[A-List] India/Pakistan: on the brink of a war?

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dicing with Armageddon

May 20th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda


Indian and Pakistani forces continue to bombard each other in
Kashmir as both sides are pushed closer to the brink. Could this
spark the first war between nuclear powers?

AS THEY continue to bombard one another along the Line of
Control, the ceasefire line that divides the disputed territory
of Kashmir, both India and Pakistan have taken steps that could
drag them dangerously closer to war. The command structure of
India?s armed forces has been streamlined, as if in preparation
for an attack. America and other countries are urging India and
Pakistan to remain calm, fearing the latest hostility could spark
the first war between nuclear powers.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over
Kashmir, since independence in 1947. Tensions flared again
following the killing on May 14th of 34 people, most of them
soldiers? wives and children, who were travelling on a bus in
Kaluchak in the Indian side of Kashmir. India has blamed the
attack on Pakistan-based rebels. Since an attack on the Indian
parliament in December, which was also blamed on rebels, India
and Pakistan have mobilised almost 1m soldiers along the Line of
Control.

On May 19th, India transferred its paramilitary border-forces
from the command of the Interior Ministry to the army, and made
the navy responsible for the coast guard. India has also expelled
Pakistan?s chief envoy in protest against attacks by militants.
Thousands of villagers have already fled the border areas in
India fearing that a big battle is imminent. Military commanders
have briefed the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who
in turn has met opposition leaders. Indian officials want America
to increase pressure on Pakistan?now a key ally in President
George Bush?s war on terrorism?to crack down on Islamic guerillas
operating from the Pakistan side of Kashmir. Pakistan has denied
any involvement in the attacks by separatists.

The military threat from India, coupled with international
pressure on Pakistan?s president, General Pervez Musharraf, was
supposed to curtail attacks on India originating from Pakistan.
This had seemed to be working, for a while.

General Musharraf banned several violent Islamist outfits,
including groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, arrested their
leaders and froze their bank accounts. In January he pledged to
crack down on extremism and to prevent terrorists from using
Pakistan as a staging post for attacks on India. The Indians
never believed him and now, they say, evidence of his perfidy is
in. General Musharraf has released three out of every four people
he arrested. Terrorist camps have been re-established in the part
of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan. Infiltration into Indian
Kashmir has not slowed down since last year, and is sure to speed
up once snow melts from the mountain passes. India claims to have
learned that the head of Pakistan?s military Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI) agency recently told army commanders that
militancy was the only weapon left to Pakistan in dealing with
India.

There are two ways to avoid retaliation: General Musharraf could
convince India that he is serious about reining in the
terrorists, or India could continue to answer terrorism with what
will come to look like empty threats. General Musharraf may lack
either the power or the inclination to do the first; the
humiliation of the second is becoming unbearable to India. Its
government, looking feeble after mishandling massacres of
hundreds of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat, is under
increasing pressure to act.

Pakistan has long embraced the cause of freeing Kashmir, India?s
only Muslim-majority state, from Indian rule while claiming
(unbelievably) that it gives only diplomatic and moral support to
anti-Indian militants. September 11th and its aftermath twisted
that alliance in ways not fully understood. General Musharraf
made enemies among jihadi groups by backing the American war
against terrorism. He appointed a new chief of the ISI, the main
patron of anti-Indian groups, in part to be able to control them.
Pakistani analysts reckon attacks, possibly assisted by rogue ISI
operatives, are directed as much at General Musharraf?s rule as
they are at India?s rule in Kashmir.

Yet the general also has reasons not to crack down too hard. One
is to avoid making terrorists angrier than they already are.
Another is that India plans to hold "free and fair" elections in
Kashmir by the autumn and is trying to entice moderate
separatists to participate. If turn-out is high and the elected
government looks popular, India will no doubt declare that
Kashmiris have accepted their lot. Earlier this month General
Musharraf described attacks on Indian forces (but not on
civilians) as part of a "legitimate freedom struggle," a
definition that enrages India.

He fires from behind multiple shields. Would India attack the
Americans? chief ally in the war against al-Qaeda? Pakistan has
already complained that India?s deployment is diverting its army
from that fight. If war starts, many Pakistanis think the United
States will step in to stop it. Would India really risk taking on
a nuclear-armed adversary? Pakistan has repeatedly stated its
willingness to go nuclear in response to a conventional attack.
General Musharraf must have drawn comfort from India?s defence
minister, George Fernandes, who told the New York Times that
India would not attack Pakistan until after the Kashmir elections
even if severely provoked.

But the price of Indian restraint rises with each outrage; the
cost of retribution, meanwhile, is starting to look acceptable.
Indian strategic thinkers have recently argued that India can
wage a "limited war" against Pakistan without risking a nuclear
exchange. This, they say, is because the adversaries understand
each other: India would not push Pakistan so hard that it had to
resort to nuclear weapons, and vice-versa. Besides, if Pakistan
did deploy its nuclear missiles, says K. Subrahmanyam, a leading
strategist, the United States "would destroy them." All this
sounds to many like dangerously wishful thinking.

If it gives up on diplomacy, India?s likeliest course would be to
mount "surgical" raids on terrorist camps in Pakistan-controlled
Kashmir, which is not formally part of Pakistan. "We know where
the camps are," says an informed source. But the risk of
escalation is always present. V. R. Raghavan, a former
director-general of Indian military operations, argued in a
recent paper that any conflict between India and Pakistan could
easily spiral out of control. India?s aggressive plans for
fighting conventional wars are now matched against Pakistan?s
aggressive doctrine for nuclear ones. An "escalation from a
conventional to a nuclear war, within one or two days of the
outbreak of the war, is not implausible," General Raghavan
writes.


Full at:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1141697