults lack avenues of appointments unlike Kashmiri Pandits who are comparatively better placed in various parts of India.

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DefenceIndia.com (India), January 24, 2001
http://www.defenceindia.com

Pak Navy going nuclear

Naval co-operation between Pakitan and China is set to enter an altogether different phase. Pakistan Navy is due to make an off-the-shelf purchase of a frontline Chinese warship and build three more under license, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Abdul Aziz disclosed, and added that it wa spart of the $630 milion nbaval modernisation programme.
The Admiral said it was cost effective for Pakistan to acquire Chinese ships and these were ment to phase out the ageing British origin destroyers. The programme is to be spread over 10 years.
An unnamed senior Pakistani naval official, speaking to the media in Islamabad, said Pakistan was in the process of nuclearising its naval force in view of the "emerging threats from the Indian naval build-up, Press Trust of India reported.
The Admiral, however, declined to provide any further details on the programme. He said, "In order to counter the Indian naval might, Pakistan has been working on a plan to give nuclear teeth to the navy, which has been beset by a resource crunch.
At a seminar in Pakistan, participants were briefed on the evolution and organisation of Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Navy's role in nation building and contribution towards economic development.
Speakers at the seminar included the top brass of the Pakistan Navy. They highlighted the role and importance of the force in defending the country.
Besides, the compulsions of Pakistan Navy in the context of Russia-India naval co-operation was brought out to bring into bold relief the achievements and tribulations of Pakistan's naval force.
Rear Admiral Irfan Ahmad emphasised that, through the construction of the Jinnah Naval Base at Ormara the maritime defence of the country has been strengthened and it also opened the 800-km-long Mekran coast for development.
He pointed out that Agosta 90-B submarine was being built in Pakistan for which PN had already acquired the required technology from France. A week earlier, it may be recalled, Pakistan's Naval chief, Admiral Abdul Aziz Mirza expressed his satisfaction over the progress made in the Agosta 90-B submarine construction project. To give greater punch to the Navy's surface fleet, Pakistan Navy is also looking forward to acquire off-the-shelf and also indigenously build new destroyers.
Admiral Mirza said, addressing the Annual Efficiency Competition Parade of Pakistan Navy, in Karachi, on January 2, 2001, modern sea warfare is both physically taxing and mentally exhausting. The hitherto unknown progress made in the field of electronics and computers has made conflict at sea highly complex.
Admiral Mirza said in spite of severe resource constraints and some inherent handicaps, the Navy was making every best effort to keep itself abreast of the ever-changing naval weaponry and equipment.
"What we lack in quantity, we endeavour to make up in quality, both through high standards of training and by inducting hi-tech weapons and sensors which the nation can afford," the Admiral added.
The Chief stated that the government was amply aware of the genuine needs of the Pakistan Navy and was prepared to provide it with the best affordable platforms, weapons and equipment.
In recent times, major naval projects aimed at the modernisation of both aviation assets and type-21 ships had been successfully undertaken, he announced.

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Indian Express (India), January 24, 2001

At village chosen for nuclear site, fission's already started

Hartosh Singh Bal

DAROLI (PATIALA), JANUARY 23: Last Thursday, the gurudwara in Daroli village in Patiala district, was converted into a place of protest. One hundred agitated villagers met to decide their future, the future of their land, their village. Daroli has been chosen as the site for a nuclear power plant, and villagers have already launched a struggle to ensure the project doesn't get off the ground.
Even as the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) awaits the final nod from the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) site selection panel, locals have set up a 15-member sangharsh committee to resist any move to acquire land for the project.
The PSEB's own site selection committee zeroed in on Daroli after sifting through data from nine sites. According to PSEB chairperson G.S. Sohal, "After examining several sites in the state, we have finally settled on Daroli. I visited the village last week and an NPC team is expected to examine the site within the next month," The team will not be examining any other site in the state.
The village got wind of plans to acquire 2,500 acres for the project only after Sohal's visit. "We have been hearing reports about a site near Patran (five kilometres away) but only last week did we realise it was our village," said ex-sarpanch Jit Singh.
That realisation spawned fear faster than you can say nuclear fission. Alternative employment, compensation, rehabilitation became the topmost concerns for the villagers. Almost everyone assembled at the sangharsh committee's meeting had the same questions on their minds: "Why didn't the government take us into confidence at any stage? Don't we have any choice in the matter?"
"This village was settled by refugees from Gujranwala and Sheikupura in Pakistan. When we came here, the area was a jungle. We paid the government to clear it; a Russian firm using giant bulldozers did the work in the 1950s. We have now turned the jungle into fertile farmland and they want us to move," says Amrik Singh, a member of the sangharsh committee.
"It is not just a question of compensation. We have built up a community here over 54 years. Will they move the whole village together? Where is the land for that in Punjab? And if they give us compensation what are we going to do? Most of us are uneducated, farming is all we know," adds Gurdip Singh.
Sohal's defense was ; the price of development has to be paid, and someone has to pay it. "There are always some elements who are anti-development and exploit local sentiments. Sufficient compensation will be paid. In fact, short of shifting the site we will pay heed to whatever apprehensions the villagers have. We hope not to include the village itself in the project area and we can consider special facilities such as land for land or a lump sum and one job per family," he says.
But residents point out that if they lose their land, they cannot stay on in the village. In fact, landless labourers were among those who attended the meeting. "We are not qualified to work at the plant. If the land is taken away who will we work for? At least here we have a home. Moreover, we have built on village common land and we will get no compensation," says Lakhwinder Singh.
Sohal admits that the lack of a resettlement and rehabilitation policy in Punjab is a problem. "Our State does not have such a policy. If we don't explain what we are doing people feel shunted out."
On the villagers' complaint that they hadn't been consulted, he said, "We can't start interacting without preliminary selection. Perhaps, instead of one site, a few more should have been shortlisted. But now nothing can be done. To start all over again would mean another two to three years and Punjab can't wait that long for power."

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The Hindu, January 24, 2001

The missile squadrons

By C.V. Gopalakrishnan

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the test-firing of the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) Agni-II arises from its proposed induction into the country's defence arsenal to make it available for deployment like any other weapon of war. This distinguishes it from the missiles which had been test-fired earlier - the Akash, Trishul, the earlier Agni-I, the Prithvi - all of which were developed as "technology demonstrators" and intended to achieve a perfection to the skills built up for the design, development and production of missiles. Such technology demonstration was aimed at filling the country's defence scientists, engineers and technicians with a sense of confidence that they could take up the mass production of the missiles if the need arose. The Government's announcement that the Agni-II would be inducted into the defence arsenal takes the project a step forward.
If Agni-II could cover 2000 km in 648 seconds during which it could pick out its targets in the Bay of Bengal, it would raise questions about the missions which would be designed for it. Its elegant streamlining, to give it a very high velocity, could give only glimpses of the stupendous engineering which would have gone into giving it the capability for hitting its target 2000 km away with precision. Not to mention the miniaturisation which would have been required to ensure that the conventional warhead fitted to the nose of the missile would meet the demand to zero in on and destroy the target. The Agni missile has come a long way from the drawing board to its test-firing. The secrets of the missile arsenals which the developed countries have built up could not have for long been kept guarded from being prised open by scientists, engineers and technologists around the world. The graduation of the missiles from carriers of conventional to nuclear warheads should have made the stockpiles of the developed countries far more deadly.
India's Integrated Missile Development Programme undertaken by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had taken up the development of only non-nuclear missile systems - Prithvi, Trishul, Akash and Agni. All these progammes have been successfully completed to ensure their induction into the armed forces. The pressure on India to indigenise design and manufacture of the components for the missiles had become quite intense in view of the U.S. having tightened restrictions on their export. The restrictions should have delayed the progress of the Agni, the Prithvi, the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle, inspite of the fact that the PSLV and the GSLV have no military applications to justify them.
Exports were prohibited if the U.S. Commerce Department, which is empowered to implement the President's Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI), suspected that the components would be used for the production of chemical and biological weapons. The sense of insecurity arising from its fears over other countries developing their missile strike capability could be readily seen from the U.S. going ahead with its own missile development and production programme under its Theatre High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) for making advanced space sensors such as "Brilliant Eyes" which can significantly enhance the coverage of both "lower and upper theatre defences" and help ground-based interceptors "provide full coverage of the continental United States", according to an official statement made earlier by an acting Director of the U.S. Strategic Defence Initiative Organisation. A great deal of the destructive potential of conventional missile warheads had been discovered with their use during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1990, the Falklands conflict (1980) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and this led to the development of a later generation of cruise missiles, TV and laser-guided and anti-radiation missiles equipped with advanced sensors for increasing their lethal power.
The non-nuclear missile systems which are now in place and ready for development during a perceived emergency are themselves highly destructive. The further induction of missiles equipped with nuclear warheads by the nuclear weapon states is the biggest menace which the world is now living with since even an accidental detonation could bring about a global inferno which even a thousand Hiroshimas could not match. Grave doubts over the safety of simply maintaining squadrons of aircraft such as the U.S.' B-52s and FB-111s, which are nuclear weapon carriers, and nuclear missile armoury and fears of accidental triggering of the weapons have repeatedly been raised. The end of the Cold War has left unsolved the problems thrown up by the missile stockpiles.
The seriousness of the accidental going off of nuclear missiles and weapons had come to light from reports - there is in all probability a greater number of unreported incidents - of potential disasters which had been luckily averted. There was a collision at sea between a U.S. aircraft carrier, the uss Kitty Hawk, and a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine way back in March 1984 though this did not result in any catastrophe. There were a number of other such scrapes. The task of defusing the stockpile of nuclear warheads remains very much unattended to - since even if the nuclear weapon states muster the will to get down to it, the dismantling itself presumably calls for technology which may not be readily available or is yet to be perfected.
According to an earlier estimate, there were over 60,000 nuclear warheads in Europe and the U.S. awaiting defusing and destruction. The status of over 3,000 warheads in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus which have seceded from the erstwhile Soviet Union is yet to be determined since it is not known whether these states accept obligations which the former USSR had agreed to under START-I and START-II with the U.S.
A persisting disaster potential resulting from nuclear weapons and missiles awaiting dismantling is the radioactive contamination of facilities and the exposure of populated areas to the same. The volume of Russian liquid missile propellants packed in the missiles is also very high amounting to more than 100,000 tonnes which are to be destroyed under the START agreements. The storage cost of these propellants is itself very heavy and and had been estimated at over $50 millions. Their destruction, assuming that it could be safely completed, has been estimated to cost $15 millions. The costs for the defanging of the U.S. non-nuclear and nuclear missile are even higher. According to an estimate made by the U.S. Department of Energy, the cost of decontaminating warhead production sites was as high as $60 billions and it was placed even higher at $155 milllions by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. No immediate results could be expected since the cleaning up of the contaminated earth, waterways and the buildings requistioned for missile production, nuclear and non-nuclear, would itself take as long as thirty years and the cost might actually go up to $ 300 billions.
The enormous and crazy extravagance of the building of non- nuclear and nuclear missile stockpiles has been projected in all its starkness by a study of how much even a much smaller part of the billions of dollars could have made Earth a happier planet had they been spent on the following programmes: reforesting the earth: $2 billions (cost of a nuclear submarine); providing safe water to all: $5 billions (cost of a few nuclear bombs); rollback of deserts: $2 billions (cost of a dozen nuclear tests); protection of the ozone layer: $1 billion; reduction of air pollution: $5 billion (cost of six stealth bombers); stabilisation of population: $6 billions; cleaning up hazardous wastes: $10 billions.
The fractional cost of these programmes for the implementation of which Planet Earth endangered by weapon programmes, non-nuclear and nuclear, is crying out bares the prodigal criminality of the nuclear weapon states.

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Dawn, January 22, 2001

Nuclear restraint and risk reduction

By Dr Maqbool Ahmad Bhatty

THE year 2001 has started on a note of renewed endeavours to improve relations between New Delhi and Islamabad. While the state-level gestures, such as reciprocal measures to foster detente in Kashmir, have been marked by ups and downs, Track II initiatives have assumed renewed importance.
The Nimrana process is being resumed in a low key, but the activism of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), founded a year and a half ago, has gained a certain momentum, with help from Germany. An IPRI delegation went to New Delhi in August last year and held talks with the Delhi Policy Group, which has former Foreign Secretary K.S. Bajpai as chairman, and Lt-Gen (retd) V. R. Raghavan as director. The focus was on nuclear restraint and risk reduction.
A delegation from the Delhi Study Group returned the visit from Jan 12 to 16, and held a series of meetings with various scholars and experts, apart from holding seminars at the Quaid-i-Azam University, and IPRI, as well as a largely attended public seminar at an Islamabad hotel. They also called on the foreign office and were received by the foreign minister.
The exchanges with the Delhi Policy Group marked the return of India to the process of building confidence between the two countries after their nuclear tests in May 1998. Though the documents signed at Lahore in February 1999, during the visit of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, had included a memorandum of understanding on measures for risk reduction and confidence-building, the whole Lahore process was put into cold storage by India after the Kargil episode. During the suspension of dialogue even on nuclear risk reduction, the Pakistan side continued to work on the measures considered necessary to prevent accidental war between the two neighbouring countries that had tested nuclear weapons, and were expected to display the maturity and restraint expected of nuclear powers.
The Islamabad Council of World Affairs organized a national-level seminar in November 1999 on Pakistan's Response to India's Nuclear Doctrine. This was followed by an international seminar on Command and Control of Nuclear Weapons in February last year, jointly with the Institute of Strategic Studies, and with the assistance of the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany. Though an Indian expert was invited to the International seminar, he did not attend.
The Indian delegation which visited Pakistan from Delhi included, apart from K. S. Bajpai and Gen Ragahvan, Air Chief Marshal (retd) S.K.Mehra, former Air Force chief, J.N.Dixit, former foreign secretary, Rear Admiral (retd) K.R.Menon, former Chief of Naval Operations, and Prof. Matin Zuberi, former professor of disarmament studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Adm. Menon has written a book on "India's Nuclear Strategy". Air Chief Marshal Mehra and Prof Zuberi are also members of the National Security Advisory Board.
Those who contributed papers from the Pakistan side at the two seminars on Jan 14 and 15 included former foreign secretaries Tanvir Ahmad Khan, and Najmuddun Sheikh, and Prof. Rifaat Husain, Chairman of the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University. Admiral Menon, Air Chief Marshal Mehra, Ambassador Dixit, and Prof. Zuberi made presentations from the Indian side. Many scholars and retired civil and military officers took part in discussions at various seminars.
The discussions proved valuable in view of the risks that have been created by the accession of the two adversarial South Asian neighbours to the status of nuclear powers. It is customary to make a comparison of the nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers during the cold war with the Indo-Pakistan standoff in South Asia. However, the situation in the latter case is much more dangerous. First, the superpower rivalry was largely ideological and they never went to war, whereas India and Pakistan have a serious territorial dispute over Kashmir and have already fought three wars. A more significant difference is that the US and the Soviet Union were separated by long distances, so that the flight time for missiles between them was at least thirty minutes.
India and Pakistan are contiguous countries and the time difference between launch of missiles and their impact is only a few minutes. An additional challenge for managing the nuclear risks in South Asia is that, whereas the superpowers worked steadily to create confidence and reduce risks, there has been a regression in South Asia since the Lahore agreements of February 1999.
Several specific confidence-building and risk reduction measures were identified at the seminars. The most important of these are adequate communications, accompanied by familiarity with the language and terminology used on both sides. The two sides have established command and control arrangements on which information needs to be exchanged. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed at Lahore had called for measures designed to prevent conflict by accident or misunderstanding. Among these was an agreement to consult each other on such matters as nuclear doctrines, but India had gone ahead and announced its draft nuclear doctrine in August 1999 without any consultation.
India and Pakistan have a history of managing their security relationship despite a clash of interests and perceptions. The agreement, signed in 1988, not to attack each other's nuclear installations is a case in point. However, the attitude adopted by the BJP government has been related to the goal of isolating and weakening Pakistan, specially after the Kargil episode. International pressure has come on India to address the issues in South Asia in an objective manner, and therefore the steps being taken now to promote confidence-building measures are welcome, and have drawn a positive response from Pakistan.
When a mention is made of nuclear issues being held hostage to political relations, the country which has followed this approach is basically India, since Pakistan has been keen to pursue the CBMs agreed at Lahore which are designed to prevent the outbreak of a nuclear conflict by accident or because of miscalculation.
Pakistan's nuclear programme is India-specific, and it is because of India's decisive superiority in the conventional sphere that Pakistan cannot adopt the NFU approach. Given the close proximity of India and the lack of territorial depth, Pakistan's major concern would be to reduce the risk of pre-emptive strikes through access to advance information based on an exchange of information and intelligence obtained through high technology. Confidence-building and security assurances could be provided through such devices as separating warheads from delivery systems, launching procedures, double keys and placing custody of codes at a higher level. All these measures would have to be coordinated, and doubts removed through communication links.
The detailed discussions on the ways in which the risks of conflict could be reduced and restraint maintained on nuclear programmes were conducted with frankness and realism. It was felt that agreements already reached, such as the Simla Accord, the Lahore Declaration and the accompanying MoU provided an adequate framework on which to build the structure of risk reduction. While the ideal solution is to resolve the political disputes that cause tension, those problems are not amenable to an early solution. In the meantime, it is necessary to ensure that a nuclear holocaust does not afflict the region for want of safety measures based on command, control, intelligence and communications.
Certain other factors were identified that might have a stabilizing effect on the situation of nuclear confrontation in South Asia. One was that, given the close proximity of the two countries, any resort to nuclear weapons would be suicidal since the radioactive fallout would affect large populations in both countries. Secondly, the great powers would not remain indifferent and outside intervention to stop a nuclear conflict was highly likely.
The matter of cooperation between India and Pakistan on non-proliferation issues was also considered. There had been a shift in the US policy from pressing for the CTBT and other non-proliferation measures to renewed interest in developing sophisticated missile defence systems through NMD, and TMD. If the Bush administration went ahead to build such systems, there might be a chain reaction with other countries acquiring their own missile defence which would fuel an arms race and affect global security and stability.
So far, the West is disinclined to recognize India and Pakistan as de jure nuclear powers as that would be seen as betraying the signatories of the NPT. However, if India and Pakistan can make progress in nuclear risk reduction in South Asia, the prospects of their acceptance would increase. They also share other problems, including the West's sanctions policy. Hence better understanding between them could lead to their taking a joint stand.
The visit of the Indian delegation enabled the discussions initiated in New Delhi on nuclear restraint and risk reduction to advance further. As significant steps had been taken to move towards better relations, it was felt that rapid progress could be made in minimizing the risk of nuclear conflict through agreed confidence-building measures. This field offers the best hope of agreement and, as such, further such meetings as could help avert the risk of accidental nuclear conflict in South Asia are desirable.

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The Times of India, January 22, 2001

Kashmir peace initiative hangs in balance

By Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI: With just days to go before its unilateral ceasefire ends, New Delhi's fledgling peace initiative in Kashmir stands precariously poised. Boxed in from all sides, the advocates of an extension of the ceasefire within the government must contend with the unhelpful silence of Islamabad, the implacable hostility of Pak-based militant groups, divisions within the Hurriyat Conference and the growing demand within India that the security forces be given a "free hand".
"Pakistan and the jihadi groups must realise time is running out," said a senior official involved with the peace initiative. "If the ceasefire cannot be extended, it will take two or three years before the opportunity for a political approach arises again. Whether it's Musharraf or Salahuddin (Hizbul Mujahideen leader), there has been no flexibility at all. They are sticking to the demand of tripartite talks or nothing". He said Pakistan should know that "we have the option of ending the ceasefire. They are wrong to assume our initiative stems from military weakness or fatigue."
At the same time, there is some concern that any heavy-handedness by the security forces will cost the country dear in the long run. The recent custodial killing of two prisoners has led to widespread public demonstrations, and officials fear the return of the 'crowd'-largely absent as a factor since the early 1990s-may add a new punch to the militants' campaign.
Though there are divisions within the government on the ceasefire and the granting of passports to Hurriyat leaders-the external affairs ministry, for example, is wary of allowing them to go to Pakistan- institutions like the Army and intelligence agencies, usually the most hawkish, are the ones in favour of the peace process. "But we have to get some opening from the other side," said the official.
On the passports issue, sources familiar with the Hurriyat's internal politics contend that the main roadblock is the opposition of two senior APHC leaders to the participation of Syed Ali Shah Geelani in the delegation. "Their fear is that with Geelani going, the jihadists will hijack the entire show," a source said. "Also, they aren't sure how the Pakistani government will receive them. If Musharraf refuses to endorse the ceasefire on their appeal and they come back empty-handed, the popular allegation in the Valley that they are 'stooges of Pakistan' will get confirmed."
At the same time, the Vajpayee government appears to be in a quandary over the passports issue. There is, for example, a concern that granting passports could amount to recognising the Hurriyat as the representatives of the Kashmiris. The MEA is especially worried that a high-profile Pakistan visit might undo New Delhi's efforts over the years to delegitimise the Hurriyat in the eyes of the international community and, especially, the US.
Even those in favour of issuing passports, say the main issue is peace. "If facilitating peace means giving them passports, so be it," said an intelligence official. "But the focus has to be on what exactly they will accomplish over there."
The most optimistic scenario is that they could get Gen Musharraf to call upon the militant groups to respect the ceasefire, in return for which, Prime Minister Vajpayee would invite Pakistan's chief executive for talks. And the pessimistic scenario? "We'll be back to the days of Robin Raphel", said an external affairs ministry official, "with the US promoting the Hurriyat once again".
Meanwhile, an upcoming conference to be held in Jammu will provide an opportunity for the Union government to demonstrate its political skills. G M Shah, the former J&K chief minister, has invited Hizb chief Syed Salahuddin, 'Azad Kashmir' Prime Minister Barrister Sultan Mahmood, JKLF leader Amanullah Khan and a host of Kashmiri militant and political figures from across the Line of Control to attend a two-day Kashmir conference on February 10 and 11 on the theme, 'In Search of Peace and Solution'.
The others invitees are Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, leaders of the Hurriyat Conference, and Kashmiri Pandit and Ladakhi Buddhist representatives. The organisers hope that if Salahuddin and others want to come from Pakistan and take part in the conference, the government of India will grant them the right of safe passage.

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India Abroad News Service, January 21, 2001

Peace lobby protests Agni missile tests

by Papri Sri Raman

Chennai, Jan 21 - The fledgling anti-nuclear weapons movement in India crossed a milestone this weekend with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) holding its first national coordination committee meeting here.
A protest against the testing of the Agni II missile as "the last step before induction" of nuclear warhead equipped missiles in the Indian armed forces also took place as a section of Chennai residents marched through the streets, raising slogans for peace and against weaponization of the country.
"It has been officially given out that the Agni II is now the centerpiece of the land-based part of a triad of land, air and sea-based nuclear delivery systems to provide a minimum nuclear deterrent for India as envisaged under the draft nuclear doctrine," the Movement Against Nuclear Weapons said in a statement.
The Movement Against Nuclear Weapons, an umbrella forum of more than 30 Chennai-based peace organizations, hosted a two-day conference that discussed the "Interim charter for nuclear disarmament for peace". The charter was drafted by the CNDP at its national convention held in New Delhi last November in which 600 peace activists, including 60 delegates from Pakistani anti-nuclear weapons groups and peace activists from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Australia, the Philippines and New Zealand had participated.
The former chief of naval staff, Admiral L. Ramdas, participating in the discussion, noted that the testing of Agni II last week was a new benchmark in nuclear weaponization in India. Going by media and "official" Ministry of Defense reports, if the Agni II test was assumed to be as "successful", this would be the first land-based missile with a solid fuel system, he said.
The successful use of "solid fuel" would provide an enormous advantage to the Indian armed forces, Ramdas told IANS. Not even a country like China, which possesses more than 15 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), has this advantage, he said.
So far all nuclear missile systems across the world have been using liquid fuels, which "cannot be kept on "hairline trigger" -- a state of permanent readiness. These nuclear-tipped missiles are not kept loaded with the liquid fuel. It takes at least 17 to 18 hours to load the fuel into the missile, which entails considerable delay in the readiness to be launched.
The liquid fuel has to be taken out and replenished with new stock. This means the fuel hold of the system would have to be cleaned before refilling, which entails another cumbersome process.
Solid fuel, on the other hand, can be loaded and kept for indefinite periods. Therefore, nuclear-tipped Agni II missiles would have a distinct "military advantage" over liquid fuel-fed missiles that are being used by all other countries, Ramdas explained.
Peace activist and CNDP member Achin Vinayak said most countries deployed either land-based or sea-based nuclear delivery systems. Even Britain only maintained its sea-based system and had cut its air-borne system, he said.
While many countries had the capability, Britain and France had agreed to contain further testing of nuclear weapons while South Africa, Brazil and Argentina had dismantled their systems. The Russian Federation countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which possessed the largest number of stock nuclear weapons, had also agreed to no further weaponization, peace activists pointed out.
At a time when everyone was talking of disarmament, India was the only country going ahead with its program to induct the "triad" system into its armed forces, the activists said. The "Draft nuclear document, with all its incalculable and undesirable consequences, has thus already begun. The pretence that it was merely a document released for public debate has been unceremoniously abandoned. The predictable reaction from Pakistan cannot gladden aspirants for subcontinental amity," the Movement Against Nuclear Weapons said.
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament draft charter under discussion included demands that India halt and roll back nuclear weapons related preparations, halt advanced research into nuclear weapons and decide against induction and deployment of nuclear weapons, including nuclear-tipped missiles like Agni II.
It also called on India not to acquire and deliver nuclear weapon-specific delivery systems (including systems like Agni II), not conduct explosive and subcritical tests and not produce or acquire weapon useable fissile material like tritium.
Calling for "full transparency and public accountability" on the part of the Indian government, the CNDP demanded compensation to the radiation-affected uranium miners of the Jaduguda mines in Jharkhand. In the "Action Plan" discussed was support to all organizations fighting for the Jharkhand radiation victims and support to all organizations in Rajasthan fighting against the use of the desert as testing grounds for nuclear bombs.
The setting up of a national federation of radiation victims in India was also discussed.
The CNDP has also decided to press for the institutionalization of the "Nuclear Disarmament and Peace Week" from August 4-11 every year from this year on in all schools and colleges in India.

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The News International, January 21, 2001

Australian humbug

Hypocracy of countries which initially condemned India's test in 1998

by Brian Cloughley

On May 12, 1998 Australia's prime minister said that "India's action in conducting three underground nuclear tests is an ill-judged step." His minister for foreign affairs followed up 24 hours later by saying "I unreservedly condemn India's action in conducting two further nuclear tests today." Then he really got stuck in to New Delhi and pronounced that "this is the act of a government that has the utmost disregard for accepted international norms of behaviour." This was the strongest language used by any country in condemnation of India's nuclear tests. But it is interesting how things change in a couple of years.
Australia is reopening defence links with India, by sending a defence adviser to New Delhi and welcoming an Indian DA in Canberra. Further, an Australian warship will attend India's International Fleet Review, to be held at Mumbai in February, and once again there will be exchanges of officers at staff colleges. These initiatives take place two years after total severance of defence ties by Australia because of India's nuclear explosions.
But what has happened in the two years that have passed since the tests, to make Australia change its mind so dramatically about India's nuclear posture? Has there been an indication by New Delhi that it will consider signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Has it agreed to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty? Has it announced that it might curtail or diminish its nuclear weapons' programme? After all, on May 14, 1998 Foreign Minister Downer of Australia said that "India must immediately sign the CTBT, join the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, and forswear forever the use of nuclear weapons." Does not this strike you as a demand? Does it not have the air of an ultimatum? Use of the words "must immediately" is indicative of the imperative-the peremptory, indeed.
This is an example of a nation of substance telling another nation of substance that its actions are "ill-judged" and that it had better look sharp and sort out its moral and practical priorities, or, by golly. Well, what, by golly? Well, not much, in the end.
Canberra rapidly backtracked from its initial outrage and its vivid, thrilling condemnation of India's nuclear explosions. In spite of Mr Downer saying so forcefully and elegantly on May 14, 1998 that "Australia has and will continue with vigour to use regional and international forums to make clear Australia's opposition to Indian nuclear testing" it seems that money beats morality.
Australia did not use a single international forum to condemn India for its nuclear tests, and a search of Parliamentary comment over the next two years reveals little anti-nuclear fervour on the part of Mr Downer and the Australian government in general. No longer was it necessary, apparently, to maintain the "strong and substantive response" that Mr Downer advocated so strongly. It seemed that India's nuclear bangs were not to be regarded as "outrageous acts", nor that they had "potentially serious implications for global security." India's nuclear explosions were apparently no longer "a provocation" as Mr Downer so righteously described them on May 13, 1998. A few months later they became, in the words of Mr Nugent, a Government member of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, the cause of "some frost or chill in the relationship between Australia and India."
Mr Nugent is also a master of elegant and syntactic language, and observed that "The problem with that frost is that there is the danger that it may do more damage to us in some ways than to India. So whilst it is right that we express to India our disappointment and disapproval of what they have done in the nuclear field, we will see, however, economic activity between the two countries, and businesses continuing to trade and do business. If we can resolve those concerns about the nuclear issue then relations between the two countries will return to normal." But resolution of the concerns has not taken place.
In mid-1998 Australian Senator MacGibbon, "on behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade" presented "a report entitled Australia's Trade Relationship with India (which) endorses the efforts of the Australian Government in promoting Australia's trade and commercial interests in India through a number of bilateral and multilateral mechanisms." There was a small problem, acknowledged Senator MacGibbon, in that "Two significant events occurred during the final stages of the Committee's Inquiry which impact on the Australia-India relationship.
The first was the election of a new government (in India) in March 1998. The second was the five underground nuclear tests which India conducted in May 1998." The Committee said no more about either India's government or the five nuclear tests, but ended its statement with the recommendation that "The Committee maintains that Australia must continue to develop its links west and to build on its trade and investment relationship with India." And that was that. Nothing about India having "the utmost disregard for accepted international norms of behaviour," as Mr Downer put it so forcefully only a few weeks before the Joint Committee produced its report.
Then there was India's 'Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine' of August 17, 1999. This paper was produced at the direction of the Indian Government, and "outlines the broad principles for the development, deployment, and employment of India's nuclear forces." Following the Report there was not a peep out of the Australian government, which wanted India to "forswear forever the use of nuclear weapons."
Neither was there comment from Canberra when India's Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Rajagopala Chidambaram, stated on October 30, 2000 that "India is now a nuclear weapon state." He went on to say that "The five carefully planned and completely successful nuclear weapons tests at Pokhran on May 11 and 13 1998, and confirmation of design yields by seismic, radiochemical and other studies give us the capability to design and fabricate weapons from low yield to around 200 kilotons. That was in May 1998, and since then a great deal of scientific and technological development has taken place." A search for comment from Mr Downer drew blank. There was no Australian outrage concerning India's nuclear ambitions as described so unequivocally by Dr Chidambaram. The Indian nuclear weapons program is off the map, off the screen, has ceased to exist, so far as Canberra is concerned, and the defence relationship is being re-established enthusiastically, along with some lucrative contracts for Australian industries.
Australia's efforts to encourage trade with a large and potentially rich country are in its best economic interests. But, all the same, one wonders about a government that can so easily ditch a principled stance without justification, explanation, or alteration of circumstances. If India had made just one concession, or even a modest gesture concerning its nuclear weapons' programme, Australia's somersault would be understandable, at least to some degree.
But Mr Downer demanded that India "must immediately sign the CTBT, join the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, and forswear forever the use of nuclear weapons," none of which was negotiable. Twenty months later, without achieving any of his demands, Mr Downer has committed Australia to a new and closer defence relationship with India, which seems a strange way to "send a message to other nations that might be considering the testing or development of nuclear weapons."
To put the cap on it, the new defence relationship begins a week after India tested a nuclear-capable intermediate range ballistic missile. This didn't upset Australia's foreign minister one little bit, but he got a jab in at Pakistan, all the same. On January 18, when asked about defence relations with Islamabad, he said there were no plans to re-establish links because of "the overthrow of democracy." So Australia does not want to have defence relations with countries that are not democracies. Fine. That is a principled stance. When does it withdraw its defence representatives from non-democracies such as Vietnam, China and Cambodia? Consistency and principle do not seem to be the rule in Canberra.
The author is a commentator on political and military affairs.

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Economic and Political Weekly, January 20, 2001

Changing Course of Kashmiri Struggle

From National Liberation to Islamist Jihad?

by Yoginder Sikand

From the 1990s onwards, a remarkable transformation in the terms of discourse in which the Kashmiri liberation struggle against Indian rule has sought to express itself may be clearly discerned. The early Kashmiri independence movement, whose roots go back to the uprising against the Dogra regime in the 1930s and then, after 1947, against Indian control, saw itself principally as a nationalist struggle. From the 1930s till 1947, the Kashmiri movement, under the charismatic Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah, aimed at challenging the autocratic rule of the Dogras and demanding a proper representation for the Kashmiri Muslims in the administration of the state. In 1947, most of Kashmir came under Indian rule, and from then onwards, the Kashmiri struggle assumed the form of a national liberation movement for an independent state.
As Abdullah’s charisma gradually declined, with the failure of his National Conference to meet the aspirations of the people and in preserving the autonomy of Kashmir, a new breed of Kashmiri nationalists, disillusioned with what they saw as Abdullah’s complicity with the Indian state, emerged. The leadership of the movement was provided by young Kashmiri Muslims who had received a modern education in the colleges that were set up in the region after 1947. Their principal demand was that India should fulfil its commitments to the United Nations and allow a plebiscite to be held in the territory to enable the people to decide their own political future. Challenging the legitimacy of Indian rule, these Kashmiri nationalists advocated an independent, secular democratic Jammu and Kashmir. The ideology informing their nationalist project was that of Kashmiriyat or ‘Kashmiri identity’, which they saw as a unique amalgam of traditions drawing upon local Muslim, Hindu and other sources. The Kashmiri nationalist project was spearheaded by several organisations and parties, the foremost being the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front [JKLF], established in 1964. The JKLF demanded that the state of Jammu and Kashmir as it existed prior to 1947 be united as ‘one fully independent and truly democratic state’. It advocated ‘equal political, economic, religious and social rights ’ for all citizens in the proposed state ‘irrespective of race, religion, region, culture and sex’.1
Parallel to the rise of the Kashmiri nationalists, Kashmir in the late 1930s also witnessed the emergence of an Islamist movement. The roots of the Islamist emergence can be traced to the reformist efforts of the Ahl-i-Hadith, established in Kashmir in 1925. The Ahl-i-Hadith saw themselves as inheritors of the legacy of the Prophet and his companions, crusading against Sufism, the dominant form of Islamic expression in Kashmir, branding it as unIslamic. Given the deep-rootedness of the Sufi tradition in Kashmir, the Ahl-i-Hadith singularly failed to develop a mass following. Rather, it remained, as it does even today, a largely elitist phenomenon, with its core support base among a limited section of the urban middle classes. The Ahl-i-Hadith-style of reformism did, however, provide fertile ground for the emergence of other Islamist trends from the 1930s onwards. Islamism in Kashmir found its most vocal champion in the Jama’at-i-Islami, established in 1941 by Sayyed Abul ‘Ala Maududi, and organised as an independent organisation and political party in Kashmir in 19522 [Kashmiri nd; 1984].
The Jama’at-i-Islami Jammu Kashmir [JIJK] remained, at least at the political level, a marginal force in Kashmir till the 1980s, but with the launching of the armed struggle in 1989 it has come to play a central role in Kashmiri politics. It has forcefully sought to present the armed struggle as a jihad between Islam and disbelief (‘kufr’), thereby challenging the Kashmiri nationalists’ definition of the struggle as one between the Kashmiri ‘nation’ and the Indian state. The Jama’at sees the struggle as a war between Muslims and others, and is bitterly critical of the notion of a separate Kashmiri national identity. Rather, it insists that the Kashmiris are simply a part of the worldwide Muslim ‘ummah’, not a nation by themselves, for, according to it, Islam and nationalism are incompatible with each other. Hence, it argues, the mission of the Kashmiri struggle is not to set up an independent state, which is what the nationalists’ project is all about, but to make Kashmir a part of Muslim Pakistan.
The JIJK’s efforts at restructuring the framework of discourse within which the Kashmiri struggle sought to express itself has, from the early 1990s, been given further impetus by the growing intervention in Kashmir of Islamist groups based in Pakistan. These groups tend to see the Kashmiri struggle not simply as a jihad between the Muslims of Kashmir and the Indian state, but in far wider terms: as a ‘holy war’ between the Muslims of the world, on the one hand, and the Hindus as an entire community, in league with other ‘disbelieving enemies of Islam’, on the other. In this grand battle, national and geographical barriers are completely demolished – all Muslims, wherever they may be, are seen as being responsible for contributing in some way or the other in this jihad. On the other hand, Hindus are seen as complicit in the oppression of the Kashmiri Muslims, and hence, considered as enemies. Interestingly, the Hindus are seen as being in league with other ‘enemies’ of the Muslim ummah – the Jews and the Christian West, against who, too, a jihad needs to be waged.
This paper looks at the process from the early 1990s onwards, in which the discursive framework within which the Kashmiri struggle has thus for operated has, undergone a dramatic transformation. It seeks to locate this struggle for discursive hegemony within the broader socio-political context to see how and why the Kashmiri nationalist discourse is increasingly giving way to an Islamist one, with the nationalist goal of a free Kashmir being marginalised in favour of the Islamist agenda of incorporating Kashmir into Pakistan and establishing an Islamic state there, as a prelude to and part of a wider, global project.
We start with a discussion of the way that the JIJK has sought to present its case for a jihad in Kashmir and the arguments it has used against the nationalists in putting forward its case for the accession of Kashmir with Pakistan. We then look to the role of Islamist groups based in Pakistan in further developing this argument, taking as a particular case the Lashkar-i-Taiba or the LIT (‘The Army of the Rigtheous’), the principal armed group active in Kashmir today.

The JIJK and the Kashmiri Jihad
The JIJK was established as an independent organisation in 1952, although from the late 1930s a growing number of Kashmiri Muslims had come under the influence of its founder, Maulana Maududi, principally through his powerful writings. The JIJK presented itself as an organisation committed to establishing an Islamic state in Kashmir based on the Islamic law, the shari’at, but using democratic means of peaceful persuasion for attaining its goals. This was stressed in its Constitution, adopted in 1953. Article 2 [b] of its Constitution states that, ‘The Jama’at shall not employ ways and means against ethics, truthfulness and honesty or which may contribute to strife on earth’. Article 2[c] of its Constitution lays down that, ‘The Jama’at shall use democratic and constitutional methods, while working for the reform and righteous revolution (Constitution of the Jama’at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmiri, nd).
Till the late 1960s, the JIJK sought to cultivate a constituency for itself through publishing and distributing literature, establishing reading-rooms and discussion groups, setting up a network of schools all over the state, and through public lectures. In 1969, for the first time, the JIJK decided to enter the electoral fray, by sponsoring a number of candidates for the local level (panchayati) elections which were held on a non-party basis. Apparently, it was felt that by remaining outside the sphere of electoral politics, it was being rendered increasingly ineffective. It was thought, therefore, that elections were ‘the best platform to popularise the message of the movement’ [Bisati 1997]. Later, the JIJK went on to participate in successive provincial as well as general elections as an independent political party. It failed, however, to win an impressive number of seats in any election, owing both to widespread rigging engineered by the Indian authorities as well as a definite lack of enthusiasm for the JIJK’s agenda on the part of the electorate.
The last time that the JIJK participated in the electoral field was in the 1987 elections, as part of the 11 party alliance, the Muslim Muttahida Mahaz (Muslim United Front or MUF), a group of several Kashmiri parties championing the right to political self-determination of the Kashmiri people. It was widely expected that the MUF would do well in the elections and might even be able to win a majority. However, these elections, like all the others previously held in Kashmir, were marked by massive rigging by the Indian authorities, as a result of which only four MUF candidates were officially declared elected. The election results met with an upsurge of rage and opposition, with mass demonstrations being held against the Indian state for subverting the democratic process. Then, in 1988, having tired of the democratic path of seeking to win the right to self-determination, an armed struggle for the liberation of Kashmir from Indian rule was launched. Two massive bomb blasts in the heart of Srinagar, the capital of the state, on July 31,1989 heralded the launching of the armed struggle. The JKLF claimed responsibility for the act.3
The armed struggle launched by the JKLF for the independence of Kashmir found mass support among Kashmiri Muslims, disillusioned as they were with Indian rule and with the subversion of democratic institutions in Kashmir. The MUF initially hesitated in joining the armed struggle, directing its four representatives within the state assembly, including Sayyed Ali Gilani, chief ideologue of the JIJK, to retain their seats so as to be able to air the grievances of the people. However, the rising tide of the JKLF-led struggle soon proved too much for the MUF high command to ignore, and in 1989, it instructed its members in the assembly to resign and to join the struggle. The JIJK now decided to fully immerse itself in the militant movement, and in 1990 it set up its own militant wing, the Hizb-ul Mujahidin (HM) (‘The Army of the Holy Warriors’).
Given the JKLF’s immense popularity among the Kashmiri Muslims, and the mass support for its goal of an independent, democratic and secular Jammu and Kashmir, the JIJK and the HM had to struggle against great odds in putting forward their own agenda of making Kashmir part of Pakistan and establishing an Islamic state in the region. One of the major hurdles that the JIJK had to face in expanding its base beyond a narrow circle of lower-middle class sympathisers was its perceived attitude towards the popular local Sufi Islamic traditions. The JIJK, rooted as it was in a fierce opposition to popular Sufism, was seen by many Kashmiris as opposed to those Sufi saints whom they held in great respect and despite its efforts to convince people that this was not the case, the JIJK was unable to dispel the notion. Since Sufism is still the dominant form of Islamic expression in Kashmir, this was seen by many as hostility towards Islam itself. Further making the JIJK’s project more difficult for itself was the fact that although most Kashmiri Muslims were certainly disillusioned with India, it is unlikely that a majority of them would have preferred to join Pakistan instead, as the JIJK and HM advocated. To make matters even more intractable for the Islamists, was the reign of terror unleashed by the Indian armed forces, resulting in the killings of many thousand Kashmiri Muslims, among whom were several known Islamist activists and sympathisers.
Despite the immense odds that the Islamists had to contend with, from both the Kashmiri nationalists as well as the Indian armed forces, they strove, through publications, mass meetings, public rallies and the work of their activists, to convince the Kashmiris that the solution to the crisis lay in the project that they were advocating – a counter to both Indian occupation and demands for independent nationhood. In this manner, a shift was sought to be made in the terms within which the liberation struggle was being waged. Islam, not Kashmiriyat, and accession to Pakistan, not an independent Kashmir, were now presented as solutions to the Kashmir question. Such arguments now began to exercise a broader appeal, especially with the rise of militant anti-Muslim Hindu groups in India, and the subsequent large-scale killings of Muslims in the wake of the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992. Indeed, the growing popularity of the Islamists in Kashmir and the consequent marginalisation of the Kashmiri nationalists, has much to do with the rapid spread of the Hindutva forces in India. The very real dangers that the rise of Hindutva posed to Muslim lives and identity in India, and to the Muslims of Kashmir as well, made the argument more convincing that the struggle being waged in Kashmir was one between kufr and Islam.
The Islamist re-working of the discursive framework in which the Kashmiri struggle has sought to express itself is well illustrated in the writings of Sayyed Ali Shah Gilani. Gilani has held many top positions in the JIJK and is presently the chief political spokesman of the party, besides being the current chairman of the All-Parties’ Hurriyat Conference, an alliance of 34 Kashmiri Muslim parties and organisations fighting for Kashmir’s freedom from Indian control. He is, by far, one of the most senior Kashmiri political leaders and also has the distinction of being the most prolific writer among them all.
Gilani’s major writings all date to the 1990s, a period when the JIJK had immersed itself in the armed struggle, in which Gilani himself played a key role, and for which he was forced to spend several years in various jails. Not surprisingly, Gilani’s writings focus almost solely on the issue of Kashmir’s freedom from Indian control. He devotes little attention in his writings to Islamic law, theology and doctrines, for being an ideologue of the JIJK he takes Maududi’s voluminous writings on these subjects as authoritative. Gilani’s concern is to place the Kashmiri struggle within the Islamist discursive framework. Thus, the struggle is depicted as a jihad, the goal of which is the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan and the establishing of an Islamic state in the region. As we shall see later, Gilani’s understanding of the struggle differs at some crucial points with the views of the Pakistan-based jihadist outfits, being considerably less radical.
Three features are of particular importance in Gilani’s description of the jihad. Firstly, the jihad is seen as directed against the Indian state and its agents, not against Hindus or Indians as such. Secondly, the jihad has the limited goal of freeing Kashmir from Indian control. Thirdly, the mujihadin have no intention of intervening in Indian internal affairs after the liberation of Kashmir. Once the Kashmir issue is solved by freeing the territory from Indian control and merging it with Pakistan, India and Pakistan, Gilani writes, will be able to establish peaceful and cordial relations with each other, for the root cause of the tensions between the two countries is the dispute over the issue of Kashmir.
Gilani sees the armed struggle being waged in Kashmir not as a war of national liberation, but as a jihad between Islam, on the one hand, and the forces of kufr or disbelief, on the other. He argues that a combination of various developments –India’s denial to the Kashmiris of their right to self-determination; its brutal suppression of the Kashmiri struggle which has resulted in the deaths of many thousand Kashmiris, and the rapid rise in India of anti-Muslim Hindu chauvinism – have necessitated the launching of a jihad against India. He writes that the Indian state has, by its actions, ‘proved its extreme hostility towards the religious and moral sensibilities (of the Muslims) and the tenets of Islam’. ‘Wherever and whenever the laws of Islam are held out for insult and the religious rights (of the Muslims) are trampled upon’, he says, ‘jihad becomes a binding obligation (farz) for all Muslims’. Such a situation, he says, prevails in Kashmir, and hence the call for a jihad to be waged there [Gilani 1993]. This jihad, he stresses, calls for the participation of all Muslims, not just Kashmiris. In a telephonic interview in 1992 with a Lahore-based journalist soon after his release from a long spell in prison, Gilani declared:
 

It has now become incumbent, in the light of the teachings of the Holy Qur’an, upon all the people of Pakistan to participate in the (Kashmir) jihad. They should now stand up determinedly and assist their Kashmiri brethren in the practical (‘amali’) jihad. This jihad is a religious duty (farz) binding not only on the people of Pakistan, but, in fact, on the entire Muslim ummat...The extreme oppression that the Kashmiri Muslims are having to face is an open challenge for the entire Muslim ummat. All Muslims must now move ahead, help the oppressed Muslims [of Kashmir] and stop the hands of the oppressors.

While declaring the armed struggle a jihad, Gilani makes it clear that the armed struggle is directed against the Indian state and not against Hindus or Indians per se. He makes a clear distinction between the Indian state, on the one hand, and ordinary Indians and Hindus, on the other. Thus, in an appeal to the Kashmiri militants in April 1992 Gilani asserted that, ‘The mujahidin have just two enemies: the Indian state and its agents. To waste the power of our youth on targets other than these two is like pouring salt on the wounds of our oppressed people’ [Gilani 1992]. Gilani has, on numerous occasions, appealed for communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir. He stresses that Hindu-Muslim relations in the state have traditionally always been cordial, and that in the past the Valley has never known the wild-bloodletting between Hindus and Muslims that has erupted periodically, and now on a menacingly increasing scale, in India [Gilani 1993]. Defending the armed struggle from charges of being anti-Hindu, he asserts that the mass exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits in the early 1990s was actually instigated by the Indian authorities in order to project the Kashmiri struggle as an ‘Islamic terrorist’ movement, so as to discredit it in the eyes of the west [Gilani 1993:29]. Gilani has issued several appeals to the Kashmiri Pandits who have fled from their homes to return and join their Muslim brethren in the struggle [Gilani 1992:246]. He has also warned the mujahidin that they should desist from any actions ‘which will give their opponents a chance to brand them as terrorists’ [Gilani 1992:151].
Gilani’s opposition to the Indian state is limited insofar as his prime objective is to liberate Kashmir from Indian control. The jihad aginst India, in other words, is circumscribed by the limited objective of freeing Kashmir from Indian rule. Thus, he asserts that after Kashmir is freed from Indian occupation, the JIJK would ‘like to see India as free, prosperous and peaceful’ [Gilani 1998:72]. Criticising certain un-named Kashmiri militant groups for spreading anti-India hatred, he says:
 

Emotional slogans such as ‘Crush India!’ are neither realistic nor do they reflect the spirit of Islam. At root, Islam is based on invitation to prosperity, witness to the truth, salvation in the hereafter, protection of the truth, the ending of every form of oppression and creating understanding between all children of Adam. This, indeed, is the message of the life of the Prophet Muhammad [May peace be upon him!]. Even when the people of Ta’if unleashed a wave of unlimited oppression on the Prophet of Islam [May peace be upon him!], he did not pray to God that they should be destroyed but that He should guide them [to the right path]. This is why I believe our struggle should be geared to gaining our rights...The slogan of Islam is not one of destruction but of invitation [to the Truth], prosperity, peace and truth [Gilani 1992:227].

The legitimacy of the category of the ‘Kashmiri nation’ that forms the subject of Kashmiri nationalist discourse is vehemently denied by Gilani, this being a logical outcome of his own Islamist position that sees Islam and nationalism as being in complete contradiction to each other. Here, of course, Gilani is seeking to question the very basis of the political agenda of the major rivals of the JIJK, the various Kashmiri nationalist groups such as the JKLF. Gilani argues that nationalism is a ‘poisonous philosophy’ which the ‘enemies of Islam’, foremost among whom are ‘various western philosophies’, who have deliberately sought to infect Muslims with rationalism so as to divide and weaken them so that they can be kept under their control. He opines that the Muslim world-wide ummat is one, monolithic ideological community, cemented together on the basis of ‘ common belief (‘aqida) and faith (iman)’, which sees no differences of colour, race, language, caste, tribe or family [Gilani 1998:4]. He asserts that ‘whenever Muslims have ignored the principles of Islam that see no boundaries of region they have lost their power and have become like any other community’. Territorial nationalism, he writes, has proved to be the bane of the Muslims, for it has divided them into different states and, thereby, has deflected them from the task of ‘changing the conditions of the entire human race’ [Gilani 1998:3].
Islam, says Gilani, makes a clear distinction between ‘love for their country’ (watan dosti), which it allows, and territorial nationalism or ‘nation worship’ (watan parasti), which it clearly forbids. ‘Nation worship’, based on the principle of ‘my nation, right or wrong’, Gilani writes, leads to group prejudice, a quality of the period of the pre-Islamic period of ‘jahiliya’, an age of utter darkness [Gilani 1998:3]. He lays much of the blame for strife, war and bloodshed that characterises the world today on territorial nationalism. ‘Nationalism is the slogan of the jahiliya’, he argues, because the nation has usurped from Islam the ‘right to decide the criterion for what is right and what is wrong’. Because of this, large states, such as India, prey on smaller, weaker states, causing endless suffering and misery, ‘with millions of people being sacrificed at the altar of nationalism’ at the hands, in the Kashmiri case, ‘of the priests of Mother India’. However, he asserts, Islam, by denying the narrow boundaries that ‘nation worship’ has inscribed, has, ‘destroyed into smithereens the idol of nationalism until the Day of Resurrection’ [Gilani 1998:4].
All Muslims being considered as one nation, Muslims and Hindus in India, and Kashmir as well, are considered to be members of two different nations despite living in the same territory. This, Gilani says, is ‘an undeniable truth’ (‘na-qabil-i-tardid haqiqat’). He writes that not just in matters of faith, beliefs and customs do the two differ, but that they are also distinct and sharply set apart from each other in such matters as food, clothing and lifestyles. For Muslims to stay among Hindus or in an environment which is very different from their own is said to be as difficult as it is ‘for a fish to stay alive in a desert’. Muslims, he says, cannot live harmoniously with a Hindu majority without their own religion and traditions coming under a grave threat, one major factor being Hinduism’s capacity to absorb other religions and communites into its fold. Hence, for Islam to be preserved and promoted in Kashmir, it is necessary for it to be separated from India [Sikand 1998:243].
If all Muslims form one nation and nationalism is antithetical to Islam, then, the argument that Gilani seeks to advance is that the Kashmiri nationalist project of groups such as the JKLF is itself un-Islamic. From this it follows that the ‘Islamic’ solution to the Kashmir question is not the establishment of an independent Kashmiri nation state but the incorporation of Kashmir into an already-existing Muslim state, Pakistan. This is seen as the first step towards the eventual unity of all Muslims. In a pamphlet titled Masla Ka Hal (‘The Solution to the Problem’), issued in 1992, Gilani expressed this view thus:
 

To advocate that one Muslim group [qaum] be kept apart from the rest would be against the very definition of a people (‘millat’), whose communal identity is based only on one creed (‘kalima tayyiba’),4 especially so when that group shares common ideological, cultural and communal relations with a neighbouring (Muslim) group as well as a common border...For such a group to maintain a separate political identity of its own is against the broader interests of the entire Muslim millat.

The JIJK has, in fact, been among the most vocal champions of the merger of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan. In a letter to Nawaz Sharif, the then prime minister of Pakistan, in June 1993, Gilani commented that in Kashmir the JIJK and the HM ‘were the most reliable groups supporting the ideology of Pakistan’, and declared that the final goal of the JIJK was Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan. In the Kashmir jihad, therefore, the Pakistani state is seen as having a central role to play, in addition, of course, to the Pakistani people who are asked to assist the jihad. Thus, in his June 1993 letter Gilani appeals to the Pakistani prime minister for further assistance, but bitterly criticises Pakistan’s alleged policy of ‘taking everyone together’, by which is meant support for Kashmiri nationalist groups, in addition to the Islamists. Gilani complains that such a policy is not only ‘un-Islamic’, it also is against the very interests of Pakistan itself. He labels the nationalists as ‘enemies of the jihad’, and foes of Pakistan, and cautions that assistance to such groups as advocates of secular nationalism are a grave threat ‘to Pakistan’s stability and existence’ [Gilani 1992:138].
From this analysis of Gilani’s major writings, four points emerge as particularly central, which underline the discursive framework that he seeks to present. Firstly, that the present struggle is not a national liberation movement but a jihad. Secondly, the jihad is directed at the Indian state and its agents, and not against Hindus or Indians per se. Thirdly, the jihad aims at freeing Kashmir from Indian control and merging it with Pakistan, as part of a wider project of establishing an Islamic state in the region and building a united Muslim bloc. An independent Kashmiri nation-state is ruled out, for according to this perspective Islam and nationalism are antithetical to each other. Fourthly, this solution is seen as the only just answer to the Kashmir crisis, and an effective means to establish peace and cordial relations between India and Pakistan. In this way, Gilani seeks to counter the Kashmiri nationalist case for a Kashmiri nation state and to rework the terms within which the discourse of the Kashmiri liberation struggle is conducted.

Pakistani Jihadists and the Kashmir Jihad
The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, followed by the jihad in Afghanistan (1979-89) against the Soviet occupation soon turned Pakistan into what one commentator termed as ‘the original staging ground of Jihad as an international movement’ (Eqbal Ahmad, Jihad International Incorporated, www.sangat.org/islam/jihad.html). Large sums of money and huge quantities of arms now began pouring into Pakistan from various sources, particularly from the US and Saudi Arabia, apprehensive as both of them were of Soviet expansionism and the Iranian-style anti-monarchical and anti-western Islamic radicalism in the region. From the early 1980s, Pakistan emerged as the major launching pad for numerous militant Islamist groups fighting in Afghanistan, with large numbers of activists flocking here not only from Afghanistan, but also from the Arab world and from the Muslim diaspora in the west, all united in the mission of spearheading a jihad against the godless Soviets. Several Pakistani Islamic parties, particularly the Jama’at-i-Islami, the Jami’at-i-’Ulama-i-Islam and the Jami’at-i-’Ulama-i-Pakistan, too, were drawn into the jihad, and set up or sponsored their own militant wings.
Numerous Islamic seminaries [madrasas] sprang up all over the country, lavishly patronised by Zia-ul-Haq and the Saudis, almost all based on sectarian affiliation, to train their students for the jihad. The consequent spread of what has been called ‘the gun-culture’ in Pakistan was a major consequence of all these factors. Thus, with arms and funds easily available, Pakistan was rapidly faced with widespread internal conflict, which took several forms – ethnic, between Mohajirs and Pathans in Karachi; sectarian, between Sunnis and minority Shi’as and, among Sunnis themselves, between Deobandis and Barelwis.
The Afghan jihad brought to Pakistan, Islamic activists from various countries, particularly from Arab states such as Algeria and Egypt, where Islamist groups were fighting incumbent governments which they saw as stooges of western imperialism. Many of these ‘Arab-Afghans’, as they are called, returned to their countries after training in Pakistan and fighting inside Afghanistan, and attempted to launch what they saw as jihads against their own governments. The Afghan war may be credited with having given birth to what has been termed by a Iqbal Ahmad as ‘Jihad International Inc’, a worldwide movement, in whose founding Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US played the leading role. This Pan-Islamic jihadist project may indeed be said to be a product of the 1980s, for although pan-Islamic sentiments have always exercised an influence in Muslim circles, never before in the 20th century has it taken the form of a project of armed jihad, worldwide in its scope.
Besides the Soviet presence at Pakistan’s very doorstep, several internal factors were responsible for Zia’s patronage of radical jihadist outfits. Having captured power through a military coup in 1977, and lacking legitimacy, he sought to win support for his regime through appeals to Islam, including the introduction of cosmetic changes in the law such as Islamic punishments, in the name of Islamisation, for which he won the warm support of Islamist groups such as the Jama’at-i-Islami. His so-called Islamisation drive has also been seen as a “compensatory mechanism for the ruling elite’s corruption, consumerism and kow-towing to the west” [Ahmad]. Linked to the Islamisation project that Zia and Pakistani rulers after him sought to pursue at home, was Pakistan’s Kashmir policy. To begin with, Pakistan is believed to have extended armed support to the JKLF, arranging for training some of its fighters in the wake of the armed uprising in Kashmir in 1989. However, it was soon clear to the Pakistani establishment that the JKLF, with its agenda of a free, democratic Kashmir, would not only not toe its line but also pose a threat to its own strategic interests. Hence, from the early 1990s began a policy of deliberate marginalisation of the Kashmiri nationalists by the Pakistani establishment, alongside with the cultivation of radical Islamists who had emerged in the years of the Afghan war to enter the Kashmir jihad , coupled with lavish patronage extended to Kashmiri Islamist groups such as the JIJK and the HM.
As a result of this change in Pakistan’s Kashmir policy from the early 1990s onwards, particularly since the mujahidin victory in Afghanistan in 1992, numerous jihadist outfits in Pakistan began turning their attention towards Kashmir. By the late 1990s, these Pakistani jihadists were playing a key role in the fighting in Kashmir, eclipsing even local Kashmiri groups. Thus, a report brought out by the Indian army in 2000 highlighted the fact that almost all the militant groups active in Kashmir were pro-Pakistan or Pakistan-based, and that the JKLF, the only non-Islamist group included in its list, was ‘presently on a low profile’. It estimated that there were some 2,750 pro-Pakistan Islamist militants active in Kashmir, while it put the number of JKLF militants at only 60 (www.armyinkashmir.org/article/killed.html). It is by now amply evident that several of these groups are being assisted by the Pakistani establishment, in particular by its Inter-Services’ Intelligence (ISI). With increasing western criticism of the Pakistani state’s role in sponsoring what some have termed as ‘Islamic terrorism’, however, an increasing ‘privitisation of jihad’ has occurred (www.myasa.com/bismark/opinion.html). Thus, Pakistan-based organisations that claim to be autonomous of the Pakistani state, but are, of course, still dependent on it for patronage, have taken up the task of spearheading the jihad. What is particularly striking about most of these groups is the relatively small Kashmiri presence in both the leadership as well as cadre levels, with almost all their leaders being Pakistani and most of their fighters being Pakistani nationals as well as some Afghans, Arabs and others. Apparently, it is felt that Pakistani strategic interests can be secured only if the leadership and even the rank-and-file of the jihadists remain in Pakistani hands. Further, it has also been argued that the failure or the unwillingness of Kashmiri militant groups to engineer large-scale killings of non-Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir so as to reduce the Hindu population, has been an important factor in the promotion of Pakistani-based groups, who have little such compunctions, to take over the armed struggle.

Jihadist Discourse of Markaz Da'awat ul Irshad and Lashkar-I-Taiba
If the JIJK, as we have seen in our analysis of Gilani’s writings, seeks to seriously question the legitimacy of the discursive framework of the Kashmiri nationalists by seeking to present the Kashmiri armed struggle as a jihad between Islam and disbelief, a further radicalisation of the jihadist discourse is clearly evident in the writings and statements of several Pakistan-based Islamist organisations actively involved in fighting in Kashmir. The most prominent of these groups are the Harkat-ul-Ansar, also known as the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami, al-Badr, Jami’at-ul-Mujahidin, al-Jihad and, probably the most influential of them all, the Lashkar-i-Taiba. All these groups share a common Islamist ideology and advocate the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan.
The Pakistan-based Islamist groups actively involved in the Kashmir conflict are thus today the central players in the Kashmiri armed struggle. One of the consequences of their emergence and growing influence has been the further radicalisation of the terms of discourse within which the JIJK has sought to portray the Kashmiri armed struggle, arguing against the claims of the Kashmiri nationalists and further developing certain themes that are only vaguely touched upon in Gilani’s writings. The jihad is no longer limited to liberating Kashmir from India, but goes far beyond, as we shall see. This is strikingly illustrated in the publications and statements of the Lashkar-i-Taiba (LIT), the ‘New Masters of Kashmir’ (jammu-kashmir.com/insights/insight9808.html), and said to be ‘the largest jihadi organisation in Pakistan’ [Khosa 1998a].
The LIT is the military wing of an organisation called the Markaz Da’awat-ul Irshad (‘The Centre for Preaching and Guidance’), set up in 1986 by two Pakistani university professors, Hafiz Muhammad Sa’eed and Zafar Iqbal. Its headquarters are located in a sprawling 160-acre campus at Muridke, a small town in the Gujranwala district of Pakistani Punjab, some 30 km from Lahore. The Markaz is affiliated to the Salafi or Ahl-i-Hadith school, known for its fierce opposition to Sufism and to the established schools of Islamic jurisprudence, insisting that Muslims must go back to the original sources of inspiration – the Qur’an and the Hadith – the sayings and reports of the acts of the Prophet Muhammad. It seeks to refashion the worldwide Muslim community in the mould of the ‘Companions of the Prophet’. It sees itself as the inheritor of the legacy of the first major jihadist movement in modern times in India, the movement launched by Sayyed Ahmad Barelwi and his band of followers, who, in the early 19th century, attempted to set up an Islamic state in the Pathan borderlands and declared a jihad against the Sikhs. The Markaz is believed to be closely linked to the Pakistani establishment as well as to the Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan.5
The Markaz, like many other Pakistani Islamist outfits, was originally designed to serve as a training base for Pakistani militants involved in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. In 1987, a year after its founding, it set up a training centre inside Afghanistan itself, at Jaji in the Patkia province, and then, shortly after, another in the Kunnar province. It claims that the warriors produced at these centres ‘performed outstanding operations’ against the Russians. In Afghanistan it carried out its jihad in league with an Afghan outfit, the Jama’at al Da’awat il al-Qur’an. As the Markaz’s activities rapidly grew, it was decided to divide its work into two separate but related sections: the educational and the jihadist. Thus, in 1993, the Markaz established its separate ‘jihadic and warfare’ wing, the LIT. The LIT later established four training centres in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where, ‘thousands of mujahidin from all over the world are being trained’. Markaz authorities claim that the militants produced at these centres have played a leading role in the armed struggles in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechenya, Kosovo, the southern Philippines, Kashmir and ‘in other areas where Muslims are fighting for freedom’.6 According to one report, in recent years the spread of the Markaz in Pakistan has ‘been phenomenal’, and today it has some 500 all over the country, most of them in Punjab, which operate as recruitment centres for would-be mujahidin (Lashkar-i-Taiba: The New Masters of Kashmir, jammu-kashmir.com/insights/insight9808.html).
At its Muridke headquarters, the Markaz runs an Islamic school and university, most of whose students are local Pakistanis, with some from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a few Kashmiris from the Indian-ruled part of the state, and several Afghans and Arabs. Besides, the Markaz has established a network of over 70 schools, mainly in Punjab, where Islamic and modern education are imparted.SUP>7 Young boys of the age of eight are taken in and are given a 12-year training. A strict military atmosphere is enforced, students must wear military uniforms, abide by military discipline and ‘properly assimilate the commandments of their theologians and military instructors that their future profession- as mujahidin-will be in great demand in the Muslim world on the threshold of the new millennium’ (Jihad, www.homestead.com/kashmirstory/jihad2~main.html). At its four training centres, would-be mujahidin are given rigorous military training. This is of two kinds. Firstly, a short 21 day course, the daura-i-’ama (‘general course’). Secondly, a three month intensive course, the daura-i-khasa (‘special course’), geared to guerrilla warfare, in which trainees learn how to handle small arms as well as survival and ambush techniques (Army: Mujahideen-e-Lashkar-e-Taiba, members.xoom.com/_xmcm/markazdawa/lashkar.html). These courses, it is claimed, ‘change the course of life’ of the trainees completely’, and a sign of this is said to be that they ‘no longer shave’ and ‘wear their shalwars above their ankles, as enjoined by the Prophet Muhammad’.
As in the case of the other Pakistan-based militant groups active in Kashmir today, the Markaz’s direct participation in the Kashmir conflict in a major way dates to the end of the Afghan war in 1992, in which an estimated 1,600 of its militants are said to have participated. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, it shifted its attention to Kashmir to ‘help the oppressed and innocent Kashmiris who were undergoing Indian aggression for the past 50 years’ (Allah’s Army: Mujahideen-e-Lashkar-e-Taiba). In this, they were assisted by the Jama’at-i-Islami of Pakistan and the ISI, key players in the Afghan jihad (Are the Talibans Coming?, www.kashmir.force9.co.uk/editorials.htm). The LIT is said to have first entered Kashmir in 1990, and then to have ‘upgraded’ its jihad there in 1993, when its militants attacked an Indian army base in Poonch. In 1994 the LIT began sending large numbers of its fighters into Kashmir, most of them non-Kashmiris. From 1995 it claims that its fighters have been ‘engaged properly and striving hard’ against the Indian forces (Ijtima Congregation: Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Amir, Mujahidin-I-Lashkar-I-Taiba, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/zaki-e.html). 1996 witnessed a major shift in the LIT’s Kashmir strategy, with greater attention being paid to the border districts of Jammu, particularly Rajouri and Poonch, as well as Doda. Reports suggest that some of the mass killings of Hindu villages in these areas have been the work of the LIT, with the aim of causing an exodus of the Hindu population of these areas so as to make their task easier (Lashkar-I-Taiba: The New Masters of Kashmir). By 1998, it was estimated that the LIT had some 350 mujahidin present in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Its fighters are considered by the Indian armed forces to be the best trained among all the militant groups in the region [Khosa 1998a].
In mid-1999 India and Pakistan almost came to war after Pakistan-based militants, believed to be backed by the Pakistani army, occupied certain strategic heights in the Kargil sector in the Ladakh province, in the remote northern part of Indian-controlled Kashmir. The four principal militant groups taking part in this operation, all Islamist and manned almost entirely by non-Kashmiris, were the Harkat-ul Mujahidin, the Tehrik-i-Jihad, al-Badr and the LIT. These groups together formed a joint military command to coordinate their military operations against the Indian army (Kashmiri Militants Fighting Indian Advance, www.ummah.org.uk/kashmir/news/advance.htm). The LIT contingent consisted, among others, of several students from its college at Muridke, led by one ‘Abdur Rahman ‘Abid, a graduate of Madinah University (Kargil: The Graveyard of Indian Troops, www.dawacenter.com/archives/tour.html). The LIT force was joined by some 200 militants from the Nuristan province of Afghanistan, the first time that such a large number of Afghan fighters had entered Kashmir in recent years (www.rawa.org/kashmir.html).
The Pakistani attempt to enter Kashmir through Kargil, however, failed, and under pressure from the west, the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, appealed to the militants to withdraw from the heights they had captured. The militants, on their part, were reluctant to obey, and they saw Sharif’s capitulation to the US as a betrayal of their jihad. Instead of towing Sharif’s line, they announced what they called ‘the second stage’ of the Kashmir jihad-taking the battle against the Indian army right inside the Kashmir valley itself, in order, as Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, the amir of the LIT, put it, ‘to avenge’ the atrocities of the Indian army. According to the amir of the Markaz, Hafiz Muhammad Sa’eed, in this second phase ‘the jihad would spread all across Kashmir. It would spread to every peak, every forest and every path’ (Kashmir Militants Start ‘Round Two’ of Struggle, www.asia2000.org.nz/news/NL1392432000.html). As part of this new strategy, the LIT came up with a new means of attack – suicide bombers, which it named as Ibn Taimiya Fida ‘i [‘Faithful’] Missions, in memory of the medieval Arab Islamic scholar who crusaded against what he saw as un-Islamic practices, and to whom the Ahl-i-Hadith owe much of their inspiration. So far, the LIT has conducted some nine fida’i missions inside Kashmir (Ijtema Congregation: Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi), the latest and the most dramatic one being an attack on the heavily-guarded Indian Army headquarters at Badami Bagh in Srinagar in early November 1999, in which several Indian troops and officers were killed. In all, the LIT claims that by early 2000, it had killed some 2,100 Indian army personnel, including senior officers, and to have lost some 500 of its own men so far in its Kashmir operations (Ijtema Congregation: Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi; Allah’s Army: Mujahideen-e-Lashkar-e-Taiba).
The success of the Badami Bagh operation came as a great boost to the morale of the LIT fighters, smarting under their poor showing in the Kargil operations some months earlier. In the wake of the attack on the Indian army headquarters, the head of the Markaz, Hafiz Muhammad Sa’eed declared before an estimated audience of 3,000 people in Muridke in November 1999 that his fighters could now ‘strike anywhere in India’, threatening even to strike at the Indian Prime Minister’s Office if India did not stop its aggression on the Kashmiri Muslims and vacate Kashmir. The jihad, declared the Hafiz, was not limited simply to freeing Kashmir from Indian control. Rather, he stressed, it was aimed at ‘liberating’ India itself.8 He revealed that the LIT was now planning to extend its activities beyond the borders of Kashmir deep inside India. ‘To set up a mujahidin network across India is our target’, said Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, chief of the LIT, addressing the same congregation. He claimed that his organisation was ‘preparing the Muslims of India against India’ and that once they were ready, ‘it would be the start of the disintegration of India’ (B Raman, Kargil: Some Dramatis Personae, www.saag.org/papers/paper57.html). Some 50,000 Pakistani youth are said to have responded to this appeal to join the grand anti-India crusade (Ijitma Coverage By Indian Newspapers, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/indiannewspapers.html).
The subject of armed jihad runs right through the writings and pronouncements of Markaz spokesmen and is, in fact, the most prominent theme in its discourse. Indeed, its understanding of Islam maybe seen as determined almost wholly by this preoccupation, so much so that its reading of Islam seems to be a product of its own political project. The contours of its ideological framework are constructed in such a way that the theme of armed jihad appears as its central, over-riding concern. Not surprisingly, therefore, it constructs a discursive framework that, like Gilani’s and the JIJK’s, completely denies the legitimacy of the Kashmiri nationalist project, but at the same time goes considerably beyond the limited aims of the JIJK’s jihad as Gilani conceives it in his writings.

Jihad in Markaz Discourse
There has been much discussion on the nature and forms of jihad in writings about Islam. Liberals have tended to explain it in terms of self-defence, while others have taken recourse to certain Sufi positions, where the foremost jihad (jihad-i-akbar) is said to the struggle against the nafs or one’s ‘baser self’ or ego. Yet others have suggested that jihad in the path of God (jihad fi’l sabil illah) can take many forms, and that armed struggle is just one of these. However, in the writings and speeches of Markaz spokesmen jihad appears unabashedly as violent conflict waged against unbelievers (qattal). Indeed, it is projected as the one of the most central tenets of Islam, although it has traditionally not been included as one of the ‘five pillars’ of the faith. Thus, it is claimed that ‘There is so much emphasis on this subject that some commentators and scholars of the Qur’an have remarked that the topic of the Qur’an is jihad’, and that ‘There is consensus of opinion among researchers of the Qur’an that no other action has been explained in such great detail as jihad’ (Jihad: The Foreign Policy of the Islamic State, www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/sept99/jihad.html, p 2).
In order to properly understand the role of jihad for the Markaz’s political project, it is necessary to situate it within the broader context of the Markaz’s own understanding of Islam. Like other Islamist groups, the Markaz sees Islam as a perfect, all-embracing system and way of life. Islam is said to govern all aspects of personal as well as social life, in the form of the shari’at laws. For the establishing of an Islamic system, an Islamic state is necessary, which will impose the shar’iat as the law of the land. This is seen as ‘the solution to all our problems’ (Implementation of Shar’iah is a Cure-All, www. dawacenter.com/magazinevoiceofislam/feb00/democracyvsislam.html). If such a state were to be set up and all Muslims were to live strictly according to ‘the laws that Allah has laid down’, then, it is believed, ‘they would be able to control the whole world and exercise their supremacy’ (Hafiz ‘Abdur Rahman Makki, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/mak.html). Since Islam is seen as the very antithesis of nationalism, it demands the establishment of one universal Islamic state, ruled by a single khalifa. Thus, the present division of the Muslims into many nation states must be overcome. Since ‘the umma is one’, it follows from this that ‘the system of khilafah does not recognise the physical borders or the independence of one Muslim country from another’. Hence, ‘the state is one, the army is one, the flag is one, the budget is one, etc’ (www.dawacenter.com/magazinevoiceofislam/feb00/democracyvsislam.html).
Islam is seen as a universal ideology meant for all humankind, and hence its message, and, in other words, the boundaries of the Islamic state, must be extended till the entire world comes under its domination. In order for the Islamic call to reach all peoples, it is the duty of the Islamic state to ‘carry it to new lands’. This, it is acknowledged, ‘will lead to a conflict with other states and ideologies’, which can be resolved either peacefully, through diplomatic means, or by force. The Islamic state must first try the former option, but if that fails it is incumbent on it to take recourse to force and wage a jihad. No one can be forced to accept Islam, however, and jihad is waged only to bring recalcitrant states under Islamic control by incorporating them within the ever-expanding boundaries of the Islamic state so that the new territories can be ‘provided with the security that comes from the application of Islam’, in other words, of the imposition of the shari’at. The people of the conquered lands, if they choose not to convert to Islam, may continue to practise their own religion. In this way, jihad is seen as ‘the method adopted by Islam to protect its lands and save humanity from slavery to man-made regimes’. It is, in short, ‘the foreign policy of the Islamic state’ (www.dawacenter.com/magazinevoiceofislam/sept99/jihad.html).
The global jihadist programme of the Markaz presents itself in a liberationist garb, basing itself on widespread feelings of discontent and suffering of sections of Muslims who see themselves as being persecuted by western-oriented elites in their own countries, as well as by the ‘west’ more generally. The greatest problem of the Muslims, says Hafeez Muhammad Sa’eed, head of the Markaz, is their ‘subjugation to the west’ (www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/feb00/seminar.html). Thus, the Markaz is reported to have gone so far as to call for a jihad against the US (B Raman, Osama Bin Laden: An Up-Date, www.saag.org/papers/paper25.html, p 3). Jihad is contrasted with other forms of war that are pursued for purely worldly concerns, and is described as ‘the act of supreme sacrifice to preserve human rights bestowed by Allah’ (members.xoom.com/_XMCM/markazdawa/jehad.htm, p 2). It is portrayed as a struggle ‘to help the oppressed against the atrocities committed by the aggressors’, and is compared with ‘a surgeon using a blade during operation’. Jihad is thus a means for challenging oppression and of establishing the rule of Islam.
Eight specific objectives are laid out for this grand jihadist enterprise. These objectives, in the words of an official Markaz statement, are: (1) To end persecution and tumult; (2) To enforce the Islamic world order; (3) To force the disbelievers to pay jizya;9 (4) To protect and shield the weak and the oppressed from oppression; (5) To avenge the millions of Muslims who were and are being mercilessly slaughtered in various parts of the world; (6) To punish those who have broken covenants made with the Muslims; (7) To restore our [Muslims’] possession of the Muslim territories now occupied by disbelievers, such as Sapin, India, Ba’it-ul Muqaddas [Jerusalem], Turkistan [Xinjiang], etc; (8) To defend and protect the Muslims continuously facing offensives from the disbelievers all over the world (www.dawacenter.com/jihad.jihad003.html).
Jihad is seen as the secret of Muslim power in the past when much of the known world was under Muslim rule, and it is argued that when Muslims ‘abandoned jihad and other injunctions they began to degenerate’ (www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/dec99/ijtima.html). In Markaz discourse, jihad is seen as a religious duty binding on all Muslims today. Thus, it is claimed that the prevailing global situation warrants all Muslims to be involved in some way of the other in jihad against non-Muslims. As an official Markaz publication puts its, ‘Struggle and fighting against the disbelievers is a comprehensive process, very vast in its nature and scope, and it cannot be carried out successfully and duly unless all the classes of the Muslim community... participate in it’ (www.dawacenter.com/jihad/jihad003.html). In this grand enterprise there are different roles for different people to play. Those who are ordered by the khalifa to fight must do so, while others may be required to assist the mujahidin by supplying them food, arms and other supplies, providing medical assistance, looking after their families in their absence or even by exhorting others to participate in the war. Thus, every Muslim, man or woman, must be mobilised to assist in the struggle in some form or the other, and if any Muslim has ‘never intended to fight against the disbelievers’, his or her faith ‘is not without traces of hypocrisy’. Those believers who have the capacity to participate or assist in the jihad but do not do so are said to ‘be living a sinful life’ (www.dawacenter.com/jihad/jihad003.html).

The Jihad in Kashmir and India
The Markaz sees the conflict in Kashmir not as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, nor even as a clash between cultures, but as nothing less than a war between two different and mutually opposed ideologies: Islam, on the one hand, and disbelief (kufr), on the other. This is portrayed as only one chapter in a long a struggle between the two that is seen as having characterised the history of the last 1400 years ever since the advent of the Prophet Muhammad (www.dawacenter.com/magazine/voiceofislam/dec99/ijtima.html). The roots of the Kashmir problem are seen in its Muslim rulers having been replaced, first by the Sikhs and then by the Hindu Dogras through British assistance. With India (i e, the6'Hindus') having taken over Kashmir in 1947, a long and protracted reign of bloody terror is seen to have been unleashed on the Kashmiri Muslims. This is seen as a direct and logical consequence of the teachings of Hinduism itself, because, it is alleged, 'the Hindus have no compassion in their religion' (www.dawacenter.com/kashmir/kashmir.html). Hence, it is the duty of Muslims to wage jihad against the 'Hindu oppressors'. All Hindus are tarred with the same brush. Thus, Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed declares: 'In fact, the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers...who crushed them by force. We need to do the same' (Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed, No More Dialogue on Kashmir, www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/sept99/editorial.html). This sort of anti-Hindu rhetoric is not a prominent feature in Gilani's writings, and thus represents a further radicalisation of the Kashmiri jihadist discourse [Sikand 1998].
The armed struggle in Kashmir is depicted as only one stage of a wider, indeed global, jihad against the forces of disbelief. Here, the Markaz goes far beyong Gilani's limited jihadist project, which aims at simply freeing Kashmir from Indian control and merging it with Pakistan. The Markaz's jihad is far more ambitious: it aims at nothing less than the conquest of the entire world. As Qari 'Abdul Wahid, former amir of the LIT in Indian-controlled Kashmir put it, 'We will uphold the flag of freedom and Islam through jihad not only in Kashmir but in the whole world' (www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/dec99/ijtima.html). Likewise, Colonel Nazir Ahmed, in-charge of the public relations department of the Markaz, declares that through the jihad that the mujahidin have launched, 'Islam will be dominant all over the world, Inshallah [God willing]' (www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/feb00/seminar.html). This war is seen as a solution to all the ills and oppression afflicting all Muslims, and it is claimed that 'if we want to live with honour and dignity, then we have to return back to jihad' (Speech by Qari 'Abdul Wahid Kashmiri, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/kashmiri-e.html). Through jihad, it is believed, 'Islam will be supreme throughout the world' (Speech by Abu Sa'ad Shabbir Ahmad, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/shabbir-e.html). The mujahidin are promised that with the launching of the global jihad against all the unbelieving oppressors of the world, 'The day is just round the corner when Islam will prevail in this earth, Insha Allah' (www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/feb00/editorial.html). Jihad has its more mundane benefits, too. Thus, it is also said to be indeed, 'the way that solves financial and political problems' (Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed, KhutbahJumu'ah, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/khutbah-e.html).
India is a special target for the Markaz's mujahidin. According to the amir of the Markaz, Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed in the same article, 'The jihad is not about Kashmir only. It encompasses all of India'. Thus, the Markaz sees the jihad as going far beyond the borders of Kashmir and spreading through all of India. The final goal is to extend Muslim control over what is seen as having once been Muslim land, and, hence, to be brought back under Muslim domination. Thus, at a mammoth congregation of Markaz supporters in November 1999, shortly after the Kargil debacle, Hafiz Muhammad Sa'eed declared 'Today I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan'. On the same occasion, Amir Hamza, senior Markaz official and editor of its Urdu organ, ad-Da'awa, thundered: 'We ought to disintegrate India and even wipe India out'. Those who take part in this anti-Indian jihad are promised that 'Allah will save [them] from the pyre of hell', and 'huge palaces in paradise' await those who are killed in fighting the disbelieving enemies (Speech by Muhammad Ibrahim Salafi, www.dawacenter.com/ijtimah/Isalafi-e.html).
This project for the disintegration of India, followed by its take-over by Pakistan and then the establishing an Islamic state, is sought to be justified by an elaborate set of arguments that use the rhetoric of liberation. Thus, instances of human-sacrifice, untouchability, infanticide, the cruel oppression of the 'low' castes by the brahmins and the suppression of women in Hinduism are described in great detail, and on this basis it is sought to be shown that such a religion as Hinduism should not 'be allowed to flourish'. This is a theme that Gilani does refer to in some of his writings, but he does not go beyond offering Islam as an alternative to Brahminical Hinduism [Sikand 1998]. In Markaz literature, the mass slaughter of Muslims by Hindu chauvinist groups, often in league with the Indian state and its agencies, and the growing wave of attacks on other marginalised groups in India such as the 'low' caste dalits, shudras and Christians, are presented in stark colours, and the point forcefully made that such a country 'where non-Hindus are not allowed to exist' should break-up. The Markaz presents itself as a champion of not just the oppressed Muslims of Kashmir or India but even of the 'low' caste shudras and dalits. It sees itself as having a divinely-appointed mission of saving the Shudras from Brahminical tyranny. Thus, it says, 'It is incumbent upon us to save the Shudras of India...from the clutches of Brahmins' (India in the 21st Century, www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/feb00/india.html). Although it claims that its jihad is aimed only against 'the tyrannical government and the army' and that 'nowhere do the mujahidin target non-Muslim or innocent people', (www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/feb00/india.html) there are reports that speak of LIT fighters being involved in the killing of several Hindu villagers in Jammu, Kashmir and in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh.
In this way, the Markaz attempts to go beyond even Gilani's relatively less radical project, by converting the Kashmir struggle into a full-blown war between Islam and disbelief. By doing so, it attempts to assert its own understanding on the nature of the Kashmir problem, replacing the Kashmiri nationalist framework with one that is constructed within the general discursive universe of Islamism.

Conclusion
As we have seen, there has, especially since the early1990s, been a marked transformation in the terms of discourse with which the Kashmiri liberation struggle has sought to express itself. The nationalists, fighting for a secular, democratic Kashmir, have increasingly had to give way to Islamist voices, first principally to the JIJK and then to even more radical groups based in Pakistan, as the latter’s influence and power grew. The success of the efforts of the Islamists in shifting the terms of debate have had to do with a host of internal as well as external factors. Internally, the growing strength of the Islamists can be traced back to the 1950s with the establishment of the JIJK in 1952. It cultivated an essentially lower-middle class constituency, consisting of traders, students and lower level government employees, many of whom were disillusioned with the politics of secular groups, such as the National Conference and the Congress as well as with the perceived other-worldliness, ritualism and limited personal piety associated with the cults of the Sufi shrines. Its network of schools that provided a mix of modern and Islamic disciplines, its social work programmes, such as setting up village-level bait-ul mals for the collection and distribution of zakat funds, as well as its focus on publishing large amounts of literature, won it a growing support-base. So did its consistent championing of the issue of plebiscite for the Kashmiri people for determining their own future. On the other hand, the perceived failure of the National Conference, first under Sheikh Abdullah, and then his son Farooq Abdullah, in articulating the genuine demands of the Kashmiris, the growing corruption within the party and its open collusion with the Indian establishment to subvert the democratic process in and the autonomy of Kashmir, and mounting economic problems and the growing unemployment of an increasing number of educated Muslim youth, generated a widespread disillusionment, which worked to the advantage of the Islamists.
The increasing salience of the Islamist element within the Kashmiri struggle can also been seen, in a crucial sense, as a response to the escalation in anti-Muslim violence in India, and the increasing threat to Muslim community identity at the hands of chauvinist Hindu groups in league with the Indian state. This point is repeatedly referred to in the writings of ideologues of the JIJK as well as of Pakistan-based jihadist groups. The growing insecurity of Muslim life and identity in India had as a natural consequence the assertion of an Islamic identity in Kashmir. To make matters more complicated was the sheer brutality of the Indian army response to the Kashmiri struggle, which was seen by many, by both Kashmiri Muslims as well as Indian Hindus, in purely religious terms. On the other hand, the Pakistan factor has been of major significance in the rise of the Islamists. There is clear evidence to show the close links between the Pakistan-based Islamist groups such as the Markaz and the Pakistani establishment. The Islamist groups are seen as playing a central role in pursuing Pakistani strategic interests. Unlike the JKLF, the Islamists all advocate the accession of Kashmir to Pakistan. Within Pakistan itself, the rise of the Islamist groups active in the Kahsmir war can be seen as a result of the crisis of the state and the economy, with Islamist parties riding on a crest of popular discontent. The Afghan factor is particularly crucial here, for many of the Pakistani Islamists now active in Kashmir received their military training in the Afghan jihad, and some of them, including the Markaz, are said to be linked with the Taliban and the Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden and his International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the US and Israel (B Raman, www.saag.org/papers/paper44.html).
It may, however, be, and, indeed, it actually does seem, that the Islamist attempt at hegemonising the terms of discourse in which the Kashmiri liberation struggle has sought to express itself has been only partially successful, at best. It may be argued that the apparent influence of the Islamists is deceptive, for while indeed they have marginalised the JKLF in military terms, owing, of course, to liberal patronage from Pakistan, they have received little support from the Kashmiri masses themselves, who seem to favour a considerably more liberal version of their faith [Khosa 1998b]. On the other hand, the relatively low-profile of the Kashmiri nationalists presently owes principally to three factors: the large-scale killing of JKLF activists and leaders by the Indian armed forces; killing of numerous activists in clashes with Islamists; and the cutting off of major arms and other supplies from Pakistan, with such assistance being diverted to Islamist groups instead. Despite the present lull in the Kashmiri nationalist camp, it still seems to reflect the asiprations of the vast majority of Kashmiri Muslims. It appears that the war-weary Kashmiris have not responded enthusiastically to jihadist appeals of groups like the Markaz – the simple fact that the LIT has only a very marginal Kashmiri component among its fighters is proof enough for this. The experience of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, and the mounting economic problems, political instability, and sectarian and ethnic violence in Pakistan, in which the Islamists have had no small role to play, have convinced many Kashmiris of the futility of the jihadist rhetoric. Moreover, the stern Wahhabism of groups like the Markaz, based on an unremitting hostility towards religious liberalism and laxity10 and Sufism, is bound to be unpopular among most Kashmiris, for whom Sufism is the normative expression of their faith and Islamic commitment.11 As it is, one of the reasons for the inability of the JIJK to develop a mass base has been its perceived hostility to Sufism, although JIJK leaders, many of whom are actually from families with a Sufi background, have tried to dispel this notion by presenting themselves as inheritors of the legacy of the Sufis, whose mission, according to them, was the establishment of the Islamic system as the JIJK concieves it. The openly condemnatory attitude of the Markaz and other such groups vis-a-vis Sufism is thus even more unlikely to win it many supporters in Kashmir. In other words, the radical Islamist rhetoric, to a considerable extent, represents an external agenda that is being sought to be imposed on Kashmir, and one that seems at odds, in several respects, with the internal conditions in Kashmir itself.
It would seem, then, that the Kashmiri nationalist forces, with their dream of a free, democratic, independent Kashmir, still do command the loyalties of most Kashmiris, the efforts the Islamists and of both the Indian as well as Pakistani establishments notwithstanding.

Notes

  1. JKLF: Our Ideology, Aims and Objectives, shell.comsats.net.pk/~jklf/i2.htm.
  2. For details, see Ashiq Kashmiri, Tarikh-i-Tahrik-i-Islami Jammu Aur Kashmir: Aghaz-i-Islam Se 1947 Tak, Department of Publications and Publicity, Jama'at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar, n.d., and by the same author, Tarikh-i-Tehrik-i-Islami Jammu Aur Kashmir:1947 Se 1970 Tak, Department of Publications and Publicity, Jama'at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar, 1984.
  3. JKLF: Three Points of Our Freedom Struggle, www.geocities/CapitolHill/Senate/1114/i5.htm.
  4. The Islamic creed of confession, 'There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah'.
  5. Thus, the amir of the Jama'at addressed a large gathering of the Markaz in November, 199, in which he 'paid glowing tribute to the families of the shuhada [martyrs] and congratulated the commanders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba', saying that they were 'rendering great service to the ummah by organising jihad' [Mujahideen Will Continue Jihad to Wipe Out Oppression and Terrorism, www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/dec99/ijtima.html, p 1].
  6. A Brief Introduction to the Markaz and the Lashkar, www.lashkertaiba.net/introduction/introduction.html. These four centres are the Mu'askra-i-Taiba, the Aqsa, the Umm al-Qurra and 'Abdullah bin Ma'sud.
  7. Speech by Prof. Zafar Iqbal, head of the ad-Da'awat school system, www.dawacenter.com/ijitmah/zafar.html.
  8. Amir Hamza, editor of the Markaz's Urdu organ al-Da'awah asserted that the Hafiz and his family had been forced to leave their ancestral home in Haryana in 1947. He warned the Indian authorities that 'the Lashkar-e-Taiba is determined to throw them out of Haryana', and advised the Indians 'not to worry so much about Kargil and to think of Haryana' instead [Kargil: The Graveyard of Indian Troops, op cit].
  9. A tax levied on all non-Muslim 'protected subjects' of an Islamic state.
  10. Thus, it is said, with regard to Muslims who do not pray or fast that they should be treated 'with hatred and animosity for the sake of Allah Almighty' as long as they do not mend their ways, for the abandoning of obligatory prayers is 'an act of great disbelief'), 'Fatawa Section', Voice of Islam, February 2000, www.dawacenter.com/magazines/voiceofislam/feb00/fatawaa.html.
  11. Thus, the Markaz claims that 'Sufism has been designed with no other purpose than to dampen the spirit of jihad', and sees it as part of a 'conspiracy hatched by our [Muslims'] enemies' (Jihad in the Present Times {part v}, www.dawacenter.com/jihad/jihad005.html).
References

Bisati, Afroz Ahmad (1997): Religio-Political Role of the Jama'at-i-Islami in Jammu and Kashmir, M Phil thesis, Shah-i-Hamadan Institute of Islamic Studies, Kashmir University, Srinagar, p 63.
Gilani, Sayyed 'Ali Shah (1992): Nava-i-Hurriyat, Mizan Publications, Srinagar, pp 92-93.
– (1993): Rudad-i-Qafas [vol 1], al-Huda Publishing House, Srinagar, p 125.
– (1998): Hijrat-Shahadat, Tulu Publications, Srinagar, p 62.
Kashmiri Ashiq (nd): Tarikh-i-Tahrik-i-Islami Jammu Aur Kashmir: Aghaz-i-Islam Se 194 Tak, Department of Publications and Publicity, Jama'at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar.
– (1984): Tarikh-i-Tahrik-i-Islami Jammu Aur Kashmir: 1947 Se 1970 Tak, Department of Publications and Publicity, Jama'at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir, Srinagar.
Khosa, Aasha (1998a): 'Pakistan Zealots Queue Up For Kashmir Jehad', The Indian Express, New Delhi, May 6.
– (1998b): 'Kashmiris Cold to Taliban's Repressive Islam', Indian Express, October 10.
Sikand, Yoginder (1998): 'For Islam and Kashmir: The Prison Diaries of Sayyed 'Ali Gilani of the Jama'at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir', Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, vol 18, no 2, p 243.


index

The New York Times, January 20, 2001

Transition in Washington: Overseas India & Pakistan

No Honeymoon Likely for New President's Foreign Policy Team

By Barry Bearak

Every president takes office believing he can set the foreign policy agenda for his administration, only to discover that a major portion of that agenda has already been set by the world.
The crises of the world do not take a time-out for a new American leader. President Clinton arrived hoping to focus on domestic issues, but was immediately faced by crises in places like Somalia, Haiti and Taiwan, along with hardy perennials like Russia and the Middle East.
President-elect George W. Bush was confronted by the killing of the president of Congo this week, and might see the election of a hawkish prime minister in Israel and the crumbling of the peace accord in Northern Ireland in his first month in office. Further down the line, Mr. Bush's enthusiasm for a missile-defense system is certain to generate fierce opposition in Europe and in Russia.
Much has been said, too, about Mr. Bush's inheriting the problem of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi strongman against whom his father went to war, but whom he left in power. In recent years, Washington's focus has been on simply keeping sanctions against Iraq in force over growing opposition, especially from Russia and France.
In Asia, the first big decision, due in April, will be whether to sell destroyers, advanced weapons and radar systems to Taiwan -- a decision that could prompt China to respond by accelerating its own military buildup.
Beyond that a host of other challenges, large and small, will vie quickly for American attention. What follows is a tour of those likely to prove most urgent.
Mr. Bush can expect a roller-coaster ride through the beautiful Himalayan region of Kashmir to the north of both India and Pakistan, a jeweled crown on two inseparable heads.
For a half century, both nations have claimed this land as their own and fought each other repeatedly to prove their seriousness. Nuclear weapons are now part of the picture, prompting President Clinton to call the region "the most dangerous place in the world."
Right now, India and Pakistan seem in a rare conciliatory mood, moving slowly toward informal talks about when they might have a more formal conversation. But the mutual distrust is so overwhelming that the roller-coaster can jump the tracks at any turn. Indeed, when they last talked, Pakistan was simultaneously planning a major incursion into the mountains above a vital Indian supply route.
Mr. Clinton interceded then, pointing the Pakistanis toward a face-saving retreat.
Interventions by Mr. Bush will undoubtedly be necessary and that may be tricky. The Indians can be prickly about what they believe to be strictly a bilateral matter. Recently, though, they have seemed open to Washington's maneuvering in the background -- so long as it involves pressuring the Pakistanis and is done with the utmost discretion.
Mr. Bush will be tempted time and again to play peacemaker. India and Pakistan are in a nuclear-arms race, though as both are impoverished and new to the competition, the race is more of a mosey than a sprint. America will require great effort to merely slow the development of bigger bombs of bigger and missiles of greater endurance.

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The Hindu, January 20, 2001

Pakistan: Shaheen Missile all set for test

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, JAN. 19. Pakistan has completed preparation for the flight test of Shaheen II and Haider I and is in a position to conduct tests at 24 hours notice in response to the Agni-II test carried out by India.
A report in Jasarat, mouthpiece of the Jamaat-e-Islami, has said both the missiles are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. While Shaheen-II could match the 2,500 km range of the Agni-II tested by India on Thursday, Haider-I has a range of 350 km.

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Dawn, January 19, 2001

Kashmir & power of illusion

By Ayaz Amir

IT's good that the guns have fallen silent along the LoC. Good too if there is less aimless shelling on the Siachen Glacier which surely must be the most foolish battlefield in the world.
It will be a good sign if Hurriyat leaders come to Pakistan and hold talks with officials here and with the leaders of the so-called jihadi organizations. But this flurry of activity should fool no one. None of it will or can lead to a Camp David on Kashmir.
The choice in Kashmir is not between peace and war. Never was except when impulsiveness drove Pakistan into unwinnable wars. The choice is between no-peace and no-war. This was the situation obtaining till 1989 when the Kashmiri people rose in revolt against India. If the current moves lead anywhere the best that can be hoped for is a return to the pre-1989 situation, with the Kashmir problem as unresolved as it is today but with a modicum of calm returning to the Kashmir Valley. India clearly stands to gain from this process. What its army in Kashmir has been unable to win its diplomatic overtures will achieve.
The question is: will the end of militancy be to Pakistan's advantage? In other words, what is Pakistan hoping to achieve from the current illusion of progress? Surely not a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. There is no shortage of fools in what passes for the Pakistani establishment - otherwise we would not be in the mess we are - but no one can be so foolish as to think that given goodwill and whatnot (the usual claptrap of weak or confused diplomacy), a final settlement of Kashmir is around the corner or is even a realistic proposition. India will never accept that and Pakistan is not in a position to change this.
So the next question is should Pakistan still be interested in the current moves knowing that, apart from clearing the atmosphere (a good enough thing in itself) and dampening the spirit of jihad, these can bear no other fruit? The answer to this question is a harsh one: even if Pakistan knows that India is beating about the bush and has no interest in a just solution of the Kashmir dispute, it should still go for the illusion of peace because no other choice lies before it.
The stark truth is that jihad (a term being used loosely here) has no future in Kashmir. This is a harsh thing to say given the blood spilt and the sacrifices rendered but, unfortunately, all too true. A continuation of the insurgency can bleed India, as it has done with creditable results over the past decade, damage Indian prestige and keep the Valley unsettled. But it cannot secure the liberation of the state. This much should be clear from the history of the last 53 years. What the Pakistan army has failed to secure in full-fledged battle the jihadis cannot hope to achieve with their hit-and-run tactics.
The jihadi organizations have their strengths - otherwise the Indian army would have crushed them a long time ago - but they also have their weaknesses. Much like the Afghan resistance they lack unity and have no central political organization. But this is not the point. Even if these weaknesses were overcome there would still be no military solution to the Kashmir problem.
It is also facile to think that jihad in Kashmir will bring India to the negotiating table. India has always been prepared for talks on peripheral issues, talks lacking substance and skirting the Kashmir issue. From the current moves what we are likely to get at the most is more of the same - another round of inconsequential talks, whether at the level of foreign secretaries or, given luck, at a higher level. Surely the purpose of jihad cannot be to secure such exercises in futility.
Pakistan's predicament, however, is altogether different. Far from achieving anything, the jihadi line is creating problems for Pakistan at home. Look, what we reaped in Afghanistan. Unwittingly and for small gains, we entered that conflict holding on to the coattails of the United States. For the US Afghanistan is a distant memory while for us it is a damaging reality casting long shadows on our national existence.
Was it for drugs, guns and unwanted refugees that we fought that jihad? What is more, involvement in that conflict nurtured the seeds of religious militancy. The creed propounded in the seminaries which now dot the land, and whose growth is one consequence of that jihad, may not lead to the green banner of Islam flying over Chechnya or the Central Asian republics but it has contributed to the spread of intolerance and bigotry within Pakistan. Democracy already was a weak sapling. Now it must compete for survival with more noxious weeds.
Much the same fallout can be detected with regard to Kashmir. The jihadi organizations, exemplars of great sacrifice (let us never forget this), cannot wrest Kashmir from Indian hands but their growing presence is colouring the political waters in Pakistan. The political parties stand discredited. The army is in the process of discrediting itself. The religious parties think they alone remain to be tested and that their hour has arrived. In elections, it is true, they stand no chance. But elections will be of consequence if democracy returns, not as long as it is banished and treated as a soiled commodity. Besides, the consciousness of armed strength (for many of the religious parties have their armed cadres) lends added strength and confidence to their voices. Is there anything more dangerous than soldiers returning from a war, especially a lost war? On whom will they turn their guns and anger?
Looking carefully we might just see that it is not India which is making any concessions but Pakistan which is trying to wash away the stigma of "cross-border terrorism" and undo the larger damage wrought by the folly of Kargil. Because of Kargil we painted ourselves as irresponsible. Now we are trying extra hard to prove our peaceful intentions. This has been the history of Pakistan: plunging into adventures and then trying to recover from the consequences. One step forward, several back.
As long as the Kashmir insurgency was largely a home-grown affair the advantage was ours and the odium India's. But then in a replay of Afghanistan we had to bring the Kashmiri resistance under the wings of the ISI, which meant that the Pakistan-based jihadi organizations began overshadowing the Kashmiri element. Added to this was the national inability to keep a low profile when circumstances so dictated. Just as Dr A. Q. Khan has never been able to resist the spotlights, none of the jihadi organizations has been able to stop itself from proclaiming its deep involvement in Kashmir.
Thus what should have remained a Kashmiri affair became a Pakistani headache, with the international community less willing to put faith in Pakistan's protestations of innocence. Other countries handle these things with greater discretion. Syria never made a tamasha out of its support for the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Somehow such subtlety has always seemed beyond us. Then, of course, came the brilliance of Kargil which overnight transformed the oppressor (India) into the aggrieved party.
Anyhow, the damage having been done what remains is to salvage something >from the debris. But to repeat the earlier point, the shadow-boxing now on display will lead to nothing. After all, since when did losers in every sphere win victories at the negotiating table? Even so, Pakistan must grasp the only thing on offer, the illusion of peace, and pretend that a great diplomatic opportunity awaits it if only to turn its gaze inwards and fight the jihads within that are clamouring to be fought.
Shouldn't we first put our house in order? We cannot make ends meet and yet must play with lordly ambitions - nuclear status, missiles and a lot of pretentious stuff which passes for foreign policy. Our ambitions are not grandiose but foolish, with no connection to reality. Let us manage our own affairs better. Let us strive to achieve political stability. Let us invest a bit more in education and address the causes of our backwardness. Then with what remains let us fight more distant battles.
This does not mean we give up on Kashmir. Nor does it mean we kowtow to anyone. May the mountains come to the sea before we do that. Did China give up its claim to Hong Kong? Has it changed its policy towards Taiwan? We too must stick to what we believe in while at the same time keeping our feet on the ground and recognizing that being aware of one's limitations is no weakness and being driven by false pretensions no sign of strength.
But for this to happen the redoubts of the old thinking - the thinking born of the Afghan involvement - must be assaulted. Within the Pakistani establishment there are powerful elements which still subscribe to the Hamid Gul and Maulana Samiul Haq schools of foreign policy nonsense. Unless these elements are reduced to their proper places not much hope can be entertained of the scales falling from our eyes.

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Dawn, January 19, 2001

Kashmir: prospects and obstacles

By Rashed Rahman

WHERE Pakistan-India relations are concerned, nothing is ever simple or straightforward. This is doubly true when contentious and long-standing issues such as Kashmir are involved. The recent spate of developments on the Kashmir front has given rise to hopes that an end to this conflict may be finally in sight. These hopes are dogged at every step of the way, though, by obstacles and hurdles.
The obstacles and hurdles owe a great deal to the past. Amongst them may be included the mindsets that evolved during and after the independence struggle and partition, the actual movement of history since, including three wars, the last of which removed East Pakistan from the map and saw it reborn as Bangladesh. Since 1989, the uprising in Kashmir has added fresh fuel to the fire. Relations between the two South Asian neighbours, traditionally rivals at loggerheads, briefly glimpsed the chimera of normalization when Mr Vajpayee journeyed to Lahore. The more optimistic amongst us thought that Pakistan and India had turned the corner, only to taste the bitter fruit of Kargil soon thereafter, which proved the corner that we thought we had turned led in fact to a cul-de-sac.
Nawaz Sharif was guilty of many sins, but it cannot be denied that his policy on India was a departure from the traditional pattern, irrespective of his motives, material interests or other factors. This departure in policy proved difficult for the military to digest. After all, the military and bureaucratic establishment's investment in the Kashmir posture over the years is considerable. Some contend it has grown into a vested interest, in which the budgetary and political turf cornered by this establishment thereby, is fiercely protected at any cost and against all comers. The inherent merit of the Kashmiri people's right to self-determination aside, for the establishment the Kashmir policy has acquired the dimensions of a control mechanism for pre-determining the national political agenda.
The crisis of management and legitimacy that has overtaken all else in the life of the country has compelled even the establishment to come to terms with Pakistan's external and internal vulnerabilities. Whether this is a genuine change of heart in the direction of normalization through a compromise solution on Kashmir (the maximalist position resting on the UN resolutions having long passed its sell-by date), or is simply a tactical position to allay the international pressures on the military regime, is a question that can only be decided by time. There is no ignoring, despite the apparent unanimity of the ruling military junta on the peace campaign launched by the present regime that hawks and hardliners are to be found in equal strenth as pragmatists within the military's top brass.
On the other side of the subcontinental divide, Mr Vajpayee has sought a settlement of the Kashmir issue based on maintaining the status quo, with the sweetener being concessions to the long-denied political and democratic rights of the Kashmiri people in Indian-held Kashmir. Mr Vajpayee's policy is by no means unanimously accepted without reservations by the hardliners in his own government and the Indian establishment. Witness the foot dragging on issuing passports to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) delegation coming to Pakistan for talks with our government and the Mujahideen groups here.
What we are seeing currently is jockeying for space by the various actors in the emerging scenario of a possible slight from the battlefield to the negotiating table. The APHC initiative threatens to leave the Kashmiri Mujahideen out in the political cold. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the latter are asserting themselves through force of arms to register their claim to speak for the people of Kashmir. The attacks on a militaray camp in the Red Fort in Delhi, the storming of the Srinagar airport by the Lashkar-i-Tiyyaba, and the attempted assassination of Farooq Abdullah by the Hizbul Mujahideen need to be located within this framework. These spectacular actions are the most recent and pointed efforts in a Mujahideen campaign of challenging the Indian hold in Kashmir. That campaign has included in the past as well as lately targeting of the ruling National Conference party leaders in Indian-held Kashmir.
The result of the current string of attacks on high-profile targets, human and material, is that the Vajpayee government has started to make noises about reviewing its stance on the peace initiative, including the extension of the ceasefire in Kashmir for the duration of Ramazan and then extended for another month. It is not clear at present what impact, if any, the review may have on the APHC delegation's visit, or on the trial balloons being floated on both sides of the divide for visits by Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Pakistan, and by General Pervez Musharraf to India.
The peace process, therefore, is subject to stresses and strains because of the discrete and conflicting protagonists involved in the Kashmir conundrum. On both sides of the border, pro-settlement and anti-settlement forces are found to be vying for their own prescriptions of how to 'resolve' the Kashmir question becoming the basis of official policy.
On our side, the pro-settlement forces include a section of the top brass of the military (whether from purely tactical or strategic motives) and civil society at large. The latter has been a relatively weak voice so far on the issue, but there are sufficient indications that public sentiment is veering round to a political solution in order for the two countries to leave the legacy of bitterness and confrontation behind. The opponents of any settlement short of the maximum, i.e. the exercise of the right of self-determination, circumscribed according to the UN resolutions to a choice between becoming part of Pakistan or India on a permanent basis, include the hardline establishment, the Kashmiri Mujahideen groups and Pakistani religious parties that support them, as well as a traditional right-wing nationalist opinion.
In a mirror image of the spectrum on our side, in India we find Mr Vajpayee and his National Security establishment prepared to explore a settlement, although within the parameters of the status quo. Civil society in India also remains a weak voice on the issue, although in recent years the chorus of critics has grown. At the opposite end of the scale can be found hardliners such as Mr Advani, the Hindutva forces, and India's own version of traditional nationalism.
Factors helping the peace process are the realization of the Pakistani establishment that the strategy of maximum demands is reaping diminishing returns because of the change in the international climate, which Pakistan cannot afford to ignore for long, given its precarious state at the moment.
When a maximum position becomes unattainable, at least in the foreseeable future, wise leaders seek the minimum possible as a way forward from a debilitating situation of being frozen into old postures that may have been overtaken by time and events.
India's great power ambitions have persuaded at least a section of their establishment that the 'irritant' of Kashmir has to be settled somehow, in order for those ambitions to find a resonance in the international community. An 'internal' political settlement is the preferred course for New Delhi, but the necessity to engage Pakistan and actors other than the relatively moderate APHC inside Kashmir have not been ruled out categorically.
Decades of mutual distrust and suspicion of each other's motives and intentions retard progress in the peace process. The twists and turns being experienced in getting even the minimum initiatives, such as the APHC visit, off the ground, should come as no surprise therefore. India can draw some comfort, despite the pain of the recent Mujahideen raids and attacks, from the fact that the APHC and the Mujahideen appear to have drifted apart since the APHC delegation's visit to Pakistan was mooted.
Within the Mujahideen ranks too, close rivalry for assuming the central role in the next phase of the struggle, including the negotiations process, is reflected in the spiralling of attacks on high-profile targets, which are expected to yield the maximum in publicity, even though they may be an operational failure.
With all these odds from history and the current phase of the struggle stacked against the peace process, what chance does it have to survive for long and acquire a momentum? Only factors and elements that are hidden from view may be the determinants. One can speculate that these include the efforts of the great powers to see a settlement of the Kashmir issue in our times. Their interest is largely economic, since the multinationals are licking their chops at the prospect of the potentially huge South Asian market opening up to their investments and products.
That is not a prospect that is necessarily anathema to the over one billion people of South Asia. Pakistan in particular can look forward to the dividends of peace. We may succeed thereby in turning the corner from crisis to stability, provided, of course, unlike in the past, the people of Pakistan are given their due share in the division of the loaves and fish.
Bilaterally, despite the gloominess that pervades at the moment as setback after setback is encountered, at least theoretically both sides seem have accepted that there is a logic to what can only be termed a historic compromise. However, recognition of the logic is one thing, settling the terms on which a sustainable solution can be founded quite another.

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The Friday Times, January 19, 2001

Unholy wars

Religio-political forces in Pakistan could spell trouble

by Najam Sethi

Religio-political forces in Pakistan, which have been molly-coddled by civilian and military governments since the time of General Zia ul Haq, constitute a double-edged weapon. On the one hand, they are propped up as an integral element of a "national security strategy" devised to secure some sort of military advantage in Afghanistan and political leverage in Kashmir. On the other, they are visible threats to the fabric of democratic government and civil society in the country. In fact, as the world recoils from an image of Pakistan wrought by such gun-toting fundamentalists bent on waging jehad against the West, the price of this dubious state strategy becomes prohibitive.
Nothing demonstrates this more forcefully than the increasingly threatening postures adopted by some such elements. Certainly, it is questionable whether the Jamaat i Islami is within its constitutional rights to exhort the corps commanders of the Pakistan Army to remove the COAS from office (in effect, stage a coup d'etat). Worse, nothing undermines the efficacy of the state or erodes the writ of law than a policy of "selective appeasement" as demonstrated by a meeting between the Lahore Corps Commander and the leader of the Jamaat i Islami on this issue.
Other worrying examples abound. Alarmed by the spectre of JI and other religio-political activists rampaging on the streets, the government was quick to backtrack on procedural modifications to the controversial blasphemy law, in the process losing considerable credibility at home and abroad. Yet when some minority and human rights organisations decided to march peacefully in Karachi the other day against the excesses of such laws and the injustice of the separate-electorate system, the police was ordered to beat them black and blue and arrest them in the scores. If the first was an act of capitulation disguised as a "tactical retreat" ("we don't want to open unnecessary fronts"), the second was a manifestation of might against right in defense of a dubious "law" and a non-existent "order".
Equally illuminating was the government's response to a threat by another religio-political group - the Tanzimul Akhwan - to march on Islamabad and demand the enforcement of shariah. The groveling attitude of the officials who met with the leaders of this group, including a federal minister, and promised all manner of concessions to them confirms our fears just as much as it raises their hopes - demand a mile and you will be a given a yard; and every yard is another step along the route to capturing state power. Therefore we are not at all surprised that the interior minister, Gen (retd) Moinuddin Haider, was told to buzz off when he ever-so-gently chided the bearded ensemble at Akora Khattak not to perpetuate a negative or bad image of Pakistan.
General Moinuddin Haider, like his boss General Pervez Musharraf, is among the best faces of this regime. Both are temperate and pragmatic persons, who prefer not to speak with forked tongues even when real politik demands otherwise. Indeed, one of their strengths is their ability to project a degree of sincerity or compulsion in what they do or don't do. That, however, is precisely why they are not hot favourites with the likes of Qazi Hussain Ahmad or Maulana Sami-ul-Haq. But the issue here is not one of personalities. It is one of approach. If the military establishment, of which both Generals are card-carrying members, is so dependent on religio-political groups for its long-term (this is the critical factor) foreign policy agendas in the neighbourhood, why should it clamp down on its allies at anyone's insistence or instigation? The fundos know this and have time and again shown an inclination to exploit this factor to the hilt. Indeed, that is why it is increasingly looking like a case of the tail wagging the dog rather than the other way round.
This could have adverse short-term consequences for national security apart from the insidious longer-term damage to state and society. A case in point relates to the peace process initiated by New Delhi with the backing of the United States. We do not know whether India is sincere or whether it is posturing. But one thing is already clear: whichever side is perceived to sabotage the process by adopting an unduly intransigent attitude at any stage of the game will be condemned in the corridors of power all over the world. Thus aggressive posturing for maximum negotiating strength by either side is fraught with risk. In India's case, a denial of visas to the Kashmiri leaders or a continuing refusal to agree to a meeting between its prime minister and the Pakistani chief executive, without sufficiently valid or palatable reasons, would hurt its cause. In Pakistan's case, diminishing returns are bound to set in if suicide attacks by the Mujahideen continue on key military or civilian targets in India, thereby giving India a good excuse to abandon the peace process and hold Pakistan responsible for its breakdown. Thus the link between the Pakistani state and religio-political elements could spell trouble for the country on more than one count if it is not firmly calibrated. The moot question is whether Islamabad has the will and ability to do that.

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The Friday Times, January 19, 2001

No-first-use of nuclear weapons

Ejaz Haider says Pakistan needs to engage India on the issue

Strategists in Pakistan invariably argue against the concept of no-first-use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. Extrapolating from NATO's policy of first-use of nuclear weapons against the Warsaw Pact forces during the cold war they point out that given Pakistan's conventional inferiority vis-à-vis India, agreement on NFU would degrade the deterrent value of Pakistan's nuclear capability. Instead, they offer a no-war-pact (NWP) to India.
India rejects the NWP and insists on NFU as a viable confidence-building measure. It first proposed NFU to Pakistan in 1994. Pakistan dismissed the offer, saying it did not have nuclear-weapons capability and therefore could not talk about NFU. India invoked the offer again in May and then in October 1998 after the two countries had tested nuclear weapons. Pakistan refused to be drawn into the NFU "trap". The two sides have therefore made no headway on the issues of NFU and NWP. That the offers on both sides, despite being couched in strategic terms, are nothing more than political gimmickry is evident from the fact that both have refused to spell out in detail what they mean by NWP and NFU.
Essentially, Pakistan's NWP offer is a ploy to get India to agree to no-war in conventional terms while keeping open the option of bleeding India through low intensity conflict (LIC). India's NFU offer, basically, is meant to deprive Pakistan of the use of nuclear weapons first into a conflict irrespective of whether the latter's core interests are threatened by conventional or nuclear means. However, unless the two sides wish to remain consistently mutually exclusive, there is need to take an integrated rather than a piecemeal approach on the two offers.
First, any discussion on nuclear capability is automatically pegged to the idea of deterrence. Therefore, the argument that NFU would undermine Pakistan's deterrent capability is itself considered the clinching argument against NFU. This is simplistic. For a start, strategists continue to disagree on what is meant by deterrence and, by extension, what kind of capability would deter the adversary. From the "winnable" nuclear wars in the fifties to mutual vulnerability of later years to the idea of anti-missile defence, the deterrence paradigm has gone through various phases.
However, taking mutual vulnerability as the benchmark of deterrence, one could argue that those who disbelieve in NFU and rely on NATO's cold war strategy should also be clearly arguing in favour of more tests, overt deployment and putting in place elaborate command, control, communication and intelligence systems. They should also spell out clearly the costs involved in moving from developing the bomb to improving and deploying it. If they are prepared to extrapolate from NATO's strategy, they should also extrapolate from the costs that the US incurred and for which the figures are now available. India and Pakistan have so far eschewed that option. In fact, under a serious NFU commitment, that situation could be made to work in their favour for movement on nuclear- and war-risk reduction.
The second argument relates to whether nuclear-armed adversaries are more concerned about non-crisis stability or accidental-war stability. It is thought that while first-use helps increase non-crisis stability, it decreases accidental-war stability. By the same logic, NFU is thought to do the reverse. The argument tends to look at the two concepts as mutually exclusive. This is owed to a simple reason: the reasoning presupposes that the relationship between the adversaries will remain constant in negative terms and therefore to avoid a conflict it is better to settle for non-crisis stability than accidental-war stability.
In the case of India and Pakistan, crisis stability at both ends of the spectrum can be a dicey proposition with or without nuclear weapons. It is within a certain political context that Pakistan looks at its capability in terms of allowing it to fight low intensity conflicts and India dismisses an NWP because it still thinks it could take out Pakistani capability in an overwhelming conventional attack or pre-emptive strike. The situation is made more dangerous by the introduction of weapons of mass destruction. This is also why overt deployment of nuclear weapons may not increase stability in the region, especially if no movement is made to qualitatively change the political context that informs India-Pakistan's relations.
Moreover, unlike the superpowers, the two countries are geographically contiguous and cannot test each other out through proxies across the globe. In their case, the only region is Kashmir. Kargil bears that out.
Interestingly, while the NFU-NWP arguments are trotted out to serve political purposes, the capability itself is only looked at in military terms. The fact, however, remains that competition exists within a political context and that political context can be made to undergo change. This fact is sacrificed at the altar of pure military strategy.
The third argument - it is somewhat surprising that proponents of first-use in Pakistan have so far not used this - relates to whether NFU is operationally feasible. Going by the cold war experience it is not. While NATO was committed openly to first-use, the Warsaw Pact was committed to NFU. Yet, new information from the SED (Socialist Unity Party of East Germany) archives indicates the Warsaw Pact's operational plans called for the use of nuclear and chemical weapons at the onset of hostilities even if NATO forces were using only conventional weapons. Extrapolating from this, western strategists have concluded that NFU only constitutes a declaratory posture and has no operational significance.
This argument, however, misses the essential point about NFU. Forces employed in launch-on-warning (LOW) role cannot remain committed to NFU. While it is now known that WP was more alive to central control of nuclear weapons and configured its forces on that basis, it was nevertheless disposed to LOW strategy. Therefore, the right inference from the SED archives should have been that a force configured for quick-reaction posture could not remain operationally committed to NFU.
Finally, a better approach to NFU, making it operationally feasible, would be to look at the Chinese case. "China has long had an NFU policy. Li Bin, a Chinese expert, argues that one can identify a serious NFU commitment through a number of factors, most notably (1) the size of the nuclear force; (2) the composition of that force; (3) the number of warheads on each missile; and (4) the accuracy of nuclear weapons. China's ICBM force....is not set up for a preemptive strike or first-use or even for launch-on-warning or launch-under-attack. China has chosen a force which may take hours if not days to get ready for launch."
China's example makes clear that NFU can be made to work operationally. Importantly, Chinese force does not work under the constraints of quick-reaction posture, which would have made it impossible for it to remain committed to NFU. But it should be equally clear that the operational viability of the commitment must be made transparent and verifiable. If India is serious about its NFU offer to Pakistan it must raise its salience from being a merely declaratory policy to an operationally tenable one.
The irony here, however, is that while Pakistani analysts refuse to accept India's offer on the grounds that it would degrade Pakistan's deterrent capability, they go on to point out that NFU is a policy which countries are willing to abide by only in peace time. Clearly, the argument should either be predicated on the former or the latter premise because if it is a commitment that would not be respected during war then it makes no sense to think that Pakistan would abide by its commitment even after its core interests have been threatened. Making the argument that NFU is something carved in stone and capable of degrading Pakistan's capability and then arguing that it is an unworkable concept is taking a contradictory position.
The idea should be to take an integrated approach on the issue. If India is indeed serious in making the offer Pakistan should explore the prospects further. For instance, India could be asked to give verifiable guarantees that it would not augment the size, sophistication and readiness of its arsenal. It should agree to conventional force reductions and altered force disposition through redeployment and accept a linkage of its NFU offer with Pakistan's NWP offer.
If India is prepared to take these steps as part of an integrated approach towards nuclear risk-reduction, besides improving the political context in which the conflict has evolved, there should be no reason for Pakistan to perceive the concept as shorn of operational significance. Contrarily, if Pakistan's serious approach on the issue serves to highlight India's political gimmickry, then it would deprive India, once and for all, of the moral high-ground it seeks to occupy by extending the offer.
This approach would also take care of any effort on India's part to push Pakistan into developing second-strike capability, raising for it the costs of the capability and the need to augment its arsenal both in qualitative and quantitative terms. It is time to make a serious move on the issue instead of just putting it down.

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BBC News Online, January 18, 2001

China's fears over India missile test

China has expressed its concern over a possible South Asian arms race after India tested a nuclear-capable missile on Wednesday.
Beijing said it had noted the testing of the Agni-II - an intermediate range ballistic missile which can be fired from a mobile platform.
The missile can carry a one-tonne payload and has a range of over 2,000 km - covering all of Pakistan and most of China.
Pakistan reacted strongly after the missile was tested on Wednesday and Britain and Japan have also condemned it.

Regional stability
Wednesday's test took place as senior Chinese leader Li Peng was ending a visit to India.
However, Beijing refused to comment on the timing of the launch.
"Like most members of international society, China hopes the South Asian region will maintain peace and stability and does wish to see any form of arms race in the region," a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The Indian foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it had informed all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in advance as well as Pakistan, Germany and Japan.

Confidence or snub?
Analysts said the fact that the test took place during Mr Li's presence on Indian soil signalled Delhi's growing confidence.
"The test signals India's determination to build strategic autonomy and deter China," China analyst Brahma Chellaney said.
India has maintained that the Agni-II is central to its plans to develop a minimum nuclear deterrent in the face of Chinese and Pakistani aggression.
China had reacted with alarm when India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998.
The testing of the Agni-II also comes at a time when India and Pakistan appear to be making tentative steps towards resuming a dialogue over the Kashmir conflict.
Observers believe it is unlikely the test would derail the process.
"This test has to be seen in the context of the peace race, or rather peace crawl, in South Asia," said Stephen Cohen of the US-based Brookings institute.

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The Times of India, January 17, 2001

Let Kashmiris decide their future: Editor

The Times of India News Service

KOLKATA: The Srinagar High Court attends to missing persons cases only once a week. This means family members of those abducted by terrorists or 'detained' by the Army have to wait several days before they can even file a case.
"Obviously, therefore, the people of Jammu and Kashmir feel the Indian government has ignored them and suppressed their freedom for the past 53 years. It is high time both India and Pakistan stopped behaving like colonial rulers and allowed the people of Kashmir to decide what they want," said editor of the Kashmir Times and senior journalist Ved Bhasin.
Bhasin was in the city on Tuesday at the invitation of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy. Speaking at a seminar on "The other voice of Kashmir", Bhasin said, "The government says residents of J&K are Indian citizens yet they refuse to give Hurriyat leaders the right to go to Pakistan to talk to leaders and common people there. Do they think every Kashmiri is a terrorist?"
A Kashmiri Hindu, Bhasin said all troops and bunkers should immediately be removed from Srinagar, Jammu and other residential areas. "The army is meant to guard our borders, not camp in the city," he said.
His colleague and editor of Kashmir Monitor Zafar Meeraj lashed out at the army and the police, accusing them of being the "worst violators of human rights in Kashmir."
"In the last 10 years alone there have been more than 5,000 cases of men and women who have disappeared without a trace. Most of them have not been abducted by terrorists but picked up from their homes by the police and the Army never to reappear again," he said.
He said the Armed Forced Special Power Act gave the army absolute power to open fire on any individual or group, even 'suspected' of anti-national activities. Other speakers said political parties were denied the right to take out processions and even student meetings demanding that examinations be held in colleges were lathicharged by the police.

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The Telegraph, January 17, 2001

The Lineage of Control

by Ashok Mitra

Much huffing and puffing on both sides, and, at the time of writing, it is yet to be known whether New Delhi will finally allow the leaders of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference — the full complement — to visit Pakistan. There is in any event a long road ahead. Why beat about the bush? The problem in Kashmir is not on account of Pakistan and its intransigence.
The problem lies in the impossible corner we, the Indians, have played ourselves into. The original sin lies with the Congress, and, one is sad to say, with Jawaharlal Nehru. Sheikh Abdullah was awfully mishandled in the Fifties; those who advised Nehru that Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad could be a suitable person to wean away the Kashmiris from their regard for the Sheikh were nincompoops, or worse, of the first order.
Indira Gandhi tried to correct the blunder committed earlier; she too was soon misguided by the likes of the bumptious Arun Gandhi and the infamous Jagmohan, the latter in particular already equipped with the frame of mind of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The bait of being reinstalled as chief minister won back Farooq Abdullah, but by then the populace of the valley had been irretrievably alienated.
From the mid-Eighties Kashmir has been as good as a terrain occupied by the Indian army; the charade of periodical elections has fooled nobody in international circles. The cost to the nation is not just in the crores and crores of rupees expended to guard the ramparts across the line of control: by now it is more than obvious that it is a porous line, and infiltrators from across the border will keep sneaking in not- withstanding the continuous strengthening of our army, air force and security personnel and of matériel supporting them. It could hardly be otherwise, given the willingness, or, rather, eagerness, of the almost entire Kashmiri population to do an evil turn to India.
Much the greater damage has, however, been rendered to India’s reputation as a nation believing in truth and fairness. We have an extremely bad case to plead on Kashmir and we have pleaded it equally badly. Our refusal to abide by the half-a-century old commitment to the United Nations for a plebiscite in the valley has exposed the extent of our hypocrisy. To dissemble that we did not in fact agree to hold the plebiscite makes the Indian case even worse. We have let several chances to arrive at a denouement with Pakistan go by.
In 1972, when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was literally begging at our doors, we could have forced him to agree to a permanent solution on the Kashmir issue by sealing a formal arrangement along the LoC: unfortunately, the ambition of our leaders had by then risen sky-high. We could have, between then and the next 10 years, foisted an agreement on still-wobbly Pakistan whereby the state of Jammu and Kashmir could have been turned into a loose confederation with Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh as separate entities enjoying the prerogative of extensive local self-government. But meanwhile our policymakers had committed themselves too far to the domestic electorate: Kashmir was an integral and inalienable part of India, and no force could snatch it away from us.
The Congress was the first to play the jingo card; the BJP with its ideological moorings and emotional inclines could hardly be blamed if it exploited it to the hilt. Now there is not one political party in the country which dares to do a reverse turn on Kashmir and yet aspire to come to power either at the Centre or in any one state.
Even the left has learnt its lesson and would be doubly chary of abiding by its principles in the matter of Kashmir; self-determination is for the birds. A handful of individuals, who do not mind being ostracized, keep the pot of Kashmiri self-will boiling, but they are by and large considered as madcaps who need not be taken seriously. And there are enough patriots around who suspect them to be part of Pakistan's fifth column: the ISI to the right of you, the ISI to the left of you, the ISI in front of you.
Our politicians and mandarins will perhaps not admit the fact even to themselves, but Kashmir has been a lost cause for the last 15 years or thereabouts. They are prisoners of circumstances they have themselves created. They are consequently unable to recognize the stream of advantages that could have accrued in case they had agreed to throw in the towel at the right time. A settlement in Kashmir would have straightway released two to three per cent of our gross domestic product which is currently being deployed towards defence and security measures in and around the valley. Such a settlement would also have made it possible for us to go slow, or even totally discard, our efforts at augmenting our nuclear capability; thereby we would have regained some of the international goodwill we have lost over the years.
Once the government of India were able to convince the world that its hands are clean in relation to the valley's affairs and, at the same time, gained back, at least partially, the trust of the valley’s population, it would have been strategically placed to enjoy vicariously the embarrassment resulting from the friction between the Kashmiris who wanted full independence and those who wanted to merge with Pakistan. Then, once the Kashmir impasse had terminated, that would immediately have led to a refurbishing of India's secular identity: many of the fissures that impeded the progress of the economy and the stability of the polity would have been automatically removed. Finally, the enhanced respect India could command in the changed situation from the international community would have gone a long way to the re-establishment of her position as natural leader of the developing world.
One has to be realistic. Till as long as the BJP and its cohorts are in control of the system, it would be impossible to conceive of any radical change in the situation; the Hindu fundamentalists would like to ride back into prehistoric darkness on the back of the Kashmir demon. Let there be therefore no mincing of words, to remove the BJP from political power should be the primary objective of those who want the healthy development of Indian society. That is going to be without question an enormously difficult task.
Besides, that would only be the beginning. For the Congress too is also pledged, for the present, to ditto the BJP line on Kashmir. If another election to the Lok Sabha is round the corner — such is the impression created by some of the signals emitted from the prime minister's house — and the Congress wises up to the reality that it has practically zero chance of recapturing power without both overt and covert assistance from the left and democratic forces, a new possibility could open up. The left could then compel the Congress to follow its own agenda. But, then, it must have the courage of its own conviction.
The going is bound to be rough. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Vishwa Hindu Parishad combine has tasted blood, and it would not easily let its prey be snatched from its mouth; it would resist, resist and resist again. The reassuring factor though is the obtuseness of the Hindutva psyche, itself its own worst enemy. Even if an empirical basis existed for the allegation, was it sagacious to state it openly that the Pakistani hand had instigated the Kathmandu disturbances?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend; in their present mood, the Nepalese youth would only be encouraged by New Delhi’s explicitly stated accusation to greet Pakistan with comradely fervour. And these young people, more likely than not, are going to be the principal determinants of Nepal’s foreign and domestic policies in the immediate period. The Indian electorate would, sooner or later — hopefully sooner than later — realize the consequences of letting the BJP continue in power; no question its agenda is ruinous for the nation.



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Landelijke India Werkgroep - 15 september 2005