-Caveat Lector-
>From NewStatesman
> <Picture: New Statesman Logo>
>
> 7 June 1999
>
> <Picture><Picture> Just a small skirmish in Kashmir?
>
> John Elliott on why the India-Pakistan border is suddenly the world's
> most dangerous place
>
> <Picture>If Nato can bomb Milosevic in the backyard of Europe, Kosovo,
> who can complain if India bombs infiltrators from Pakistan in its own
> remote mountain region of Kashmir? Not America, which traditionally
> backs Pakistan, nor even Robin Cook, whose pro-Pakistan stubbornness
> destabilised the Queen's visit to India in 1997. For once the west
> seems to accept that difficult, proud India can have right on its
> side. Western powers even remained quiet last weekend when the Indian
> prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, politely brushed aside a
> mediation offer from Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, and refused
> to stop the bombing till the infiltrators withdrew: shades of Nato
> determination there.
>
> Despite the similarities to Nato and Kosovo, there is more to this
> dangerous situation than just another major power starting a small
> local skirmish to bring order to a remote region. India and Pakistan
> both tested nuclear weapons a year ago, making the use of a tactical
> nuclear warhead in a Kashmir-type conflict a worrying possibility.
> These bitterly divided countries have fought three wars since they
> became independent in 1947, and the use of nuclear weapons is far more
> likely to begin in a local engagement such as Kashmir than in a
> primary attack on each other's major cities.
>
> The situation is dangerous because of its scale, too. After nearly 20
> years of sending infiltrators to make trouble in India (first during
> the Sikh unrest in Punjab in the 1980s, then in Kashmir from about
> 1989), Pakistan has gone a step too far this year. Taking advantage of
> Indian dilatoriness, Pakistan's forces infiltrated up to 1,000 men
> (its own troops and Afghan and other Islamic fundamentalists) across
> the Indian border into the 16-18,000ft peaks of the Ladakh range of
> mountains when snows began to melt earlier this year. Before the
> Indians had woken up to the seriousness of what was happening, the
> infiltrators had occupied the Indian summertime posts.
>
> There has been sporadic shelling across this border every summer for
> several years - usually started by whichever country's troops have the
> higher ground. Pakistan has the height advantage near the Indian
> truck-stop town of Kargil, on a key highway that links Srinagar,
> capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, to Leh, in Ladakh.
> Kargil was a focal point of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and is at the
> centre of the current conflict. This year the scale of hostilities is
> dramatically different. For the first time, the infiltrators broke
> through the line of control that marks the border between the two
> countries, and took up high positions that gave them a good chance of
> seizing a section of the highway - a strategic defeat that no Indian
> government could countenance.
>
> This is as much a shock to India as it is to world opinion. Only two
> months ago Vajpayee made his dramatic peacemaking bus trip to the
> Pakistani city of Lahore to meet Nawaz Sharif, his Pakistani
> counterpart. After the trip, Vajpayee had been planning to campaign in
> India's general election this autumn on the basis that his Bharatiya
> Janata Party (BJP) could build peace with Pakistan. The west had also
> been unwisely lulled into hoping that the risk of conflict between
> these two nuclear powers had been significantly diminished.
>
> A tough Indian response is inevitable. First, the Vajpayee government
> has to make up for the failure of its defence and intelligence
> services to spot the infiltrators till they were well entrenched and
> had started shelling Indian ammunition stores and a road-building gang
> that was diverting the Srinagar-Leh highway away from the border.
> Second, they have to overcome the suspicion that Pakistan conned
> Vajpayee on the bus trip and must have already planned its Kargil
> military initiative. Third, the Hindu nationalist BJP must sell itself
> as the guardian of India's borders, especially against Islamic
> marauders.
>
> Pakistan's motives and strategy are more complex. Sharif, a skilful
> politician who is gaining a near-dictatorial hold over his
> economically crippled country, seems to have been playing on two
> levels. He has been successfully wooing world opinion for economic
> support by appearing to make peace with India, while allowing the
> Kargil offensive to go ahead in order to placate Islamic extremists at
> home. He has also destabilised Indian Kashmir, which had become so
> peaceful in the past year that tourists had been returning to Srinagar
> and its famous Dal lake houseboats.
>
> But most important, Sharif is internationalising Kashmir by
> underlining that it is the central issue in India-Pakistan relations.
> This is important because India wants to put Kashmir to one side and
> build friendship initially on other, less sensitive issues. Pakistan
> would like to resolve Kashmir, probably by international mediation,
> which India resolutely refuses to accept. "We don't have faith in
> western impartiality - the US has never minced words about Pakistan
> being its ally," says Inder Kumar Gujral, former Indian prime
> minister.
>
> India has successfully resisted outside intervention but it
> accidentally moved the Pakistan goalposts with its nuclear tests last
> year. The tests were primarily aimed at protecting it from China in
> the future, but they also escalated international concern about its
> immediate differences with Pakistan. "The bomb has not deterred
> Pakistan from its Kashmir cross-border terrorism," says M J Akbar,
> editor of India's Asian Age newspaper. "It may have even persuaded
> Islamabad to step up its involvement on the grounds that the world
> would have to take notice and prevent escalation."
>
> India would probably accept a deal that turned the current line of
> control into the permanent border, but Pakistan is determined to
> conquer new territory - and Sharif knows he could probably stay in
> power for life if he did. A quick settlement is therefore unlikely,
> and the immediate focus must be on forcing Pakistan to withdraw to its
> position of last winter. <Picture>Search this section
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