The India-Pakistan Conflict Lies Threatening in the Wings

As U.S. Defense Department hawks train their sights on Saddam Hussein for their next target, a more dangerous and immediate threat looms in South Asia: a war between India and Pakistan born from the remnants of Al Qaeda terrorists fleeing Afghanistan for the foothills of disputed Kashmir--perhaps their last haven on Earth. These two nuclear-armed neighbors have gone to war two times over Kashmir since the 1947 partition.

Preventing a fourth Indo-Pakistani war--one with nuclear ramifications--needs to rise quickly to the top of the White House agenda before military hawks in Islamabad and New Delhi decide jet raids and missile launchers are the preferred instruments of dialogue. President Bush’s move Thursday to shut down funding to Lashkar-e-Taiba was a good start. This is the declared terrorist group operating in Kashmir and the one Bush said is responsible for the Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament that killed at least 12 people. But a more important step is ensuring Pakistan’s long-term stability and President Pervez Musharraf’s viability in office.

India should assist Musharraf in fighting the evil in his midst rather than condemning him for it, and perhaps thereby fatally wounding his regime. At home, Musharraf cannot withstand an iota of challenge to his support for Kashmir’s indigenous militancy after essentially betraying--in the eyes of Islamic fanatics--the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Abroad, he can no longer be seen as looking the other way while Arab terrorists infiltrate the ranks of Kashmiri militant groups and bring their money, guns, firebrand Islam and terrorist methods to South Asia.

In New Delhi, the argument for ratcheting up tensions with Pakistan to wartime levels is simplistic. Terrorists are terrorists, and those who attacked the Parliament building with alleged support from Islamabad are the same breed who have for years attacked Indian targets in occupied Kashmir. If the United States can hunt down Bin Laden and Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, why can’t New Delhi go after Lashkar militants across the Line of Control into Pakistan-held Kashmir?

Such thinking is nothing more than a recipe for provoking war. The harsher truth is that New Delhi’s most ardent hawk, Home Affairs Minister Lal Krishna Advani, is raising the ante to save his ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party from embarrassing results in state elections that could cost the party its majority in Parliament and unseat Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Advani is considered by most to be the de facto ruling force in India.

But local politics is hardly reason to stoke the fires of war with a perpetually unstable neighbor whose hawkish generals would love to teach India a military lesson, regardless of the consequences.

Rhetoric aside, India’s military preparations during the past week indicate more than just talk is forthcoming. Air bases in Kashmir and along the Pakistani border have been activated for military operations. Troops are being moved closer to the border and reinforcements are being sent to Kashmir at a time when normally they come home from the winter snows. A single incursion across the Line of Control by Indian army personnel or air force jets would be the matchstick that lights the flame.

Pakistan, of course, is not without blame. Musharraf can’t have it both ways. He can’t support what started as an indigenous movement for self-determination in Kashmir and not recognize that the same movement has been hijacked by Arab and Afro-Arab terrorists. He can’t hail Pakistani intelligence as a constructive force in stabilizing the region when all the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (Pakistan’s CIA) has ever done is sow seeds of instability from Afghanistan to Kashmir.

Musharraf realizes he has a dilemma. The question is whether India realizes he does and whether New Delhi hard-liners are willing to give him the time and space to clean up his mess.

Musharraf’s intent is clear. He closed down religious schools that taught firebrand Islam by day and bred the Kalishnikov culture by night. He pulled his intelligence agents out of Afghanistan, facilitating Kabul’s rapid fall. He dismissed his intelligence chief for conducting operations diametrically opposed to the U.S. and allied effort to quash Al Qaeda. He even agreed to let the FBI go to Pakistan to investigate any evidence presented by New Delhi of official Pakistani complicity in the attack on Parliament.

Still, Musharraf can do more. He should cite the U.S. freezing of Lashkar assets as reason enough to completely dismantle all Arab-dominated militant groups operating in Pakistan and deport non-Pakistanis to their homelands even if it means losing the Arab world’s financial support. A similar purging of Islamic zealots in his military intelligence services would send an equally strong signal.

India cannot eradicate terrorists from the midst of Kashmiris by attacking a Pakistan that is delicately balanced on terrorism’s ledge. New Delhi’s legitimate security concerns will only be redressed when it is prepared to offer viable political solutions for the Kashmiri people that replace rhetorical threats of war against them--and Pakistan.

*

Mansoor Ijaz, an American Muslim of Pakistani origin, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.