Flashpoints - Notes on the present danger - tensions between Pakistan and India

National Review, April 17, 2000 by Humphrey Hawksley

A YEAR ago, I traveled through the Indian subcontinent, talking to dozens of people about the prospect of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. It soon became blindingly obvious that scientists, military men, and officials in both countries believed war was inevitable. Some even advocated a showdown, nuclear or otherwise, to end the low- intensity conflict that has ebbed and flowed for the past 50 years. It was blamed for keeping the development of both countries shamefully behind that of their neighbors in more affluent East Asia.

In the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, I spent an evening with a nuclear physicist. "The explosion would be comparable to Hiroshima," he said. "But India's population density is such that a million could be killed with just one strike."

The next day I was given afternoon tea by a retired Pakistani diplomat, a well-traveled and urbane man who now happens to be a senior official in the new military government. "The problem is the Islamic fanatics coming in from Iran, Yemen, Algeria," he said. "We are losing control of them, and they could do something that India would have to react to." He was in favor of Pakistan's doubling its nuclear capacity, and we ended up on the floor of his living room poring over a map to determine how the war would start. His finger trailed down the disputed border areas of Kashmir, which is claimed by both Pakistan and India and has been the focus of conflict since partition and independence in 1947.

The night before I flew on to Delhi, Imet with a senior Pakistani intelligence official who had once been used by the CIA to run mujahedin guerrillas into Afghanistan against the Soviet forces. When the Afghan conflict wound up, he turned his attention to Kashmir and helped reignite the insurgency there. "What is Pakistan doing to stop the mujahedin fighters getting involved in Kashmir?" I asked. "They are freedom fighters," he replied. "We will encourage them. We will demand they come to help us liberate Kashmir-and it is not just Kashmir." His son nodded enthusiastically: "You should go to the villages," he urged. "They are calling for a Khomeini to lead Pakistan out of its misery."

"They want an Islamic revolution, you mean?"

"Of course. If the people came onto the streets against our corrupt leaders, the army would back the people. Pakistan would be a great nation with the army in charge again."

A month later, Pakistani troops crossed the international frontier into Indian-controlled Kashmir, prompting some of the bloodiest fighting to date. Five months later, the army took power in Pakistan.

THE PERILOUS PROVINCE

Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places in the world. At this time of the year, it is alive with spring flowers, budding fruit trees, and streams gushing with freshly melted mountain snow. The air is crisp and clean against the filth of Delhi and the other South Asian mega-cities. Yet for the past ten years, it has been a place of war, and for the past two, it has been the potential flashpoint for nuclear war. President Clinton referred to it as "the most dangerous place in the world today."

The Kashmiris themselves are starkly attractive people who have become victims of a botched colonial inheritance. In that respect, they are no different from victims of ethnic and religious discord anywhere, be it Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, or Chechnya. Kashmir is predominantly Muslim, yet ruled by predominantly Hindu India. Pakistan fuels its war of separation; but polls of Kashmiris suggest that all they want is to be left alone with some form of self-rule.

Sadly, they have little say in their own future because for both India and Pakistan too much is at stake. If Pakistan compromises, it risks the wrath of Islamic-fundamentalist forces that are working their way into the impoverished villages in the name of jihad. If India compromises, it envisages the collapse of its multicultural society, particularly among the 130 million Muslims who live in India. Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that Indian democracy has now thrown off the veil of secularism and voted in the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party, to lead the government. In cliched shorthand, a Hindu state faces a Muslim state. One has a Hindu bomb, the other a Muslim one.

It is this nuclear specter that has pulled Kashmir so suddenly to the top of the pile of ethnic insurgencies, focusing minds in Washington and belatedly propelling President Clinton to Delhi and Islamabad. His visit arguably marks the most significant shift in strategic thinking since the end of the Cold War, comparable to President Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

During the Cold War, India technically remained non-aligned. But given the polarization of the era, the United States viewed it as hostile, and India forged a close relationship with the Soviet Union. Russia is still a major ally, supplying the backbone of India's military equipment. Pakistan fell into the American camp. But it was a tenuous relationship because of Pakistan's chaotic tapestry of military dictatorship, Islam, and failed Western-style democracy. Having been showered with gifts of military equipment and aid, Pakistan often found those gifts withdrawn on what it saw as the whim of American policy. When at war with India in 1965, Pakistan was left without American spare parts and new equipment. In 1990, after a close relationship during the Afghan war, the U.S. imposed sanctions because of suspicions about Pakistan's nuclear program. "It was like a series of stabs in the back," Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, a former army chief of staff, told me in Islamabad. "I regret that we ever danced to the tune of the United States."