Author: Jim Hoagland
Publication: Washington Post
Date: May 23, 2002
India and Pakistan are three to
four weeks from a foreseeable war that the United States has done too little
to prevent. By misreading Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration
has contributed to a dangerous confrontation between South Asia's two nuclear-armed
rivals.
Troops the two sides have deployed
in and around the Kashmir theater total 1 million. They balance on a razor's
edge. The winter snows that immobilized them for four months are gone.
Extreme heat and then monsoon conditions will arrive in a month or so in
the region, limiting India's logistical capabilities and campaign predictability.
India's politically faltering government faces a choice of going to war
before that moment -- or enduring the embarrassment of backing down from
a costly and seemingly pointless bilization.
India of course does not have to
wait until the last moment and give up the element of surprise. Another
incident in Kashmir like the May 14 guerrilla attack on defenseless Indian
women and children in the city of Jammu could easily trigger immediate
Indian retaliation.
"The country is ready for war,"
Indian officials say confidently to diplomats. Pakistan's tightly monitored
press is featuring usually taboo reports of deployments of troops and weapons
such as surface-to-surface Shaheen missiles.
Musharraf's aim presumably is not
a full-scale war. He cannot conquer India. But the Pakistani military ruler
has shown in the past two months that when it comes to the half-century
conflict over Kashmir, he is an extraordinary risk-taker. He has dared
India to fight. And he has just as boldly reneged on a promise to the Bush
White House to shut down terror camps in Kashmir. The two steps are part
and parcel of his brinksmanship.
After internal debate, the U.S.
intelligence community now accepts that Musharraf allowed the 50 to 60
guerrilla camps in Kashmir that harbor some 3,000 fighters to come back
to life in mid-March after two months of quiescence. Two other Musharraf
promises -- to prevent cross-border terrorism from Pakistan or Pakistani-controlled
territory, and to dismantle permanently Pakistan's Islamic fundamentalist
organizations that preach violence -- have also withered as American attention
has been focused on the Middle East.
"The debate about what is going
on has been settled," says one U.S. official involved in the contentious
discussions here about Musharraf's abandoned pledge to cut off help and
training that this intelligence services and military give to terrorists
in Kashmir and India. "The rate of infiltration into Indian-occupied Kashmir
is above the rate of a year ago. What is still being debated is Musharraf's
intention. Is he unable or unwilling to prevent what is happening? And
what do we do about either case?"
The effect of Secretary of State
Colin Powell's intense and successful diplomatic intervention last winter
to ease tensions has been washed away by U.S. inattention and failure even
to acknowledge Pakistan's subsequent backsliding. "America is either with
us or with the terrorists," Omar Abdullah, a rising star in India's political
system, said mockingly in Parliament last week as details of the grisly
Jammu raid spread.
The attack on an Indian military
family housing area by three guerrillas identified in the Indian media
as Pakistani citizens could hardly have been more inflammatory. Wives and
children of Indian soldiers were butchered. A 2-month-old baby was machine-gunned
to death. By coincidence or design, the attackers went to the very limit
of the Indian military's tolerance.
Musharraf's own assessment of the
consequences of such acts remains murky. He may believe that India does
not have the will to attack. Or he may believe that Washington needs him
too much in the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban to let India come after
him. U.S. officials have given him grounds for thinking that.
Or Musharraf may be quite willing
to see limited clashes begin in hopes of provoking international intervention
that will aid his position in Kashmir, much as Yasser Arafat seeks to draw
outside powers into his conflict with Israel.
In 1971, Pakistan launched attacks
along India's western frontier that had no chance of military success.
Pakistan's military rulers, humiliated by India's easy conquest of their
forces in the eastern territory that was to become Bangladesh, went to
war in a desperate and forlorn bid for outside intervention to save them
from defeat or at least from disgrace.
Managing Musharraf and Pakistan's
role in Operation Enduring Freedom is a tricky task. But Powell and his
chief aides have devoted too little time and energy to that demanding job
since mid-February. They have let events drag them back in belatedly to
separate two nuclear-armed antagonists.
Pakistan helped create and foster
al Qaeda and the Taliban. It has long used terror as an instrument of state
policy to try to break India's hold on two-thirds of Kashmir that New Delhi
controls. Confronted with anything less than unrelenting pressure, Musharraf
will keep on gambling, up to the brink and -- in a matter of days from
now -- perhaps beyond.
