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Kashmir: The need to square the
circle
By Peter Chalk and Chris Fair
Since the September 11 attacks on the United
States, Pakistan has figured prominently in Washington's
global war on terrorism. Responding to a series of
threats and inducements, President General Pervez
Musharraf terminated support for the fundamentalist
Taliban regime it had helped create and foster in Kabul,
allowed Pakistani territory and airspace to be used for
Operation Enduring Freedom, and provided important
intelligence data to coalition forces targeting
terrorist training camps on Afghan soil.
Pakistan is expected to play a continuing role
in Bush's plans to tackle remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda
elements, both on account of its geostrategic position
in Southwest Asia and the fact that the best information
on these entities currently lies with Islamabad's own
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.
In his recent trip to the United States
(September 2002), Musharraf reiterated his commitment to
the war on terrorism and preparedness to cooperate with
the international community in rooting out and
destroying extremist Islamist elements. One area,
however, where the president remained noticeably quiet -
and where the US has been conspicuously reticent in
terms of pressuring his regime - is the issue of jihadi
terrorism connected to the disputed Indian-administered
province of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).
In two
widely hailed speeches delivered on January 12 and May
27 this year, Musharraf variously pledged that all
militant infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC)
would end and that there would be no tolerance of
organizations that openly espouse and propagate
extremist sentiments. In addition, he announced the
banning of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the Jaish-e-Mohammad
(JeM) and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) - the three
jihadi outfits at the forefront of terrorist activity in
J&K - and moved to arrest several hundred militants
scattered across the country.
Despite these
commitments, infiltration across the LoC is presently
close to levels seen this time last year; the leaders of
both the LeT and the JeM remain essentially free to
conduct their activities in an unhindered fashion in
Pakistan; asset seizures of proscribed groups have so
far netted no more than a few hundred dollars in most
cases; and the bulk of the militants arrested during the
first six months of 2002 have since been released.
Violence levels in J&K also continue to
rise, with both the LeT and the JeM moving to disrupt
the state elections in September-October that ended this
week by systematically targeting candidates (two
candidates - Sheikh Abdul Rahman from the Handwara
constituency of northern Kupwara district and Law
Minister and National Conference (NC) candidate from
Lolab constituency Mushtaq Ahmed Lone have been killed
thus far), political workers (84 had already been killed
by October 4]) and party rallies. State government
officials have also been attacked, with a particularly
serious incident occurring on September 11 when the
J&K Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Mustaq
Ahmed Lone, was assassinated.
In short,
extremist Islamist activity and terrorism in J&K is
as prominent as ever - the inspirational and
organizational source of which clearly remains rooted in
Pakistan.
To date, the United States has chosen
not to forcibly pressure Islamabad on demonstrably
curbing militancy connected to the Kashmir dispute.
Although officials in Washington note that Musharraf is
being privately encouraged to abandon his strategy, they
concede that there has been no move to strongly demarche
him over the issue since September 2001, when the global
war on terrorism was first instituted. Indeed, American
strategy in the region increasingly appears to be
following a two-tier tract, giving precedence to
operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, while
conspicuously delaying firm action to permanently
neutralize Kashmiri militant activity in and from
Pakistan. Given president George W Bush's post-September
11 affirmation that "'you are either with us or against
us" in the war on terrorism, and that there will be no
tolerance for those that willingly eschew the effort
against international extremism, Washington's reticence
is deserving of some explanation.
Undoubtedly
the key consideration underlying US policy is the belief
that Kashmir is simply not an issue that Musharraf can
move decisively on. Not only does the liberation of the
state from "repressive" Indian rule constitute the
essential raison d'etre for the army (not to mention the
crucial justification for the inordinately large
percentage of the country's GDP that the military
consumes), it is also something that many Pakistanis
have been brought up to believe constitutes the "marrow"
of national patriotism. Add to this the existence of
several thousand armed jihadis who could just as easily
direct their energies against Islamabad as New Delhi,
and an understanding of Washington's perspective begins
to emerge: pushing Musharraf too forcibly on Kashmir
risks fatally undermining a key ally in the war on
terrorism and possibly setting up a chain of events that
leads to the institution of a more divided, if not
extreme regime in Pakistan.
How viable and wise,
however, is the US position? Ignoring the Kashmir
dispute certainly risks undercutting Washington's
relations with India - the key hegemonic power on the
sub-continent and a state that already views Bush's war
on terrorism as one specifically geared toward narrow
American strategic and national interests. As several
intelligence analysts remarked to these two authors,
"Why does the US continually ask us about Pakistan's
involvement with terrorism and yet never do anything
about it?"
Arguably of more importance is the
danger of allowing the emergence of a new "hotbed" of
pan-Islamic extremism for the sake of short term
expediencies. It should be remembered that the groups at
the apex of the conflict in Kashmir - the LeT and the
JeM - have always articulated their objectives in a
wider transnational context, with the rhetorical enemy
defined as any state that is perceived to be at odds
with their own idiosyncratic Wahhabist-based ideological
interpretation of the world. More to the point, both of
these organizations are known to have forged tactical
and personal linkages with al-Qaeda and may now be
moving to facilitate the logistical relocation of Osama
bin Laden's forces, post-Taliban. Securing a stable,
moderate and functional state in Pakistan will be key
not only to stabilizing Afghanistan, India and the
general Southwest Asian region but, more intrinsically,
to mitigating the export of the type of unrestrained
extremism that culminated in the September 11 tragedy.
There are also ethical reasons as to why the
United States should make every effort to rehabilitate
and "de-jihadize" Pakistan. It is often forgotten that
many of the country's current internal security problems
and seeming dependence on Islamist manpower stem from
America's own policy of exhorting and propagating the
international anti-Soviet mujahideen campaign in
Afghanistan. When Washington departed from the region in
1989, it left a vast underground network for the
trafficking of drugs and arms - which have created huge
law and order problems for successive governments in
Islamabad - as well as an extremely sophisticated
militant training infrastructure that has been
effectively mobilized for the proxy war in Kashmir.
Rehabilitating Pakistan is, thus, not only a
question of national security, it is also morally
incumbent given the US's close association with
fostering instability in this part of Asia. Perhaps the
most viable ally the Bush administration has in
furthering this effort is the Pakistani population
itself, which overwhelmingly supports a return to the
moderate path envisioned by the republic's founder,
Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
It is essential that the US
take these considerations into account in the current
formulation of its policy toward Musharraf. Not doing so
is to risk the emergence of a terrorist operational
environment in Pakistan's remote northern regions that
could prove every bit as threatening as the Afghan
conduit that preceded it.
Peter Chalk,
senior political analyst, Rand Corporation and Chris
Fair, associate political scientist, Rand
Corporation
Published with permission from
the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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