Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death

Re: Tahmed321 #257

In the current global environment, any country will be extremely foolish to launch a first strike (nuclear), especially against a country that has successfully painted itself as a victim of terror and has an explicit no-first-use policy. The diplomatic fallout will be far more comprehensive and dangerous than the radioactive fallout. India realizes that the General is in a prickly situation, and the missile tests were meant more for his domestic audience than to scare India. India has been aware of Pakistani capabilities, and such muscle-flexing in the current situation draws international condemnation. After the missile tests, Indian leaders did not so much as whimper, but the statements from the US/EU and Russia were far sterner. Let us assume that the Pentagon estimates (20 million casualties worst case) do pan out, and Pakistan plays its trump card. Let us also assume that the casualties are all Indian (unlikely, but even then only 2% of India`s population). Where will it leave Pakistan diplomatically and militarily when the dust has settled? What will happen to its regime, international standing, the Kashmir `cause`, and the state (ostensibly the benefactors of the protection afforded by nukes)? The answer to such questions in the changed global environment should give the General occasion to pause -- hence his mellowed response to CNN recently where he stated that a `nuclear war is unthinkable`. That response is seen as an attempt to lighten the international pressure. The CNN comments are quite a departure from his fire-breathing speech that Irfan Hussain was critical of, where the General was talking about concepts of `offensive defense`, first-strikes, etc. Such thinking is completely out of line in the current global sentiment.

Of course, if India was seen as mounting an unprovoked, Hitler-like attack, and the West was not describing infiltrators as terrorists, and all international sympathies were with Pakistan, then a Pakistani nuclear first strike against an unprovoked Indian attack would be seen as fully justified. That, however, is simply not the case currently as long as the war on terror rages, the Al Qaeda remain active, and there are ghastly attacks occuring in India, accompanied with international calls on Musharraf to `do more`. In this scenario, Musharraf risks being seen as a risk-taking adventurist with nukes. And Vajpayee knows it.

The risk for Musharraf and Vajpayee is that if Vajpayee pushes Musharraf too hard and causes a coup leading to Musharraf`s fall from power, then perhaps both India and the US may lose an important would-be reformer. (Musharraf still has some credibility left with the Americans, but none with the Indians). If a hardline general (in the mould of Hamid Gul) takes over who refuses to play ball with the Americans on Al Qaeda in the face of Indian cooperation the former, then this may finally be the event that turns the Americans against Pakistan. In that scenario, Pakistani nukes and will be in the crosshairs of the US.

The General appears to be getting caught in a web of his own making (of course, he inherited a quagmire when he deposed NS).

AlephNull: Further to my note, I should add that I do agree 100% with Irfan Husain (the Dawn columnist) when he says: ``Let us be clear that action to eliminate extremism from Pakistan is in our best interest, and not something the government should do to placate India or the United States. ``

Extremists should be treated like the common criminals that they are. That their actions should result in something so close to a nuclear war is an indication why fighting these people should be job one for Pakistan. So, Musharaff is hardly off the hook simply because he managed to scrape through the current crisis by firing warning shots.

AlephNull #248 you quote from the Dawn article that ``Testing missiles at this juncture of heightened tension hardly raises our security. ``

My point here was (and is) that it is surprising how many wars are caused by misperceptions of the other party`s capacity and/or intentions. These tests went a long way towards removing these misperceptions I believe (the view of the Indian public of Pakistan`s capacity to defend itself, from all indications, is based on the 1971 defeat - these tests were followed by a bunch of ``doomsday`` scenario articles in the Indian press that I am sure helped introduce the public and the leaders to the grim reality).

In that sense the tests were useful and may well have fended off a full scale war. I believe though that for the situation to have reached such a stage where we are test firing missiles (i.e. firing warning shots) as a last resort to stop a full scale war is testament to the thoughtless actions of both governments that led to this situation.

you write ``Granted that India conducted similar tests soon after it mobilized its forces earlier this year, but why do we have to mimic our neighbour`s bellicose stance?}}``

There is a vast difference in the two tests: the Indian government played its hand too soon earlier this year - having test fired and having placed its large army on the borders, it left itself with only two choices: attack Pakistan (and so risk all out nuclear war) vs. keep troops sitting at great expense on the border. The Pakistani tests simply sunk in the reality of the first option to the Indian public (as is evidenced by the ``doomsday`` articles in the Indian press that came after the tests).

why cant u leave us alone...let us fight and die..we dont need ur holier than thou attitude,, bloody firangi

In Kashmir, déjà-vu is a way of life

Should the west interpose between India and Pakistan? Salman Rushdie says it must

Saturday June 1, 2002

The Guardian

The present Kashmir crisis feels like a déjà-vu replay of the last one. Three years ago, a weak Indian coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party had just lost a confidence vote in parliament and was nervously awaiting a general election. At once it began to beat the war drums over Kashmir. Now another Indian coalition government, still led by the BJP and deeply tainted by BJP supporters` involvement in the massacre of innocents in Gujarat, may be about to lose another general election. So here it goes again, talking up a Kashmiri war and asking the nation to stand firm behind its leadership.

Three years ago, across the frontier in Pakistan, the equally weak government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif had bankrupted the economy and was facing well-documented corruption charges. Sharif, too, had much to gain from war-fever. The hawkish Pakistani general who presided over a military regime that liaised with and trained terrorist groups operating from the Pakistani side of the Kashmiri line of control was one Pervez Musharraf. (Some of these groups were almost certainly sent by Pakistan`s intelligence service to al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan.)

When Nawaz Sharif succumbed to US pressure and promised to rein in the terrorists, Musharraf was furious. It is said that Sharif`s rejection of Musharraf`s Kashmiri strategy was an important motivation in the subsequent coup in which the general overthrew the PM and seized power.

Now President Musharraf is being pressed by the United States to stamp out Kashmiri terrorism. In recent months, he has played a double game, arresting hundreds of members of the groups he once fostered, but quietly freeing most soon afterwards. Caught between two necessities, placating his major international sponsor and playing to the home audience, he may in the end follow his deepest political instincts, which are to support (overtly or covertly) the Islamist radicals who have terrorised the once idyllic valley of Kashmir for well over a decade.

India`s prime minister, AB Vajpayee, with his talk of a ``decisive battle``, clearly feels that direct military action, resulting in the reconquest of some if not all of the Kashmiri territory presently under Pakistani control, is the only way of preventing such attacks as the recent atrocity in which women and children were slaughtered at an Indian army base.

Vajpayee knows that Indian rule is unpopular in the valley, that the Indian army looks to many Kashmiris like an army of occupation. But he will also have calculated that in the opinion of the international community, and also of many fearful, near-destitute Kashmiris, Pakistan`s protracted sponsorship of terrorism has damaged its claims to moral legitimacy.

Would a war between India and Pakistan go nuclear? Pakistan, with its suggestively timed missile tests, its refusal to adopt a no-first-use policy and its hawkish talk, is trying to give the impression that it would have no compunction about using its nuclear arsenal. India`s military leadership has said that if attacked with N-bombs it will respond with maximum force, and that in such a conflict India would sustain heavy damage but survive, whereas Pakistan would be destroyed. Is it really likely, however, that Pakistan would strap a nuclear weapon to its belly, walk into the crowded bazaar that is India and turn itself into the biggest suicide bomber in history?

Musharraf doesn`t look like martyr material. Ah, but if he were losing a conventional war? If India`s overwhelming numerical superiority on land, at sea and in the air, won the day, and Pakistan lost its prized Kashmiri land, would reason be swept aside? Worst of all, if Pakistani fury at a military defeat by India were to result in Musharraf`s overthrow by Islamist hardliners, Pakistan`s nuclear warheads would fall into the hands of people for whom martyrdom is a higher goal than peace, people who value death more highly than life.

Pakistan is calling upon international community to intervene, but this call must be listened to with caution. For half a century, Pakistan has sought to inter nationalise the Kashmiri dispute, while India has described that effort as interference in its internal affairs. That old déjà-vu again. Both sides are locked into old language, old strategies. Even the game of chicken that`s currently playing itself out across the line of control is an old one. Like two aged wrestlers fighting on a cliff, India and Pakistan are locked together, rolling closer to the edge.

Their ancient hatred is no longer only a matter for them. The nuclear scenario, however improbable, makes Kashmir everybody`s problem. Right now, it`s the most dangerous place in the world. These pathetic old fighters must therefore be pulled apart, and soon. The international community must intervene; yes, that probably does mean the west, though Russia seems keen to help as well, which is useful.

This should not, however, be the intervention that Pakistan wants. The point is not to restrain Indian ``aggression`` but to make the world safer for us all. The situation can only be stabilised if India and Pakistan are both forced to back away, preferably to Kashmir`s historic, unpartitioned borders. This ``hands off Kashmir`` solution will have to be externally imposed on the reluctant principals, and will require a large peacekeeping force to be sent to the region. But who wants that - it`s just the old colonialist-imperialist power-trip, isn`t it? And who`s supposed to pay for all this peacekeeping?

The answers to those questions are also questions: what`s the alternative? Do you have a better idea? Or shall we just stand back and keep our post-colonial, non-imperialist fingers crossed? Will it take mushroom clouds over Delhi and Islamabad to make us give up our prejudices and try something that might actually work? In the words of the Spice Girls, will this déjà-vu never end?

© Salman Rushdie



http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,725485,00.html

Eyeball to Eyeball, and Blinking in Denial

By CELIA W. DUGGER

EW DELHI — AS India and Pakistan, fledgling nuclear powers, edge closer to war, the rest of the world looks on aghast at a possible nuclear exchange that could kill millions of people. British and American envoys are rushing to the region in last-ditch efforts to avert catastrophe. On Friday, the United States government urged tens of thousands of Americans living in India to leave.

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But here in India`s capital — a plausible bull`s-eye — there has been no panic. The sweltering city moves to its usual somnolent summer rhythm. At a recent seminar titled ``Preparing to Survive,`` the subject was earthquakes and cyclones, not nuclear firestorms and radiation sickness.

And that is in large measure because India`s ruling elite and many of its leading strategic thinkers are in nuclear denial.

Though Pakistan`s leaders have spoken openly over the years and in recent days and weeks about the possibility of using the country`s nuclear weapons, India has seen this ``loose talk,`` as a spokeswoman for India called it Thursday, as evidence of Pakistan`s bluffing and blackmail.

K. Santhanam, a physicist who helped organize India`s 1998 nuclear tests and now heads the government-financed Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, said the risk of nuclear war is ``overdramatized.``

``The probability of occurrence is very low, extremely low, vanishingly low,`` he said.

Pakistan`s leaders and thinkers, too, are living their own form of nuclear denial — that of the smaller, militarily weaker nation. They believe Pakistan`s conventional military prowess, combined with its credible nuclear threat, will deter the region`s dominant power, India, from daring to attack Pakistan. They also expect that it will force the United States to pressure India to give ground on Kashmir, the land India and Pakistan have fought over for a half century.

``There will be no war, conventional or nuclear,`` Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, retired chief of Pakistan`s armed forces, declared. ``This military buildup is to pressurize Pakistan to stop the liberation movement in Kashmir.``

India`s and Pakistan`s mirrored denials of the nuclear dangers are part of the treacherous dynamic that could lead to war, military analysts and South Asia experts say. As they intensify their rhetorical belligerence and military preparations, each expects the other to back down. But they may just fall into the nuclear abyss.

``There`s a complacency that the weapons won`t be used which I find baffling,`` said a senior Western diplomat here. ``It`s like the early days of the cold war. People here haven`t understood what these weapons can do. I don`t think most people here have ever heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.``

While many Indians and Pakistanis say there will be no nuclear war, they often paradoxically acknowledge the possibility in the next breath, exhibiting also the unspoken assumption that these two hugely populous nations — India has a billion people and Pakistan 150 million — would survive.

Mr. Santhanam, the Indian physicist, said his hunch is that a war would remain conventional, but he also said, ``If we`re hit, we`ll know how to handle it. If there`s a nuclear attack, India`s policy is severe retaliation.``

Asked at a public meeting in Islamabad last week if there could be a nuclear catastrophe, General Beg, the former Pakistani army chief, said more people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that millions have been killed by small arms fire.

``Look,`` he said, ``I don`t know what you`re worried about. You can die crossing the street, hit by a car, or you could die in a nuclear war. You`ve got to die someday anyway.``

After the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, which surprised and frightened the United States and the Soviet Union at how quickly they could unintentionally slide toward a nuclear exchange, the superpowers shifted to engaging each other indirectly through proxy wars in the third world rather than in direct conflicts. They also began an arms control process to regulate nuclear competition.

In contrast, India and Pakistan have hundreds of thousands of troops poised for war along their border who have been engaged in fierce artillery duels for two weeks. And their senior leaders are not talking. India has withdrawn its ambassador to Pakistan and expelled Pakistan`s envoy to Delhi.

A part of this may be due to the sheer power of disbelief that military planning could go so awry that nuclear arms would come into play. Strategists and Indian officials, including Defense Minister George Fernandes, have argued that India can wage a limited conventional war. They say Pakistan would not hit India with nuclear weapons and risk devastation in reprisal. They say they know Pakistan`s trip wires and have no desire to conquer or vanquish Pakistan.

BUT what if a provoked India aggressively counterattacked across the border and Pakistan responded more effectively than anticipated? If that opened the way toward a general war, at what point would Pakistan`s military rulers feel so endangered they would consider firing a nuclear weapon? Pakistan`s leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, recently told Der Speigel that if Pakistan`s survival as a nation were threatened, ``then it would be a case of: in extreme emergency, even the atomic bomb.``

Miscalculation is, after all, at the heart of virtually all the nightmare visions of how any nuclear exchange would start. India`s external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, said last week that India and Pakistan were of the same womb — suggesting they therefore understood each other. But their history is littered with deadly misunderstandings, scholars say. Often, Pakistan underestimates India`s military determination and democratic resilience, while India underestimates the depth of Pakistan`s suspicion that India is out to vivisect it.

Their misjudgments could be catastrophic. General Musharraf openly threatened Wednesday to take the war into ``the enemy`s territory`` if India stepped even an inch across the line of control that divides Kashmir between them.

This is complicated by the fact that these countries, unlike the United States or the Soviet Union, have no experience of the horrors of modern total war, waged against whole cities with the very intention of leveling them. Americans, while their own cities were left untouched during World War II, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviets saw vast parts of their homeland devastated.

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What the Indians and Pakistanis do have is a legacy of deep, intimate mistrust. They are neighbors born in a moment of cataclysmic religious violence. They have a blood feud that features deep personal bitterness between the most senior leaders of the two countries. And they have large cities so close to each other that a nuclear missile could hit its target in minutes.

Pakistan`s president, General Musharraf, was born here in India`s capital. But his Muslim family fled to Pakistan, the newly created Islamic nation hacked from the British Indian empire in 1947 at the same hour as India. His parents later told their children that they had escaped on the last train to leave India safely — and that Hindus and Sikhs had massacred the Muslims on the trains that came after. As a boy, the general was taught to deeply mistrust the Hindus who are predominant in India, his brother Naved said.

India`s leaders also mistrust General Musharraf, whom they believe betrayed India by plotting to sneak army regulars into the Kargil region of Indian Kashmir in 1999. His troops took mountain peaks overlooking a crucial Indian supply route even as India`s prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was on a peace mission to Pakistan.

Many believed Pakistan was emboldened to act so recklessly because the army assumed its nuclear arsenal would deter an Indian counterattack. At the time, India heeded American pleas that, to avoid the possibility of an escalating war, it not cross into Pakistan-administered Kashmir. But after Kargil, frustrated Indian officials talked more about the feasibility of a limited war that involved striking into Pakistani territory.

During the Kargil war, which ended with Pakistan`s ignominious withdrawal, American intelligence officials concluded that Pakistan had taken steps to prepare its nuclear weapons for possible use, according to an essay by Bruce Riedel, a special assistant to President Bill Clinton, published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania.

The current crisis is another incarnation of the struggle for Kashmir that began in 1947. Pakistan has long backed Islamic extremists who have committed atrocities against civilians as they battle Indian rule. Now, inspired in part by President Bush`s post-Sept. 11 policy of zero tolerance for terrorists, India has warned that it will take military action unless Pakistan stops sheltering and arming them.

Human rights monitors say Indian forces have committed gross human rights violations in battling the insurgency, which General Musharraf never fails to describe as an indigenous freedom struggle. LAST week, in a speech, he effectively cast the battle as a Hindu-Muslim conflict, an inflammatory step in the nuclear context. ``If war is imposed,`` he vowed, ``a Muslim is not afraid and does not retreat, but with the cry of Allah o-Akbar he jumps into the war to fight.``

As alarmed American officials watch the crisis unfold, they worry that India and Pakistan could become a model and inspiration for the likes of Iraq and North Korea if they should ever use their nuclear weapons against each other. ``Once you use it,`` one official said, ``that almost mystical taboo is removed.``

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/02/weekinreview/02DUGG.html?pagewanted=2

japantoday commentary

Bin Laden`s ultimate twin towers Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

Iqbal Latif

Pakistan`s anti-terrorist posture is once again under scrutiny as India-Pakistani tensions over Kashmir, which is a potential nuclear flash point, flare up.

The recent Indian assertions, that President Musharraf is not a genuine ally in the global war on terrorism, is a blatant endeavor to undo the perseverance and resolve shown by the Pakistani president since Sept 11 in the changed international milieu.

The Indian move is an incredibly irresponsible self-centered action, which does not take into account the global ramifications of a destabilized Pakistan. A coup or change of government in Pakistan may bring about a new round of enduring national unpredictability and propel fringe fanatics closer to the corridors of power.

The charges that Musharraf has not done enough and has failed to clamp down on infiltration, across the disputed territory of Kashmir, trivializes the significant struggle which Pakistan underwent in order to contribute to the reining of the tentacles of Global Terrorists Inc under Osama bin Laden.

The bigger picture of continuing war against global terror cannot be overlooked. That war has far bigger horizon beyond present bilateral problem of Kashmir, it has collateral impact on global economy and future of the sheikhdoms in the Middle East and oil are all linked to the continuing war against global terror.

Indian suggestions highlighted in a Vajpayee letter to U.S. President George Bush, which Chidanand Rajghatta reported from Washington, stated that India has no faith in Musharraf.

According to the Times correspondent in Washington, India has signaled to the United States and much of the world that it has completely lost faith in Musharraf and cannot do business with him. In a self-serving verdict the Times of India correspondent believes that ``Musharraf is also rapidly losing Washington`s trust, except perhaps his last bastion, the State Department.``

The Indian view, communicated both directly and indirectly, means a return to normalcy in the region may now depend on Musharraf`s exit or what Indian officials say is ``the unlikely event of him having a complete change of heart and forsaking terrorism as an instrument of state policy.``

India`s myopic view forgets that an effort of making an ``Arafat`` out of Musharraf is actually strengthening the hands of the Islamic global militants represented by al Qaeda. Musharraf rather than Bush is probably more likely to head the list of the most wanted men by al Qaeda.

When it mattered the most after Sept 11, Pakistan under Musharraf took the right decisions; which none of the strategists in the area ever thought that Pakistan was capable of. No one ever dreamt that moderation in the Pakistan army would be an overnight change of heart by the commander in chief.

Not that he did any favors to anyone, he owed it to humanity and mankind at large, however in a complete 180 degree turn which shocked Indian strategists who had always believed that the fruitless quest of fighting vain battles for Islam would once again steer Pakistan into taking a wrong decision and continue supporting the Taliban. In a succession of quick decisions he cleaned the slate, wiped out Taliban sympathizers like Mehmood, the dismissed chief of the ISI, and started anew.

The Sept 11 attacks were two-pronged, one to hit America within the safe confines of its homeland, which was a kind of a cold-blooded message with the stated objective of cowing the U.S. into appeasement. That first assumption was a deadly error by al Qaeda. They misread American history and could not evaluate the natural American response.

The second objective was to get Americans out of the Islamic world and leave the crescent of instability from Morocco to Pakistan in the hands of Islamic militants. As some believe the attacks were really not about the poverty or lack democracy within the Islamic countries, if this was the case, the hijackers should have been impoverished Afghans or Africans rather than rich Saudis.

The top leaders of al Qaeda include a trust-fund baby, hailing from one of the richest families in the Saudi kingdom, and another is a surgeon from a prominent Egyptian family. Clearly the attackers were not motivated by economic discontent, so what drove them? Religion, of course — although not everyone is ready to fully admit the role of Islam in September`s attacks.

The struggle led by bin Laden was not only to destroy the WTC but to create enough terror so as to move on and bring the ruled and the rulers of the Muslim world into a direct confrontation. Bin Laden and his cohorts, who undeniably represent the medieval era, are pitted against those who are slightly moderate and govern Muslim countries today.

Bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the ousted Taliban leader, used Afghanistan as a base for their strategy, the ultimate aim of which was to launch a Sunni revolution across the Muslim world in a hope to bring down moderate regimes such as Pakistan in its first stage.

Bin Laden, a veteran of Afghan wars, found in the Taliban enough of the tribalism and backwardness that could help him reincarnate the 1,400-year-old epoch once again.

``Talibanization`` is the Sunni answer to the Shia revolution of Iran. Bin Laden wanted to become the Ayatollah Khomeini of the Sunni world. Talibanization under him would have definitely moved south into the hinterland of Pakistan as a counter to the Sunni global revolution had the response to the Sept 11 attacks not have taken out the roots of this global intifida.

Denying sanctuaries and breeding grounds to the global Islamic bandits under bin Laden is the biggest achievement of the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban. This campaign has been successful as a result of a total cooperation from the moderate regime of Musharraf.

The task would have been much more complicated had anyone else would have been at the helm of the affairs. His personal risk and his correct decision to save the region from medieval reincarnation have saved the Islamic world from a major turmoil. Today the global militants are far weaker and Musharraf`s contribution are undeniable reality.

The militancy in Kashmir in terms of its scope and impact on Islamic world has some limitations on the global level but Islamic militants believe it has all the making of a firebrand Sunni revolution that could find a lot of sympathy in the Arab streets. Once Pakistan strategic assets are under their control, the next step would be to bring Saudi Arabia within the fold and restore the caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia.

By this view, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were just a preamble to win the hearts and minds of the worldwide community of Muslim believers. Bin Laden hoped that the attacks against the United States would spark uprisings by Muslims against their own American-backed regimes.

As Sandy Berger stated very correctly, ``Bin Laden`s ultimate twin towers are Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.`` The mixture of oil and strategic assets under one caliphate spread out from Morocco to Indonesia would be a dreadful consequence. This theoretical but very possible scenario was averted by swift U.S. action and total cooperation by the Pakistani president and the nation as a whole.

Mmeanwhile, India, if nothing else, should be grateful to Musharraf for leading Pakistan out of a self-destructive cycle.

India for its own gains in Kashmir is undermining the coalition efforts to stamp out the global war against terrorism. Pakistan, out of default, is a key member due to the nature of the terror network objective and is a target of the militants as well, since they wish to control this pivotal member.

By forcing a confrontation with India they can sell Musharraf short as the man who brought down the Taliban but was unable to repel Indian aggression due to the lack of American support. They will make Musharraf an example within the Islamic world that will term him as the ``New Shah,`` a friend of America who was betrayed.

The last thing the U.S. wants is this new categorization. America needs trusted allies in the region and the actions of India are not very helpful. India, considering the recent events in Gujarat and Bihar and with a restive Islamic population within its border, should know that it cannot afford a destabilized and radicalized Pakistan.

A stable Pakistan helps a secular India grow stronger and provides calmness on its northern frontier and helps it to concentrate to alleviate the condition of its people. It`s a win-all situation for India and Pakistan.

At this stage of the war against Global Terror Inc, India`s decision to weaken Pakistan and pose a threat to its very existence is not very helpful. India is a victim of terror and so is Pakistan. The militants presently engaged with Indian armed forces are the same people who recently bombed the French engineers in Karachi, who were working on a very important Pakistani defense project. Hundreds of Pakistani doctors have been killed by these very militants who find anyone who opposes them worthy of elimination.

They are friends of no one, and are not the least bothered about Kashmir. It is the perpetual struggle of jihad and domination of Islam that drives them. The very objective of these militants is to create instability and they will thrive in this environment.

India should have a bigger picture in mind. The present mischief across the Line of Control is not a big enough reason to derail the global war against terrorism and push Pakistani moderates into ignominy. (Media Monitors Network)

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=comment&id=194&refresh

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501020603-250061,00.html

On the Brink

In Kashmir, the conflict never stops—because so many gain so much by it

BY ALEX PERRY SRINAGAR

AMAN SHARMA/AP

Indian Army soldiers run during an army exercise near the international border between India and Pakistan



Special Report: Back on the Brink



Sometimes it seems nobody wants peace in Kashmir. When two masked gunmen dressed in Indian police uniforms gunned down Abdul Gani Lone at a rally in the leafy summer capital of Srinagar last week, the list of suspects was notable for including almost everyone. Some naturally pointed the finger at India and its secret service: for decades Lone had staunchly opposed Indian rule in Kashmir. But the 70-year-old former lawyer had modified his stance in the past two years, and that had survivors, including Lone`s son Sajjad, pinning the assassination on Pakistan, its powerful intelligence agency the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Kashmir`s Islamic guerrillas. Sajjad, who succeeds his father in Kashmir`s most powerful separatist alliance, even vocally wondered whether his father`s allies were involved: men who were standing alongside him minutes before he was shot. Lone had been evolving into that Kashmiri rarity: a man pushing for peace. Nearly everyone agrees that`s why he died.

And with his death, the clouds of war grew immediately darker. Last week in India and Pakistan—and most concentratedly in Kashmir—the talk was not of whether there will be conflict, but when and what form it will take. Since 1947 the South Asian neighbors have squabbled over the lush Himalayan foothills; and since 1989 more than 35,000 people have lost their lives in a separatist rebellion, partly fueled by Pakistan. Lone`s death followed a militant attack at an army camp in Jammu the week before that left 31 dead, and India declared it had lost patience with Pakistan`s ``cross-border terrorism.`` Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told some of the 750,000 Indian troops massed with heavy artillery and short-range ballistic missiles all along the western front to prepare for a ``decisive battle.`` He used the same alarming phrase a day later before the civilian press. Vajpayee ordered thousands more jawans, or soldiers, to the 3,000-kilometer-long border with Pakistan and moved five warships to the Arabian Sea. Pakistan responded by pulling 4,000 men out of peacekeeping duties in Sierra Leone and stationing them along its eastern frontier. It is considering withdrawing thousands more of its soldiers from the coalition hunt for al-Qaeda fugitives on the Afghanistan border. On Saturday, it performed a provocative test of a medium-range Ghauri missile. With mutual nuclear annihilation as the ultimate escalation, the subcontinent once again regained its status, in Bill Clinton`s phrase, as ``the most dangerous place on earth.``

Kashmir is the locus of that terrible peril because, for most of the players, continuing conflict works. It works for the militants, who have found an escape from grinding poverty in the gun and the cash and prestige it attracts. That`s true of both the indigenous Kashmiri militants and the ``guest mujahedin`` who come in from Pakistan, veterans of ISI-run training camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and former Taliban-ruled territory in Afghanistan, who subscribe to the same ideal of waging a purifying jihad.

Trouble in Kashmir also works for Pakistan. While President Pervez Musharraf publicly denounces militant incursions from his side of the border, it would be political suicide for him to denounce their aims. Nor does the Pakistani President`s rhetoric blind anyone to the memory that in 1999 he commanded the operation to seize strategic passes in the mountains of Kargil on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LOC). Moreover Musharraf`s announcements of a crackdown on the militants ring more than a touch hollow. While five insurgent groups have been banned and bank accounts have been frozen, some of the arrested leaders have been freed, the bank accounts are reported to have been emptied before they were closed and the incursions and attacks inside Indian territory continue, including a December attack on Parliament in New Delhi in which 14 people died.

Lately, all-out war has also become increasingly attractive to India. Vajpayee`s limping, pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is only too aware of the restorative powers of a good fight. War talk and fulminations against Muslim militancy have successfully rid India`s newspapers of reports of the excesses of the BJP`s hard-line supporters in Gujarat, where more than 1,000 Muslims have been killed in a 10-week religious pogrom. Conflict and crisis also allow India to ignore the average Kashmiri`s main complaints: the nagging injustice of Indian rule, rigged elections, rampant official corruption, police torture and murders by soldiers. And with the U.S. enthusiastically prosecuting its war on terror in Afghanistan, New Delhi feels the time is right for its own crackdown. In Kashmir, it is: even Kashmiri militants, who desire independence from India, agree that their guest mujahedin are as nasty as they are unwelcome. ``They are trying to Talibanize Kashmir,`` says activist Mohammed Kaleem. ``Their only objective is to destroy India.`` Mehbooba Mufti, vice president of the pro-India People`s Democratic Party, says the jihadis are giving Vajpayee`s government exactly the justification it needs: ``They always want to keep the Kashmir pot boiling.``

So far, India seems to have calculated correctly. While expressing concern at the prospect of war, U.S. President George W. Bush has said he understands India`s anger and frustration. European Union external affairs commissioner Chris Patten, who visited New Delhi and Islamabad last week, described India`s patience as ``stretched almost beyond breaking point`` and the situation as on a ``knife edge.`` Bush has stopped short of publicly admonishing Pakistan, Washington`s key ally in the war on terror, but he`s dispatching burly Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage to Islamabad next week, and his mission will be to deliver a heavy, private bruising. ``If anyone can threaten to crack Musharraf in half, it`s Armitage,`` says one State Department source. (Armitage can bench-press 160 kilos) For his part, Vajpayee has been hinting that New Delhi`s military strategy has received covert approval, saying last week ``world opinion is on our side but they are not saying so openly.``

Exactly what New Delhi is planning remains a mystery. ``Wait and watch,`` was Vajpayee`s heavy warning last week in Srinagar. Both sides have taken care not to publically flaunt their nuclear capabilities: Islamabad swiftly denounced one hard-line minister who did. Vajpayee told local newspaper editors in Jammu that as a first step New Delhi was considering abandoning a treaty that ensures the free flow of three rivers including the Indus, which originate in Indian-administered Kashmir and run through the mountains to irrigate Pakistan`s northeastern bread basket. A second option is surgical strikes by the air force and commando teams on jihadi training camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The third is a pounding of Pakistani posts along the LOC in Kashmir followed by a limited invasion to push it back a few kilometers and allow India to take and block passes used by militants crossing into its territory.

Pakistan says it is preparing for the last two scenarios. ``The actions that the Indians have taken tell us that they have the capability to launch air strikes on the so-called camps, besides having the capacity to start a fierce ground offensive,`` says one Pakistani general. ``We have set our defenses accordingly and we are prepared for a limited war in and around Kashmir.`` For now, Pakistan says it is attempting to placate its neighbor by targeting Islamic militants on its soil. Late last week, diplomats were indicating that India was considering giving Pakistan one last chance. But like India, Pakistan too has a limit to its patience. ``No matter what Musharraf does, it will never be enough for India,`` says one Western diplomat. Adds a senior Pakistani military source: ``We may be tempted to finally say enough is enough.`` As Abdul Gani Lone discovered last week, peace is seldom popular in Kashmir.

TIME

Re: soysauce

Addendum to previous post:

``...Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was unshakable in his confidence in Musharraf, has begun wincing at Islamabad’s on-the-edge strategy, especially after Pakistani diplomat Munir Akram broadcast before the world on Thursday his country’s low threshold for throwing in nuclear weapons.

Asked on a television news show on Thursday if nuclear weapons would be used by India or Pakistan if conflict came, Powell indicated that he had told the Pakistanis how foolish such an option would be, given India’s no first use policy...``

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=11583302

Re: soysauce

``...Interesting, but implausible scenario...``

Not too implausible if you think hard about it. If India`s aim (as I think it is) is to simply make Pakistan stop infiltration, and not to destroy it (only under which scenario nukes are to be used), then a non-response become more attractive diplomatically from India`s perspective. The international media is already buying India`s line almost completely, and every industrial nation is calling upon Musharraf to stop infiltration of `terrorists from Pakistan`. Remember, the decision to respond will be India`s, and India can chose not to respond after Pakistan has taken a first step beyond the point of no return (which is likely to be against Indian armor on the battlefield in Pakistan and not on Indian cities). Can you imagine the global condemnation that will befall any country (especially a dictatorship) that uses nuclear weapons against conventional forces that in the post 9/11 scenario are acting to `stop terrorism` and not waging a war of aggression? Indian intentions towards Pakistan should become apparent to everyone (especially to the US with its satellites that are able to look at every military move, and can confirm what Indian intentions really were at the time nukes were used), and if they do not threaten the existence of Pakistan, and yet if Pakistan uses nukes, then Pakistan will be perceived as the guilty party. In that case, if a nuke is used as a battlefield weapon, it would mark the first time since 1945 that such a weapon will be used. Colin Powell has explicitly warned any state that uses them with the most dire diplomatic consequences -- and Pakistan can forget about Kashmir for ever as also its strategic assets if India does not respond -- there will be UN arms inspectors under UN sanctions of all types to roll back Pak strategic assets -- there will be other mandatory (as opposed to the non-mandatory Kashmir UN resolutions) to worry about. The US and the rest of the world is not about to see anyone legitimize the use of nukes as battlefield weapons, because this will have serious implications for the US` security posture worldwide. Allowing their use would suddenly make them useful for all types of unpleasant regimes worldwide who will then work overtime to develop them, and bring the carefully built US arms control regime crumbling down. Woe upon anyone who does so. The loss for India may be a few hundred tanks and about 10,000 to 20,000 men given that the columns will be spread thin(relatively small numbers -- roughly the number that die in 2 to 3 years of conflic in Kashmir if that results in major diplomatic gains -- neutralizing Pak nukes, abandonment of Kashmir poliy, infiltration that are broader in scope than India`s current limited aims of simply stopping infiltration).

Hobbyty #234

{Alpha, I was very disappointed with your post}

First off, it`s Aleph, as in Hebrew, not Alpha, as in Greek.... if you are capable of making that distinction, of course.

Secondly, I fear that you have far more severe `disappointments` in store than that occasioned by my post. Thus who have long lived in fantasy worlds - as have too many Pakistanis, alas - find the process of coming to terms with reality quite painful.

{ - it seems, you have missed the forests for the trees.}

Come down to earth from your cloud nine, and you may not mistake a carpet of hallucinogenic mushrooms for a forest.

I did that rapid back-of-the-envelope calculation to give some idea of the general quality and level of the author`s knowledge. Babbling Babbin appears to have little idea of the actual `order of battle` that he makes so much mention of, or of the true relative capabilities of the forces in question. If his factual knowledge is so defective, his conclusions are also likely suspect. His article does have advantages - temporary, at any rate - for besieged believers craving confirmation of their crumbling creed.

{What is pertinent is that neither side will have what can be equated with a ``cake walk``.}

A vacuous tautology. War is never a cakewalk.

{It could be weather, a small or what is judged as inconsequenial on the battlefield or in the theatre, may have larger consequences - either way, the point is that this subject does not lend itself to determinate eventuality, other than a indeterminate eventuality, that is, regardless of winners and losers, terrible.}

What is this verbal flatulence supposed to signify? [Your grammar sorely needs fixing, BTW] That war is heck, but that the outcome is always uncertain? Sure - so what? Perhaps the Pakistan Army ought to have thought along these lines a decade ago when it started its proxy war in J&K. Nations go to war after estimating the likely risks and payoffs. Of course, some, like Pakistan, do it extremely badly.

{Any proposal to defuse this situation ought to contain the following provisions in my opinion: ...

2. Evacuation of Indian occupation forces from captive Kashmir.}

Amusing. Curiously, I see no mention of evacuation of Pakistani occupation forces from Pakistan-occupied captive Kashmir (POCK). An honest oversight, I presume.

{3. Joint statement, as a prelude to offical process of negotiation between Pakistan, India and Hurriyet, calling for a cessation of all hostile activity against remaining Indian policemen.}

Uproariously funny ... how about cessation of hostile activity by Pakistani terrorists against Indian civilians? Another oversight?

{4. A joint security commission to include Pakistan, India, Hurriyet and UNO to monitor events, pending the final status of modalities to arrive at a comprehensive, mutually agreed upon solution.}

You seem to be on a roll ... modalities, eh? While you`re at it, why don`t you propose tripartite `proximity talks` under UN auspices, a la Geneva, to secure a withdrawal of `Indian occupation forces` from `captive Kashmir`?

...if india can get what it wants without going to war, why should it?...

{In his remarks this week, Mr. Bush suggested endorsement of the long-held Indian view of the Kashmir conflict: that the insurgency in India`s only Muslim-majority state is not a homegrown uprising against Indian rule, but a guerrilla war orchestrated and controlled by the Pakistani government. Defusing the crisis, Mr. Bush suggested, is as simple as sealing the Pakistani border; he implied that General Musharraf could accomplish that with an order to his lieutenants. }

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/01/international/asia/01ASSE.html

An excellent article by one of the most reliably sensible columnists in Pakistan`s English press. Highly recommended for the Hobbytys and Romairs and others of their ilk:

``Giving Peace a Chance``

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm

{{Let us be clear that action to eliminate extremism from Pakistan is in our best interest, and not something the government should do to placate India or the United States. If terrorists are striking at Indian targets, they are doing the same right here in Pakistan: the killing of French engineers, an American journalist and foreign churchgoers in Islamabad is linked to the same people who are slaying civilians in Indian-held Kashmir. The faces of the killers and the names of their outfits may be different, but their mindset and motivation are identical.}

{{Why did Gen Musharraf feel he had to match Vajpayee`s sabre-rattling? Testing missiles at this juncture of heightened tension hardly raises our security. Granted that India conducted similar tests soon after it mobilized its forces earlier this year, but why do we have to mimic our neighbour`s bellicose stance?}}

TAhmed, please note the paragraph above.

{{The truth is that we have become so used to trying to match India that it is now a knee-jerk reaction with our policy-makers. ...

We seem not to have grown up to the point of accepting that India is a far bigger country, and its name and image have an international resonance that ours does not. Pakistan, as a relatively new country, has still to settle on an identity and determine its place in the world. This cannot be done through simultaneously denying our South Asian roots as well as trying to match India in everything.

Above all, we are in denial about the military and economic disparity between the two countries. Even educated Pakistanis insist they are not willing to accept Indian `hegemony`. But what does this mean? Some people seriously think that India is interested in the break-up of Pakistan. But even the most hawkish Indian probably realizes that such a scenario would cause enormous problems for India and the entire region.}}

#: 235

tahmed321

I had said that the policy of nuclearization by successive Indian governments would go down as one of History`s Greatest Blunders. ...///

Nuclearization became inevitable the day Bhutto declared ``we will get nukes even if we have to eat grass``. Pak wanted nukes to fend off any more beating from India - likes of one it got in 1971. But Once it got the nukes it started dreaming of adventures in wonderland - it changed its own paradigm from defense to offense: to sustain a proxy war against India on the assumption that the nukes would prevent a backlash. At that point - India has no other option to get its own nukes - thus completing the circle.

India also had an additional reason - China.

The tests in 1998 were a mere ``coming out of closet`` kind of incident. In a way - it was better that we all know the ``wolves`` as themselves instead of having ``wolves in sheep skin`` - thus allowing fatal mistakes to be made.

Iamgine the current situation without explicit nuclearization - and India going to war on assumption that Pak doesnot have nukes.

Pakistani President at the Fulcrum of Crisis

By DEXTER FILKINS

SLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 31 — With South Asia teetering on the edge of war, President Bush has imposed on Pakistan the burden of dragging it back into balance.

But the question making its way through the Pakistani capital here is whether the country`s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has as much power as President Bush implies. At the same time, many in India are wondering whether General Musharraf, who is known as a hawk, really wants to rein in Pakistan.

Earlier this week, in unusually strong language, Mr. Bush called on the Pakistani president to prevent Muslim guerrillas from crossing into the Indian state of Kashmir, where thousands of Indians have been killed in a 13-year-old insurgency.

Just how much the Pakistan government helps the Muslim guerrillas is at the heart of the current standoff along the border, where a million Indian and Pakistani troops are facing off in a confrontation made all the more dangerous by the nuclear weapons each side possesses.

In his remarks this week, Mr. Bush suggested endorsement of the long-held Indian view of the Kashmir conflict: that the insurgency in India`s only Muslim-majority state is not a homegrown uprising against Indian rule, but a guerrilla war orchestrated and controlled by the Pakistani government. Defusing the crisis, Mr. Bush suggested, is as simple as sealing the Pakistani border; he implied that General Musharraf could accomplish that with an order to his lieutenants.

For Pakistanis, the reality of Kashmir is more complicated, bound up in the passions of faith and nation that transcend their views on other issues. Kashmir has been a flashpoint since 1947, when India and Pakistan rose from the remains of the British Empire, divided largely along religious lines. Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state with a Hindu prince, split between the two new nations, and successive Pakistani governments have persisted in trying to wrest the Indian part of Kashmir from the largely Hindu country. India, a secular democracy with myriad faiths, has fiercely resisted, skeptical of the idea that religion is the principal arbiter of national identity.

With such passion invested in the struggle, few Pakistanis today think that General Musharraf has enough power to hold back the militants crossing into Indian Kashmir, or that it would make much difference in the guerrilla war even if he did.

Indeed, Pakistanis expressed irritation today at Mr. Bush`s remarks, saying they exposed a fundamental misunderstanding of the Kashmir conflict and of the Pakistani government`s role in it. To most Pakistanis, the conflict is a struggle with local roots, with the largely Muslim population writhing beneath the oppressive rule of a Hindu-dominated nation. Although it has long been an open secret that Pakistani governments have provided training and support for Muslim militants who cross the frontier into Indian Kashmir, few Pakistanis believe that their support is decisive.

``The struggle is totally indigenous,`` said Maj. Gen. Nasirullah Babar, interior minister under Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister. ``The Indians have thousands of troops there, and still they cannot suppress it.``

Like other Pakistanis, General Babar said Mr. Bush`s recent remarks might embolden the Indian government, which has been contemplating a military strike into Pakistan to snuff out what it says are terrorist camps for militants heading into Indian Kashmir.

Like many current and former Pakistani officials, General Babar denied that the Pakistani government was helping to operate such camps, despite the widely held view of Western diplomats that it does. Indeed, after a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December, General Musharraf pledged to cut off the infiltration routes of the insurgents and crack down on militant groups inside Pakistan.

By many accounts, American and Indian, General Musharraf`s attempts to rein in the militants have been either futile or cosmetic. The infiltration persists, and most of the 2,000 or so militants detained late last year and early this year are now back on the streets.

``If these camps were reactivated, it is not conceivable that this could happen without President Musharraf`s knowledge,`` said Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times, an English-language newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan.

Just why General Musharraf might have thought that he could continue to press the Kashmir struggle in the face of public American opposition is unclear. According to a Pakistani source, he believed that in exchange for helping the United States destroy the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he would be allowed to assist the insurgency in Kashmir unfettered.

Though known to be a moderate Muslim, the general is also known to harbor hawkish views toward his neighbor. A native of India, he left his home in New Delhi during the trauma of partition. A half-century later, as head of the Pakistani Army, he directed the incursion into the Kargil region on the Indian side of Kashmir in 1999, which nearly brought the two countries to war.

But a widely expressed fear here is that the general, who has vowed to turn his country away from militant Islam, may be unable to persuade members of his own army and intelligence services to turn off the insurgency, regardless of the urgings of Mr. Bush. Such an inability could doom chances of a rapprochement with India, which has made shutting down the militant camps the condition for withdrawing its troops from the Pakistani border.

``I personally don`t feel that Musharraf can control these groups,`` said Tariq Rahman, a professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. ``There are groups that want to embarrass him; they have their own version of Islamization.``

``That is one possibility,`` Professor Rahman added. ``The other is that the operation has been in motion for such a lot of time, that junior officers and middle-ranking officers are not enthusiastic about shutting it down.``

If Professor Rahman is right, the Pakistani government and the White House may find it more difficult to put the current crisis to rest. As Western officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, prepare to visit the region, they may find that the question of the Pakistani-based militants proves the stickiest of all.

Additionally, with the crisis entering its seventh month, General Musharraf may decide that the situation is too dangerous to jettison the militants, whom he might need if war broke out.

``There are 50,000 of these guys; they are Pakistan`s fifth column,`` said Mr. Sethi, the newspaper editor. ``With India breathing down his neck, there is no way Musharraf is going to dismantle them now.``

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/01/international/asia/01ASSE.html

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