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India-Pakistan
Standoff: Political Tension Eases But Troops Stand Eyeball-To-Eyeball
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| Can war be avoided? |
By Zafarul-Islam Khan
NEW DELHI, Jan. 2 (IslamOnline
& News Agencies) - By Tuesday evening, it became clear in New Delhi that
political tension between India and Pakistan is decreasing.
However, the military
build-up on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and the
international borders continued unabated amid reports of the continued flight of
villagers from border areas on both sides of the LoC due to continuous shelling.
Close to 65,000 villagers in
Indian-controlled Kashmir alone have reportedly fled their homes to safer areas
where they are lodged in temporary camps as well as in school and college
buildings.
On Tuesday, 13 persons,
including 11 Pakistani soldiers, were reportedly killed in border shelling in
the Kashmir region where the two armies stand eyeball-to-eyeball and any small
miscalculation could lead to a full-scale war.
Military preparations and
fortifications continue on both sides. According to the latest information, even
nuclear devices have been moved close to rocket launchers. It is understood that
for the time being, India will keep up with the diplomatic and political
pressure on Islamabad with new demands.
The latest in this series is
that the Pakistani army must ensure that there is no infiltration to
Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side.
On Tuesday, New Delhi
presented a list of 20 most wanted persons to Pakistan with a request to
extradite them to India.
The list, earlier said
contain 30 names, includes Jaish-e Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e Toiba (LeT)
leaders, the five hijackers of the Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar, some
Kashmiri militant leaders as well as some Indian criminals who have fled to
Pakistan and have allegedly taken up residence in Karachi.
Aziz Ahmed Khan, Pakistani
foreign ministry spokesperson, said Pakistan had received the list but that
action could not be taken against them without evidence, which had not been
supplied, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
India has dropped the ISI
(the military intelligence in Pakistan) from this list. Moreover, Foreign
Minister, Jaswant Singh, now says that there is no “time-table” for Pakistan
to take the required steps to root out “terrorism.”
He added that we do not want
to classify Pakistan as a “terrorist state” but want it to realize the
seriousness of the situation.
During the last two days both
the government and ruling party spokesmen have toned down their two-week-long
familiar rhetoric which bordered on war-mongering and brinkmanship.
Jaswant Singh, who had termed
only three days earlier the arrest of Azhar Masood, leader of JeM, as a
“mockery”, has now changed tactics and has termed a similar action by
Pakistan against LeT patron and former chief, Hafiz Saeed, as “encouraging.”
Earlier, he had been
categorical that no Indian leader will meet his Pakistani counterpart unless
India's basic demands are met. Now he does not “rule out” meeting his
Pakistani counterpart during the SAARC summit in Kathmandu later this week.
Indian Prime Minister, Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, also took a softer line in his New Year Day article carried by
major Indian newspapers in which he said that India will be willing to “walk
more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through
dialogue, any issues, including the contentious issue of Jammu and Kashmir.”
He also betrayed a new
flexibility in his government's approach: “In our search for a lasting
solution to the Kashmir problem, both in its external and internal dimensions,
we shall not transverse solely on the beaten track of the past.”
Political analysts say that
there was another encouraging sign: the prime minister's description of the
recent measures against Pakistan as “certain temporary measures” that might
cause “hardship” to the people.
But he added that the
country's fight against terrorism will be “necessarily a long one.”
Vajpayee’s approach to
solving the Kashmir problem is particularly encouraging as the current conflict
has only demonstrated once again that it remains the main cause of tension
between the two powers of the subcontinent, and there will be no peace in the
region without solving this contentious issue in a way acceptable to both India
and Pakistan.
Ruling party (BJP) chief,
Jana Krishnamurthy, has also mellowed his stance. He said in a press meet on
Monday, December 31 that there is “no possibility of war with Pakistan.”
He had earlier threatened to
wipe out Pakistan from the face of the earth if it used nuclear weapons against
India, and only a week ago, BJP members of parliament had unanimously asked
their own government to go to war against Pakistan to teach it a lesson.
Pramod Mahajan, Minister of
Parliamentary Affairs, said that Vajpayee met opposition leaders last Friday,
adding that these leaders have wholeheartedly supported the government's policy.
However, a careful reading of
later statements of some of these leaders suggests that the opposite is correct:
opposition leaders have asked the government to exhaust all avenues before
thinking of the unthinkable.
Late Tuesday, Vajpayee met
former prime ministers of India to discuss the situation and seek their advice.
It is not known what transpired in the behind-the-doors meeting, but VP Singh, a
former prime minister, categorically said after attending the meeting that there
will be no war with Pakistan.
In another development on New
Year’s Day, the two countries officially exchanged a list of nuclear
installations and facilities in their countries through diplomatic channels.
This is in compliance with a
1988 agreement on the mutual prohibition of attack against nuclear installations
and facilities. Under this agreement, the two countries are required to inform
each other on the first day of each year of their nuclear facilities.
However, sources told
IslamOnline earlier that a decision was already taken after the attack on the
Indian Parliament to go to war against Pakistan “to teach it a
lesson.”However, the idea was not to attack Pakistan itself but to cross into
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and destroy training bases of the activists there.
This has been on the Indian
agenda ever since the present government, led by the BJP, came to power three
years ago. But New Delhi's enthusiasm for “hot pursuit” was checked earlier
by the U.S.
This time, New Delhi
calculated that it would be able to fight back any such attempt by telling the
America that it cannot have two criteria, one for itself and Israel and the
other for India and the rest of the world, South Asian analysts told IslamOnline.
Using this logic, the United
States “understood” Indian anger but nevertheless demanded that it show
restraint. The reason cited by the U.S. was that any war would quickly lead to a
nuclear confrontation.
This assessment was backed by
U.S. mock-war games, conducted recently five times in the Pentagon according to
Jane's Defence Weekly.
Every war game between the
two countries always ended with a nuclear war. But the real reason may be
different: the U.S. is more afraid about the safety of its soldiers and huge
weaponry stockpiled on Pakistani soil, the analysts said.
The U.S. is also apprehensive
that any Indo-Pak war will necessarily weaken the current western crusade
against “terrorism” which, according to all indications, will continue in
the new year against many Muslim countries and organizations and “Islamic”
Pakistan's participation would be badly needed to show that this crusade is not
against Islam or Muslims, they added.
The opposition to war is not
limited to foreign powers. Although the possibility of going to war against the
traditional enemy always appeals to a specific stream in India, which is ruling
the country at the moment, there is considerable opposition to this idea among
both military experts as well as serious intellectuals and analysts.
Outside the country there are
no takers for the Indian posture. India is seen everywhere as a belligerent
bully who is ready to risk nuclear war to settle scores with a neighbor who does
not want war and is trying to oblige.
India has received bad press
all over the world for its brinkmanship which is making the task of President
Musharraf difficult, they said.
Big powers including Britain,
France, Germany and China, have cautioned India that they will not support any
war or even a limited conflict at this juncture. The U.S. has been particularly
harsh behind the scene. It has told New Delhi in no uncertain terms that war is
not acceptable.
Moreover, Washington has
warned New Delhi that its growing relationship with the U.S. will suffer as a
direct consequence in case it goes to war. However, the present Indian
government has been painstakingly nurturing a close relationship with the U.S.
as part of a sharp change in Indian foreign policy.
Washington is not keen to be
drawn into another conflict while its hands are full with Afghanistan and Bin
Laden.
Moreover, Indian strategic
and military experts have clearly told Vajpayee and the Cabinet Committee on
Security (CCS) that military action across the border would spark off a war that
may not end in weeks or even in months.
Military experts have also
reportedly told the government that the Indian military advantage over Pakistan
is not overwhelming.
New Delhi's initial
assessment was that its war will last between three to seven days and that it
will halt hostilities at the request of the U.S. and U.N. While India has no
real foreign backer this time round (unlike the erstwhile Soviet Union in the
past), Pakistan has the backing of China, in addition to the U.S. With his visit
to Peking last week President Musharraf sought to bring home this fact.
During the current conflict
Pakistan has been so taken aback by the Indian belligerence that it has not even
thought of raising the issue of India-backed violence in Pakistan over the
years, analysts said.
India has been supporting
secessionist and terrorist movements in Pakistan's Sindh, Baluchistan, Frontier
Province, so-called 'Balwaristan', as well as Muhajirs in Karachi.
Famous journalist and former Indian ambassador in
London, Kuldip Nayar, raised this issue in the Indian parliament last year but
was shouted down as a traitor.
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