Asia Times: On the brink of war?


	December 19, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

On the brink of war?
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - India and Pakistan have been perpetually on the brink of war for the past 12 years since the Pakistan-supported insurgency started in Kashmir. At times, the margin of safety has narrowed down to a thin line. The past few days have been such a time.

The terrorist assault on the Indian parliament last week in which 13 people died, including five terrorists, has tested the ruling elite's patience. Both the heavyweights in the ruling coalition, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Home Minister L K Advani, have gone out on a limb, leaving little room for retreat. If they do not initiate a wide-scale military action against Pakistan now, the Hindu fundamentalist leaders who have nurtured a single-point agenda of taming Pakistan for the past half a century of their political life, will not be able to show their faces in the forthcoming all-important elections in the largest Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

"Deeds, not words," is what will count now, Advani has himself declared numerous times in the past few days. Pakistan fears India is teetering on the brink of initiating a wide-scale military action, especially after Vajpayee's declaration that India is in a situation of zero military tolerance.

New Delhi has pointed the finger at the Pakistani-based Lashkar-i-Taiba (Army of the Pure) as responsible for the attack, with Advani on Tuesday repeating the accusation in parliament. India has now given Pakistan a deadline of a few days to close down the offices of the Lashkar-i-Taiba as well as the Jaish-i-Mohammed, another militant group, and warned of "dire consequences" if it does not. Both groups are active in disputed Kashmir, where a separatist war has raged for years.

Writing in India's second largest circulated magazine, Outlook, journalist Amir Mir has quoted Pakistani military sources as saying that Indian assault units have been moved to Kashmir to reinforce its defensive holding corps. India's 21 Strike Force, comprising mainly the 33rd armored division, has advanced towards Akhnoor in the Jammu region, where the Indian forward command post is located. The division was reinforced by two armored infantry brigades and mechanized artillery units from main bases in Meerut and Mathura. In addition, the Indians are transferring armored and infantry brigades to transform 16 Corps at Nagruta in Jammu, 15 Corps at Badami Bagh, Srinagar, and 14 Corps at Nimmu and Leh from defensive to attack forces. Sources say that these movements amount in practical terms to a full Indian war alert in Kashmir.

In response, the Pakistani government of President General Pervez Musharraf, too, has put its armed forces on high alert and immediately called for a meeting of top military leaders to hold what is called "a sensitive strategic conference". One false move from either side, and the entire region could be sucked into a bloody, destructive conflict.

War-drummers have indeed been at work, again. As analyst Harish Khare of the Hindu newspaper points out, from the night of December 13 ( the day of the attack), anchorperson after anchorperson has taken it upon himself/herself to beat the war drum as loudly as possible. The ministers are harangued for being so mealy-mouthy. If the United States could do it to Afghanistan, why can't we do it to Pakistan? Follow Israel. Tell us here and now, what is the government going to do? Spell it out.

The opposition leaders are being lectured for not standing by the government, ridiculed for exercising their democratic right to dissent. There is this distinct sense of disapproval that the opposition is not for going to war with Pakistan right away. The wise young men and women with microphones can be almost heard muttering "politicians will be politicians".

Maybe the media has taken seriously Vajpayee's exhortation the other day that India ought to learn a lesson or two from the "patriotic" behavior of the American media. Vajpayee was inviting the media to emulate their American counterpart, which has unabashedly dropped all pretenses of journalistic objectivity and fairness in reporting an "America at war". A war-like mood is being sought to be created and unfortunately many of the central ministers themselves are abetting this emotionalism.

War hysteria has received a fillip from what is perceived as American support for strong military action against Pakistan. US President George W Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell are reported to have said that India had the right to self-defense. By itself this is an unexceptionable statement. But at the time and in the context it was made, it has been interpreted to mean that the US would now like India to help it finish the terrorist camps in Pakistan in the same way it has done so in Afghanistan.

The statement is indeed not very different from the green signal given to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. When Hussein informed the American ambassador that he intended to invade Kuwait, he was told, "The United States has no opinion in the matter." He had rightly interpreted this as approval to invade. Similarly, India would be justified, it is said, in interpreting the present US stance as a green signal. But perhaps India should also recall what happened to Saddam Hussein and his country later.

In a typical comment in the India media, strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney, for instance, says, "The present international setting could not be more propitious for Indian counteraction. Nothing will harm India more than inaction, given that such a favorable opportunity may not come again. While action entails costs [which any self-respecting nation should be able to bear to defeat aggression], let us not forget that India's costs of inaction are higher - and mounting - with fidayeen [suicide] attacks getting worse."

Trying to convince the government that the time for military action has come, most commentators, largely retired military chiefs of various wings, have been saying what is summed up by Chellaney in the following paragraphs: "Now a different kind of fear is being sought to be instilled to paralyze politicians into inaction. This is the fear of the unknown. What if Pakistan hits back and escalates the conflict to a full-fledged war? What if Armageddon results from Pakistan's nuclear use?

"Logic and objectivity are needed. First, India will be not initiating, but responding to aggression by the other side. Just because India has stoically suffered cross-border terrorism for years is no reason for it to put up with the first-ever attack on its parliament. Second, a lack of response will damage India's interests more than a measured response because it will send the message that the terrorists and their backers can get away with the most audacious attack. Third, only the uninformed or those seeking to disinform will argue that India lacks the capability to inflict proportionate or calculated pain on Pakistan or to manage and defeat escalation at any level. Any escalation of hostilities to a higher level by Pakistan will mean an escalation in the punishment wreaked on it.

"Fourth, Pakistan's geography and narrow strategic waistline render its nuclear weapons useless for anything other than blackmail. The Pakistani military knows it, and the Pentagon war games have underlined it, that a nuclear first strike by Pakistan would mean national suicide. Fifth, by any measure, India is not the weaker state. So there is no reason for it to behave as the more vulnerable, powerless state that can be terrorized by bully Pakistan. The Pakistani military generals flaunt their bravado off the battlefield and cravenly prefer covert rather than overt aggression. The Pakistani military's record speaks volumes. Despite repeatedly initiating aggression, it has not won a single war or accomplished a single clandestine operation."

India, in this oft-repeated view, is paying for its soft response to terror so far. In his analysis of the attack, Chellaney wrote in the Hindustan Times, "The terrorist assault on the symbol of Indian democracy at a time when jihadis [Islamic fundamentalists] are on the run elsewhere in the world reflects the widely perceived softness of the Indian state and the costs it is paying for its compromises with the forces of terrorism. India's talk-tough-but-act-meek approach has emboldened transnational terrorists, who pick their targets carefully to get maximum propaganda value and show that they can strike anywhere, anytime. Earlier, they struck at the Red Fort, which symbolizes Indian authority, as India has been ruled since the 17th Century by those who occupy it."

Thus he concludes, "Now that Pakistan-sponsored groups have taken their terror campaign to the heart of Indian democracy, Vajpayee has to respond to what clearly is an act of war." Vajpayee is also reminded that he had on October 1 drawn a clear line in the sand: India's restraint will go if there was another major attack by such a surrogate group. In fact, Vajpayee had told President Bush in a letter that "Pakistan must understand that there is a limit to the patience of the people of India."

Fortunately, there are cooler heads and calmer brains too. Vinod Mehta, the editor of Outlook magazine, comments, "Pakistan is in a state of utter and near-terminal confusion as it confronts and challenges self-created demons. Does it suit its present rulers to open up a new front by taking on New Delhi in New Delhi? Could this be the handiwork of Pakistan-based jihadi groups currently out of Pakistan control and perhaps keen to embarrass the Musharraf regime? Could Mr bin Laden and his lieutenant Mullah Omar have thought up this ingenious [the white car, the sirens, the computer lessons, the fake ID cards] and audacious outrage?

"I am not pleading for a clean chit to the general. I am pleading for consideration and deliberation before we choose to retaliate. Certainly, this is the time to press George W Bush. He was unusually energetic and swift when his 'beacon of freedom' was attacked. Now that another equally important beacon has been attacked, India should remind him to urgently fulfill promises made to this country in respect to terrorism. India must respond to December 13. The response, however, should not be knee-jerk, and it should not be determined by domestic pressure to 'do something' quickly, but by its effectiveness and by national interest. We are too big and too mature a nation to indulge in spectacular but counter-productive acts of adventurism. Now more than ever, India needs cool heads and calm brains."

But full-scale war is not the only option being touted. The government news agency Press Trust of India has released news story summarizing what B Raman, a top security expert, says in a new book, "Much as it may deny, Pakistan has allowed anti-India terrorists to set up bases in its country and the only way for India is to wage a counter proxy war that hurts it [Pakistan] politically, economically, paramilitarily and militarily till it abandons its sponsorship."

Raman, a retired senior officer from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), points out that "ideas such as the right of hot pursuit, raids on training camps across the Line of Control [LoC] will not work. The question of raids on training camps across LoC does not arise because the camps are located on either side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and not in PoK [Pakistan Occupied Kashmir] or NA [Northern Areas]," writes Raman in A Terrorist State As A Frontline Ally.

"Hot pursuit can work against terrorists, insurgents indulging in hit-and-run raids from rear bases across the border. There cannot be hot pursuit of terrorists operating from shelters inside our territory and against suicide bombers," he points. In the book, written after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Raman writes that the policy of dealing with conventional terrorism policy based on the principle of passive defense has not paid India in good stead.

It will not so in the future "unless and until the Pakistani army is made to realize that a proxy war is a game which two people can play and that India can play it more effectively and conclusively than Pakistan", he asserts. Raman's idea of a counter proxy war is that of a carefully-planned policy that has to have an overt and a covert component. The overt component, according to him, relates to extending political, moral and diplomatic support to the alienated sections of PoK and NA in their agitations and struggles against the government of Pakistan.

Another dimension of the overt methodology, Raman points out, is to highlight the "atrocities" of Islamabad in these areas that have gone unnoticed in the international arena so far. "The world, for instance, does not know that the PoK assembly does not have any financial powers, that the budgets are prepared in Islamabad and that the chief secretary and other senior officials of the NA are either Punjabis or Pakhtoons, that the people of NA have never participated in elections to Pakistan's National Assembly and are governed even today as the frontier tribals of British India were before independence," he writes.

The covert part of the operation has to be well thought out, says the author, warning that it should not be PoK or NA "because of the presence of a strong Punjabi-Pakhtoon component in the local population".

He says that, "The epicenter of the covert component of any counter proxy war policy has to be in areas where we will have the advantages of ground conditions and local support. We have to choose the terrain, which will hurt Pakistan and hurt it badly," he emphasizes. "We have till now treated our intelligence agencies essentially as intelligence collection, analysis and assessment agencies and have not given them an adequate covert action/counter proxy war capability. This capability is an urgent need," says Raman.

With Home Minister Advani sanctifying his rhetoric by reiterating it in the parliament on Tuesday, the next few days may prove to be a turning point in South Asian history.

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