Politics
Just a small skirmish in Kashmir?
Published 07 June 1999
John Elliotton why the India-Pakistan border is suddenly the world's most dangerous place
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.
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