Foreign Correspondent
Inside Track On World News
By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
Eric Margolis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
www.foreigncorrespondent.com
KASHMIR BURNS
By
Eric Margolis 4 July 1999
NEW YORK - Heavy fighting between India and Pakistani-supported insurgents
in northern Kashmir and Ladakh has raged for the past five weeks in some
of the world's most remote and difficult terrain.
Last week, Indian ground and air attacks intensified, and spread south to
other sectors of the long Line of Control that has divided Kashmir since
1947 into Indian and Pakistani-ruled portions. Indian admits to losing
two warplanes and over 200 dead and 400 wounded or missing. India claims
Pakistan and the Kashmiri insurgents battling to liberate the Indian-ruled
part of Kashmir have lost a similar number of men.
The escalating fighting in Kashmir and Ladakh has set off alarm bells
across the world. For the first time ever, two nuclear-armed powers, India
and Pakistan, are directly engaged in hostilities that could quickly turn
into full- scale war. Indian leaders describe the situation as `a near
war.' This week, India's caretaker prime minister, Atal Vajpayee demanded
Pakistan pull all rebel forces out of Pakistani Kashmir. Pakistan warned
India it would not bow to threats -even nuclear ones - and insisted India
cease its occupation of the two-thirds of Kashmir ruled under martial law
by Delhi.
After five weeks of brinksmanship and threats, neither India nor Pakistan
has won any real advantage in the latest round of their 52-year old
confrontation, and they are edging dangerously close to all-out war. This
week, however, India claims to have regained some of the commanding
heights seized by mujihadin forces after very heavy fighting.
In the beginning of the crisis, Pakistan scored an important victory. The
large- scale incursion by Kashmiri mujihadin into a highly strategic
sector of Ladakh belied Indian claims that the decade-old Kashmir
`intifada', or uprising, had been crushed. In spite of deploying up to
600,000 troops and paramilitary police in the mountain state, and years of
brutal repression, India has been unable to extinguish the revolt by the
Muslim majority, which demands either union with Pakistan, or
independence.
Equally important, the fighting, because it threatened to ignite nuclear
war between India and Pakistan, also dramatically showed that the old
problem of Kashmir was very much of international concern, rather than
simply an internal issue of India, as Delhi insists. Pakistan's strategy
is to internationalize the Kashmir issue and call for implementation of
the plebiscite that the UN originally mandated in 1949, a vote that would
inevitably end Indian rule. India is just as determined to avoid ever
holding a vote, or allowing any outside intervention in Kashmir.
But the US grew alarmed by the risk of a nuclear conflict in South Asia,
and sent a high-ranking general to put pressure on Pakistan to reign in
the Kashmiri militants. India's claims the intruders were
`mercenaries,Afghan Taliban, and Pakistani soldiers' were mainly
propaganda. Most of the independence fighters are native Kashmiri Muslims
rebelling against Indian misrule, with only a sprinkling of Islamic
veterans from other jihads, or holy wars.
But the insurgents could not have moved into Pakistani Baltistan - just
north of Ladakh - or launched a large offensive at 15,000-18,000 ft
altitude without major logistical support from the Pakistani army and
supporting fire from Pak artillery. So the US and other foreign powers
openly blamed Pakistan for the crisis and urged Islamabad to defuse it at
once. China, Pakistan's closet ally, and no friend of India, adopted a
neutral stance, deeply disappointing Islamabad.
Indian forces in northern Kashmir and Ladakh are attacking up almost sheer
rock faces at punishingly high altitude. As Indian losses mount, India's
generals are sorely tempted to open offensives further south. India's
interior minister warned this week his nation might chose the ground on
which to fight, implying an Indian attack in southern Kashmir, or further
south on the plains of Punjab, where India's 3:1 superiority over Pakistan
in armor, guns, and aircraft would prove decisive.
Why Pakistan chose to ignite this crisis remains a mystery. Some Indian
analysts suggest the powerful Pakistani Army triggered the fighting to
embarrass Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose wobbly, scandal-ridden
government is increasingly unpopular, and to give the detested Indians a
nasty surprise. But India's scandal-ridden, BJP caretaker government is
also unpopular and faces fall elections. The border fighting has aroused
nationalist passions in India and will certainly boost the electoral
fortunes of PM Vajpayee and his fellow BJP Hindu chauvenists, who vow to
crush Muslim resistance in Kashmir and even to dismember Pakistan.
Adding to the sense of danger, there were two recent massacres of
civilians last week in Kashmir: one of Muslims and one of Hindus. Indian
forces reportedly executed Muslim political opponents in Srinagar, the
capital of Indian Kashmir. Fighting and heavy shelling raged along
various sectors of the Line of Control, including the strategic Poonch
sector. Far from abating, military tensions in Kashmir appear on the
rise.
Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif, apparently eager to find a face-saving exit
from this mounting crisis, flew to Washington last weekend for a hurried
meeting with President Clinton. Sharif left claiming, somewhat
contradictorily, that Pakistani-backed mujihadi n forces would withdraw,
and then that Pakistan had no control over the militants, deepening the
impression that he was not really in charge of events in his own nation.
India again scorned calls for the US to mediate the crisis.
The issue of Indian-ruled Kashmir deserves world attention. Its long-
oppressed Muslim majority has been misruled and brutalized by India, and
denied the right to vote on its future in direct violation of a series of
UN resolutions. Unfortunately, this long-neglected human rights issue was
totally forgotten until Pakistan played its military card in May by
helping the Kashmiri insurgents attack. Violence too often seems the only
way to bring international attention to major abuses of human rights. In
the case of Kashmir, however, a nuclear war could be the result.
Copyright eric s. margolis 1999
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