Asia Times: Hardline takeover in India, Pakistan heralds trouble



	October 20, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Hardline takeover in India, Pakistan heralds trouble
By Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI - As soon as Gen Pervez Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif on October 12, India put its troops on ''high alert'', while expressing ''grave concern'' at the development.

Since then, New Delhi's reaction to the cataclysmic setback to the process of democratization has ranged from churlish gloating to a search for a new opportunity for closer relations with Washington, to outright rejection of the October 17 offer by the Pakistani army chief for an ''unconditional and result-oriented'' dialogue with India on all issues, including Kashmir.

Beneath bland official statements of relative neutrality and declarations of willingness to deal maturely with all regimes in Pakistan, whether civilian or military, lurk many Indian fears, suspicions and calculations.

These, and Gen Musharraf's hardline stance toward India - reflected in his initiation of the Kargil misadventure - bode ill for relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

India's National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra has discounted Musharraf's unilateral offer to pull back troops from ''the international borders'' with India, and said that a dialogue can only be held once Pakistan ceases its ''cross-border terrorist operations''.

Whatever the validity of his claim that the term ''borders'' does not extend to the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir, but only to the settled international boundary in Punjab and Sindh, this is a big dampener on the prospect of conciliation between India and Pakistan.

The re-election of the Hindu right-wing Vajpayee government in India and the military takeover in Pakistan could be a recipe for heightened tension between the two neighbors, which could worsen under domestic pressures.

The events in Pakistan are inseparable from the tension that developed between Sharif and Musharraf over the Kargil operation, and the withdrawal in July of Kashmiri ''mujahideen'' (freedom fighters) - in reality, army regulars who had been infiltrated across the mountainous Line of Control at Kargil. The army was embarrassed at the withdrawal. Its differences with the civilian government surfaced, further exacerbating Sharif-Musharraf differences.

There is another Indian - and nuclear - angle to the Pakistani coup. The Kargil fighting was itself the result of the Pakistani military's view that nuclear weapons possession had given Islamabad virtual strategic invulnerability and it could afford a limited conventional conflict with India without risking serious escalation.

During the two month-long bloody conflict, which resulted in more than 1,000 deaths, Indian and Pakistani officials exchanged veiled and open nuclear threats no fewer than 13 times, boasting of their newly acquired prowess.

Just four months down the line comes the takeover by right-wing forces in the two countries. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party may have welcomed ''bus diplomacy'' in Lahore in February, but historically it has always opposed conciliation with Pakistan and a peaceful negotiated solution to the Kashmir problem.

Indeed, it denies there is a problem: Kashmir is an integral part of India, and its status is not open to negotiation. It also advocates strong-arm methods to deal with the ''azadi'' (autonomy or independence) movement in the Kashmir Valley.

On the other side is the Pakistani military which sees itself as the guardian of the nation and its Islamic foundations. In recent years, the army has itself come under Islamicist political influence and become embroiled with the Taliban and other fundamentalist forces. Although Gen Musharraf is not known to be a ''jihadist'', he has never hidden his support for the Kashmir mujahideen. Nor have most other generals.

The present context of heightened mutual suspicion and India-Pakistan tension has been further vitiated by the US Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last week. This takes the pressure off India and Pakistan to sign and ratify the CTBT at an early date.

Although the CTBT does not prevent nuclear weapons manufacture and stockpiling, it would create an atmosphere conducive to nuclear restraint. In the absence of any nuclear restraint measures, India and Pakistan are likely to persist with their nuclear arming.

Two months ago, India ignited a new post-Cold War nuclear arms race in Asia by publishing a ''draft nuclear doctrine'' which calls for a huge, open-ended arsenal with triadic (land, air and sea) deployment. Pakistan has said it has no choice but to match India. Even China is re-evaluating its nuclear posture and is likely to undertake nuclear arsenal expansion and modernization when India does build a substantially large nuclear force.

The CTBT setback in the US signifies an even larger reversal of the global arms control process. With hardline Republicans prevailing, the agenda of nuclear arms reduction, ratification of START-II, and the beginning of START-III, is liable to suffer, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (which bans full-scale ''Star Wars'' technology) is jeopardized.

The US has been reluctant to call the military takeover in Pakistan a ''coup'' and condemn it strongly, although it has called for a return to ''constitutional, civilian, democratic rule''. This reluctance may be rooted in the view that it is wise to nudge Musharraf gently rather than confront or threaten him. But it has certainly sent wrong signals to Indian right-wingers.

Some of them see in the Pakistani military takeover an opportunity to trap Washington in its own rhetoric of democracy and human rights, and its claim to be the world's democracy watchdog. More importantly, they feel the time is ripe to raise the pitch of the ''joint campaign'' against ''cross-border terrorism'', on which Washington and New Delhi find themselves on the same side of the fence.

This cynical calculation is likely to spur them to question Pakistan's intentions in offering dialogue, even a troop pullback, and hence torpedo any opportunity for mutual conciliation. There could of course be some token gestures, and some half-hearted attempts at improved relations in the coming weeks.

However, at a more fundamental level, the stage is set for more tension and rivalry, and possibly, bitter exchanges, between India and Pakistan - unless they are pressed by the international community toward sobriety and conciliation. For this, the international atmosphere itself must change in support of nuclear restraint, arms control and reduction.

Renewed India-Pakistan tension could have profoundly negative consequences for the people in the two countries, which have both seen a disturbing growth of militarism and jingoism, and a diversion of resources away from rational developmental priorities in recent years. Jingoism, hardline approaches and communal nationalism in one country always feeds on militarism, suspicion and distrust in the other.

(Inter Press Service)