Posted on 05/24/2002 11:42:10 AM PDT by maquiladora
With war clouds looming low in South Asia and all sides painting themselves into the proverbial corner, nobody faces a more difficult choice than Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf is caught between neighbour India's threats to go to war over Islamabad's continued support for Kashmiri militant separatists and his own public, which strongly supports the Kashmiri Muslim separatist cause. Meanwhile, the USA, which both sides hope will help them out of the current crisis, is quickly losing patience with Musharraf for not containing the cross-border violence and increasing pressure on the militants.
However, to do so would be a difficult and dangerous task for the president, whose political support at home is dropping and who faces challenges from religious groups over previous moves to end support for the Taliban and his work to bring Islamic fundamentalists in the country under control.
It will be no easy task for Musharraf to rein in the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant groups, which enjoy strong support among the general public and lesser, but still important, backing from the army and intelligence services. The most recent crisis was precipitated on 14 May when Kashmiri militants attacked an Indian Army camp, killing 32 people, mostly women and children. With tensions already high and over a million troops of the nuclear-armed neighbours on the border, the situation deteriorated further following days of heavy artillery shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
New Delhi increased its war preparations, sending five naval ships into the western Arabian Sea to threaten Pakistan's primary port of Karachi. Pakistan responded by saying that, if needed, it would recall a brigade serving with the UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone and shift troops supporting the USA's Operation 'Enduring Freedom' (OEF) on the Afghan border and send them to the eastern border with India.
To make matters worse, Kashmiri moderate political leader Abdul Ghani Lone, who supported dialogue rather than a military solution to the Kashmir problem, was assassinated by unidentified gunmen - an act for which both sides blamed the other. US officials called Lone's death "a huge negative" and said it was probably perpetrated by Kashmiri militants with Pakistan's backing. Mirroring a growing clamour for war at home, Indian officials started to turn up the pressure, with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee saying New Delhi would wage a "decisive battle" against terrorism. Indian officials were busy telling journalists they intended to launch military strikes across the LoC, sooner rather than later, if Pakistan did not take strong and immediate steps to end its training and equipping of the Kashmiri fighters.
US officials believe those strikes would initially be against training camps across into Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, but also fear that once a war begins, it would be difficult to contain. In a letter to US President George Bush, Vajpayee said India had completed all necessary preparations for a military strike and urged Bush to convince Pakistan to end its support for the Kashmiri fighters before it was too late. While US officials are sympathetic to India's complaints - they noted, for example, that training and equipping of the Kashmiri fighters on Pakistani territory is continuing - they are also fully aware of the difficult steps Musharraf has already made. Moreover, they said, Pakistan's continued support of OEF is vital, a point not lost on the Pakistani side.
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Always this excuse of Democracy vs. reigning in terrorists. As if reigning terrorists and unpopularity forbade a leader from doing the right thing. It's pathetic.
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