Nuclear Threat Restrains Foes in Kashmir Dispute

For all the violence unleashed along the Indian-Pakistani border, the most remarkable fact for many people here and abroad is that the historic enemies have not yet stumbled into another war.

In the past week, the crisis in South Asia has crept perilously close to the brink: A large group of Muslim guerrillas, allegedly backed by Pakistan, crossed into Indian territory. The Indian air force, for the first time in 28 years, took to the skies to destroy the intruders. A Pakistani missile shot down an Indian fighter over the ill-defined Himalayan border.

Still, neither country has yet dared to launch a major assault across the other’s frontier. Experts and officials in India, Pakistan and the West say the shadow of last year’s nuclear weapon tests appears so far to have produced a measure of caution in the chaotic scene that is unfolding in the disputed region of Kashmir. While Pakistan pursues a high-stakes strategy to force a solution to the Kashmir issue, India has so far declined to provoke a larger crisis.

“Fifteen years ago, after all of this, I think India would have gone to war,” Nishat Ahmad, a retired Pakistani lieutenant general, said Saturday. “Nuclear weapons are making each side much more deliberate about the actions they take.”

Ahmad, like many people watching the conflict, added that the fighting in Kashmir could quickly turn into a full-blown war. Indian officials say they too are worried about an accident or miscalculation that could catapult the two countries toward nuclear catastrophe. But for now, leaders on each side say they are making a concerted effort to keep the conflict under control--even as the fighting goes on.

“We are not interested in escalation,” said Indian Vice Air Marshal S. K. Malik. “With nuclear weapons, one always has to be cautious.”

On Saturday, fighting raged and both sides started talking peace. Indian officials said their air and ground campaign had brought the number of dead guerrillas to 300. They said they had repulsed three overnight attempts by Muslim fighters to enter India. Pakistani officials said that Indian artillery had killed two Pakistani civilians and wounded four and that their forces had beaten back Indian ground assaults.

Indian leaders said they were mulling a proposal from Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to send his foreign minister to India to begin peace talks.

“If goodwill was shown from the other side, India will more than reciprocate,” said a senior aide to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The crisis started May 8, when the Indian army awoke to discover that a force of up to 600 Muslim guerrillas had captured mountaintops along a Himalayan ridge that divides India and Pakistan. The size of the force was unprecedented in the decade-long Kashmir insurgency. The high altitudes and the guerrillas’ sophisticated gear, the Indians said, suggested the hand of the Pakistani army.

To combat the infiltrators, India unleashed its air force. But instead of attacking targets in Pakistan, the Indian armed forces have limited their strikes to Indian territory, even though they claimed that hundreds of guerrillas were waiting just across the border.

As losses mounted--at least one jet was downed by a Pakistani missile, and one of India’s helicopters was shot down by the guerrillas--Indian leaders reaffirmed their strategy of refraining from any large-scale attack on Pakistani soil.

“The Pakistanis have been provoking us to escalate,” Malik said. “We are going to continue to operate in a restrained manner.”

Some experts say the nuclear tests of May 1998--in which India and then Pakistan exploded atomic devices--have forced the two countries to act with more caution.

And just last month, India test-fired an advanced ballistic missile that it said is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets in Pakistan and China. Pakistan responded with a test-launch of a nuclear-capable missile that it said could target India’s largest cities.

While no one here believes there is much danger that either country will use its weapons, the fear of escalation and the consequences of a nuclear exchange is too great on both sides.

“Everything is different now,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a member of India’s National Security Council Advisory Board. “When a state acquires nuclear weapons, it has to act with restraint.”

Kashmir was the flash point for two of the three wars that India and Pakistan have fought since 1947. The subcontinent’s partition with India’s independence from Britain that year created Muslim Pakistan. India, which is predominantly Hindu, occupies two-thirds of Kashmir; Pakistan, the rest. Muslims are the majority in the disputed region.

“In 1965, India crossed the Line of Control and attacked,” Subrahmanyam said. “In 1999, they don’t do that.”

Some Indians grumble that it is their self-restraint that allows Pakistan to support the insurgency in Kashmir without fear of serious retaliation. It wasn’t until Pakistan acquired the capability to make nuclear weapons that its leaders began to seriously back the insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan is believed to have acquired the ability to make nuclear weapons in the mid- or late 1980s. The insurgency in Indian-ruled Kashmir began to intensify in 1990.

“Pakistan can support the insurgency because it knows India will not respond,” Subrahmanyam said.

Pakistani officials say their backing for the Kashmiri guerrillas goes no further than moral or political support. The Indians scoff at that, and many Western experts do too. The current infiltration, the experts say, was too sophisticated to be carried out by freelancers: It took place at altitudes of more than 10,000 feet. The guerrillas are armed with shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. They entered from Pakistan.

“It’s reasonable to conclude that some state institution in Pakistan, whether it is the army or the intelligence services, helped out,” said George Perkovich, author of a book on the Indo-Pakistani conflict.

Pakistani leaders have concluded that they cannot resolve the Kashmir issue alone, Perkovich and others say. So Pakistan is backing infiltrations in hopes that the U.S. or an international organization will broker a settlement.

“It’s a very high-stakes game of poker,” said C. Uday Bhaskar, a defense expert in New Delhi.

With such a dynamic at work, it’s not clear how long the conflict in Kashmir will stay under control. The fear is that one miscalculation could set off a chain of events that would lead to a full-scale war. Some people worry that the present Indian government, which faces an election in September, may feel compelled to escalate the conflict if its strategy does not work.

“If the situation gets out of control, then you cannot determine what course it would take,” said Ahmad, the Pakistani general. “It would have a dynamic all its own.”