The Perfect Murder Commentary The Monitor`s View

from the May 31, 2002 edition

Christian Science Monitor

The Kashmir–Al Qaeda Tangle

The threat of war between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan doesn`t have the same level of attention from Washington as does the US war on Al Qaeda. But it should. The two conflicts are rapidly becoming linked.





First, the remaining Al Qaeda fighters appear to be supporting terrorist strikes on India from Pakistan, in the name of liberating the largely Muslim Kashmir from Indian rule.

And second, the strong possibility of a Pakistan-India war – one that might easily go atomic – could devastate the US antiterrorist efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In fact, it may be that Al Qaeda`s remaining leadership is trying to further its goal of rallying Muslims into a global jihad by agitating a conflict with largely Hindu India, even to the point of igniting a wider war in South Asia.

Terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament in December, and later on Indian soldiers and their families in Kashmir, have pushed India to threaten the same kind of war on Pakistan that the US did on Afghanistan to root out terrorists.

But while the US may sympathize with India, it needs Pakistan`s military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, to crack down on Al Qaeda forces there. By doing little, so far, to end the Pakistan-India showdown, the Bush administration undermines its own war.

A diplomatic fatalism in the West over resolving the territorial dispute over Kashmir has hindered the US and Europe for decades. Ever since the British partition of its colony into India and Pakistan in 1947, the two nations have been estranged in many ways. Kashmir is just the flashpoint for deeper differences between the two nations, driven by silly stereotypes each side holds of the other.

And as global prosperity largely passes them by, the two remain stuck in the domestic politics of extreme, irrational nationalism, which could lead to hair-trigger fingers on nuclear weapons.

Pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink only temporarily will not be enough for US interests. It`s very possible that Mr. Musharraf lacks total control over the terrorists striking India and can`t be held accountable if those attacks continue. A serious diplomatic intervention by the US is needed to set India and Pakistan on new paths of reconciliation, using various carrots and sticks.

Like the cold war, the war on terrorism may have sideshows that become the main event, à la Vietnam. But the US doesn`t need to have an India-Pakistan conflagration distract it from its primary goal of eliminating Al Qaeda.



http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0531/p10s02-comv.html

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

On the Brink

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

BY ALEX PERRY SRINAGAR

AMAN SHARMA/AP

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



Special Report: Back on the Brink



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lighting The Nuclear Fire Pakistani President at the Fulcrum of Crisis

By DEXTER FILKINS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lighting The Nuclear Fire Commentary The Monitor`s View

from the May 31, 2002 edition

Christian Science Monitor

The Kashmir–Al Qaeda Tangle

The threat of war between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan doesn`t have the same level of attention from Washington as does the US war on Al Qaeda. But it should. The two conflicts are rapidly becoming linked.





First, the remaining Al Qaeda fighters appear to be supporting terrorist strikes on India from Pakistan, in the name of liberating the largely Muslim Kashmir from Indian rule.

And second, the strong possibility of a Pakistan-India war – one that might easily go atomic – could devastate the US antiterrorist efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In fact, it may be that Al Qaeda`s remaining leadership is trying to further its goal of rallying Muslims into a global jihad by agitating a conflict with largely Hindu India, even to the point of igniting a wider war in South Asia.

Terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament in December, and later on Indian soldiers and their families in Kashmir, have pushed India to threaten the same kind of war on Pakistan that the US did on Afghanistan to root out terrorists.

But while the US may sympathize with India, it needs Pakistan`s military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, to crack down on Al Qaeda forces there. By doing little, so far, to end the Pakistan-India showdown, the Bush administration undermines its own war.

A diplomatic fatalism in the West over resolving the territorial dispute over Kashmir has hindered the US and Europe for decades. Ever since the British partition of its colony into India and Pakistan in 1947, the two nations have been estranged in many ways. Kashmir is just the flashpoint for deeper differences between the two nations, driven by silly stereotypes each side holds of the other.

And as global prosperity largely passes them by, the two remain stuck in the domestic politics of extreme, irrational nationalism, which could lead to hair-trigger fingers on nuclear weapons.

Pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink only temporarily will not be enough for US interests. It`s very possible that Mr. Musharraf lacks total control over the terrorists striking India and can`t be held accountable if those attacks continue. A serious diplomatic intervention by the US is needed to set India and Pakistan on new paths of reconciliation, using various carrots and sticks.

Like the cold war, the war on terrorism may have sideshows that become the main event, à la Vietnam. But the US doesn`t need to have an India-Pakistan conflagration distract it from its primary goal of eliminating Al Qaeda.



http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0531/p10s02-comv.html

Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501020603-250061,00.html

On the Brink

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

BY ALEX PERRY SRINAGAR

AMAN SHARMA/AP

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



Special Report: Back on the Brink



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TIME

Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death Pakistani President at the Fulcrum of Crisis

By DEXTER FILKINS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death Commentary The Monitor`s View

from the May 31, 2002 edition

Christian Science Monitor

The Kashmir–Al Qaeda Tangle

The threat of war between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan doesn`t have the same level of attention from Washington as does the US war on Al Qaeda. But it should. The two conflicts are rapidly becoming linked.





First, the remaining Al Qaeda fighters appear to be supporting terrorist strikes on India from Pakistan, in the name of liberating the largely Muslim Kashmir from Indian rule.

And second, the strong possibility of a Pakistan-India war – one that might easily go atomic – could devastate the US antiterrorist efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In fact, it may be that Al Qaeda`s remaining leadership is trying to further its goal of rallying Muslims into a global jihad by agitating a conflict with largely Hindu India, even to the point of igniting a wider war in South Asia.

Terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament in December, and later on Indian soldiers and their families in Kashmir, have pushed India to threaten the same kind of war on Pakistan that the US did on Afghanistan to root out terrorists.

But while the US may sympathize with India, it needs Pakistan`s military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, to crack down on Al Qaeda forces there. By doing little, so far, to end the Pakistan-India showdown, the Bush administration undermines its own war.

A diplomatic fatalism in the West over resolving the territorial dispute over Kashmir has hindered the US and Europe for decades. Ever since the British partition of its colony into India and Pakistan in 1947, the two nations have been estranged in many ways. Kashmir is just the flashpoint for deeper differences between the two nations, driven by silly stereotypes each side holds of the other.

And as global prosperity largely passes them by, the two remain stuck in the domestic politics of extreme, irrational nationalism, which could lead to hair-trigger fingers on nuclear weapons.

Pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink only temporarily will not be enough for US interests. It`s very possible that Mr. Musharraf lacks total control over the terrorists striking India and can`t be held accountable if those attacks continue. A serious diplomatic intervention by the US is needed to set India and Pakistan on new paths of reconciliation, using various carrots and sticks.

Like the cold war, the war on terrorism may have sideshows that become the main event, à la Vietnam. But the US doesn`t need to have an India-Pakistan conflagration distract it from its primary goal of eliminating Al Qaeda.



http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0531/p10s02-comv.html

The Perfect Murder INDIAN SCENARIO II

Thu May 30,10:03 PM ET

By Richard Reeves

PARIS -- The last time Pakistan got India really mad, that would be in 1972, this is how it ended:



The military dictator of the moment, that would be Gen. Yahya Khan, was sitting in a hole just dug behind the commander in chief`s house at army headquarters in Rawalpindi with a couple of sandbags over his head to protect him against Indian bombs. He had only one companion, Sultan Khan, his foreign secretary, and he asked his chief diplomat when he thought the Americans, led by his friend Richard Nixon, would come to save them.

Nixon loved Yahya Khan, a gruff, Scotch-drinking man who liked to tap a cavalryman`s crop agaist his leg, and had helped the American president make the contacts that led to his historic trip to China to meet with Mao Tse-tung. But, of course, the Americans never came. Neither did the Chinese, who were pledging undying loyalty to Pakistan. They meant verbal and diplomatic loyalty, but Khan misunderstood.

In fact, Khan misunderstood most everything, including what happened just before he climbed into his earthy new bomb shelter. He had been meeting with the U.S. ambassador, who was trying to tell him he was on his own, when the ambassador was literally pulled away by his military attache. That would be the famous pilot and Air Force general Charles (Chuck) Yeager. ``We`ve got to get out of here right now,`` said Yeager.

Why? Yeager explained that for some fool reason Khan had ordered a few of his planes to attack airfields in India. Probably Khan thought a few explosions would persuade Nixon to send in the Marines. Now, said Yeager, the Indians are going to send in bombers and the Pakistanis were going to send up their entire air force to dogfight. When the Pakistanis landed to refuel, the Indian bombers would turn for home, but a second Indian wave would arrive and destroy Pakistan`s air force while it was all on the ground with empty gas tanks.

And that`s what happened. Pakistan, which is to India as Canada is to the United States, lost half its country in a couple of weeks. What is now Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, but the Indians invaded, capturing hundreds of thousands of Pakistani troops sent from Rawalpindi, in West Pakistan, to reverse the result of elections in which East Pakistani separatists had predictably won every seat in the national Parliament, giving them political control over both wings of divided Pakistan.

Well, times have changed. The current military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is as charming as Yahya Khan and a lot smarter. He has only half as much country, but he does have nuclear weapons -- though there is some question over who has control of them. And, because of those weapons, the Indians will very possibly attack to try to get them before the Pakistanis use one or two. That prospect was headlined last weekend in London`s Sunday Telegraph under the astonishing headline, quoting an Indian general: ```India Can Afford to Lose 25 Million People. But Could Pakistan?```

It is more likely that Pakistan could lose everything. All this was perfectly predictable. To be immodest, even I could do that -- and I did in an October column called ``The Indian Scenario.`` That was based on the almost certain probability that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites) would drive the Taliban and al-Qaida into Pakistan -- where else could they go? -- and that movement might destabilize Pakistan or even make it into a new base for unholy Holy War. That would leave India with the choice it faces now: Trust to Musharraf, the United States and luck to prevent the use of the nuclear missiles pointed at them from Pakistan, or go into Pakistan and try to take them out.

So here we are, on the brink of massive war and at the mercy of a deluded general thinking, as did Yahya Khan, that the people of his country love him and will follow him anywhere. They don`t and they won`t.

Pakistan may be more of a country than Afghanistan, but it is in some ways in worse shape than it was when it was created 55 years ago -- as the Muslim counterpart to Hindu India -- by the British as they fled South Asia at partition in 1947. In those 55 years, Pakistan has been unable to establish democracy or any kind of truly legitimate government. It has not educated its people much beyond feudalism, and it still believes itself the equal of India, which it is not, never was and never will be. God help them.

Yes, the United States is the ``Great Power,`` as they say on radio and television here in France. But what do we have power over? Not Musharraf, not Pakistan and not events to come.

We had to retaliate after Sept. 11; we had to cater to Musharraf. But it is becoming more and more obvious that we do not know what will happen next or what use to make of our great power.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020531/79/1mgvi.html

Lighting The Nuclear Fire Iran being close to both India and Pakistan will stay nuetral in Indo-Pak conflict

Concerned by the mounting tension between the two nuclear neighbors, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Monday that Tehran ``welcomes talks`` between the two nuclear-armed powers to defuse tension. He didn`t elaborate, but Iranian lawmakers and political analysts say Iran should remain neutral if war breaks out.

``Iran`s national interests require it to adopt a position of active neutrality in case a war breaks out. Iran`s strategy will be to launch an all-out diplomatic drive to prevent (any) spread and continuation of a war,`` said Mohsen Torkashvand, a lawmaker and member of the Iranian parliament`s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.

``Considering Iran`s good relations with both Pakistan and India, it will be totally against Iran`s national interests to side with any of the warring parties,`` he said.

Mostafa Kavakebian, leader of a reformist party, said neutrality would be the best strategy for Iran, but said the situation ultimately could require limited supporting measures if Pakistan`s Muslim population were to be subjected to serious danger.

Lighting The Nuclear Fire

The India-Pakistan doomsday scenario

U.S. intelligence says a nuclear exchange between the two feuding countries could kill 12 million. Here`s how experts believe the region could explode.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Damien Cave

May 31, 2002 | A U.S. intelligence assessment released this week warned that a full-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, whose bitter dispute over Kashmir continues to escalate, could immediately kill up to 12 million people. Assuming that both countries would use most but not all of their nuclear arsenals, the report argued that the combined blasts would immediately draw American forces into the conflict. With millions dead and up to 7 million people wounded, the world would collectively have to respond.

``The humanitarian crisis that would result would be so great that every medical facility in the Middle East and Southwest Asia would be quickly overwhelmed,`` a Defense Department official told the New York Times. ``The American military would have no choice but go in and help with the victims and to clean up.``

But are these U.S. intelligence assumptions -- and the horrific conclusion -- accurate? How exactly would the region`s rising tensions lead to a nuclear exchange, and how would the world be affected? The questions take on rising urgency as President Bush sends Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the region next week to help cool tensions.

Most military observers agree that any attempt to predict how a war between India and Pakistan might intensify will likely prove inaccurate. It`s nearly impossible, they argue, to ``game out`` a path of altercation. There are too many variables to consider, and most of the people who make military decisions don`t have enough information or wherewithal to understand the possible consequences of their actions.

``People in power don`t escalate logically,`` says Tony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense policy think tank. ``They escalate in ways that are more emotional than reasonable. The history of war is almost never one in which each side knows the other side`s perception of the actions taken. When we game out the conflict [between India and Pakistan] we approach escalation as if history doesn`t exist.``

And most observers think the U.S. intelligence report is likely the worst of all worst-case scenarios. Still, Cordesman and other experts admit that one nuclear scenario -- with a few permutations -- has gained traction in the intelligence community. That is the possibility of at least one nuclear explosion -- one that, according to an oft-discussed academic report, would immediately kill up to 860,000 people, while slowly killing many more. No one hopes to see the prediction come true, and some experts seem confident that India and Pakistan will disengage. But increasingly, regional observers say the world has to at least plan for the possibility that the conflict could go nuclear -- if not the worst-case scenario laid out in the U.S. intelligence report, a bad enough scenario that requires some attention.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/31/doomsday/index_np.html

Lighting The Nuclear Fire INDIAN SCENARIO II

Thu May 30,10:03 PM ET

By Richard Reeves

PARIS -- The last time Pakistan got India really mad, that would be in 1972, this is how it ended:

The military dictator of the moment, that would be Gen. Yahya Khan, was sitting in a hole just dug behind the commander in chief`s house at army headquarters in Rawalpindi with a couple of sandbags over his head to protect him against Indian bombs. He had only one companion, Sultan Khan, his foreign secretary, and he asked his chief diplomat when he thought the Americans, led by his friend Richard Nixon, would come to save them.

Nixon loved Yahya Khan, a gruff, Scotch-drinking man who liked to tap a cavalryman`s crop agaist his leg, and had helped the American president make the contacts that led to his historic trip to China to meet with Mao Tse-tung. But, of course, the Americans never came. Neither did the Chinese, who were pledging undying loyalty to Pakistan. They meant verbal and diplomatic loyalty, but Khan misunderstood.

In fact, Khan misunderstood most everything, including what happened just before he climbed into his earthy new bomb shelter. He had been meeting with the U.S. ambassador, who was trying to tell him he was on his own, when the ambassador was literally pulled away by his military attache. That would be the famous pilot and Air Force general Charles (Chuck) Yeager. ``We`ve got to get out of here right now,`` said Yeager.

Why? Yeager explained that for some fool reason Khan had ordered a few of his planes to attack airfields in India. Probably Khan thought a few explosions would persuade Nixon to send in the Marines. Now, said Yeager, the Indians are going to send in bombers and the Pakistanis were going to send up their entire air force to dogfight. When the Pakistanis landed to refuel, the Indian bombers would turn for home, but a second Indian wave would arrive and destroy Pakistan`s air force while it was all on the ground with empty gas tanks.

And that`s what happened. Pakistan, which is to India as Canada is to the United States, lost half its country in a couple of weeks. What is now Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, but the Indians invaded, capturing hundreds of thousands of Pakistani troops sent from Rawalpindi, in West Pakistan, to reverse the result of elections in which East Pakistani separatists had predictably won every seat in the national Parliament, giving them political control over both wings of divided Pakistan.

Well, times have changed. The current military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is as charming as Yahya Khan and a lot smarter. He has only half as much country, but he does have nuclear weapons -- though there is some question over who has control of them. And, because of those weapons, the Indians will very possibly attack to try to get them before the Pakistanis use one or two. That prospect was headlined last weekend in London`s Sunday Telegraph under the astonishing headline, quoting an Indian general: ```India Can Afford to Lose 25 Million People. But Could Pakistan?```

It is more likely that Pakistan could lose everything. All this was perfectly predictable. To be immodest, even I could do that -- and I did in an October column called ``The Indian Scenario.`` That was based on the almost certain probability that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites) would drive the Taliban and al-Qaida into Pakistan -- where else could they go? -- and that movement might destabilize Pakistan or even make it into a new base for unholy Holy War. That would leave India with the choice it faces now: Trust to Musharraf, the United States and luck to prevent the use of the nuclear missiles pointed at them from Pakistan, or go into Pakistan and try to take them out.

So here we are, on the brink of massive war and at the mercy of a deluded general thinking, as did Yahya Khan, that the people of his country love him and will follow him anywhere. They don`t and they won`t.

Pakistan may be more of a country than Afghanistan, but it is in some ways in worse shape than it was when it was created 55 years ago -- as the Muslim counterpart to Hindu India -- by the British as they fled South Asia at partition in 1947. In those 55 years, Pakistan has been unable to establish democracy or any kind of truly legitimate government. It has not educated its people much beyond feudalism, and it still believes itself the equal of India, which it is not, never was and never will be. God help them.

Yes, the United States is the ``Great Power,`` as they say on radio and television here in France. But what do we have power over? Not Musharraf, not Pakistan and not events to come.

We had to retaliate after Sept. 11; we had to cater to Musharraf. But it is becoming more and more obvious that we do not know what will happen next or what use to make of our great power.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020531/79/1mgvi.html

Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death Iran being close to both India and Pakistan will stay nuetral in Indo-Pak conflict

Concerned by the mounting tension between the two nuclear neighbors, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Monday that Tehran ``welcomes talks`` between the two nuclear-armed powers to defuse tension. He didn`t elaborate, but Iranian lawmakers and political analysts say Iran should remain neutral if war breaks out.

``Iran`s national interests require it to adopt a position of active neutrality in case a war breaks out. Iran`s strategy will be to launch an all-out diplomatic drive to prevent (any) spread and continuation of a war,`` said Mohsen Torkashvand, a lawmaker and member of the Iranian parliament`s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.

``Considering Iran`s good relations with both Pakistan and India, it will be totally against Iran`s national interests to side with any of the warring parties,`` he said.

Mostafa Kavakebian, leader of a reformist party, said neutrality would be the best strategy for Iran, but said the situation ultimately could require limited supporting measures if Pakistan`s Muslim population were to be subjected to serious danger.

The Perfect Murder India/Pakistan

Battle lines drawn around Musharraf

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Seven months into its newfound relationship with the United States, Pakistan finds itself isolated - the US and its coalition partners have condemned its latest series of missile tests, and they are increasingly accepting the Indian claim that Pakistan-sponsored terrorism is the cause of the troubles in Kashmir.

And just as the nation is becoming isolated and confused by the international turn of events, so too is its leader, President General Pervez Musharraf, who appears to be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on the domestic front.

Imtiaz Alam, a commentator on political affairs, points out that the ``commando president`` - even as Islamabad puts Pakistan on a war footing - ``is being opposed by both liberals and religious extremists for entirely opposite reasons. The liberals want him to come down heavily against the extremists who threaten both internal and external security. The religious extremists detest him for abandoning the Taliban and are not even willing to trust him in his war against India, which they hate.``

US President George W Bush has told Musharraf to work harder to stop cross-border incursions into Indian-controlled Kashmir. ``He must perform,`` Bush said. These remarks from a great ally endorse the view that Pakistan is still sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir, even though Musharraf has pledged not to.

Opposition politicians in Pakistan now want Musharraf to step down and hand over power to an independent caretaker as the only way to forge national unity. This sentiment was expressed in a resolution filed by more than 15 mainstream political and religious-political parties in Lahore last week that said, ``Musharraf should immediately resign from all his de facto positions and hand over power to a neutral caretaker government which should unite the nation, face the challenge posed by India and hold fair and free election.``

But at the same time, the opposition is making it clear that it is against Musharraf and not the military itself - in an apparent move to capitalize on anti-Musharraf sentiment said to be simmering within military ranks because of his political ambitions. ``We have full confidence in our military capabilities and preparedness, but Musharraf stands discredited and lacks the stature and moral authority to deal with the current threat to national security and territorial integrity of Pakistan,`` said a spokesman for the Pakistan People`s Party, led by former premier Benazir Bhutto.

Critics also say that Musharraf has pitted himself against domestic forces over the years - most recently though the April 30 referendum that extended his rule for five years which was roundly criticized at home. This has made it difficult for him to have enough political standing to pursue dialogue with India, they added.

The opposition conference by the All Parties Conference in Lahore came just days before Musharraf`s consultative meeting with politicians on tensions with India, which rose after last week`s attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi blames on Pakistani militants.

Because opposition parties boycotted Musharraf`s meeting with politicians, one newspaper reported that it was attended by ``all the king`s men`` who have little public support and who have always been regarded as establishment-backed. ``It reveals how isolated Islamabad is at home, despite a serious challenge to the national existence,`` said Alam.

The April referendum that gave Musharraf another five years in office appears to have created an unbridgeable divide between political forces and Musharraf, one that would only widen until elections planned in October.

Many people believe that the Musharraf is also using the tense situation with India - he has said that Pakistanis would defend ``every inch`` of the country - to win back people`s sympathies that critics say he had lost by ``fabricating`` the referendum result.

This is the first time in Pakistan`s history that a sitting government has faced such criticism at a time of grave external threat. In the past, the country stood united when Pakistan and India fought wars in 1965 and 1971, even though the then military rulers had also created enough cause for opposition resentment.

But this time, the opposition, frustrated by Musharraf`s agenda of political exclusion and his plans to keep all power concentrated in him through his planned amendments to the constitution, are not ready to give him any room to relax, despite the current war clouds. The parties say that Musharraf - who is president, chief executive as well as army chief - cannot lead the country in a war.

``We demand the appointment of a full-time army chief who could devote all his attention to the country`s defense and who could meet the threat to national security and territorial integrity,`` said Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, a veteran politician who chaired the opposition`s Lahore conference. ``If [British prime minister Neville] Chamberlain can be replaced by [Winston] Churchill in the middle of World War II, certainly Musharraf can step down and hand over power to a nationally acceptable government in the larger interest of uniting the country in this hour of need,`` asserted Khan.

In fact, some of Musharraf`s harshest critics hold him responsible for the current impasse with India. They refer to his role in the 1999 undeclared Kargil conflict with India that scuttled the so-called Lahore Peace Process, initiated after Indian Premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee`s train trip to Lahore in February 1999. They say it was due to Musharraf`s role in Kargil as army chief that India never took his repeated peace offers seriously.

``We are with the nation and not with Pervez Musharraf, who disrupted the Lahore process with his Kargil misadventure without the consent of the then prime minister,`` argued Zafar Ali Shah, a close associate of former premier Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf deposed in an October 1999 coup. ``If he had any concern for the nation, he would not have divided it by his political misadventures despite a military standoff with India for the last six months,`` Shah pointed out.

Some critics say that Musharraf should accept that he is no longer acceptable to the nation and that his government has lost what international stature it had gained after the September 11 attacks after the referendum, whose conduct had been criticized even by some of the Musharraf government`s newfound allies in foreign governments.

``More alarming than Indian intentions is the situation at home. This is time for national unity, for subordinating self-interest to the national good. But the military government with its divisive policies is ill-suited to deliver this goal,`` columnist Ayaz Amir wrote in the English-language daily Dawn.

Musharraf`s changed status is illustrated by his remark some while ago when he questioned ``why should I contact the Pakistan Muslim League (N) when Its `N` [leader Nawaz Sharif] is missing?`` Now, he has sent a senior military officer to talk to Nawaz Sharif in Saudi Arabia, where he is in exile, on possible cooperation.

Before Musharraf`s coup in 1999, three military dictators had ruled Pakistan since its independence in 1947, but only General Yahya Khan (1969-71) had an exit plan. He held elections and handed over government to an elected representative. Field Marshal Ayub Khan (1958-62) was hounded out of office after countrywide protests, while General Zia ul-Haq (1977-85), who died in an airplane crash, had no plans to relinquish power.

Now, with opposition to him mounting, Musharraf might well be wondering how he is going to survive the next five years he has given himself in power.

http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE30Df02.html

The Perfect Murder `Karachiites yearning for a Jihad call`

PAKISTAN`s FLAG on INDIA`s RED FORT

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/may2002-daily/29-05-2002/metro/k1.htm

By our correspondent

KARACHI: City Nazim Naimatullah Khan has said that the Karachiites were yearning for a Jihad call from President Musharraf, reiterating that the brave military of the nuclear power, Pakistan, which enjoyed full support of 140 million people, was well capable of hoisting the Pakistani flag on Delhi`s Red Fort.

He was addressing a huge gathering after leading a mammoth rally, which, started from the gate of the Quaid-i-Azam`s mausoleum at the Shahrah-e-Quaideen and after taking a U-turn reached the mausoleum`s VIP gate at New M A Jinnah Road in a bid to mark the nuclear tests day-Yaum-e-Takbeer-on Tuesday. ``India must not think of waging war against Pakistan as all of its cities are targets of our nuclear bombs and missiles and the 140 million Pakistanis are ready to fight along with their military, whose motto is Jihad,`` he maintained.

The participants of the rally, the ``Defence of Pakistan March`` by the City Government, raised their hands in the air and replied ``yes``, when their City Nazim asked whether they were ready if President Musharraf gave them call for Jihad. Naimatullah said that India must keep in mind that Muslims ruled the

Sub-continent for over 800 years and left their numerous imprints in the form of the Taj Mahal, castles etc and now Pakistanis might claim for such heritages of their ancestors. ``Mahmood Ghaznavi had attacked India 17 times and we will make the 18th invasion if India does not mend it ways``, he added.

Naimatullah said that India, which was depending on the international community, could neither pressurise Pakistan nor deprive it of its essential part, Kashmir. If India was proud of its military then it must realise that hundreds of thousands of its military personnel had so far not managed to defeat just a few thousand Mujahideen in Indian-held Kashmir for the last 15 years.

Terming Karachi the heart of Pakistan, he said that the metropolis was inhabited by people who had either migrated from different states of India or parts of Pakistan, saying that all Karachiites were ready to sacrifice their lives for upholding Islam and Pakistan. The surroundings echoed to shouts of ``Allah-o-Akbar`` and ``La ilaha il Allah`` when City Nazim concluded his speech with shouting slogans, ``Naara`ay Takbeer``, ``Pakistan Ka Matblab Kya?`` respectively.

Scores of trucks, buses, mini-buses, coaches, motorbikes, taxis, and other forms of transport were carried the participants while a large number of them were towards the venue, set up between the VIP gate and the Cosmopolitan Club. Hundreds of women also participated in the rally while a large number of them were also carrying their infants. A large number of school children and teachers also attended the rally.

Earlier, a number of processions, which were taken out from the offices of all 18 Towns and 178 Union Councils, started assembling at Mazaar-i-Quaid after 5pm. The participants offered Asr prayers at Masjid-e-Bab-e-Rahmat before starting their march. There was a heavy deployment of police all along the route of the march. Police were seen stationed atop some buildings situated along the road and near the stage.

The crowd, which moved for around half an hour behind Naimatullah all the way from Shahrah-e-Quaideen to New M A Jinnah Road continued chanting pro-Islamic, pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans. They were also carrying flags, banners and placards with different slogans. A large number of the workers of Shabab-e-Milli - the youth wing of the Jama`at-e-Islami -- were carrying a huge national flag on the occasion.

The Perfect Murder `Karachiites yearning for a Jihad call`

PAKISTAN`s FLAG on INDIA`s RED FORT

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/may2002-daily/29-05-2002/metro/k1.htm

By our correspondent

KARACHI: City Nazim Naimatullah Khan has said that the Karachiites were yearning for a Jihad call from President Musharraf, reiterating that the brave military of the nuclear power, Pakistan, which enjoyed full support of 140 million people, was well capable of hoisting the Pakistani flag on Delhi`s Red Fort.

He was addressing a huge gathering after leading a mammoth rally, which, started from the gate of the Quaid-i-Azam`s mausoleum at the Shahrah-e-Quaideen and after taking a U-turn reached the mausoleum`s VIP gate at New M A Jinnah Road in a bid to mark the nuclear tests day-Yaum-e-Takbeer-on Tuesday. ``India must not think of waging war against Pakistan as all of its cities are targets of our nuclear bombs and missiles and the 140 million Pakistanis are ready to fight along with their military, whose motto is Jihad,`` he maintained.

The participants of the rally, the ``Defence of Pakistan March`` by the City Government, raised their hands in the air and replied ``yes``, when their City Nazim asked whether they were ready if President Musharraf gave them call for Jihad. Naimatullah said that India must keep in mind that Muslims ruled the

Sub-continent for over 800 years and left their numerous imprints in the form of the Taj Mahal, castles etc and now Pakistanis might claim for such heritages of their ancestors. ``Mahmood Ghaznavi had attacked India 17 times and we will make the 18th invasion if India does not mend it ways``, he added.

Naimatullah said that India, which was depending on the international community, could neither pressurise Pakistan nor deprive it of its essential part, Kashmir. If India was proud of its military then it must realise that hundreds of thousands of its military personnel had so far not managed to defeat just a few thousand Mujahideen in Indian-held Kashmir for the last 15 years.

Terming Karachi the heart of Pakistan, he said that the metropolis was inhabited by people who had either migrated from different states of India or parts of Pakistan, saying that all Karachiites were ready to sacrifice their lives for upholding Islam and Pakistan. The surroundings echoed to shouts of ``Allah-o-Akbar`` and ``La ilaha il Allah`` when City Nazim concluded his speech with shouting slogans, ``Naara`ay Takbeer``, ``Pakistan Ka Matblab Kya?`` respectively.

Scores of trucks, buses, mini-buses, coaches, motorbikes, taxis, and other forms of transport were carried the participants while a large number of them were towards the venue, set up between the VIP gate and the Cosmopolitan Club. Hundreds of women also participated in the rally while a large number of them were also carrying their infants. A large number of school children and teachers also attended the rally.

Earlier, a number of processions, which were taken out from the offices of all 18 Towns and 178 Union Councils, started assembling at Mazaar-i-Quaid after 5pm. The participants offered Asr prayers at Masjid-e-Bab-e-Rahmat before starting their march. There was a heavy deployment of police all along the route of the march. Police were seen stationed atop some buildings situated along the road and near the stage.

The crowd, which moved for around half an hour behind Naimatullah all the way from Shahrah-e-Quaideen to New M A Jinnah Road continued chanting pro-Islamic, pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans. They were also carrying flags, banners and placards with different slogans. A large number of the workers of Shabab-e-Milli - the youth wing of the Jama`at-e-Islami -- were carrying a huge national flag on the occasion.

The Perfect Murder http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/05/29/taliban-kashmir.htm

05/29/2002 - Updated 02:24 PM ET

Taliban, al-Qaeda linked to Kashmir

By John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON ? Al-Qaeda and Taliban members are helping organize a terror campaign in Kashmir to foment conflict between India and Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and foreign diplomats say.

The strategy of the terrorist network and its allies in the ousted Afghan government:

Relieve pressure on al-Qaeda members hiding in western Pakistan by forcing the Pakistani government to move troops searching for the terrorists to the eastern border with India.

Destabilize the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf by raising tensions with India and pushing Musharraf to crack down on domestic Islamic militants who support al-Qaeda.

Pakistan and India, the world`s newest nuclear powers, both claim all of Kashmir, the Himalayan region that straddles their border. They have fought three wars since 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

Al-Qaeda`s ability to coordinate terrorist activities in Kashmir worries U.S. officials because it indicates the war in Afghanistan hasn`t put the group out of business. The shift of Pakistani troops to the Indian border leaves U.S. operatives in western Pakistan without crucial allies to pursue al-Qaeda leaders that might include Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Pakistan`s offensive against al-Qaeda in the west has fizzled as forces move to the tense Indian border, a top Pentagon official says.

Intelligence officials have yet to link al-Qaeda or the Taliban conclusively to specific acts, such as the attack on the Indian parliament Dec. 13, which touched off the latest crisis, or Tuesday`s shooting of seven people in a Kashmiri village, apparently by Muslim guerrillas. Some Pentagon and CIA officials are not ready to ascribe al-Qaeda activities in Kashmir to a coordinated terrorist campaign.

But sources familiar with U.S. Intelligence analysis say al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan are helping terrorists they had trained in Afghanistan to infiltrate Indian-controlled territory.

Their goal, says one U.S. Intelligence official, is to ``cause the biggest problem between India and Pakistan that they possibly can.`` The intelligence is coming from interrogations of al-Qaeda and Taliban members, as well as information supplied by intelligence organizations in Pakistan and India, the officials say.

Robert Oakley, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, says that if al-Qaeda ``can do something to bring India and Pakistan to war, that`s wonderful for them because it relieves pressure on them.``

A link between al-Qaeda and Kashmiri militants would pose an awkward problem for the United States, which would have trouble carrying out its war against al-Qaeda and still remain neutral in the India-Pakistan dispute.

Musharraf`s government, which fears the conflict could turn Pakistan`s Muslims against his pro-U.S. regime, denied charges by India on Tuesday that Pakistan is harboring al-Qaeda terrorists in Kashmir.