archive: Time to Crush the Cobra
Time to Crush the Cobra
V.P. Bhatia
Organiser
July 11, 1999
Title: Time to Crush the Cobra
Author: V.P. Bhatia
Publication: Organiser
Date: July 11, 1999
In a letter to his socialist friend, Sir Stafford Cripps, the British
Cabinet Minister, on December 17, 1948, Pt. Nehru wrote as follows to
express his feelings of frustration at the anti-India role of the
Anglo-American bloc in Security Council in the Kashmir case : "It
seems to be our function to go on agreeing and Pakistan's to go on
refusing and rejecting, although we happen to be the victims of
Pakistan's aggression. I just do not understand this. A problem can
be tackled from the point of view of equity or practical convenience
or preferably both. I find that in regard to Kashmir neither of these
aspects had been fully considered with the result that more and more
confusion and difficulty arises... if we have been in error, we shall
gladly suffer the consequences of that error. I have no doubt that we
have made many mistakes. But in regard to Kashmir I am dead certain
that we have made no major mistakes except hold our hands repeatedly
in the face of provocation. We are continually being asked not to do
this or that as if we are the aggressors or the guilty party.
Meanwhile, a set of barbarians are let loose on parts of Kashmir
territory, bringing up havoc in their train." (Vide S. Gopal,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. II, p. 32
Nehru's lament after leaving the job half-finished in Kashmir In a
nutshell, India was being asked to show 'restraint' and agree to
ceasefire. There is a saying in Punjabi, Aap na mariye, swarg na
jaiye! One cannot go to heaven without dying oneself. No one else
would offer you victory on a platter! You have to earn it yourself by
blood and tears. Nehru's cardinal error vis-a-vis Kashmir problem was
in fact not to depend on his own political will and India's own
resources to solve it finally. He left it half done, to go by the
advice of a motivated person like Mountbatten who initially wanted the
State to go to Pakistan, failing which he made it so complicated that
unlike Junagarh and Hyderabad problems, which were solved by Sardar
Patel even in the face of Mountbatten's determined adverse moves,
Kashmir became a millstone round India's neck.
It is interesting to note that soon after the case against Pakistan's
abetment of tribal invasion was taken to UN Security Council at
Mountbatten's behest, the Belgian ambassador had warned of 'grave
difficulties' to India "because Pakistan would be ready to
'prostitute' herself to America in return for a favourable award".
This is what actually happened mainly because of the dirty role played
by the head of the British delegation, Philip Noel-Baker. He
influenced the US delegation's view also into making it a Hindu-Muslim
question as per the Partition basis, though the US was taking a
non-partisan view in the beginning. Noel-Baker, in turn, was
influenced by the British diplomats in New Delhi and Karachi to take
the line that Pakistan had no hand in the tribal invasion. It was a
clear conspiracy to trap India although Mountbatten protested that he
had given an honest advice.
It is interesting to note in this context that Mahatma Gandhi had
written to the British Premier, Clement Attlee, to mediate between
India and Pakistan and name the party which was in the wrong but
Attlee refused and instead asked India to go to UNO. It is also
interesting to note that even in the draft of the reference to UNO,
Nehru had said that India reserved the right to strike inside Pakistan
if the latter did not stop supplies and transit facilities to
raiders. Mountbatten described this as most 'impolitic' thing to
write to the Security Council, as they thought Pakistan was under
imminent Indian threat. Mountbatten, however, saw to it that the plan
to defeat Pakistan soundly was never implemented. It was used 18
years later by Lal Bahadur Shastri. Mountbatten went many steps
further to ditch India's plans to clear the whole of J&K by its own
military. Later, even after retirement to UK on June 22, 1948, he
persuaded Nehru to accept ceasefire as war with Pakistan would lead to
a greater communal holocaust than of 1947. The real reason was he
wanted to save Pakistan from much stronger India, as he wrote in his
Diary.
Later at Tashkent, the problem could not be solved because of Soviet
mediation which favoured Pakistan, and at Shimla because of Indira
Gandhi's 'magnanimity of a victor' although there was no pressure of a
mediator then. Shimla Agreement in fact did a greater damage, as it
lulled India into thinking that now Pakistan was incapable of
engineering any mischief both from outside and inside Kashmir. The
result was that the Indian defence authorities lowered their guard and
even starved the forces of essential level of requirements, while
Pakistan became more vengeful and determined to do a Bangladesh on
India by grabbing Kashmir. It is another matter that India has
defeated the 10-year proxy war and will do so again in case of armed
intrusion in Kargil. But at what cost? It is indeed height of naivety
on the part of any Indian to believe that Sharif is not an equal
partner in this latest plot to undo India. In sheer desperation, the
Paki bigwigs are even threatening to use nuclear bomb. But, as a
retired military general has said, can Sharif afford to see Lahore,
the heart of Pakistan, wiped out?
Can Sharif see Lahore wiped out by risking a Nuclear War? Meanwhile,
describing the predicament of Pakistan in the wake of its Army's
misadventure in Kargil, an eminent Pakistani columnist, Ayaz Amir,
writes in the Dawn of Karachi.
"We seem to have perfected the art of getting into wars without
purpose and without a sense of the danger involved. In 1965, the road
to war was paved with false assumptions. In 1971, political
recklessness set the stage for our greatest national humiliation.
More recently we got involved in Afghanistan without counting the long
term costs of that engagement. Given this background, it is only fair
to wonder what considerations lie behind the Kargil operation.
"That it is putting the country in an awkward position is becoming
clearer with each passing day. Our official line is that we have no
control over 'freedom fighters'. That may be so, but it will be hard
to convince the world that these fighters have fallen from the skies
or are being supplied from the heavens. Even otherwise, to go
forward-that is to expand the Kargil operations (as Nawaz Sharif has
threatened)-looks difficult because it would mean certain war.
Stepping back risks a loss of national face besides prompting angry
questions as to what the sabre-rattling was all about. How to declare
victory, with as straight a face as possible, and defuse the challenge
facing the country's politico-military leadership?
MEANWHILE, referring to hordes of armed tribals and mujahideen roaming
all over Pakistan and itching to descend on India like swarms of
locusts under the aegis of the ISI and Paki Army command, Lt. Gen.
(Retd.) V.R. Raghavan, a former Director-General of Military
Operations, sums up India's predicament in an article in The Hindu
(June 28) in the following words : "The Indian Government, early in
the conflict, took the laudable initiative of limiting the conflict in
geographic terms. This straightway imposed heavy burden on the
military. It left the Pakistan military free to make its response
without fear of a wider conflict. A full-scale war would have been
calamitous to Pakistan. The limits India placed on itself have,
however, led to heavy Indian casualties. A conflict which could have
been brought to a successful conclusion in a few weeks would now have
to be conducted over some months at least.
"The Kargil conflict throws up a number of disturbing possibilities
for the future. Pakistan has chosen an area where the full power of
the Indian military machine cannot be brought to bear. The strike
corps, tank divisions, heavy artillery and air power are of little
avail in the high mountains. Pakistan has also used a force in which
the bulk of soldiery is provided by its Afghan involvement. This
group has had years of war fighting experience and has close links
with the Pakistani General Staff and the logistics-cum-intelligence
structures. A moderate percentage of the military personnel of the
army, with a large para-military ballast of the
Taliban-Mujahideen-Lashkar force, provides Pakistan with an additional
low cost army. Such an army has drawn and engaged a substantial part
of the Indian army in intense combat and imposed a high cost. The
conflict can be continued by Pakistan almost indefinitely at low
costs. Its Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, is only stating the obvious
when he talks of the possibility of many more Kargils in the future."
Peace-makers at large REFERRING to the secret Niaz Naik mission, and
before that, of another former Pakistan Minister Mubashir Hasan, both
angling for a face-saving formula for Nawaz Sharif because of
relentless American pressure to call off its misadventure in Kargil,
M.D. Nalapat, Political Editor of The Times of India, says that it is
meant to sow confusion and prevent India from inflicting a decisive
military and diplomatic defeat on Pakistan and leave the job half done
with another Shimla Pact. That would leave the Cobra's head uncrushed
again. As he puts it :
"Both Hasan and Naik conveyed the same message that Nawaz Sharif was
under attack from 'fundamentalists', and that if there was Pakistani
'humiliation' in Kargil, then these forces would take over 'and maybe
push the nuclear button'. This was a repeat of the Pakistani strategy
during the 1972 Shimla talks when Indira Gandhi bought the argument
that a humiliated Bhutto would give way to hawkish anti-India
generals. In the event, despite the Shimla concessions, Bhutto
continued a hard line against India, this time covertly.
"Both the (Paki) envoys refused to commit their government to
immediate withdrawal of the Pakistani force from the Indian side of
the LoC, offering only that Islamabad would 'begin talks that could
lead to a solution'. "In other words, first a ceasefire, followed by
talks which may or may not lead to a pullout. Not surprisingly, this
proposal was rebuffed by the Indian side, which remained firm that
talks could take place only after a complete pull out of Pakistan's
force from India's side of the LoC".
What can USA do in this context even though President Clinton was so
alarmed after receiving Prime Minister Vajpayee's letter saying that
India might have to attack inside Pakistan if the latter did not pull
back its troops from Kargil because of heavy Indian casualties having
incensed the public mind? According to a US report, if Sharif does not
do the needful, because of his Army's clout, the USA may look the
other way to allow India to attack Pakistan and enforce a military
solution. Obviously, leaving the job half-done by allowing Paki
intruders a safe passage would not satisfy the Indian public opinion
which wants a 'final solution' at any cost.
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