India and Pakistan stand once again on the brink of war.The moment is a precarious one and the stakes are high, not just for the regionbut potentially for the world. The United States has burgeoning interests in thesubcontinent since the war in Afghanistan, and renewed Indo-Pakistani conflictcould divert needed resources from the effort to stamp out terrorism. Incautiousstatements from both Indian and Pakistani leaders have also raised fears that anuclear exchange may be in the offing. The consequences would be far-reaching anddevastating. Nonetheless, only three years after their last confrontationprompted frantic U.S. diplomatic overtures and direct personal intervention byPresident Bill Clinton, these two nuclear-armed adversaries have, since thebeginning of this year, been staring each other down across their shared border.
The trigger for the current crisis was an incident last December, whenoperatives of two Pakistan-based insurgent groups attacked the Indian parliament.Security guards managed to keep the terrorists away from legislators, but in theshootout that followed, six Indians were killed along with the five attackers.Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, condemned the attack, but hisprincipal military spokesman suggested that India had assaulted its ownparliament in an effort to implicate Pakistan. Under intense pressure from Indiaand the United States, Musharraf banned the two groups responsible for theattacks and promised to squelch the activities of other terrorists operating frominside Pakistan. He refused, however, to hand over 20 individuals whom the Indiangovernment accuses of involvement in a range of terrorist activities on Indiansoil. In the intervening months, it turns out, Musharraf has also failed to endhis country's support for terrorism in Kashmir, even while he has supported theU.S. effort to root out al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters along his western borderwith Afghanistan.
Indeed, although he initially cracked down on several of Pakistan's militantIslamic organizations, Musharraf looked the other way when the groups' membersresumed activities under new names. In response, India has adopted a strategy ofcoercive diplomacy, massing close to half a million troops along theIndia-Pakistan border and the so-called Line of Control that divides the disputedstate of Jammu and Kashmir. India's leaders have made clear that for New Delhi toreverse the military buildup, the infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan intoIndia must end.
Indo-Pakistani relations have a long and troubled history, of which thecurrent crisis is merely the latest chapter. Since both independent statesemerged from the detritus of the British empire in 1947, they have fought fourwars (1947-48, 1965, 1971, and 1999). Their most intractable conflict is the oneover Kashmir, the mostly Muslim state whose Hindu ruler chose to join his landsto India in 1947. Pakistan contested that arrangement and invaded the territory,touching off the first Indo-Pakistani war. By the end, Pakistan controlled aboutone-third of Kashmir. The status of the state has remained unresolved ever since.
The Indo-Pakistani conflict lay mostly dormant for several decades. During the1970s and 1980s, the Indian government sought to win the hearts and minds of theKashmiris by investing in education, mass media, and social welfare. Yet at thesame time, the authorities engaged in considerable political chicanery, as theyattempted to prevent a secessionist elite from taking power through the electoralprocess. By 1989, these policies, combined with fundamental social changes withinIndian-controlled Kashmir, had helped spark an ethno-religious insurgency in thefabled Kashmir Valley.
Pakistan's political and military leadership saw a vital opportunity inKashmir's brimming reservoir of discontent with Indian misrule. Over the nextseveral years, Pakistan's military intelligence organization, the Inter-ServicesIntelligence Agency, provided Kashmiri rebels with military training, logisticalsupport, and physical sanctuaries. The Pakistani authorities also brought indisaffected Afghans, radical Arabs, and Pakistani jihadis to support and extendthe uprising. By the mid-1990s, a spontaneous and largely disorganized uprisinghad been transformed into a well-orchestrated insurgency. The principal localinsurgent organization, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), found itselfcaught in a vicious vise: It faced relentless military pressure from the Indiansecurity forces at the same time as it suffered routine depredations at the handsof Pakistan-sponsored militant Islamic organizations. By the mid-1990s, the JKLFhad eschewed violence as a political strategy for fear of being destroyed on thebattlefield.
As Pakistan-sponsored, nonindigenous groups came to dominate the insurgency,Kashmiri support for it subsided. That moment was not lost on New Delhi, whichconducted a successful election for the state's legislature in 1996. Anunprecedented number of Kashmiris turned out to vote, and foreign and domesticobservers concluded that the election was mostly free of fraud. Many Kashmirisgreeted the emergence of a popularly elected government with considerableoptimism: After more than half a decade of political turmoil and civil violence,perhaps some modicum of law and order might soon return to their disputed state.Indeed, by the late 1990s, the insurgency was clearly fading.
But when both India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in May 1998, Kashmirwould feel the aftershocks. The hawkish Indian home minister, L. K. Advani,cavalierly announced that Pakistan's ability to foment mischief in Kashmir wasnow effectively constrained. That statement, designed to instill fear in theminds of risk-prone Pakistani decision makers, revealed Advani's myopicunderstanding of the strategic significance -- as well as the militarylimitations -- of nuclear weapons. For although nuclear weapons could dramaticallyreduce the likelihood of full-scale war, they could also create permissiveconditions for more low-level conflict -- a situation that political sciencescholars refer to as the "stability-instability paradox."
Between May and June of 1999, the subcontinent saw the first test of thisparadox. During the preceding winter, units of Pakistan's Northern Light Infantryhad penetrated Indian territory in a successful surprise attack at three pointsalong the Line of Control. The waning of Kashmir's insurgency had led India'smilitary circles to grow complacent and vulnerable. On the Pakistani side,tensions between the civilian regime of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and themilitary had made reviving the flagging insurgency politically attractive.Moreover, Pakistani decision makers surmised that given the nuclear risks, theirIndian counterparts would be loath to punish Pakistan by expanding the scope ofthe conflict. They were right: Out of fear of nuclear escalation, India kept theconflict confined to the areas of incursion. Ultimately, significant Indian militarypressure, combined with forceful U.S. intercession, persuaded Sharif to withdrawhis troops in late July 1999.
That debacle proved fatal for Sharif. Three months later, Musharraf, the chiefof army staff and the architect of the incursion, seized power in a bloodlesscoup. A renewed burst of Pakistani support for the Islamic militants soonfollowed. Terrorist attacks increasingly expanded outside the Kashmir Valley toneighboring regions of India, as the December attack on the parliament buildingin New Delhi so brazenly demonstrated.
Last month, India's frustrations with Musharraf's regime reached their apexafter a May 14 terrorist attack killed 34 Indians, including a number of wivesand children of military personnel in the Kashmiri city of Jammu. Within days,militants also killed Abdul Ghani Lone, a 70-year-old moderate Kashmiriseparatist leader who had indicated a willingness to begin talks with New Delhi.Musharraf publicly condemned these attacks while also insinuating that bothepisodes were the handiwork of al-Qaeda forces. But despite the strong urging ofthe United States and other Western powers, the Pakistani military leadership hasevinced little willingness to curb the terror emanating from its lands. India'sprime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has consequently assumed a more bellicoseposture.
Pakistan's persistent dissembling on the question of military support toterrorists, and India's growing impatience and belligerence, have stoked fears ofa conventional war between these two long-standing foes. Concern that any warbetween India and Pakistan could escalate to the nuclear level has prompted callsfor restraint from all corners of the world. Rightly so: A nuclear war in SouthAsia would produce horrific human loss and a humanitarian crisis of unprecedentedmagnitude. It would also breach the unspoken post-Nagasaki taboo on the use ofnuclear weapons. The rupture of this fire wall would make the world a far, farmore dangerous place.
War between India and Pakistan would also hobble the U.S.-led effort toeviscerate the remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, many of whom have takenrefuge in the poorly administered, trackless reaches of Pakistan's NorthwestFrontier Province. As Pakistan's army gets increasingly drawn into a conflict withIndia, its ability to cooperate with the United States will inevitably dissipate.Meanwhile, the United States may find itself in the singularly unenviable positionof having to choose between an uncertain but necessary ally, Pakistan, and along-term potential strategic partner and democracy, India.
The most immediate interest of the United States, clearly, is to forestall andideally prevent another war between India and Pakistan. In all likelihood, U.S.pressure on both capitals will lead the two states to step away from the brink.Then the United States must do two things: It must forcefully persuade Pakistanto eschew support for the Islamic militants in Kashmir and simultaneouslyconvince India that a lasting peace can emerge only if the genuine grievances ofthe Muslim population in the Kashmir Valley are adequately addressed. Adoptingthese two negotiating principles will be neither easy nor painless. But for Indiaand Pakistan, there is no other path away from the precipice.
