As India ferries its tanks and missiles to the border to “teach Pakistan a lesson” for “meddling in Kashmir”, it might sensibly pause to consider its error. One nuclear power can’t possibly teach another nuclear power any “lessons” through war. Nor can it rest assured that its military intervention will have “limited” objectives. Escalation is inevitable when each side is able and willing to hit back, as both India and Pakistan discovered to their mutual discomfort in the Kargil conflict.
Equally, Pakistan’s old strategic doctrine of supporting proxy wars in India’s periphery, especially through an Islamic jehad in Kashmir, so that the conventional military balance is restored to more manageable proportions, is out of sync with recent realities. In particular, the post 9/11 world sees Islamic jehad as pure terrorism that must be stamped out everywhere.
We said as much over a year ago
(TFT Editorial “Start talking”, April 7, 2000): “The greater the losses of India at the hands of Pakistan inspired jehadi forces in Indian-held Kashmir, the greater the chances that New Delhi will be provoked into launching a war against Pakistan…. In the event of such a conflict, the international community led by Washington may be expected to support India as a victim…the fact that India’s robust and independent economy will also be able to better withstand the rigours and ravages of war…than Pakistan’s dependent and crippled economy lends weight to this line of thinking”.
The dye was cast last October when the jehadis of the Jaish i Mohammad (JM) led by Maulana Masood Azhar in Pakistan killed 40 people outside the state parliament building in Srinagar, prompting the American ambassador in New Delhi to finally say that the militants in Kashmir were terrorists and not “freedom fighters”. A more aggressive response from India and the international community should therefore have been anticipated following the December 13 jehadi attack on the parliament house in New Delhi. As India has mobilized for war, Washington has stepped in to outlaw the JM and the Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) and warned Pakistan to clamp down on them.
Unfortunately, Pakistan’s argument that India should provide “evidence” against the JM and LeT before action can be taken against them doesn’t cut ice with the international community which scarcely bothered with such niceties itself when it came to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. But like their ill-fated counterparts in Afghanistan, the jehadis in Pakistan and Kashmir have proven to be their own worst propagandists, having proudly owned up to acts of militancy in Kashmir as well as publicly threatened to carry the jehad to the heart of India in Delhi. Therefore Pakistan’s condemnation of such acts as “terrorism” evokes the same contemptuous dismissal as its lack of adequate “leverage” over the Taliban before 9/11.
But this, too, hasn’t come as a surprise to us. In the same TFT editorial in April last year we warned that “the strengthening of the diverse jehadi parties and groups based in Pakistan for the purposes of the proposed liberation of Kashmir is bound to undermine Pakistan’s internal cohesion and political stability. Indeed, granting center-stage to the Kashmir struggle by the mujahideen could signal a strengthening of the forces of Talibanisation in Pakistan just as similar succour to similar forces for similar purposes in Afghanistan has had a socially destabilizing impact on Pakistan. Equally, since such groups lack a calibrated world view with regard to diplomatic gains or losses, their military successes in Kashmir would be proportionate to a decrease in the political leverage of Pakistan over them, as in Afghanistan. Indeed, in time to come, Kashmir could come to resemble Afghanistan with all that that description entails.”
If Pakistan’s past errors have caught up on it, is there any hope of a realistic adjustment in its Kashmir policy? Islamabad has certainly gone through the motions of complying with the international requirements of freezing the assets of some jehadi groups and detaining their leading lights. But this may not be sufficient to stave off further pressure if the jehadis continue to mount suicide attacks in Kashmir and India, thereby jeopardizing the political and economic “gains” of Islamabad’s revamped Afghan policy after 9/11.
However, if Pakistan desperately needs a more realistic Kashmir and India policy, it is equally true that “India remains bereft of a Kashmir policy and a Pakistan policy and its brinkmanship policy is unimaginative”, as American scholar Stephen Cohen has noted. “This policy cannot consist only of Pakistan-bashing. India must also reassess its entire strategy for dealing with the Kashmiri separatist movement and with Pakistan under its present leadership,” argues Mr Cohen. “India fantasizes that the Pakistan army will suddenly yield power to a pro-Indian civilian government that will turn Pakistan into a pliable and accommodating neighbour but this is wishful thinking. New Delhi cannot afford a truly radicalized and a fragmenting but angry and nuclear-armed Pakistan…Ignoring the root causes of the anger of some of its own citizens and the very existence of its neighbour do not seem to be steps in the right direction”.
Truer words have not been spoken. India should talk to Pakistan and the Kashmiris and resolve their disputes with it instead of fighting with them.