Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death
Ali Hasan Cemendtaur May 19, 2002
#270 Posted by cutandpaste on July 4, 2002 1:30:51 pm
An Indian summer
By Edward Luce
Published: July 1 2002 20:59 | Last Updated: July 1 2002 20:59
American diplomacy has averted the imminent threat of war between India and Pakistan. But senior members of the Bush administration know that it is only a matter of time before military tensions flare up again between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The prospects of renewed tension were underlined at the weekend with the appointment of L. K Advani as India`s deputy prime minister. Although Mr Advani was already seen as the successor to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister, his new title is a timely reminder of the hardline, anti-Pakistani elements that surround the ageing - and increasingly frail - prime minister.
``It might be three months, it might be nine months, but we all know that India and Pakistan will go back to the brink again,`` says a senior US official in Washington. ``Maybe next time they will go over the brink.``
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#269 Posted by cutandpaste on June 16, 2002 8:47:26 pm
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000042372jun16.story?null
June 16, 2002 Talk about it E-mail story Print
THE WORLD
Al Qaeda Gathering Strength in Pakistan
Asia: Operatives are hiding in cities, with support from local extremists. The nation is the terrorists` new hub, U.S. officials say.
By BOB DROGIN, JOSH MEYER and ERIC LICHTBLAU, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of Al Qaeda terrorist operatives are hiding in Pakistan`s cities after forming or renewing alliances with local Muslim extremist networks that have helped provide safe houses for communications, training and logistics, U.S. officials say.
The result, they fear, is that America`s closest ally in Central Asia has in effect replaced Afghanistan as a command-and-control center for at least some of the battered remnants of Osama bin Laden`s terrorist army.
``They don`t operate with impunity there like they did in Afghanistan,`` a U.S. intelligence official said. ``But they have lots of supporters, and it`s easy for them to blend in.`` A Justice Department official agreed, saying Al Qaeda members appear to have gone ``wherever they want`` in Pakistan`s teeming cities.
``They`re hiding in plain sight,`` he said.
Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica, says Bin Laden might have viewed Pakistan as part of a ``business continuity plan to ensure survival of leadership, financing, communications and so on`` in case Al Qaeda lost its sanctuary in Afghanistan.
Authorities say that Al Qaeda has made similar efforts to regroup by merging with local Muslim extremist groups in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. These makeshift alliances are more decentralized than the network long directed by Bin Laden, officials say, and thus might be more difficult for outsiders to penetrate.
Since last fall, the United States and its allies say they have foiled more than a dozen terrorist plots around the world and arrested more than 2,400 suspects in nearly 90 countries.
But more than half of Al Qaeda`s known leaders remain at large, including several linked to the Sept. 11 assaults and other major attacks. Officials are especially eager to catch Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an Al Qaeda operative linked to almost every attack against the United States since the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
U.S. intelligence analysts still believe that Bin Laden and his top aides have found refuge somewhere along Pakistan`s long and lawless border with Afghanistan. Broad pockets of local sympathizers are said to exist in the semiautonomous tribal areas of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province.
But U.S. and Pakistani officials now estimate that hundreds more Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who fled the war in Afghanistan have disappeared into Pakistan. Many are thought to have linked up with like-minded local groups opposed to secular Muslim regimes and to the Western powers that support them.
*
Backers Mount Attacks
Al Qaeda supporters appear to have been responsible for at least two suicide attacks on Westerners in Pakistani cities this year, U.S. officials say. Al Qaeda leaders and followers have been arrested or tracked in nearly every major Pakistani city, including Karachi in the south, Lahore and Faisalabad in the east, Peshawar in the west, and Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital, in the north.
In some cases, U.S. officials say, Pakistani militants and even some members of the government`s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, have openly supported Al Qaeda and have used an informal underground railroad to help fleeing terrorists.
``The ISI is filled with extremists, and I don`t think they`re trying very hard to find these people,`` said a recently retired U.S. counter-terrorism official who is familiar with the manhunt. ``In fact, they`re actively trying to hide them.``
Another U.S. official downplayed ISI`s role, citing recent intelligence reports. But ``that doesn`t rule out the possibility that there are still links between rogue elements of ISI and Al Qaeda,`` he said.
Al Qaeda`s presence in Pakistan poses a growing danger and dilemma for both Washington and Islamabad.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who visited Pakistan last week, and other U.S. officials have offered strong public support for President Pervez Musharraf`s military regime, which has provided airstrips, bases, fuel, intelligence and other critical help to U.S. forces.
Privately, however, many U.S. officials are increasingly voicing concerns that Musharraf`s crackdown on local terrorist groups this year has largely failed. Several banned groups have morphed or spawned virulent offshoots that have launched several attacks against Westerners this year. Authorities haven`t solved Friday`s car bombing outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, which killed at least 11 Pakistanis and wounded dozens more. A previously unknown group has claimed responsibility, but U.S. officials said the FBI is investigating whether Al Qaeda might be linked to the attack.
U.S. intelligence officials now suspect that groups linked to Al Qaeda were responsible for a May 8 bus bombing in Karachi that killed 11 French engineers and a March 17 grenade attack in Islamabad that killed four Protestant International Church congregants, including a U.S. Embassy employee and her daughter.
The arrest last month of an American-born alleged Al Qaeda operative, Jose Padilla, after he flew to Chicago on what authorities called a scouting mission for a possible radioactive bomb attack, suggested just how widespread Al Qaeda may have become.
U.S. officials say that Padilla, who used the Muslim name Abdullah al Muhajir, studied bomb-making early this year at an Al Qaeda safe house in Lahore, met with senior Al Qaeda officials in March at another safe house in Karachi and traveled elsewhere in the country. Pakistani police arrested Padilla`s alleged accomplice in Rawalpindi.
Although Padilla`s role was not known at the time, U.S. and Pakistani officials raided the Lahore safe house where he had stayed as well as suspected Al Qaeda compounds in several other cities March 28. Abu Zubeida, Al Qaeda`s operations chief, and several of his senior aides were captured after a shootout that night at a house in Faisalabad.
US. authorities say Abu Zubeida approved Padilla`s proposed ``dirty bomb`` plot at a meeting in December in Afghanistan and later traveled with him in Pakistan. Abu Zubeida, U.S. officials say, had been responsible for rebuilding the Al Qaeda network inside Pakistan before his capture.
A senior intelligence official said Al Qaeda ``already had a presence`` in Pakistan ``so they don`t require other groups`` for operations.
``They have always had loose alliances with fellow travelers with similar goals and motives,`` this official added. ``The memberships are very loose. People go back and forth from one group to the other.``
*
Group`s Reach Spreads
Arrests elsewhere also point to the terrorist group`s spread. Saudi Arabia acknowledged Saturday that three men arrested in Morocco on suspicion of planning attacks on U.S. and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar are Saudi citizens. Morocco said they claim to be Al Qaeda operatives. The attacks would have been similar to the suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen--an operation also linked to Al Qaeda.
As for Pakistan, the State Department, in its annual report on global terrorism issued last month, said Islamabad had ``rendered unprecedented levels of cooperation to support the war on terrorism.`` The report noted that Islamabad broke ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, froze hundreds of thousands of dollars in suspected terrorist assets and moved to bring radical Muslim schools that served as ``breeding grounds for terrorists`` into the mainstream educational system.
Musharraf`s government also outlawed several terrorist groups and detained more than 2,000 domestic ``extremists,`` the report said. But most have now been released and might be active again.
Questions remain, the State Department warned, about whether ``Musharraf`s `get tough` policy with local militants and his stated pledge to oppose terrorism anywhere will be fully implemented and sustained.``
Part of the problem is Pakistan`s history of covert support and overt tolerance for Muslim extremist groups, starting with the Taliban.
Peter Tomsen, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, said the ISI provided the ``weapons, resources and intelligence`` to the Taliban as the Islamic movement rose to power, and then was ``intimately involved`` as the Talibs forged ties with Al Qaeda.
On its other border, Pakistan provided similar support for years to Muslim zealots fighting to oust India from the disputed territory of Kashmir. Terrorist attacks against civilians in Kashmir and in India brought the two nuclear armed rivals to the brink of war in recent weeks, but the crisis eased after Musharraf moved to stop Pakistani militants from crossing into the Indian-held portion of Kashmir.
Until recently, however, little attention was paid to other Pakistani terrorist groups that share Bin Laden`s doctrinaire view of Islam and his hatred of the West. Many attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, or received arms and other support from Bin Laden, even if they didn`t formally join Al Qaeda. The contacts apparently paid off after Sept. 11.
A Pakistani official said his government estimates that at least several hundred Al Qaeda fighters slipped into Pakistan`s 10 tribal territories--mostly in the so-called Pushtun Belt that runs from Quetta to north of Peshawar--last winter. But they were exposed to U.S. satellites and other forces in the open desert, he said, and the cities seemed far safer.
Many had money to buy vehicles, supplies and guides from local warlords, this official said. And many, he said, reached out to a broad underground network of Bin Laden sympathizers and ``fellow travelers,`` mostly urban Pakistani militants.
``The network is there. You have religious groups that were sanctioned for years that no one was shutting down and are operating freely,`` the Pakistani official said. ``They are providing them with sanctuary.... It is an ongoing problem. We are cracking down on them, but they are still out there.``
Two Pakistani groups in particular--Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed--have long espoused the jihad cause against non-Muslims. They now appear to have provided haven or other assistance to Al Qaeda terrorists, the official said.
Authorities say Lashkar-e-Taiba was affiliated with the safe house in Faisalabad where Abu Zubeida and his top aides were arrested. And Jaish-e-Mohammed was linked to the January kidnapping and, later, beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi.
The State Department labeled both groups as foreign terrorist organizations in December, empowering Washington to freeze any of the groups` assets in the United States and to urge other nations to block their funds.
*
`Very Worrisome` Trend
A former Clinton administration counter-terrorism official said Pakistan`s increasing tangle of terrorist groups and their spinoffs is ``very worrisome.``
``The general turmoil has made it much more attractive for all jihadists in the region to go after American targets,`` he said. The long-range danger is that local Muslim militants backed by Al Qaeda could destabilize Pakistan, overthrow the government and set a dangerous new course for the nation.
``It is entirely within the realms of possibility that Pakistan could end up with an Islamic leadership that is a lot less sympathetic to the United States,`` he said.
Tashbih Sayyed, the Pakistani-born editor of Pakistan Today, published in Southern California, said the war in Afghanistan only ``destroyed an outpost`` of terrorism. ``The main infrastructure remained intact,`` he said. And Pakistan, he warned, ``is kind of a meeting place now for all the radical forces in the world.``
June 16, 2002 Talk about it E-mail story Print
THE WORLD
Al Qaeda Gathering Strength in Pakistan
Asia: Operatives are hiding in cities, with support from local extremists. The nation is the terrorists` new hub, U.S. officials say.
By BOB DROGIN, JOSH MEYER and ERIC LICHTBLAU, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of Al Qaeda terrorist operatives are hiding in Pakistan`s cities after forming or renewing alliances with local Muslim extremist networks that have helped provide safe houses for communications, training and logistics, U.S. officials say.
The result, they fear, is that America`s closest ally in Central Asia has in effect replaced Afghanistan as a command-and-control center for at least some of the battered remnants of Osama bin Laden`s terrorist army.
``They don`t operate with impunity there like they did in Afghanistan,`` a U.S. intelligence official said. ``But they have lots of supporters, and it`s easy for them to blend in.`` A Justice Department official agreed, saying Al Qaeda members appear to have gone ``wherever they want`` in Pakistan`s teeming cities.
``They`re hiding in plain sight,`` he said.
Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica, says Bin Laden might have viewed Pakistan as part of a ``business continuity plan to ensure survival of leadership, financing, communications and so on`` in case Al Qaeda lost its sanctuary in Afghanistan.
Authorities say that Al Qaeda has made similar efforts to regroup by merging with local Muslim extremist groups in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. These makeshift alliances are more decentralized than the network long directed by Bin Laden, officials say, and thus might be more difficult for outsiders to penetrate.
Since last fall, the United States and its allies say they have foiled more than a dozen terrorist plots around the world and arrested more than 2,400 suspects in nearly 90 countries.
But more than half of Al Qaeda`s known leaders remain at large, including several linked to the Sept. 11 assaults and other major attacks. Officials are especially eager to catch Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an Al Qaeda operative linked to almost every attack against the United States since the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
U.S. intelligence analysts still believe that Bin Laden and his top aides have found refuge somewhere along Pakistan`s long and lawless border with Afghanistan. Broad pockets of local sympathizers are said to exist in the semiautonomous tribal areas of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province.
But U.S. and Pakistani officials now estimate that hundreds more Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who fled the war in Afghanistan have disappeared into Pakistan. Many are thought to have linked up with like-minded local groups opposed to secular Muslim regimes and to the Western powers that support them.
*
Backers Mount Attacks
Al Qaeda supporters appear to have been responsible for at least two suicide attacks on Westerners in Pakistani cities this year, U.S. officials say. Al Qaeda leaders and followers have been arrested or tracked in nearly every major Pakistani city, including Karachi in the south, Lahore and Faisalabad in the east, Peshawar in the west, and Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital, in the north.
In some cases, U.S. officials say, Pakistani militants and even some members of the government`s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, have openly supported Al Qaeda and have used an informal underground railroad to help fleeing terrorists.
``The ISI is filled with extremists, and I don`t think they`re trying very hard to find these people,`` said a recently retired U.S. counter-terrorism official who is familiar with the manhunt. ``In fact, they`re actively trying to hide them.``
Another U.S. official downplayed ISI`s role, citing recent intelligence reports. But ``that doesn`t rule out the possibility that there are still links between rogue elements of ISI and Al Qaeda,`` he said.
Al Qaeda`s presence in Pakistan poses a growing danger and dilemma for both Washington and Islamabad.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who visited Pakistan last week, and other U.S. officials have offered strong public support for President Pervez Musharraf`s military regime, which has provided airstrips, bases, fuel, intelligence and other critical help to U.S. forces.
Privately, however, many U.S. officials are increasingly voicing concerns that Musharraf`s crackdown on local terrorist groups this year has largely failed. Several banned groups have morphed or spawned virulent offshoots that have launched several attacks against Westerners this year. Authorities haven`t solved Friday`s car bombing outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, which killed at least 11 Pakistanis and wounded dozens more. A previously unknown group has claimed responsibility, but U.S. officials said the FBI is investigating whether Al Qaeda might be linked to the attack.
U.S. intelligence officials now suspect that groups linked to Al Qaeda were responsible for a May 8 bus bombing in Karachi that killed 11 French engineers and a March 17 grenade attack in Islamabad that killed four Protestant International Church congregants, including a U.S. Embassy employee and her daughter.
The arrest last month of an American-born alleged Al Qaeda operative, Jose Padilla, after he flew to Chicago on what authorities called a scouting mission for a possible radioactive bomb attack, suggested just how widespread Al Qaeda may have become.
U.S. officials say that Padilla, who used the Muslim name Abdullah al Muhajir, studied bomb-making early this year at an Al Qaeda safe house in Lahore, met with senior Al Qaeda officials in March at another safe house in Karachi and traveled elsewhere in the country. Pakistani police arrested Padilla`s alleged accomplice in Rawalpindi.
Although Padilla`s role was not known at the time, U.S. and Pakistani officials raided the Lahore safe house where he had stayed as well as suspected Al Qaeda compounds in several other cities March 28. Abu Zubeida, Al Qaeda`s operations chief, and several of his senior aides were captured after a shootout that night at a house in Faisalabad.
US. authorities say Abu Zubeida approved Padilla`s proposed ``dirty bomb`` plot at a meeting in December in Afghanistan and later traveled with him in Pakistan. Abu Zubeida, U.S. officials say, had been responsible for rebuilding the Al Qaeda network inside Pakistan before his capture.
A senior intelligence official said Al Qaeda ``already had a presence`` in Pakistan ``so they don`t require other groups`` for operations.
``They have always had loose alliances with fellow travelers with similar goals and motives,`` this official added. ``The memberships are very loose. People go back and forth from one group to the other.``
*
Group`s Reach Spreads
Arrests elsewhere also point to the terrorist group`s spread. Saudi Arabia acknowledged Saturday that three men arrested in Morocco on suspicion of planning attacks on U.S. and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar are Saudi citizens. Morocco said they claim to be Al Qaeda operatives. The attacks would have been similar to the suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen--an operation also linked to Al Qaeda.
As for Pakistan, the State Department, in its annual report on global terrorism issued last month, said Islamabad had ``rendered unprecedented levels of cooperation to support the war on terrorism.`` The report noted that Islamabad broke ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, froze hundreds of thousands of dollars in suspected terrorist assets and moved to bring radical Muslim schools that served as ``breeding grounds for terrorists`` into the mainstream educational system.
Musharraf`s government also outlawed several terrorist groups and detained more than 2,000 domestic ``extremists,`` the report said. But most have now been released and might be active again.
Questions remain, the State Department warned, about whether ``Musharraf`s `get tough` policy with local militants and his stated pledge to oppose terrorism anywhere will be fully implemented and sustained.``
Part of the problem is Pakistan`s history of covert support and overt tolerance for Muslim extremist groups, starting with the Taliban.
Peter Tomsen, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992, said the ISI provided the ``weapons, resources and intelligence`` to the Taliban as the Islamic movement rose to power, and then was ``intimately involved`` as the Talibs forged ties with Al Qaeda.
On its other border, Pakistan provided similar support for years to Muslim zealots fighting to oust India from the disputed territory of Kashmir. Terrorist attacks against civilians in Kashmir and in India brought the two nuclear armed rivals to the brink of war in recent weeks, but the crisis eased after Musharraf moved to stop Pakistani militants from crossing into the Indian-held portion of Kashmir.
Until recently, however, little attention was paid to other Pakistani terrorist groups that share Bin Laden`s doctrinaire view of Islam and his hatred of the West. Many attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, or received arms and other support from Bin Laden, even if they didn`t formally join Al Qaeda. The contacts apparently paid off after Sept. 11.
A Pakistani official said his government estimates that at least several hundred Al Qaeda fighters slipped into Pakistan`s 10 tribal territories--mostly in the so-called Pushtun Belt that runs from Quetta to north of Peshawar--last winter. But they were exposed to U.S. satellites and other forces in the open desert, he said, and the cities seemed far safer.
Many had money to buy vehicles, supplies and guides from local warlords, this official said. And many, he said, reached out to a broad underground network of Bin Laden sympathizers and ``fellow travelers,`` mostly urban Pakistani militants.
``The network is there. You have religious groups that were sanctioned for years that no one was shutting down and are operating freely,`` the Pakistani official said. ``They are providing them with sanctuary.... It is an ongoing problem. We are cracking down on them, but they are still out there.``
Two Pakistani groups in particular--Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed--have long espoused the jihad cause against non-Muslims. They now appear to have provided haven or other assistance to Al Qaeda terrorists, the official said.
Authorities say Lashkar-e-Taiba was affiliated with the safe house in Faisalabad where Abu Zubeida and his top aides were arrested. And Jaish-e-Mohammed was linked to the January kidnapping and, later, beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi.
The State Department labeled both groups as foreign terrorist organizations in December, empowering Washington to freeze any of the groups` assets in the United States and to urge other nations to block their funds.
*
`Very Worrisome` Trend
A former Clinton administration counter-terrorism official said Pakistan`s increasing tangle of terrorist groups and their spinoffs is ``very worrisome.``
``The general turmoil has made it much more attractive for all jihadists in the region to go after American targets,`` he said. The long-range danger is that local Muslim militants backed by Al Qaeda could destabilize Pakistan, overthrow the government and set a dangerous new course for the nation.
``It is entirely within the realms of possibility that Pakistan could end up with an Islamic leadership that is a lot less sympathetic to the United States,`` he said.
Tashbih Sayyed, the Pakistani-born editor of Pakistan Today, published in Southern California, said the war in Afghanistan only ``destroyed an outpost`` of terrorism. ``The main infrastructure remained intact,`` he said. And Pakistan, he warned, ``is kind of a meeting place now for all the radical forces in the world.``
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#267 Posted by cutandpaste on June 13, 2002 12:37:33 pm
Pakistani Crackdown Gives Rise to Doubts
South Asia: Curbing Islamic extremism is widely seen as key to easing tensions over Kashmir. But to some, it borders on betrayal.
By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER
MANSEHRA, Pakistan -- The first hint of a government crackdown against Muslim extremist groups in this dusty market town came in January, local businessman Jamil Ahmed recalls.
That`s when police told him to stop collecting money for the militant Al Badr organization, which for nearly a decade ran a training camp in the nearby hills. Locals say it was one of eight such camps in the Mansehra area that turned young Pakistani volunteers into Islamic warriors--known as jihadis--and then launched them across the frontier to fight in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir.
By March, jihadi recruiting posters that had lined the streets of this town in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province for years quietly came down, as did billboards proclaiming Indian atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris. Then, Ahmed and other residents say, the camps themselves were closed about two months ago and those who ran them vanished. For political moderates here and in India, that`s good news.
Curtailing the jihadi groups is widely viewed as a vital first step in scaling back a crisis that has led India and Pakistan to mass about 1 million troops on their border and raised the frightening prospect of the world`s first war between two nuclear-armed states.
Pakistani officials say the crackdown in Mansehra is part of a broader move against Islamic militant groups that began tentatively this year and appears to have gradually gained greater purpose. Leaders of many of the militant groups were detained last month, according to authorities.
Today, there is little visible evidence in Mansehra of either the jihadis or their cause.
After initial skepticism, India appears to have accepted that Pakistan has stopped militants from crossing the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but the extent to which their activities inside Pakistan have been halted remains unclear. India, for example, says that at least three training camps still operate in the area around Mansehra--a charge that Pakistan rejects.
``I can say with authority there are no training camps operating now,`` declared army Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is leading Pakistan`s efforts to shut down the extremist groups.
Locals, however, refused to take a foreign reporter to visit the camp locations, saying they were afraid of possible reprisals from ``the agencies``--a reference to Pakistani intelligence organizations, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, that for years have been the jihadis` main backers within the country`s military establishment.
The government`s follow-up on the initial arrests of suspected militant group members has also raised questions about the crackdown`s effectiveness. For example, 21 militants arrested here in April under an anti-terrorism law were set free recently for lack of evidence.
For President Pervez Musharraf, shutting off support for the jihadi groups means stepping back from a decade-old strategy: using religiously motivated fighters to harass India with a persistent, but effective, low-grade guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.
The mountainous, spectacularly beautiful territory, claimed by India and Pakistan, has been the object of two of their three wars in the last 55 years. After suffering defeat twice in conventional conflicts at the hands of superior Indian forces in Kashmir, Pakistan embraced the jihadis in the late 1980s.
Although government support for the jihadis has always been denied publicly, the groups for years recruited openly, published magazines, solicited donations and operated sophisticated training camps.
Two years ago, Al Badr leader Bakht Zameen even brought a group of Pakistani reporters based in Peshawar to the group`s camp near here to watch a colorful graduation ceremony for recruits who had completed basic training before heading for Kashmir.
``The level of discipline was amazing,`` said one witness who declined to be identified. ``It was like watching an army.``
A 22-year-old volunteer jihadi from Peshawar who used the nom de guerre Uqab said in an interview this week that his main training camp instructors were retired Pakistani army members. He went through a camp run by the Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen group two years ago near Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir.
Uqab said the camp offered three types of courses, including three-week basic training and a special forces session that taught recruits how to use a variety of weapons, including hand grenades and rocket launchers. The third course lasted six months and was for suicide bombers.
``Very few people are selected for this course,`` Uqab said.
In recent months, actions attributed to the jihadi groups, including a daylight attack in December on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, have exacerbated political tensions between the two nations.
For Musharraf, moving against the Islamic militants carries considerable domestic risks in a country where the struggle to break India`s grip over Kashmir is imbibed with mother`s milk.
Pakistan`s vociferous fundamentalist Islamic minority already resents Musharraf`s decision to abandon Afghanistan`s Taliban government and side with America and the West in the war against international terrorism after Sept. 11. Some now see Musharraf`s clampdown on the Kashmir militants as dangerously close to betrayal.
``People aren`t happy about this,`` said Junus Khattak, a local leader of Pakistan`s largest religious-based party, Jamaat-i-Islami. ``Jihadi groups should be allowed to operate [in Kashmir]. Their fight is on the side of good, on the side of the oppressed.``
But the biggest danger for Musharraf as he moves forward might not be from an angry populace but from disgruntled elements within his ruling establishment, including the ISI and senior ranks of the army.
Some officers in both institutions see the guerrilla campaign not just as an effective and low-cost response to India`s huge military superiority but also as part of a far larger global struggle to end the oppression of Muslims. As such, these officers have developed strong loyalties to the militants.
``Pakistan had success diplomatically after Sept. 11 when it became the centerpiece of an anti-terror campaign, but militarily, it has suffered a huge setback in Kashmir,`` said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a regional specialist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital. ``The question now is if this really leads to a de-escalation and genuine dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the issue.``
International diplomatic efforts, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s visit to the region this week, are expected to dwell on measures to verify the frontier`s stability and to coax both sides to pull back military forces and, eventually, begin talks.
Many Pakistanis worry that Musharraf has conceded too much. With the jihadis cut off from Indian-controlled areas, they fear, India`s security forces are likely to move more freely against indigenous Kashmiri separatist groups. Any such action from New Delhi would put pressure on Musharraf to unleash the jihadi groups again, especially if there is no progress toward negotiations.
``If he gets nothing [from India], he`ll ask the militants to lie low and consider his options,`` Rais said. ``He`ll keep the structures [of the militant groups] intact.``
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041298jun12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld
South Asia: Curbing Islamic extremism is widely seen as key to easing tensions over Kashmir. But to some, it borders on betrayal.
By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER
MANSEHRA, Pakistan -- The first hint of a government crackdown against Muslim extremist groups in this dusty market town came in January, local businessman Jamil Ahmed recalls.
That`s when police told him to stop collecting money for the militant Al Badr organization, which for nearly a decade ran a training camp in the nearby hills. Locals say it was one of eight such camps in the Mansehra area that turned young Pakistani volunteers into Islamic warriors--known as jihadis--and then launched them across the frontier to fight in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir.
By March, jihadi recruiting posters that had lined the streets of this town in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province for years quietly came down, as did billboards proclaiming Indian atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris. Then, Ahmed and other residents say, the camps themselves were closed about two months ago and those who ran them vanished. For political moderates here and in India, that`s good news.
Curtailing the jihadi groups is widely viewed as a vital first step in scaling back a crisis that has led India and Pakistan to mass about 1 million troops on their border and raised the frightening prospect of the world`s first war between two nuclear-armed states.
Pakistani officials say the crackdown in Mansehra is part of a broader move against Islamic militant groups that began tentatively this year and appears to have gradually gained greater purpose. Leaders of many of the militant groups were detained last month, according to authorities.
Today, there is little visible evidence in Mansehra of either the jihadis or their cause.
After initial skepticism, India appears to have accepted that Pakistan has stopped militants from crossing the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but the extent to which their activities inside Pakistan have been halted remains unclear. India, for example, says that at least three training camps still operate in the area around Mansehra--a charge that Pakistan rejects.
``I can say with authority there are no training camps operating now,`` declared army Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is leading Pakistan`s efforts to shut down the extremist groups.
Locals, however, refused to take a foreign reporter to visit the camp locations, saying they were afraid of possible reprisals from ``the agencies``--a reference to Pakistani intelligence organizations, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, that for years have been the jihadis` main backers within the country`s military establishment.
The government`s follow-up on the initial arrests of suspected militant group members has also raised questions about the crackdown`s effectiveness. For example, 21 militants arrested here in April under an anti-terrorism law were set free recently for lack of evidence.
For President Pervez Musharraf, shutting off support for the jihadi groups means stepping back from a decade-old strategy: using religiously motivated fighters to harass India with a persistent, but effective, low-grade guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.
The mountainous, spectacularly beautiful territory, claimed by India and Pakistan, has been the object of two of their three wars in the last 55 years. After suffering defeat twice in conventional conflicts at the hands of superior Indian forces in Kashmir, Pakistan embraced the jihadis in the late 1980s.
Although government support for the jihadis has always been denied publicly, the groups for years recruited openly, published magazines, solicited donations and operated sophisticated training camps.
Two years ago, Al Badr leader Bakht Zameen even brought a group of Pakistani reporters based in Peshawar to the group`s camp near here to watch a colorful graduation ceremony for recruits who had completed basic training before heading for Kashmir.
``The level of discipline was amazing,`` said one witness who declined to be identified. ``It was like watching an army.``
A 22-year-old volunteer jihadi from Peshawar who used the nom de guerre Uqab said in an interview this week that his main training camp instructors were retired Pakistani army members. He went through a camp run by the Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen group two years ago near Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir.
Uqab said the camp offered three types of courses, including three-week basic training and a special forces session that taught recruits how to use a variety of weapons, including hand grenades and rocket launchers. The third course lasted six months and was for suicide bombers.
``Very few people are selected for this course,`` Uqab said.
In recent months, actions attributed to the jihadi groups, including a daylight attack in December on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, have exacerbated political tensions between the two nations.
For Musharraf, moving against the Islamic militants carries considerable domestic risks in a country where the struggle to break India`s grip over Kashmir is imbibed with mother`s milk.
Pakistan`s vociferous fundamentalist Islamic minority already resents Musharraf`s decision to abandon Afghanistan`s Taliban government and side with America and the West in the war against international terrorism after Sept. 11. Some now see Musharraf`s clampdown on the Kashmir militants as dangerously close to betrayal.
``People aren`t happy about this,`` said Junus Khattak, a local leader of Pakistan`s largest religious-based party, Jamaat-i-Islami. ``Jihadi groups should be allowed to operate [in Kashmir]. Their fight is on the side of good, on the side of the oppressed.``
But the biggest danger for Musharraf as he moves forward might not be from an angry populace but from disgruntled elements within his ruling establishment, including the ISI and senior ranks of the army.
Some officers in both institutions see the guerrilla campaign not just as an effective and low-cost response to India`s huge military superiority but also as part of a far larger global struggle to end the oppression of Muslims. As such, these officers have developed strong loyalties to the militants.
``Pakistan had success diplomatically after Sept. 11 when it became the centerpiece of an anti-terror campaign, but militarily, it has suffered a huge setback in Kashmir,`` said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a regional specialist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital. ``The question now is if this really leads to a de-escalation and genuine dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the issue.``
International diplomatic efforts, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s visit to the region this week, are expected to dwell on measures to verify the frontier`s stability and to coax both sides to pull back military forces and, eventually, begin talks.
Many Pakistanis worry that Musharraf has conceded too much. With the jihadis cut off from Indian-controlled areas, they fear, India`s security forces are likely to move more freely against indigenous Kashmiri separatist groups. Any such action from New Delhi would put pressure on Musharraf to unleash the jihadi groups again, especially if there is no progress toward negotiations.
``If he gets nothing [from India], he`ll ask the militants to lie low and consider his options,`` Rais said. ``He`ll keep the structures [of the militant groups] intact.``
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041298jun12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld
#266 Posted by sarwar on June 11, 2002 4:07:16 pm
=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts
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#265 Posted by sarwar on June 11, 2002 1:56:46 pm
=== Interact Filtered ===
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#263 Posted by veeresh on June 6, 2002 9:34:08 pm
J Bodenheimer 243 . . . I guess they can all join the paedophiles?
#262 Posted by Nagnatheshwar on June 6, 2002 2:27:14 am
INDIA FEELING CAUGHT BETWEEN THE CARROTS FROM U.S.A. & THE FIRE OF MILITANTS & TACTICAL LOW YIELD NUKES
http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEH20020605131651&Title=Top+Stories&rLink=-100
Washington comes calling, with some carrots up its sleeve
WASHINGTON: The Russians and Chinese haven`t been able to do it. Neither have the other Asian nations in Kazakhstan. So what can the United States bring to the crisis between India and Pakistan to ensure that the two nuclear powers don`t go to war?
For starters, top US diplomatic and defence officials will wield America`s unparalleled influence as the world`s sole superpower _ and bank on the fact neither side can refuse to listen. That clout will be backed up with hard intelligence about what`s really happening among forces on the ground and alarming projections about what could lie ahead if war erupts, according to Bush administration officials.
But Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will also be asking both countries to make tough choices _ and holding out carrots if they cooperate.
Their most stark message will be for Pakistan, where both begin their missions. Armitage, known for his blunt talk and intricate knowledge of South Asia, intends to lay it on the line with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, US officials say.
He`ll call for an immediate end to infiltration by extremists across the Line of Control and a clampdown on the staging areas they use for attacks on targets in the Kashmir Valley. In exchange, the United States will tell Musharraf that he stands to make gains _ not necessarily in Kashmir but on other fronts.
``He`ll have a chance for a new position in the world, as leader of the moderate Muslim world, and in new economic assistance through continuing debt relief ... that we can offer him,`` said a senior State Department official who asked to remain anonymous. ``If we can work with him on ending support for violence, then that`s the kind of country we can do business with.``
On their second stops, Armitage and then Rumsfeld will urge India to show restraint while giving Pakistan a chance to rein in militants and cut their access to Kashmir. Once that process shows significant progress, India should reciprocate by de-escalating its military readiness in the area, the US officials will advise.
Armitage and Rumsfeld will concentrate on these delicate initial steps, while outlining possible follow-up steps if the two nations adhere to the efforts to defuse hostilities, the senior State Department official said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has indicated that the US will try to prod the two nations into a face-to-face political dialogue on the future of Kashmir. India does not want the United States to mediate the issue, while Pakistan is eager to have Washington play a direct role, as it has in the Middle East.
Said a senior State Department official: ``We would like to see a dialogue with all issues on the table, and we might even be able to contribute some ideas.``
But for the United States, the hardest task _ and the key to ensuring that the current tensions don`t quickly flare up again _ will be getting Musharraf to hold the line against militants.
Regional experts say Musharraf must be told that he can no longer take half-measures _ and that the only way out of the current crisis is by taking the same tough stance toward militants in Kashmir that he did with pro-Taliban extremists along his nation`s border with Afghanistan.
Says Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center: ``(Pak needs to be told) that this policy (of infiltration) is failing Pakistan. It`s not helping Kashmiris or rescuing Kashmir from India`s grasp. ... If it continues, it could spark a nuclear exchange and wipe out millennia of Muslim accomplishments.``
On an issue assuming increasing prominence, the United States could also encourage India to take action on human-rights concerns in Kashmir. Key Indian police units, some made up of former militants who changed sides, have been behind a good deal of the abuse in the disputed region, Krepon said. These units could be disbanded and individual soldiers accused of rapes and other violations prosecuted as a way to show India takes basic rights seriously, a key demand by Pakistan.
http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEH20020605131651&Title=Top+Stories&rLink=-100
Washington comes calling, with some carrots up its sleeve
WASHINGTON: The Russians and Chinese haven`t been able to do it. Neither have the other Asian nations in Kazakhstan. So what can the United States bring to the crisis between India and Pakistan to ensure that the two nuclear powers don`t go to war?
For starters, top US diplomatic and defence officials will wield America`s unparalleled influence as the world`s sole superpower _ and bank on the fact neither side can refuse to listen. That clout will be backed up with hard intelligence about what`s really happening among forces on the ground and alarming projections about what could lie ahead if war erupts, according to Bush administration officials.
But Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will also be asking both countries to make tough choices _ and holding out carrots if they cooperate.
Their most stark message will be for Pakistan, where both begin their missions. Armitage, known for his blunt talk and intricate knowledge of South Asia, intends to lay it on the line with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, US officials say.
He`ll call for an immediate end to infiltration by extremists across the Line of Control and a clampdown on the staging areas they use for attacks on targets in the Kashmir Valley. In exchange, the United States will tell Musharraf that he stands to make gains _ not necessarily in Kashmir but on other fronts.
``He`ll have a chance for a new position in the world, as leader of the moderate Muslim world, and in new economic assistance through continuing debt relief ... that we can offer him,`` said a senior State Department official who asked to remain anonymous. ``If we can work with him on ending support for violence, then that`s the kind of country we can do business with.``
On their second stops, Armitage and then Rumsfeld will urge India to show restraint while giving Pakistan a chance to rein in militants and cut their access to Kashmir. Once that process shows significant progress, India should reciprocate by de-escalating its military readiness in the area, the US officials will advise.
Armitage and Rumsfeld will concentrate on these delicate initial steps, while outlining possible follow-up steps if the two nations adhere to the efforts to defuse hostilities, the senior State Department official said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has indicated that the US will try to prod the two nations into a face-to-face political dialogue on the future of Kashmir. India does not want the United States to mediate the issue, while Pakistan is eager to have Washington play a direct role, as it has in the Middle East.
Said a senior State Department official: ``We would like to see a dialogue with all issues on the table, and we might even be able to contribute some ideas.``
But for the United States, the hardest task _ and the key to ensuring that the current tensions don`t quickly flare up again _ will be getting Musharraf to hold the line against militants.
Regional experts say Musharraf must be told that he can no longer take half-measures _ and that the only way out of the current crisis is by taking the same tough stance toward militants in Kashmir that he did with pro-Taliban extremists along his nation`s border with Afghanistan.
Says Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center: ``(Pak needs to be told) that this policy (of infiltration) is failing Pakistan. It`s not helping Kashmiris or rescuing Kashmir from India`s grasp. ... If it continues, it could spark a nuclear exchange and wipe out millennia of Muslim accomplishments.``
On an issue assuming increasing prominence, the United States could also encourage India to take action on human-rights concerns in Kashmir. Key Indian police units, some made up of former militants who changed sides, have been behind a good deal of the abuse in the disputed region, Krepon said. These units could be disbanded and individual soldiers accused of rapes and other violations prosecuted as a way to show India takes basic rights seriously, a key demand by Pakistan.
#261 Posted by cutandpaste on June 6, 2002 2:27:14 am
Divided Indian-Pakistani families suffer on both sides of border under threat of war
Wed Jun 5, 8:06 PM ET
By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - When her Pakistani husband died in December, none of Nargas Begum`s relatives from India could come to his funeral in his hometown Multan.
Her parents consoled her by phone, telling Begum that relations between the two countries would be normal soon and promising to come then. But three months later, as her brother lay dying in India, Begum still was not allowed to travel across the border to see him.
With India and Pakistan trading hostile words and intense shelling across the confrontation line in Kashmir (news - web sites), her family must now contend with the threat of war. ``Things are only getting worse and worse,`` said the 47-year-old New Delhi native.
Separated from family members since New Delhi and Islamabad cut off transportation links at the end of last year, thousands of Indians and Pakistanis are suffering doubly because of their cross-border connections — now even more difficult with war looming.
New Delhi severed all train, bus and air connections with Islamabad at the end of December, following an attack on the Indian parliament that it blamed on Pakistani-based Islamic extremists. Pakistan denied the charges and retaliated by halting the links on its side.
Tensions have spiraled since last month`s attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir that New Delhi again blamed on Pakistani-backed extremists. On a war footing since December, Pakistan and India have now massed hundreds of thousands of troops along the 2,912-kilometer (1,800-mile) border that separates the countries.
The threat of nuclear conflict has prompted the United States, Britain and other countries to urge their nationals to leave India and Pakistan.
Caught in the middle are thousands of families like Begum`s, who have ties on both sides of the border. Many families ended up with members in both countries after the two were carved out of British India in 1947.
``There was darkness everywhere when my husband died,`` she said. ``I am in Pakistan with only a few relatives. Ninety percent of my family live in India. My heart is still there.``
Then in March, ``my brother wrote that he was on his death bed, but I could not go to see him in the hospital,`` Begum said, remembering how she wept at his letter.
From the southern port city of Karachi, Khurshid Ahmad, 43, worries about his 23-year-old daughter, who married a cousin in Bombay, India, last year. His three sisters and dozens of close relatives also live in India.
``My daughter is pregnant, but I can`t go to India,`` Ahmad said. ``We never thought that the two countries would come so close to war.``
Ahmad said he continues to pray for peace even as he fears a war that could kill countless numbers of people on both sides of the border.
In Lahore, Begum Mujtaba, 48, talked of how she used to travel to India two months out of the year to visit relatives. This year, she had to cancel plans. She also worries over her daughter, who married a cousin in New Delhi five years ago.
``I pray every day that there will be no war,`` she said.
Residents of Bhano Chak village on Lahore province`s eastern frontier with India say they have relatives living just across the border, yet they cannot meet with them.
``My elder sister lives in Indian Punjab province and I am worried about her family because they will be the first to face casualties because they live near the border towns like us,`` said Begum Munshi Khan, 62.
It is in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir where the fear of war seems most intense and the familial ties with India are deepest.
``Eighty percent of our relatives live in Indian-part of Kashmir and we know they will be suffering most of the casualties if war starts,`` said Jamil Mir, 29, who lives in a refugee camp after crossing into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir two years ago with his wife and son. ``We are against war.``
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020606/ap_wo_en_po/pakistan_divided_families_1
Wed Jun 5, 8:06 PM ET
By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - When her Pakistani husband died in December, none of Nargas Begum`s relatives from India could come to his funeral in his hometown Multan.
Her parents consoled her by phone, telling Begum that relations between the two countries would be normal soon and promising to come then. But three months later, as her brother lay dying in India, Begum still was not allowed to travel across the border to see him.
With India and Pakistan trading hostile words and intense shelling across the confrontation line in Kashmir (news - web sites), her family must now contend with the threat of war. ``Things are only getting worse and worse,`` said the 47-year-old New Delhi native.
Separated from family members since New Delhi and Islamabad cut off transportation links at the end of last year, thousands of Indians and Pakistanis are suffering doubly because of their cross-border connections — now even more difficult with war looming.
New Delhi severed all train, bus and air connections with Islamabad at the end of December, following an attack on the Indian parliament that it blamed on Pakistani-based Islamic extremists. Pakistan denied the charges and retaliated by halting the links on its side.
Tensions have spiraled since last month`s attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir that New Delhi again blamed on Pakistani-backed extremists. On a war footing since December, Pakistan and India have now massed hundreds of thousands of troops along the 2,912-kilometer (1,800-mile) border that separates the countries.
The threat of nuclear conflict has prompted the United States, Britain and other countries to urge their nationals to leave India and Pakistan.
Caught in the middle are thousands of families like Begum`s, who have ties on both sides of the border. Many families ended up with members in both countries after the two were carved out of British India in 1947.
``There was darkness everywhere when my husband died,`` she said. ``I am in Pakistan with only a few relatives. Ninety percent of my family live in India. My heart is still there.``
Then in March, ``my brother wrote that he was on his death bed, but I could not go to see him in the hospital,`` Begum said, remembering how she wept at his letter.
From the southern port city of Karachi, Khurshid Ahmad, 43, worries about his 23-year-old daughter, who married a cousin in Bombay, India, last year. His three sisters and dozens of close relatives also live in India.
``My daughter is pregnant, but I can`t go to India,`` Ahmad said. ``We never thought that the two countries would come so close to war.``
Ahmad said he continues to pray for peace even as he fears a war that could kill countless numbers of people on both sides of the border.
In Lahore, Begum Mujtaba, 48, talked of how she used to travel to India two months out of the year to visit relatives. This year, she had to cancel plans. She also worries over her daughter, who married a cousin in New Delhi five years ago.
``I pray every day that there will be no war,`` she said.
Residents of Bhano Chak village on Lahore province`s eastern frontier with India say they have relatives living just across the border, yet they cannot meet with them.
``My elder sister lives in Indian Punjab province and I am worried about her family because they will be the first to face casualties because they live near the border towns like us,`` said Begum Munshi Khan, 62.
It is in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir where the fear of war seems most intense and the familial ties with India are deepest.
``Eighty percent of our relatives live in Indian-part of Kashmir and we know they will be suffering most of the casualties if war starts,`` said Jamil Mir, 29, who lives in a refugee camp after crossing into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir two years ago with his wife and son. ``We are against war.``
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020606/ap_wo_en_po/pakistan_divided_families_1
#260 Posted by rsridhar on June 6, 2002 2:27:14 am
re:Reply #: 235
tahmed321,
India`s nuclear weaponisation has always been in response to China`s and the process got speeded up after the war with China. BARC was started by Bhabha with Nehru`s blessings. Weaponisation program was initiated by Shashtri. India developed cold feet and did not explode a bomb until 1974.
OTOH, Pak has committed a great blunder by becoming overtly nuclear. The western nations are concerned about the prospects of nuclear assets of Pak falling into wrong hands (fundoo Army or Taliban). Mushy is their last bet. I do not see any such concerns vis-a-vis India. India`s nuclear assets are in civilian hands and India has a ``no-first use`` policy.
Sridhar
tahmed321,
India`s nuclear weaponisation has always been in response to China`s and the process got speeded up after the war with China. BARC was started by Bhabha with Nehru`s blessings. Weaponisation program was initiated by Shashtri. India developed cold feet and did not explode a bomb until 1974.
OTOH, Pak has committed a great blunder by becoming overtly nuclear. The western nations are concerned about the prospects of nuclear assets of Pak falling into wrong hands (fundoo Army or Taliban). Mushy is their last bet. I do not see any such concerns vis-a-vis India. India`s nuclear assets are in civilian hands and India has a ``no-first use`` policy.
Sridhar
#259 Posted by rsridhar on June 5, 2002 4:13:03 pm
EST Reply #: 198
Yahuda Goldsteen
``The time has come for Pakistan to get divided further. Balochistan should be cut away from trecherous rabbid Pakistan. Pakistan should be included in the list of rogue states...``.
Actually, India and the world have to just sit and watch. Pakistan`s internal turmoil and contradictions will ensure that all you have said above would come to pass. Pakistan is a feudalistic society being ruled by a military dictator. The only agenda they seem to have is :get Kashmir or perish. It is tragic that this benighted nation`s people could not hold on to what was rightfully their`s (Bangladesh) and are now trying to covet something that is not rightfully their`s (Kashmir). And this nation, in doing so, has broght itself and India close to disaster. Can there be a greater tragedy?
Sridhar
Yahuda Goldsteen
``The time has come for Pakistan to get divided further. Balochistan should be cut away from trecherous rabbid Pakistan. Pakistan should be included in the list of rogue states...``.
Actually, India and the world have to just sit and watch. Pakistan`s internal turmoil and contradictions will ensure that all you have said above would come to pass. Pakistan is a feudalistic society being ruled by a military dictator. The only agenda they seem to have is :get Kashmir or perish. It is tragic that this benighted nation`s people could not hold on to what was rightfully their`s (Bangladesh) and are now trying to covet something that is not rightfully their`s (Kashmir). And this nation, in doing so, has broght itself and India close to disaster. Can there be a greater tragedy?
Sridhar
#258 Posted by cutandpaste on June 5, 2002 11:43:27 am
Cover story
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html
The Times, UK
A state of war
BY TREVOR FISHLOCK
The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?
Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.
Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.
In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.
It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.
Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.
The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.
Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.
Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.
The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.
At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.
Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.
India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.
India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.
Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.
Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.
Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.
Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.
The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.
Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.
In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.
Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.
It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.
It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.
In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.
People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.
Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html
The Times, UK
A state of war
BY TREVOR FISHLOCK
The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?
Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.
Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.
In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.
It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.
Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.
The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.
Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.
Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.
The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.
At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.
Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.
India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.
India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.
Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.
Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.
Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.
Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.
The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.
Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.
In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.
Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.
It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.
It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.
In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.
People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.
Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.
#257 Posted by cutandpaste on June 4, 2002 1:32:14 am
In Praise of Nukes (Gulp)
Contrary to media hysteria, nuclear weapons have actually had a sobering effect on India and Pakistan. But that can’t last forever
NEWSWEEK
June 10 issue — Relax. There won’t be a nuclear war on the Indian Subcontinent. At least not this month.
FRUSTRATED THOUGH IT IS, India will be deterred from launching a military offensive by two things—nuclear weapons and American soldiers. Contrary to much of the media hysteria, nuclear weapons have actually had a sobering effect on both India and Pakistan. In the first 30 years of their independence (pre-nukes) they fought three wars; in the second 30 (post-nukes) they have fought none. To put it another way, if neither side had nuclear weapons, they would be at war right now. Nuclear deterrence is not pretty—remember the Cuban missile crisis—but it usually works.
Second, India knows it wouldn’t be easy to fight now because many of Pakistan’s prime targets—its air bases, for example—are swarming with American troops. For its part, Washington has a huge incentive to put out the flames. If there is a war, its operation against Al Qaeda will collapse as Pakistan’s troops abandon the Afghan border to fight Indian forces.
From Wealth to Power by Fareed Zakaria
Other books by Fareed Zakaria
There’s a final reason why India won’t go to war. Its current strategy is working. What you have been watching for the last three weeks might look like a frenzied move toward war. In fact it is a well-thought-out attempt by India to end Pakistan’s support for terrorism in Kashmir. New Delhi has decided that in order to get Pakistan’s—and Washington’s—attention, it has to make threats that are utterly believable. As one of India’s best columnists, Shekhar Gupta, wrote last week, “To be convincing to others [the strategy] had to be so real that even we believe that we are heading for war.”
Washington has moved fast, bearing down on President Musharraf to halt the terrorist traffic into Kashmir. This week’s trips by Richard Armitage and Donald Rumsfeld will emphasize that message. But then what? Having solved this month’s crisis, Washington and the world will breathe a sigh of relief and go home—and there lies the danger. Both India and Pakistan are reaching a point of no return on Kashmir. Kicking the can down the road will only ensure another crisis later. And that one will not be so easily defused.
The most likely scenario is that Pakistan, under pressure, will put a stop to terrorist crossings for a couple of months—as it did after the last blowup in January—but then allow them to slowly resume. When, inevitably, another major terrorist attack takes place in Kashmir, India will face its own crisis of credibility. It has made too many threats over the last six months to stay quiet. Musharraf has also made his own threats to “give a fitting reply” to any Indian attack, making clear that if India launches a limited operation—say only into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—he will not keep his response limited to that area but might go into Indian territory. The war on the ground has been low-level; the war of words is already nuclear.
Neither side wants war. Their threats are really deterrents. But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail. There is a real danger that by ratcheting up the rhetoric, each side will have to act if those threats fail. Will nuclear deterrence work time after time? If the United States and the Soviet Union had had a Cuban missile crisis every three months, at some point they could have gotten unlucky.
There is no permanent solution to the Kashmir problem, at least none in sight. But there is a solution to the current crisis. Pakistan must end its support for cross-border terrorism. It could support the Kashmiri groups who rebel against India politically and diplomatically. But it must end its 13-year policy of bleeding India through state-sponsored terrorism. More than anything else, a shift in this policy would move the region off the eternal brink of war.
For Musharraf, this means new risks. Ending Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and confronting Islamic militants at home was easier; he had the vast majority of Pakistan on his side. But Kashmir is a cause with which every Pakistani identifies. If Musharraf is going to back down on it, he will need something in return.
Enter Washington. The United States should keep pressing Musharraf relentlessly but also make clear that if he does abandon terrorism permanently, Pakistan will reap rewards. Politically that means helping to restart talks between India and Pakistan on Kashmir. (It is even conceivable that New Delhi would agree to some quiet American mediation, one of Pakistan’s long-standing hopes.) Economically it would mean aid, trade and a permanent push from Washington to help Pakistan emerge as a modern, moderate Muslim nation.
In other words, the best outcome for South Asia would be if India’s threats against Pakistan succeed—and so do Washington’s promises.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc
http://www.msnbc.com/news/760518.asp?0dm=C16SO
Contrary to media hysteria, nuclear weapons have actually had a sobering effect on India and Pakistan. But that can’t last forever
NEWSWEEK
June 10 issue — Relax. There won’t be a nuclear war on the Indian Subcontinent. At least not this month.
FRUSTRATED THOUGH IT IS, India will be deterred from launching a military offensive by two things—nuclear weapons and American soldiers. Contrary to much of the media hysteria, nuclear weapons have actually had a sobering effect on both India and Pakistan. In the first 30 years of their independence (pre-nukes) they fought three wars; in the second 30 (post-nukes) they have fought none. To put it another way, if neither side had nuclear weapons, they would be at war right now. Nuclear deterrence is not pretty—remember the Cuban missile crisis—but it usually works.
Second, India knows it wouldn’t be easy to fight now because many of Pakistan’s prime targets—its air bases, for example—are swarming with American troops. For its part, Washington has a huge incentive to put out the flames. If there is a war, its operation against Al Qaeda will collapse as Pakistan’s troops abandon the Afghan border to fight Indian forces.
From Wealth to Power by Fareed Zakaria
Other books by Fareed Zakaria
There’s a final reason why India won’t go to war. Its current strategy is working. What you have been watching for the last three weeks might look like a frenzied move toward war. In fact it is a well-thought-out attempt by India to end Pakistan’s support for terrorism in Kashmir. New Delhi has decided that in order to get Pakistan’s—and Washington’s—attention, it has to make threats that are utterly believable. As one of India’s best columnists, Shekhar Gupta, wrote last week, “To be convincing to others [the strategy] had to be so real that even we believe that we are heading for war.”
Washington has moved fast, bearing down on President Musharraf to halt the terrorist traffic into Kashmir. This week’s trips by Richard Armitage and Donald Rumsfeld will emphasize that message. But then what? Having solved this month’s crisis, Washington and the world will breathe a sigh of relief and go home—and there lies the danger. Both India and Pakistan are reaching a point of no return on Kashmir. Kicking the can down the road will only ensure another crisis later. And that one will not be so easily defused.
The most likely scenario is that Pakistan, under pressure, will put a stop to terrorist crossings for a couple of months—as it did after the last blowup in January—but then allow them to slowly resume. When, inevitably, another major terrorist attack takes place in Kashmir, India will face its own crisis of credibility. It has made too many threats over the last six months to stay quiet. Musharraf has also made his own threats to “give a fitting reply” to any Indian attack, making clear that if India launches a limited operation—say only into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir—he will not keep his response limited to that area but might go into Indian territory. The war on the ground has been low-level; the war of words is already nuclear.
Neither side wants war. Their threats are really deterrents. But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail. There is a real danger that by ratcheting up the rhetoric, each side will have to act if those threats fail. Will nuclear deterrence work time after time? If the United States and the Soviet Union had had a Cuban missile crisis every three months, at some point they could have gotten unlucky.
There is no permanent solution to the Kashmir problem, at least none in sight. But there is a solution to the current crisis. Pakistan must end its support for cross-border terrorism. It could support the Kashmiri groups who rebel against India politically and diplomatically. But it must end its 13-year policy of bleeding India through state-sponsored terrorism. More than anything else, a shift in this policy would move the region off the eternal brink of war.
For Musharraf, this means new risks. Ending Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and confronting Islamic militants at home was easier; he had the vast majority of Pakistan on his side. But Kashmir is a cause with which every Pakistani identifies. If Musharraf is going to back down on it, he will need something in return.
Enter Washington. The United States should keep pressing Musharraf relentlessly but also make clear that if he does abandon terrorism permanently, Pakistan will reap rewards. Politically that means helping to restart talks between India and Pakistan on Kashmir. (It is even conceivable that New Delhi would agree to some quiet American mediation, one of Pakistan’s long-standing hopes.) Economically it would mean aid, trade and a permanent push from Washington to help Pakistan emerge as a modern, moderate Muslim nation.
In other words, the best outcome for South Asia would be if India’s threats against Pakistan succeed—and so do Washington’s promises.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc
http://www.msnbc.com/news/760518.asp?0dm=C16SO
#256 Posted by tahmed321 on June 3, 2002 2:51:55 pm
shammi #60 What you say is logically correct. The fear is that of a mistake. Mistakes are not unheard of in war - ``friendly fire`` due to mistakes has cost more US (and Canadian) lives in Afghanistan in a number of incidents than ``enemy fire`` - and this in a war where intelligence is real time, and drones roam the skies tracking individuals and vehicles, and satellites track the big picture. Among other means to protect against mistakes. Also, we have a macho culture - in Pakistan people would almost literally rather die than be caught wearing a seat-belt in a car. I assume the same is true in India.
#255 Posted by ai on June 3, 2002 2:51:55 pm
GENERAL AZIZ - CHAIRMAN OF JOINT STAFF.
With rank cowards like this fat General who gave us Kargil there can be no peace. This crooked brainless man`s ill gotten plots should be siezed to pay compensation to the famililies of the thousands he sent to their deaths in Kargil. Personally I would appoint Gen Rani to be Chairman of the Joint Staff Committee - she has exhibited better morals than this clown of a full General.
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