India - Pakistan - Dicing with Armageddon

The latest terrorist outrage in Kashmir has pushed India and Pakistan a little closer to the brink. Could this spark the first war between nuclear powers?

IT IS just this type of barbarism that the international war on terrorism is determined to stop.” So said Christina Rocca, the top American diplomat for South Asia, of the killing on May 14th of 34 people, most of them soldiers’ wives and children, who were travelling on a bus in Kaluchak in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is also the sort of attack that India has given warning would provoke retaliation against Pakistan, which could spark the first war between nuclear powers.

Mrs Rocca was already shuttling between the Indian and Pakistani capitals to head off such a war. India’s army has been mobilised along its border with Pakistan since December, after a terrorist attack on its parliament. The military threat, coupled with international pressure on Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, was supposed to curtail attacks on India originating from Pakistan. Mrs Rocca’s mission may be one of the last chances for this “coercive diplomacy” to work.

It had seemed to be working, for a while. General Musharraf banned several violent Islamist outfits, including groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, arrested their leaders and froze their accounts. In January he pledged to crack down on extremism and to prevent terrorists from using Pakistan as a staging post for attacks on India. The Indians never believed him and now, they say, evidence of his perfidy is in. General Musharraf has released three out of every four people he arrested. Terrorist camps have been re-established in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, with some 3,000 inmates, say Indian officials: their infiltration into Indian Kashmir has not slowed down since last year, and is sure to speed up once snow melts from the mountain passes. India claims to have learned that the head of Pakistan’s military Inter Services Intelligence agency recently told army commanders that militancy was the only weapon left to Pakistan in dealing with India. And now terrorists have staged the bloodiest attack since Kashmir’s parliament was bombed in October.

There are two ways to avoid retaliation: General Musharraf could convince India that he is serious about reining in the terrorists, or India could continue to answer terrorism with what will come to look like empty threats. General Musharraf may lack either the power or the inclination to do the first; the humiliation of the second is becoming unbearable to India. Its government, looking feeble after mishandling massacres of hundreds of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat, is under increasing pressure to act. The prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, said that India “will have to counter” the massacre.

Pakistan has long embraced the cause of freeing Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, from Indian rule while claiming (unbelievably) that it gives only diplomatic and moral support to anti-Indian militants. September 11th and its aftermath twisted that alliance in ways not fully understood. General Musharraf made enemies among jihadi groups by backing the American war against terrorism. He appointed a new chief of the ISI intelligence agency, the main patron of anti-Indian groups, in part to be able to control them. Pakistani analysts reckon attacks such as this week’s, possibly assisted by rogue ISI operatives, are directed as much at General Musharraf’s rule in Pakistan as they are at India’s rule in Kashmir.

Yet the general also has reasons not to crack down too hard. One is to avoid making terrorists angrier than they already are. Another is that India plans to hold “free and fair” elections in Kashmir by the autumn and is trying to entice moderate separatists to participate. If turnout is high and the elected government looks popular, India will no doubt declare that Kashmiris have accepted their lot. Earlier this month General Musharraf described attacks on Indian forces (but not on civilians) as part of a “legitimate freedom struggle,” a definition that enrages India.

He fires from behind multiple shields. Would India attack the Americans’ chief ally in the war against al-Qaeda? Pakistan has already complained that India’s deployment is diverting its army from that fight. If war starts, many Pakistanis think the United States will step in to stop it. Would India really risk taking on a nuclear-armed adversary? Pakistan has repeatedly stated its willingness to go nuclear in response to a conventional attack. General Musharraf must have drawn comfort from India’s defence minister, George Fernandes, who told The New York Times this week that India would not attack Pakistan until after the Kashmir elections even if severely provoked.

But the price of Indian restraint rises with each outrage; the cost of retribution, meanwhile, is starting to look acceptable. Indian strategic thinkers have recently argued that India can wage a “limited war” against Pakistan without risking a nuclear exchange. This, they say, is because the adversaries understand each other: India would not push Pakistan so hard that it had to resort to nuclear weapons, and vice-versa. Besides, if Pakistan did deploy its nuclear missiles, says K. Subrahmanyam, a leading strategist, the United States “would destroy them.” All this sounds to many like dangerously wishful thinking.

If it gives up on diplomacy, India’s likeliest course would be to mount “surgical” raids on terrorist camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, which is not formally part of Pakistan. “We know where the camps are,” says an informed source. But the risk of escalation is always present. V. R. Raghavan, a former director-general of Indian military operations, argued in a recent paper that any conflict between India and Pakistan could easily spiral out of control. India’s aggressive plans for fighting conventional wars are now matched against Pakistan’s aggressive doctrine for nuclear ones. An “escalation from a conventional to a nuclear war, within one or two days of the outbreak of the war, is not implausible,” General Raghavan writes.

Indian leaders are aware of such risks, and pray that Mrs Rocca’s mission will provide some escape. They are not hopeful. After years of terrorism, taking a gamble with Armageddon is starting to look to some like the lesser evil.

I fear that the Four Horseman are already loose upon the World, when I saw the armed Terrorists that invaded, the constant attacks on Israel and basically the Middle East in chaos I felt that we were already locked on a road to destruction. I don't know that Armageddon is going to be the result, but WW III is not only a possibility but is actually a probability.

I'll wager that historians will look upon the assassination of AhmadShahMassoud of the NorthernAlliance on Sept 9, 2001 as the start of the global war.

The best thing that could happen would be for us to pull out and let them have at it with each other and then Back the one who comes out of the Dust afterwards, if their is any Part of the Middle East Left.

In Terms, for all to understand as it would be is easier to deal with the World if we wouldn't have support <>1.9 Billion two legged A*s Backward Animals anymore...

Pakistan can't get their nuclear "Beeghmuthah Matahr" missile to work so 1,000 volunteers will carry it to India and detonate it. They warned India that they have enough volunteers for at least 2 missiles.

All armies are in place on the border. It's just a matter of time. Historically they simply start shooting one day and it quickly goes to full intensity. After about 3 weeks they are out of gas and shells. Whoever wants to use nukes would probably use them sooner rather than later since the nukes themselves will be targets -- use them or lose them.

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I'll guarantee you this much: If and when India starts fighting back the press coverage and howls of protest will be enormous. The terrorism that leads to a military response seems to be forgotten and justified by too many. The Pakis are asking for it, but their Muslim allies and the media are going to scream bloody murder when they get what they deserve.

The buildup on the border began last winter and wouldn't have been ready for a full offensive until April at the earliest. It's probably ready now.

Just a nit; you mean WWI. I think that's already happened. The assasination of AhmedShahMassood, NorthernAlliance Leader on September 9, 2001 - buried in the pages of newspapers.

I hope both that both packistan and india are smarter than this. I hope that all their sabre rattling is just to placate nationalistic attitudes back home.

Here's a way to tell if they realize the danger of a nuclear war: If there is a border incursion, the side gaining territory stops advancing due to some made-up excuse.

Let's hope india and pakistan are two civilized countries with a gift (or some perverse need) for brinksmanship.

Please; constant provocations by Pakistan and attacks on women and children need to be responded to. Doing nothing is an invitation to Pakistan to attack more. The Pakistanis are laughing at the Indians.

India has to hit and hit hard; destroy the camps. It is time for India to call Pakistan's bluff about nuclear war. Musharrafat's word means less than a pile of pig dung.

The same guys attacking Indians today were in Afghanistan yesterday and will be back on the western border taking aim at Americans tomorrow.

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