Asia Times: Wars don't come cheap


	January 26, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Wars don't come cheap
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - Completely unmindful of the human, financial, social and political costs of war or even long-term mobilization of forces, India's strategic analysts suggest that the million-strong army deployment along the border with Pakistan should continue for months.

The government, too, seems to agree. For the aim, they claim, is not so much to go to war, but to "bleed Pakistan white" and thus teach it a lesson.

India's military mobilization has forced Pakistan to deploy half a million troops, and this is causing a major drain on its slender resources. According to media reports, Pakistan's month-long mobilization of its armed forces has already cost it between US$400 and $600 million. Pakistan's weak economy is expected to start feeling the pinch if this continues for more than 45 days.

Defense analyst Pramit Pal Chaudhuri of Hindustan Times contends that even the lower figure of $400 million per month would mean a huge 20 percent bite out of Pakistan's declared defense budget of $2.2 billion this year. As it was, the Pakistani military had already been asked to take a hefty cut in its defense budget last year because of the country's fiscal problems. The past month's mobilization will thus have caused serious misgivings in Islamabad.

Indian officials have reportedly told Western diplomats that mobilization is as much about bleeding Pakistan as it is keeping alive the threat of war. India's mobilization carries an even larger price tag, but New Delhi has deep enough pockets to maintain this posture for months on end.

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf should also recognize that India's deeper pockets mean that it can play this game again and again. And each time Pakistan will see its balance book hemorrhage red ink. Indian diplomacy has also insured against a financial bailout from Washington or Beijing.

In Chaudhuri's assessment, the costs of mobilization would initially come from transporting troops to forward positions. After that, Pakistan would have to spend money on fuel and spares. Particularly expensive would be the need to keep a certain number of warplanes in the skies.

Islamabad, say analysts, has another problem. Because of the loss of Afghanistan's strategic depth, its military strategy is one of offensive-defense. This means its two strike corps have to capture swathes of Indian territory. This means a lot more fuel and ammunition than a simple defensive stance.

It seems that the United States, too, is resigned to the deployment continuing for a long time, even if it doesn't lead to war. While he was in India last week, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the establishment of communication between India and Pakistan had a higher priority in his scheme than withdrawal and redeployment of forces. Why did Powell take the stand he did? Because he was aware that such eyeball-to-eyeball deployments had been in existence in various parts of the world for decades without escalating into war, says K Subrahmanyam, a senior defense analyst with The Times of India.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Warsaw Pact confrontation in Central Europe during the Cold War is the most celebrated instance, he points out. There was a similar massive confrontationist mobilization between Chinese and Soviet troops during the Cold War years. Currently, on the Korean peninsula, South Korean and US forces face the North Korea forces. In fact, on the Line of Control (LoC), Indian and Pakistani forces have been in such confrontation for decades. In 30 years, there has been only one misadventure on the part of Pakistan (in the form of Kargil), which was managed without further escalation.

Debunking the fears of military brinkmanship leading to an accidental, unintended war, Subrahmanyam says, "Each year, there are exchanges of fire across the LoC, involving thousands of rounds of ammunition without escalation, and yet we hear learned comments of some frustrated gunner starting a war.

"The Indian army mobilization imposes a corresponding cost on Pakistan and communicates to them that this country would not always be on the receiving side of a proxy war, which costs Pakistan next to nothing. Though in absolute terms, the Indian costs are higher, the burden on Pakistan is higher because of its smaller economy.

"As the deployment takes place and forward areas are mined and the habitations are cleared up, the feasibility of infiltration is proportionately reduced, though not fully eliminated. The deployment keeps the international focus on Pakistan and its terrorism."

In his view, India should present its case for such long-term deployment in terms familiar to the West. Just as the "rogue" North Korean army has to be contained in the Demilitarized Zone, "rogue" Pakistan has to be on the Indian-Pakistan border and the LoC.

"No doubt the alert status preliminary to combat expectations cannot be sustained for long. That will necessarily lead to a stand down. But that is different from our forces being redeployed back to their peacetime locations. We should make use of this deployment to intensity our intelligence and surveillance and to hunt out and neutralize the terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. It is because these forward deployments have costs for Pakistan that Islamabad is asking for de-escalation. The choice before Pakistan is clear - stop further terrorism and over a period of time there will be de-escalation; or continue terrorism and pay the price for it," he concludes.

Such cold-blooded calculation, however, completely leaves out the human, social, political and the real economic cost of war, even of military mobilizations and deployment on the border. In the words of columnist C Rammanohar Reddy (The Hindu, January 5), "A war causes colossal human suffering - to the men in uniform, to the civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and to their families and friends. It also destroys homes and places of work. After the immediate suffering comes the lifelong damage to mind and body. In all this, the 'economic' costs seem trifling. But there is a huge cost, both short and long term. On that there cannot be any doubt.

"The human, social and political costs of a war are always much more widespread and of a qualitatively more serious nature. But there is a huge cost that any economy will have to bear during and after a conflict. So when Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha says a war will have no economic impact or when senior officials claim it will cost nothing because stocks of armaments and ammunition have already been accumulated, it is irresponsibility of the highest order."

Since the December 13 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, it has been claimed by advocates of war time and again that the Indian people want war. While this is largely true of affluent urban middle classes, as the editor of Outlook news magazine Vinod Mehta discovered to his horror, they do not really constitute the Indian people.

This makes senior columnist Patwant Singh sarcastic in his column in the influential Asian Age. "Now, even war - including nuclear - might be declared in the name of 'ordinary people', since the editor of a leading national daily has made the astonishing proposition that India owes her people a war, because the masses are angry and frustrated at being denied the satisfaction of seeing Pakistan taught a lesson. Understandably, he didn't spell out war's catastrophic consequences, like the danger it would pose to India's internal stability by polarizing her two major communities [Hindu and Muslim] still further. Or the extent to which it would wreck her economy with the burden of rebuilding war-damaged cities and replacing military assets lost in war. And most of all the toll it would take of our fighting men on the battlefield.

"Wars don't come cheap. As it is, India's current defense spending makes up a significant portion of the national budget. A war would not only see a steep increase in defense allocations but additional funds would obviously be diverted from India's badly strained social and infrastructural sectors. Other outlays will also rise, such as increases in the oil import bill. And so on. The invisible costs of a war will be no less debilitating and demanding: a tapering off of foreign investments, dramatic down-swings in tourist earnings, shortfalls in exports, and the demoralizing overall effect of an already demented Sensex [stock market].

"Another consequence of creating a war-like atmosphere - without actually going to war - is the degree to which the lives and livelihood of farmers in border states are disrupted by the movement of men, material and armor. Punjab's farmers, who produce over 70 percent of India's wheat, pay the highest price in terms of crops destroyed and families uprooted as army units with heavy vehicles and tanks move into their fertile border lands. Their large-scale movements destroy crops, while gun batteries, military encampments, trenches, training exercises and mine laying operations place a formidable burden on the farmers whose state has a 530 kilometer long border with Pakistan.

"Another telling example is the acreage of cultivable land which was expropriated for all time for the fence laid along the international border in 1984. How did the farmers fare in that project? According to a recent report, '20,000 acres of cultivable land in three border districts lies between the fence and the zero line. Fields accessible earlier have been rendered out of reach. The union government, after much persuasion, last year agreed to pay Rs 2,500 [$52] per acre as compensation to the affected farmers!' So much for 'ordinary people', since tillers-of-the-soil no doubt fall in this category. It goes to the everlasting credit of Sikh farmers that they have zestfully participated in every war since independence, have always volunteered to fight alongside troops, and offered their tractors, trailers and trucks to the army to augment its resources.

"There is another category of 'ordinary people' our editor and his readers might like to consider - the over 300 million Indians who live below the poverty line for whom terrorism and Pakistan are of less importance than the everyday terror of their poverty. The terror of seeing their children die because Indian has the world's highest infant mortality rate, of not enough food to eat (even though India is food surplus), or clean water to drink, of living in shanties amidst unbelievable filth, without medical cover, or education and employment opportunities. They are angry because of the low priority given to their struggle for survival, and not because Pakistan has not been taught a lesson. It is arrent nonsense to suggest this."

The India-Pakistan mobilization of forces is happening in the midst of human habitations, where people engage in daily commerce and agricultural activities. Counting the cost is not easy. Thousands of acres of agricultural land, for instance, have already been rendered useless by the mere fact of the existence of the border. Then there is damage from extensive mining. Army sources confirmed that at least 80 Indian soldiers have already been killed while laying mines, and how many more humans and animals will be killed and maimed over the years is of course not known.

The BBC's Asit Jolly reported (January 17) from the Indian-Pakistan border on how mine laying is affecting Indian villagers. India has laid extensive new minefields during its military escalation with Pakistan. The minefields are scattered in cultivated farmlands near the international border and the LoC in Kashmir. Villagers on both sides of the frontier are likely to live with the fear of the mines for many years to come. Several unaware civilians have become their victims.

Laying mines is a defensive measure. State officials told the BBC that local people have been asked to relocate to safer areas, away from the range of Pakistani artillery. The Indian army says that the area has been mined to prevent any possible incursion by Pakistani troops. Officers say that troops on the other side of the frontier have also taken similar measures. They also say that Indian troops have completed two phases of laying the mines and in the third and the final phase they will lay mines to protect strategic targets near the frontier.

The Indian army says that it will clear the area of all the mines if and when a military de-escalation takes place. But some experts said it was impossible to remove all the mines. So irrespective of whether India and Pakistan are able to make peace or go to war, villagers on both sides of the frontier are likely to live with the fear of the mines for many years to come, as is the case in Afghanistan, and many other countries, such as Laos and Cambodia.

Rammanohar Reddy tries to count the cost of war at some length. "The implications of a war, however brief it may turn out to be, on two of the world's poorest economies should be self evident. For India, first, there is the financial burden on the central government which has to meet the direct costs of the conflict. Second, there is the cost of displacement and disruption in the areas where the conflict will take place - both are likely to be considerable. And, third, there are the medium and even long- term costs the economy will experience in the form of lower economic growth. As against this the only benefit - if there can be such a thing in war - is that presumed to flow from better use of unutilized capacities in the economy.

"Precise figures in rupees cannot be placed on the costs of war. But past wars provide enough indications of the colossal cost that awaits us if we are to embark on a war with Pakistan. Our neighbor will experience much the larger difficulties, but ours are not going to be negligible. One thing is certain. It will be a short conflict and not the least because we can expect the major powers to intervene and put an end to the military adventure. Any war will go on only as long as the inventories of ammunition and spares last in both countries, for whatever the claims about self-sufficiency in defense, even India is still heavily dependent on imports to keep the war machine going.

"The immediate and direct costs to the government will be what it will have to incur on consumption of inventories of missiles and ammunition, on additional inputs such as fuel for the air force sorties, the costs of destruction of armaments and the spending on deployment. Inventories are replenished after a conflict and the additional expenditure after the Kargil war of 1999 gives an idea of how much even a contained and short war could cost at the bare minimum.

"During the year of the Kargil conflict (1999-2000) defense spending jumped by 18 percent. Some of the replenishment costs would have been incurred in the next financial year as well, and defense outlay increased further by 16 percent in 2000-01. That was a 36 percent growth over two years.

"A war also results in the destruction of civilian infrastructure, disruption of local economies and a dislocation of production and transport elsewhere in the economy. There is also the possibility of a spurt in inflation if shortages arise from dislocation. The overall outcome is a slowing down of economic growth. The economist Jean Dreze in a study of militarism, development and democracy points out that of the six countries which experienced an economic contraction at double-digit rates in 1990-97, five had gone through wars or civil wars in that time.

"The Indian experience with past wars is striking. In 1962-63 [the year of the war with China], the economy grew by only 2 percent; in 1965-66 [war with Pakistan] growth was a negative 3.7 percent and in 1971-72 [the Bangladesh war] it was as little as 0.9 per cent. All three years witnessed a deceleration and it took a couple of years before the economy recovered.

"Again, this was not always the fallout of the conflicts. In 1965, for instance, there was a severe nationwide drought. Yet, it is hard to deny that the three wars of the 1960s and 1970s must have contributed substantially to the deceleration in GDP growth. The impact of the Kargil war is more ambiguous. The economy grew at the same pace in 1999-2000 as the year before - a healthy 6.5 percent. But that was an unusual year. The Fifth Pay Commission bonanza led to a rapid growth in the service sector and that also gave a temporary boost to the industry. After that it has been downhill all the way."

Concluding his detailed analysis of the impact of war on Indian economy, Reddy says, "The short and simple truth is that a war will be bad for the Indian economy. A war cannot also come at a worse time. The economy is in a slump. Even a short conflict will push it deeper into a quagmire. All these arguments are well known. If yet they have to be elaborated, it is because powerful voices are blinded by the thirst for revenge."

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