Use Economic Aid as Leverage for Cease-Fire

When fighting broke out between India and Pakistan in Kashmir six weeks ago, the United States reacted with pleas for dialogue and carefully avoided pinning blame on either side for disturbing the peace. But the evidence is now overwhelming that Islamabad has launched a long-planned military offensive designed to alter the strategic balance in the disputed Himalayan state.

As the danger of escalation to a nuclear confrontation grows, it is no longer enough for the United States to wring its hands. The time has come for the Clinton administration and the U.S.-backed international aid agencies that are financially propping up the Nawaz Sharif regime to apply determined diplomatic and economic pressures designed to get Islamabad to abandon its reckless adventure.

Privately, American officials acknowledge that the 600 “freedom fighters” who seized a network of strategic positions along the key Kargil sector of the Kashmir cease-fire line were organized and equipped by Pakistani intelligence agencies and consist primarily of Pakistani-trained Afghan mercenaries under the command of Pakistani military personnel.

What makes the present crisis so alarming is that it is not merely another one of the cross-border skirmishes and artillery exchanges that have become commonplace along the cease-fire line. This time, Pakistan is trying to alter the border forcibly by seizing and holding territory on the Indian side of the line in order to cut off a key road that gives India access to Ladakh and to Indian outposts in the tense Siachen Glacier region.

The Pakistani press is hailing the chief of the Pakistani general staff, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Azizuddin, as the master strategist who conceived the Kargil invasion plan during his tenure as commander of a Pakistani brigade in Kashmir in 1985. After becoming chief of staff last year, reported the weekly Takbeer, it was Azizuddin who lined up the military high command behind the plan and then confronted Prime Minister Sharif at the last minute with a virtual fait accompli.

India scored an intelligence coup when it intercepted a May 29 international telephone conversation between Azizuddin and the army chief of staff, Gen. Pervaiz Musharaf, then in Beijing. A transcript of the conversation is replete with evidence indicating the grip of the armed forces over both civilian politicians in Pakistan and the Kashmir “freedom fighters.” In one conversation, Azizuddin tells Musharaf of an exchange in which an advisor to the prime minister expressed concern that the Islamic militants in the Kargil operation might force an escalation of the war. “We made clear,” said Azizuddin, “that there need be no such fear, since we have them by the scruff of the neck, and that whenever desired, we can regulate the situation.”

Despite the growing intensity of the fighting, the U.S. and the international aid agencies have continued economic aid. On May 24, three weeks after the start of the conflict, the International Monetary Fund, backed by the United States, disbursed $51 million in aid. Another $100 million is scheduled to be released next month.

The principal argument advanced to justify this business-as-usual policy is that without continuing aid, Pakistan would fall into economic and political chaos, opening the way for the return of military rule, possibly under the control of Islamic fundamentalists. This rationale ignores the fact that Islamic fundamentalist groups have already infiltrated the top echelons of the Pakistani armed forces and intelligence agencies and have been able to push Sharif into supporting the current Kashmir adventure. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid has documented the penetration of the armed forces leadership by the extremist Lashkar-e-Toiba.

The immediate problem before the international community is not how to prevent an Islamic fundamentalist takeover in Islamabad, but how to give Sharif leverage in internecine policy conflicts with the fundamentalists over ending the war. The most effective leverage would be a credible threat by the United States and the international aid agencies to freeze economic aid until Pakistan pulls back its forces from the Indian side of the cease-fire line.

Pakistan is in no position to ignore such a threat because it has failed to meet key economic performance targets and its IMF support is already hanging by a thread.