Back from the Brink

Columnist M ZAFAR discusses the near war situation that almost blew up in our faces.

It began with the Kashmiri freedom fighters’ attack on the Indian Parliament on 13th December 2001. In anger and frustration Indians moved land, air and naval strike formations to the vicinity of Pakistan to threaten invasion. It took some time before the seriousness of the Indian leadership to go for an all out war over the issue became apparent to Pakistan and the international community. Expectedly Pakistan moved its forces to forward defensive locations and world powers that have vital interests in maintenance of peace, a euphemism for status quo, in the region dispatched high level emissaries for counselling restraint. 

Indian military moves were accompanied with charged rhetoric. The otherwise restrained Prime Minister threatened a “this way or that way war”. Commentators on Indian official media advanced sophisticated reasons for using military force to resolve the conflict that had defied solution for half a century. Pakistan generally remained cool but at appropriate time did warn that use of nuclear weapons was a real possibility if the situation became desperate. To give increased credence to the assertion, Pakistan tested its delivery systems, of course, with prior intimation to Indian authorities as required by existing protocols.

After six months of deployment though the armies are still eyeball to eyeball the Naval forces have reportedly been pulled back. Indian media also announced that normal leave to the troops deployed at the front had been allowed. The Americans and other powers too have indicated that the danger of a conflict has abated fully.

Some observers, however, do not quite share the optimism. They relate decrease in tension to the weather and warn that unless something tangible is forthcoming during the rainy season, the prospect of strains reaching and perhaps surpassing the previous levels remain real. That means a lot of home task for the peacemakers and the contending powers. This also is the time for observers to sit back and recount the lessons of the phase just gone by. 

The first lesson that comes out is that after 11 September 2001, the definition of terrorism has undergone a fundamental change. Now any act of defiance of the existing political order can be classed as a terrorist act at the choosing of regime in power. Such regimes can now claim the freedom to choose place, direction and quantum of response. If these standards were current half a century ago, UK would have been justified to invade Greece during the EOKA rebellion in Cyprus and bomb Boston at the height of IRA’s operations in Northern Ireland. Today the United Kingdom finds it difficult to concede the rights it allowed to EOKA and IRA, to the Kashmiri freedom fighters.  Some dichotomy — but this is the reality of international power politics. 

India did not lose any time in pressing this new concept into service. A genuine homegrown political struggle of Kashmiris is now openly called Pakistan’s war on India by proxy. In the worst, scenario a peaceful demonstration in Srinagar that turns violent and results in casualties to the occupation forces could be used as a pretext for a full fledged armed attack on Pakistan. Ridiculous — yet possible.  9/11 has given India a lot of freedom for action against Pakistan. Outrageous — but needs to be taken note of.  There is yet another, vastly more sinister, scenario that can be imagined. Indians certainly have the capability to mount a surprise attack against a refugee camp near the L of C, which they may at their convenience dub as terrorist training camp. Now if that was to happen and casualties caused a few too many the onus of escalation will fall on Pakistan — a situation that will delight planners at Indian General Headquarters, as they will have the all-out war they desire without being accused of provoking it by the international community. 

Another fact that comes to the fore is that throughout the crisis the United Nations remained on the sidelines. How can we forget that initial ceasefire between the two warring nations was brought about by the United Nations and that since then UN troops are posted along the Line of Control? Does this fact not make the UN a party?  But UN has progressively veered away from its committed stand on Kashmir in subservience to realities of power. At a certain time this august body wanted to drop Kashmir from the list of its unresolved matters. More recently it has started hedging behind technicalities and differentiating between resolutions passed under various chapters of the UN Charter. Of course, the real possibility of any meaningful initiative being vetoed in the Security Council makes the UN shy of stretching out but for Pakistan it means the diminution if not total loss of an important source of persuasion. 

Moreover, the New World Order designed by the sole superpower of the planet has made United Nations decision-making organs quite powerless. World powers now consult within the UN but work outside the organisation whenever action is required. In the case of Kashmir also, Permanent Five consulted with each other in UN but refrained from taking any joint action under the auspices of the body. Pakistan is now faced with a dilemma. It has been resting its case on the implementation of the resolutions of the body that is helpless to have its decisions implemented. Can it duplicate US and build a coalition of supporting states and force a military decision? Or should it keep waiting for UN initiatives that will never come? Is this a dead end? Perhaps some innovative political and diplomatic ideas are required to craft alternates that are in sync with the times and are based on realistic assessment of political and military opportunities and threats. You cannot keep beating a dead horse forever.

For that Pakistan has to free itself from a number of binds that it was put in by self-seeking dictators. Here a mild reassertion of a principle of statecraft may not be out of order. Other than the life of the state itself nothing is sacrosanct. If you start from there then you can free yourself from the binds. Then you will find that zero sum games will not take Pakistan anywhere. These will only debilitate its power and blur its direction. On Kashmir, Pakistan has been stuck in a position where the gain of one side has to be necessarily the loss of the other. This is a position to which even some of the Kashmiri leaders on our own side do not fully subscribe. We need to free ourselves from slogans and mature into politics. Politics and more so diplomacy is the art of masterly compromise. Deprived of that it is drumbeating not diplomacy. The public needs to be educated on the realities of realpolitik. That is the function of leadership. 

As the crisis moved into critical area where decisions became imminent paucity of options and weakness of leverages became disturbingly clear. This situation had been in the coming for quite some time and not many people were really surprised. The surprising aspect was that the nation had to be walked right up to the brink to be made aware of this stark reality. 

A word about the leverage that international community has with the regional powers when it comes to their long held views and positions. In the last analysis it appears that both India and Pakistan listened to nobody. Even the United States had to resort to some arm-twisting and line up the support of Russia to persuade India from going the whole hog.  This time it had a compelling reason to go the extra mile. US needs the logistic base facilities in Pakistan for its forces fighting in Afghanistan. Next time around, there may be no such compulsion. 

Lastly, the effectiveness of nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to war has been established. We have to maintain it whatever the advice to the contrary from whatever quarter. Yes, we could of course consider the denuclearisation of the whole region. In the meanwhile, the nuclear status quo has to prevail.