Author: Gopalji Malaviya and Lawrence
Prabhakar
Publication: www.newindpress.com
Date: May 25, 2002
Over the last few years, Pakistan
has been prosecuting a "low cost, low intensity war" with India, backed
up by threats to use nuclear weapons should India attempt retribution across
the Line of Control.
The routine killings in Kashmir
- and the most recent one on May 14 - have ushered in the latest crisis
prompting India to shift to high gears in response to Pakistani actions.
The question that arises now is whether India's strategy vis-a-vis Pakistan
is inherently ambivalent; is it that India wants to avoid a confrontation?
India's war against terror has been
one of the most sustained and bitter ever. But India's political response
has been vacillating, ad hoc and often rhetorical with no tangible action
on the ground. India's response has never raised the stakes or inflicted
unacceptable costs on Pakistan for its sponsorship of terrorism.
India's latest diplomatic Brahmastra
has been the decision to pack off Pakistan's High Commissioner to India;
combined with full mobilisation along on the border to exert maximum pressure.
However, this has not yielded the desired results.
It should be noted that terror attacks
often coincide with the visits of high level US delegations to the region
- the Shikhupura massacre during President Bill Clinton's visit to India
in March 2000 and the Kaluchak attack during the visit of US Assistant
Secretary of State Christina Rocca earlier this month.
More terror attacks may therefore
be expected, coinciding with the planned visits of US officials in the
next few weeks. These high powered missions have achieved little beyond
the routine protocols and press statements. However the situation is such
that much depends on the nature of US pressure on Pakistan to desist from
misadventures.
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf
in his quest to legitimise himself as a reformist and "democratic leader,"
had in a major policy speech on January 12, 2002 promised to rein in the
terrorists and dismantle jihadi infrastructure. It is, therefore, ironic
that Pakistan is simultaneously promoting terrorism in Kashmir while joining
the US in its campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan's northwest.
One should not forget that Musharraf,
one of the architects of Talibanised Afghanistan, facilitated the escape
of the fleeing Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces into Pakistan. This was done
with the grand plan of redeploying them in Kashmir.
India's global diplomatic response
has been a "war of words" that amounts to nothing more than empty diplomatic
verbiage for Pakistan. For Pakistan, with its status as a frontline state
in the war against terror, has been substantially bolstered by US economic
largesse and promises of military aid in the aftermath of September 11,
2001.
Of course, the US has publicly adopted
an even handed approach to South Asia exhorting India to continue its dialogue
with Pakistan, while asking the latter to crack down on terrorism.
US measures to bolster Pakistan
are grounded on the premise that a Musharraf is the lesser of two evils;
the idea of a Talibanised Pakistan with nuclear weapons is something Washington
does not want to contemplate. The irony is that Pakistan's military-mosque
order has thus been allowed to redirect its offensive energies against
India.
Pakistan is confident it can sustain
its campaign to bleed India by a thousand cuts - without any effective
retaliation by India - by periodically harping on its willingness to use
its nuclear arsenal. In its endeavour to be even handed vis-a-vis India
and Pakistan, the US has been adopting a strategy of nurturing India as
a natural ally and strategic partner while simultaneously bailing out its
client state Pakistan.
Thus the US-India strategic enterprise
is also matched by a US-Pakistan strategic enterprise that involves US
forces hunting Al Qaeda and Taliban elements in the NWFP along with Pakistani
forces in joint operations. The US in its desire to avoid an Indo-Pakistan
conflagration has been advising India on the need for restraint and dialogue
even in the face of the worst provocations from Pakistan. For it fully
understands the perilous implications of even a limited war between the
two nuclear-armed powers.
In pursuit of its policy, the US
has been consolidating its partnership with India through cooperative endeavours
ranging from technology transfer to arms procurement to strategic dialogue.
While all these have helped to improve
the India-US relationship, yet on the issue of Pakistan's provocations
in Kashmir India is being asked to adopt restraint. This raises the question:
What are the limits to Indian tolerance in the face of Pakistan's provocations?
Should India continue to exercise
patience even if Pakistan keeps escalating the war in Kashmir? If 9/11
can justify an all out campaign of retaliation by the US, is there not
a similar relative breaking point for India?
Or should democratic India continually
plead with the West to merely condemn Pakistan whose fundamental strengths
are a dictatorship presiding over a failing State, a haven for terror groups.
But with the latest crisis and the shift of gears by India, a decisive
phase has been reached in this protracted conflict .
India's options would be best served
by a synergised diplomatic, economic and military campaign suitably packaged.
It needs to have a sense of mission combined with operational finesse.
It should act with a sense of its own autonomy and not be guided by the
pontification of others who are only striving to secure their own interests.
While it is difficult to dwell on
the specifics of the kind of operations India should go in for, owing to
the fluidity and the sensitivity of the prevalent situation, certain broad
pathways can be charted out.
India should explore joint forces
action against Pakistan ranging from the deployment of its substantial
airpower - both manned and unmanned - with focused air strikes along the
Line of Control in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir as suitable retaliation. Such
intense, focused air strikes should be backed by sustained artillery barrages.
Should the US question Indian resolve,
India should invoke its emergent strategic understanding with the US, urging
it to send in its forces in joint operations along with Indian forces against
the same mujahideen it is forced to contend with in the NWFP.
The participation of US forces along
with India may be a most controversial proposition, yet it would send a
clear message to Pakistan that terror is terror wherever it may occur as
observed by US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill.
The second element would be Indian
naval action in the high seas, especially mining the sea approaches to
Karachi. It is well known that Karachi port is the hub of Pakistan's export
of its staple crop - narcotics - to the rest of the world. Narcotics commerce
is the prime sustainer of Pakistan's failing economy and the critical resource
support to Pakistan's infrastructure of terror.
An effective naval quarantine could
be implemented by India that would inflict optimal pain on Pakistan. This
constitutes an indirect approach in India's strategy, deflected from the
actual terrain of operations i.e. the Line of Control. A naval quarantine
of Pakistan is the equivalent of the armed forces buildup along the border;
it's also a non-offensive response that could exact from Pakistan a high
price for its adventurism.
The third would be to deploy a higher
space-to-force ratio in areas where terrorists operate; improved surveillance
and intelligence capabilities; improved armed forces readiness in terms
of substantial upgrades of its weapons stocks and inventory. The fourth
would be to improve Indian nuclear readiness to signal to Pakistan that
it won't cow down to Pakistani nuclear blackmail.
The fifth should be the activation
of political consensus in India, and the mobilisation of public opinion;
an early end to the communal frenzy of the Indian variety that has effectively
ruined its domestic tranquillity in recent times.
These measures in the right combination
would provide a synergistic effect and optimal outcomes that would fall
short of a limited war but would significantly escalate the price Pakistan
would have to pay to further continue its cross- border terrorism. It is
time that the government sheds its inertia, and initiates optimal and tangible
actions that are in the critical interests of the nation. As of now, there
can be a hot war or a cold peace in Kashmir, hence the imperative for decisive
action. As the crisis evolves, it is inevitable that the US will play a
crucial role, bringing to bear powerful pressure on the two nuclear-armed
powers, specially Pakistan to halt terrorism.
Dr Gopalji Malviya is Professor,
Department of Defence & Strategic Studies, University of Madras &
Dr W Lawrence Prabhakar is Associate Professor, Political Science, Madras
Christian College, Chennai
