They Fight for the Sake of Fighting

The hijacked Indian Airlines passenger jet that, at this writing, is hopscotching across South Asia and the Middle East symbolizes the inherent dangers posed to Indo-Pakistani stability by the unresolved business of Kashmir. Increasingly, South Asia is a region where Western policy interests in economic development, particularly India’s, are overtaking concerns about rising Hindu and Islamic radicalism and its implications for peace and security. The hijacking is a stark reminder that billion-dollar trade deals are of little value if the environment that fosters their success is constantly threatened by random acts of terrorism.

The terrorists on board Flight 814 represent the most virulent form of radicalism emanating from the forced migration of Agfhan Moujahedeen to Kashmir in the early 1990s. Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, imported the jobless commandos at the end of the Afghan war to stiffen the resolve of the otherwise docile Kashmiris resisting Indian occupation of their lands. Now they fight just for the sake of fighting because war is big business for them.

The precedent for this past weekend’s murderous drama is equally unsettling. The last time an Indian airliner was hijacked in 1971, Kashmiri separatists were implicated and the ensuing Indo-Pakistani dispute over airspace rights erupted into a war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. This time, Kashmiri separatists are demanding the release of a Pakistani religious cleric and other Kashmiri militants who have been held by India since 1994 for their role in the resistance movement.

The problem posed by this hijacking, then, is how to defuse a terrorist act before it ignites more serious military movements--even nuclear saber-rattling--this time with Hindu fundamentalists forcing decisions in New Delhi and Islamized military generals pushing their agenda in Islamabad to claim Kashmir as their prize.

The evidence is disturbing. The hijackers are presumed to be affiliated with Harkat Moujahedeen, a Kashmiri-based militant Islamic organization formerly headed by the jailed religious cleric Maulana Masood Azhar. Harkat’s separatist agenda, which won it a U.S. State Department label of terrorists under a previous incarnation, has received material and moral support from Pakistan’s intelligence services for decades.

That Kashmiri separatists may have felt the need to up the ante at a time when India was projecting maintenance of the status quo as the long-term solution for divided Kashmir may lie at the heart of the hijacking. Certainly, it comes at a time when a confluence of divergent events grips South Asia.

Pakistan has once again surrendered democracy to its army rulers, each of whom India blames for planning and executing this summer’s military incursion in the heights of Kashmir. Islamabad suspects Indian intelligence is behind the hijacking in an effort to pin the label of state-sponsored terrorism on Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s lapel just in time for President Clinton to bypass Pakistan on his way to India early next year.

India’s Hindu fundamentalists, fresh off a victory in an election necessitated by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s anemic response to Pakistan’s Kashmiri gambit this spring, believe wrongly that they have won the battle over Kashmir. Holding the status quo while they wait for Pakistan to collapse under the weight of its self-inflicted wounds is a recipe for disaster in New Delhi.

Indian policy planners should take far more seriously the ramifications of Islamic radicalism’s march across the region and the terrorism it is breeding. Peace and security must supersede economic revitalization as a policy priority because peace is a necessary precondition for sustainable growth.

Economic development, with the foreign investment it needs to fuel growth, simply cannot take place in any environment where property and life are at constant risk from extremism’s raging forces.

While the innocent lives of 160 people are now in the hands of extremists who are clearly prepared to die for their misguided notion of “jihad” (holy war), perhaps the tragedy of this event can still yield rational thinking about how to finally diffuse the tinderbox that is Kashmir.

First, the hijacking drama must be brought to an end. To demonstrate that human life transcends ethnic and religious divides, Islamabad should join New Delhi and offer all its military and intelligence resources to free the hostages. The U.S., Russia and China should provide tactical support and logistics to ensure that an international community response to terrorism, regardless of its roots and location, becomes the norm for combating such future incidents.

Second, while New Delhi cannot be seen as bowing to terrorist demands by releasing jailed dissidents, it is clear the Kashmir crisis will never be resolved by following its present hard-headed line of thinking. The time has come for India to demonstrate its maturity as a democracy ready to foster regional development by taking the first steps toward peace rather than maintaining its stance as a petulant power eager to reincorporate unruly vassal states.

New Delhi should consider a unilateral withdrawal of at least one-third of its troops from Kashmir and start earnest negotiations with the only viable institution in Pakistan that can make a Kashmiri truce stick: the army. Islamabad should cease its military and intelligence support for Kashmiri guerrillas, many who are neither indigenous nor particularly concerned with Pakistan’s welfare anymore, and begin the long process of reforming its politically meddlesome intelligence apparatus. Both countries must find, as Israel and its Arab neighbors ultimately did, that only in peace is there meaningful strength.