SOUTH ASIA: Foreign Intervention Needed to Avert Catastrophe

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Dec 21 2001 (IPS) - A week after the terrorist attack on India’s Parliament House, which killed 13 people, India and Pakistan are at each other’s throats, threatening retaliation and counter-retaliation.

Only a combination of domestic and international pressure for sobriety and restraint could bring the two nuclear-armed neighbours back from the brink as the danger of an outbreak of war looms large in what has been described as “the most dangerous place in the world”.

There has been significant movement of troops, tanks and heavy artillery in the last few days along the border in Punjab and the so-called Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. Although Pakistan denies this, the Indian army chief confirms it, saying his troops’ repositioning was in response to the Pakistan army’s “sizable build-up”. “We are doing what we have to do.”

Several villages have been evacuated in the Indian part of Kashmir in what has been seen as preparation for retaliatory Indian strikes.

Firing across the LoC has already resulted in the reported killing of 35 Pakistani soldiers and destruction of 25 border posts, according to India’s 25th Infantry Division.

Driving the developing eye-to-eye confrontation is the Indian government’s claim that five Pakistani nationals belonging to groups supported by and based in that country conducted the Dec. 13 terrorist attack.

Prime Minister Vajpayee on Wednesday joined hawks in the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Home Minister L.K. Advani, in holding Islamabad responsible for a conspiracy to “wipe out India’s entire political leadership”.

Vajpayee, who adjourned Parliament prematurely to underline the present “critical” situation, described the terrorist strike as an attack on the “very existence and honour of the nation”, and declared “all (retaliatory) options are open”.

He chided the United States, without naming it, by saying those who were counselling restraint on India should be talking to Pakistan.

This could be interpreted as New Delhi’s way of asking the Washington to put even greater pressure on Islamabad to act against the two Pakistan- based terrorist groups it has specifically blamed — Lakshkar-e- Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) — or face the risk of an armed conflict in South Asia.

LeT is already on a U.S. terrorist watch list (though it has not been blacklisted). JeM was set up last year by one of the main leaders of a militant group which was banned in 1995 by the United States after its killing of American civilian hostages. It, too, could qualify for blacklisting.

Having raised the pitch of its response to the Dec 13 attack to a high level, the Indian government has to secure some tangible results in the form of “anti-terrorist” action from Pakistan. Or else, it must itself be seen to be “acting” diplomatically, even militarily.

From Pakistan’s point of view, too, it cannot be seen to be “giving in” to Indian “bullying”. General Pervez Musharraf would loathe to describe as “terrorists” those who his government insists are “freedom- fighters”.

Islamabad has over 12 years fished in the troubled waters of Kashmir, by funding, arming and training groups which make few distinctions between military and civilian targets and kill indiscriminately.

Already, Musharraf is under heavy domestic flak for having lost the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan, by joining the U.S.- led anti-terror alliance. He cannot afford to be seen as further “caving in” — least of all to India.

In India, at stake is not just national “honour”, but hardcore electoral politics. Vajpayee’s BJP, which leads a fractious, rickety 26-party coalition in New Delhi, will contest legislative elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab before the spring.

Uttar Pradesh, currently ruled by another BJP-led coalition, is a key state — India’s most populous — where the BJP faces a rout, according to all opinion polls.

Many BJP leaders admit that the party’s defeat in Uttar Pradesh could lead to an unravelling of the national coalition. A “tough” macho stand against Pakistan and “terrorism” gives the desperate BJP some electoral hope.

That’s one reason why the Vajpayee government has rushed to name militant groups and their accomplices — without having gathered adequate, direct, clinching evidence, as distinct from circumstantial evidence.

The two principal groups they accuse, LeT and JeM, are organisationally and ideologically distinct and mutual competitive. LeT is affiliated with the al-Qaeda network. JeM is not. They have no history of joint operations anywhere.

Thus, the Indian government won’t find it easy, without further investigation, to present convincing evidence to back its claims. This, plus U.S. pressure in favour of restraint, could potentially inhibit an Indian military strike on Pakistani territory. Mercifully, there could be other restraining factors too.

Domestically, there is widespread anger at the Parliament House attack, but many Opposition leaders have warned against military measures before exhausting political-diplomatic options.

India’s armed forces are also reported to have cautioned against attacking terrorist training camps based in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. They believe most of these are “no more than drill squares and firing ranges”. Strikes against them will have little impact. Also, many camps are located deep inside Pakistani territory.

Attacking them risks a military conflict that could last for weeks — with a frightful potential for escalation to the nuclear level. Any conventional India-Pakistan conflict carries such potential. The two exchanged 13 nuclear threats during their Kargil war in mid-1999. Missile flight-time between their cities is just three to eight minutes.

A nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan will have devastating consequences for all of South Asia, and indeed the world. A scientific projection suggests that even a first-generation nuclear bomb dropped over a city like Mumbai or Karachi could produce 800,000 to two million early deaths, besides a radioactive cloud that will spread over the whole region.

India and Pakistan are estimated to have between 70 and 150 nuclear bombs. A nuclear conflict between them would destroy the moral-political firebreak that has globally existed against the use of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked the world in 1945.

This is itself a powerful reason why the international community must intervene to defuse the present crisis. The “international community” cannot be a euphemism for the United States which has played a skewed, partisan and often ham-handed role in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States is not fully trusted as a neutral, honest broker by the public.

For international intervention to be effective, it must come from the United Nations Security Council, as well as emergency missions from all major global powers and South Asian states. No less important would be the role of the Non-Aligned Movement.

A happy combination of international and domestic restraining factors or forces could yet prevent a South Asian catastrophe. But these will not rise spontaneously. They have to be created, nurtured and developed. Can the world meet that challenge?