Compared to the past thirty years, the current standoff between India and Pakistan on Kashmir may be considered the most serious between the two South Asian rivals. More than a million heavily armed soldiers facing each other eye to eye across the great South Asian divide everyday only exacerbates tension. The specter of an armed confrontation between the two adversaries possibly degenerating into a nuclear holocaust is keeping the whole world on tenterhooks.

While the stronger partner, India, showed precious little of the required open heartedness to soothe frayed nerves in Pakistan, the Pakistani leadership used fear of India as an alchemy to aggravate its people’s agony. The situation was still not so hopeless, or beyond redemption, so long as Pakistan was under civilian rule. But the malady became almost incurable with power slipping into the hands of soldiers of fortune in Pakistan.

A Diplomacy of Fear

The Pakistani Bonapartes found an elixir for their own longevity in power by adroitly admixing fear of India’s hegemonic traits with the rising power of religious fundamentalism. It was politically opportune for them to wield the specter of a rapacious India lying in wait to devour Pakistan, in order to keep themselves in reckoning as defenders of Pakistan’s faith and frontiers.

India’s frontal role as “liberator” of Bangladesh made it so much easier for the power-hungry generals to impress their uninformed audience at home with their “hate India” logic. India’s persistent—and at times inane—refusal to play ball on the thorny issue of Kashmir inadvertently granted the generals all the leverage to hold their quarries at home in bondage. Physical partition of land was eclipsed by the tide of emotional separation that soon became a gulf.

The only exception to the Pakistani generals’ rhapsody on India—and in constant reference to India—was the decade-long era of Ziaul Haq. But he did not need to wield the India card because the Soviets had given him a more redoubtable alibi for staying in power by invading Afghanistan. Zia in fact gave himself the luxury of indulging in “Cricket diplomacy” with India while, behind the scenes, taking the battle to India by courting and generously assisting the Sikh separatists.

Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of Zia, tried to borrow a leaf from his mentor’s book by initiating his own “Bus diplomacy” with a Vajpayee desperately trying to stave off the Hindu revivalists in his own BJP. Both failed in their putative initiative to fight the odds. Nawaz signed his own death warrant by being seen as peacemaker with India on Kashmir, an anathema to the Pakistani Bonapartes. Nawaz was trying to rob them of their turf and had to be stopped. Vajpayee, dithering as ever, soon succumbed to his own hawks.

Enter Musharraf!

General Pervez Musharraf, once secure in his coup against Nawaz, tried to be robustly involved in Pakistan’s relations with India. But in doing so, he wanted to avoid all the pitfalls of his predecessors and deal with India from a position of strength.

To him and to those who had propelled him to power, Nawaz Sharif was a weakling towards India and his policies and postures vis-à-vis Delhi were not in the “best interest” of Pakistan; they had to be shunned. In other words, there was no question of cutting a deal with Vajpayee if he did not admit the centrality of the Kashmir issue.

Likewise, there was no room in Musharraf’s lexicon for vacuous gestures and postures, such as Ziaul Haq’s “Cricket diplomacy.” Gimmicks like that were the work of the weak and the irresolute. The Pakistan army had bridged the gap with India by quickly following it into the world nuclear club in 1998. India, henceforth, was expected to learn to deal with Pakistan on equal terms.

The Nuclear March

The nuclear parity with India was Musharraf’s trump card. It was this perception of Pakistan’s new-fangled nuclear status that had been the threshold of Musharraf and company’s brazen blitz in Kargil in the summer of 1999.

Musharraf himself, and the cabal of like-minded generals goading him on, thought the time to usher in a new perspective on the half-century old Kashmir tangle with India had arrived. The generals, overconfident and with undisguised disdain, if not contempt, decided to give India and the world a taste of Pakistan’s new strength and resolution. Kargil was an expression of as much pride of the Pakistani generals in their nuclear clout as contempt for their political superiors.

Musharraf, understandably, brought to his high office the dual baggage of pride in Pakistan’s nuclear muscle and belief in parity with India in any dialogue on Kashmir. He and his colleagues in uniform believed that India could be forced into a deal on Kashmir by staying on a course of strength, blending carrot and stick. The carrot was Pakistan’s readiness to enter into a dialogue with India on the “core” problem of Kashmir; the stick was the low-intensity uprising of the Kashmiris under Indian occupation with the moral and material support of Pakistan.

But the Kashmir chessboard was complicated. It snarled for Musharraf by the rise of fundamentalism in India, matching Pakistan’s own slide into the jaws of a stridently militant version of Islam. The spin-off of the two countries’ consummation in the vortex of extremism could only be a standstill on the political front. There could be no meeting of minds between two antagonists, with each given to an uncompromising belief in the correctness of their stand.

The “War on Terror” Contribution

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan

The situation in the Pakistani camp was further complicated by the increasing involvement of the Taliban and Al-Qa’eda elements in Kashmir’s initially home-spun uprising. The fallout from September 11 gave a shot in the arm to the militants and hard liners in Vajpayee’s own sanctum. They had a sure winner, they thought, in the conscience of a world awakened to the menace of terrorism.

They had been tilting at all the windmills to convince the world that Pakistan was exporting terrorism to Indian-Controlled Kashmir; now the world must believe the veracity of their clamor. The terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in Delhi on December 13 added a further dimension to their case against Pakistan. The die was cast in favor of teaching Pakistan a lesson for its “perfidy.” The armies were ordered to keep their gunpowder dry.

But Musharraf did not think that his case on Kashmir had run out of steam. He had done a great favor to Bush by dying his own wool in Bush’s color on Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Bush owed it to him on Kashmir, where Pakistan was not involved in terrorism but was merely lending its support to a people fighting for their freedom.

In his much-heralded speech of January 12, reverberated around the world, Musharraf promised to crack down on militancy inside Pakistan, but Kashmir was another kettle of fish. Kashmir, in his words, pulsated in the heart of every Pakistani. How could anybody expect him to renege on Pakistan’s “moral and principled” commitment on the side of the Kashmiris?

On that Pile

That is where the two countries, and the world, are currently poised—on the edge—on Kashmir. Both Musharraf and Vajpayee are mired in the bog of their high-pitched and shrill policies on a matter that both consider as one of life and death. Hence neither one of them is prepared to blink.

High profile emissaries from the powers-that-be have been making the diplomatic pilgrimage to both Delhi and Islamabad. But any breakthrough is still up in the clouds. The Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin, failed to arrange a meeting between the two adversaries, Vajpayee and Musharraf. There was, unlike the SAARC summit of last January in Kathmandu, no impromptu handshake at Almaty. Not even an eye contact between the two leaders. This explains the chasm between them.

Both Vajpayee and Musharraf are symptoms of the Kashmir problem. Therefore, it would be wrong, if not naïve, of anyone to expect them to become the instruments of change for the better.

Vajpayee is a prisoner to the rhetoric forced down his throat by the hawks and hard liners around him. He got himself marooned on a dangerously high perch from where he cannot descend unscathed without the safety net of some face saving. But who should throw him that lifeline? Not Musharraf.

To the Pakistani strongman, Kashmir is a matter of commitment and conviction. He cannot envisage himself abdicating his moral responsibility in the matter. Being from the much-maligned mohajir (immigrant) community he must show more than usual resilience and élan on Kashmir lest the majority community ruling the roost in the army and the bureaucracy doubt his commitment and loyalty to Pakistan.

And then there is Pakistan’s redoubtable nuclear option. The world has a right to manifest all the angst on the nuclear trigger that could, rightly, wreak horrific devastation on both India and Pakistan. But to Musharraf, and the coterie around him, it is the ultimate equalizer. Hence his repeated reminders to the world that, in dire crunch, he may be left with no other option but pull the nuclear lever. The world should take him seriously. He may not be bluffing.

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