CIAO DATE: 01/03

Special Report—India and Pakistan Eyeball to Eyeball: Some Basic FAQ’s

Teresita C. Schaffer

The South Asia Monitor
Number 47
June 1, 2002

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

 

Indian and Pakistani troops have been deployed on a war footing since mid-December 2001. What follows are a few basic questions and answers, designed not so much to interpret each country’s position as to provide an analytical framework for assessing how they could start or stop a war, and how they could move toward peace.

Is India bluffing?
No. Last December’s attack on the Indian parliament crystallized the government’s determination not to continue to live with Pakistan’s military support for organizations active in the insurgency in Kashmir that commit violence there and elsewhere in India. The Indian government has sought U.S. help in pressuring Pakistan to end infiltration, but absent a real change is prepared to use military force.

Can Musharraf stop infiltration?
Yes, but not completely. Musharraf has the support of the army, which remains highly disciplined, and can probably control the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) if he is determined to do so. His efforts to stop sectarian violence inside Pakistan are popular, though his recent referendum hurt his popular credibility. If the Pakistani government and army are determined to stop infiltration, or to suspend it, the flow will be reduced to a trickle.

Musharraf will pay a price, however. The Kashmir cause is popular in Pakistan, and many Pakistanis believe that without the threat of violence, India will simply ignore them. The parliamentary elections scheduled for October make it harder to take a tough line. The militant organizations most heavily involved will respond to a crackdown with stepped-up violence inside Pakistan – and possibly with threats against Musharraf himself. However, Musharraf’s public criticism the militants and his pledge to close down their domestic activities probably runs these risks in any event, so relaxing pressure on infiltration may not be much safer for him.

Will stopping infiltration end the risk of war?
No. A new terrorist incident in Kashmir or elsewhere in India could trigger an Indian decision to take military action. Even if infiltration stops, militants with the motivation and ability to carry out a terrorist attack are undoubtedly in place on the Indian side. A serious control effort by Musharraf could well spur such people on to action, and the fact that an attack could have terrible consequences for Musharraf and for Pakistan would not deter them.

Will political pressures push the Indian government into war?
No, but they make it harder to reverse the present deployment. Anti-Muslim violence in February and March 2002 weakened India’s governing political coalition. The state government in Gujarat, run by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was ineffective – or, some would argue, complicit – in handling the riots. Both the reaction to these riots and violence in Kashmir have galvanized the right wing of Vajpayee’s political movement, however, making it harder for Vajpayee to move away from his present tough stance.

Will a war go nuclear?
Possibly, but not necessarily. An Indian military move under these circumstances would undoubtedly be calculated to minimize the risk of a Pakistani nuclear response. This suggests a limited operation – either an air attack on a specific training camp or other facility, or a limited ground action following which Indian troops would withdraw. An operation designed to seize and hold territory – say, in Pakistan-held Kashmir – would be riskier. The initial Pakistani response to such a move would also be limited – but there would be a response. The danger lies in this tit-for-tat process. If both sides felt compelled to keep responding, they would risk losing control of the escalation ladder.

What could lead to a nuclear move?
Pakistan’s insecurity is the key. The most likely nuclear “trigger” would be Pakistan’s concluding that it faced a threat to its national integrity. This could result from loss of major military assets, loss of significant territory, a large attack on a major population center, or perhaps the loss of key transportation links. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are intended to deter any attack – nuclear or conventional – that threatens the country’s viability. Such an attack might not instantly lead to a nuclear response: Pakistan might well start by trying to galvanize a much more intense international effort to stop the Indian attack. But Pakistan is the more likely country to put the nuclear question in play. The key point about nuclear weapons in the South Asian context is uncertainty. No one can be certain what would trigger a nuclear response, and the world needs to take the risk seriously even if the chances are less than half.

Can war be avoided?
Yes. If Pakistan acts decisively to stop infiltration, if its moves are credible, and if India responds by laying the groundwork for a serious political dialogue, the short-term crisis will ease. This is a tall order, and will become much more difficult if militants active in Kashmir carry out further attacks there or in India. But crises will recur unless the parties develop and maintain a real peace process.

What does India need to do to reduce tensions?
Reducing the massive military deployment on its Western frontier and restoring normal transport links with Pakistan would make a major contribution to a more peaceful atmosphere. But this will not happen until India believes Pakistan has reliably ended infiltration. In the short term, while India assesses the impact of Pakistan’s actions, it could lower the rhetorical temperature and better safeguard the human rights of ordinary Kashmiris. It could also establish discreet contacts with Pakistan about restoring compliance with bilateral agreements they reached a decade ago to reduce the risk of accidental conflict.

Does the United States have a role here?
Yes. The fundamental work of defusing the crisis and building up a relationship of trust, of course, has to be done by the Indians and the Pakistanis. But the United States has good relations with both, to a degree unprecedented in the last half century. Against the background of the systematic distrust between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the United States may be able to help the two countries bridge the gap, assess the credibility of the efforts being made on both sides, and help the two parties communicate in a constructive way.

How does Kashmir figure in this situation?
It’s a key element , and has come to symbolize their broader conflict. For Pakistan, Kashmir represents the unfulfilled part of its dream of being a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. For India, it symbolizes the country’s secular identity. After decades of political manipulation and bad governance, the Kashmiri population is deeply alienated from India. Many Kashmiri Muslims would prefer to be independent of both India and Pakistan.

Do both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir?
Not exactly. India claims that all Kashmir is rightly part of India, because the maharajah of Kashmir formally acceded to India at the time of the partition between Pakistan and India. In practice, India already controls the Valley of Kashmir, which is most central to the dispute. Pakistan argues that the status of Kashmir should be decided by a plebiscite in which the inhabitants are asked to choose either India or Pakistan , as stipulated in the United Nations Security Council resolutions of 1948 and 1949, that ended the first Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir. India argues that Kashmiri participation in several Indian elections since then has in effect given the people a chance to express themselves, and that in any event India and Pakistan formally agreed, in the 1972 Simla accord, to settle their differences (including this one) bilaterally.

What would a peace process look like?
A peace process would center on two simultaneous but separate dialogues. The first is between India and Pakistan, who have agreed on several occasions to set up separate, simultaneous working groups to discuss the full range of issues between them. This remains a good formula for ensuring that each country’s key priorities are on the agenda, and that the difficulty of the Kashmir issue does not block progress on the easy issues.

The second dialogue is between Kashmiris and the government of India. Kashmiris need to participate in any real peace process, because satisfying their basic need for self-government is essential to maintaining peace in this strategically crucial area. The Kashmiris were largely left out of India-Pakistan settlement efforts before 1989. The insurgency in the Valley of Kashmir put the Kashmiris on the political map. However, when India-Pakistan military tensions rise, the military faceoff takes center stage, and the problems and political leaders of Kashmir tend to be marginalized.

India and Pakistan have never conducted both India-Kashmir and India-Pakistan discussions at the same time. This task is complicated by Pakistan’s concern that such a format would imply Pakistan’s abandoning its long-standing position that the Kashmiris still need to decide whether they should belong to India or Pakistan. Even within the India-Pakistan dialogue, talks have usually broken down over Kashmir. India has wanted to confine discussions to stopping terrorism, while Pakistan has wanted to focus on the sovereignty issue. The challenge in a new peace process would be to get over these hurdles and develop a peaceful, honorable, and practical solution for India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris.