Asia Times: India/Pakistan


	June 11, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

COMMENTARY
Al-Qaeda and military logic drive nuclear risk
By Marc Erikson

"War less a worry than monsoon", read the June 1 Washington Post headline of a story reporting that ordinary Indians and Pakistanis largely discount the threat of nuclear conflict between their nations. Many analysts concur. In the same story, Brahma Chellaney, a professor of security studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is quoted saying, "Kargil [the intense and protracted 1999 border war in northern Kashmir's Kargil mountains] has taught us that we can have a limited conflict with Pakistan."

The trouble is that neither ordinary citizens nor security analysts make the decisions or fire the weapons that make for the wars that cannot happen because they must not happen. The trouble, too, is that even nations' leaders' solemn assurances that they consider use of nuclear weapons "insane" (Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf) or that they won't be the first to employ them (Indian Prime Minister Aatal Bihari Vajpayee) mean precious little in the face of constraints imposed on them by military logic and political compulsions.

As for political predicaments, precepts and unthinking preconceptions that could trigger military escalation all the way up to an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange, there are plenty on both sides. "Even if Musharraf is serious about controlling the militants, some of these groups - especially Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Muhammad - are totally financially independent," says Suba Chandran, a research associate at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in New Delhi.

"They have ways to infiltrate India and enough ways to wage war in Kashmir without Pakistan's help. This is the real threat." Indeed, not even militant groups over which Musharraf does have some influence necessarily do his bidding: In his May 27 speech - under heavy US and British pressure - he had been expected to announce a ceasefire on the Kashmir Line of Control (LoC) and a commitment on the part of major jihadi groups to do the same. But this did not come to pass.

A meeting only hours before the speech between Musharraf envoys and representatives of the Pakistani chapter of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), the Jamaat-e-Islami, and various jihadi outfits' commanders angrily rejected the proposal of a ceasefire call to be issued by the United Jihad Council. UJC chairman Salahuddin reportedly voiced his outrage at the idea and accused Musharraf of wanting to push the mujahideen into a Tora Bora- or Kunduz-like situation in which Indian troops would butcher them.

On the Indian side, things are no better. "Getting tough with Pakistan" and ignoring the concerns of the Indian Muslim minority defined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's electoral strategy in (losing) state elections this year. Provocative rhetoric like Home Minister L K Advani's assertion that India would win any war "like we did in 1971" (with the implicit threat of dismembering Pakistan) abounds. India, not without justification after deadly attacks on its parliament and an army camp in Jammu, sees itself as the aggrieved party in the present conflict. But that doesn't justify the type of incendiary talk issuing from the likes of Advani for domestic political consumption, but not lost, of course, on Islamabad.

What's most astonishing is that both a reluctant Musharraf, fearful of further alienating his country's large radical Islamic community, and a tongue-tied Vajpayee, stubbornly refusing to negotiate, appear to be blind to the likely evil designs of a third party. As former US assistant secretary of state Karl Inderfurth put it in a recent interview, al-Qaeda wants Pakistan and India to go to war because Musharraf is on al-Qaeda's most-wanted list for his betrayal of the Taliban. He might have added that nuclear war between ("treasonous") Muslim Pakistan and (anti-Islamic) Hindu India would certainly fit beautifully into Osama bin Laden's overall scheme of things and prove hugely more catastrophic than last September's attacks on the US. A recent Pentagon estimate puts the potential number of dead from 100 percent delivery of both countries' nuclear arsenals at 12 million, with another 2 million to 5 million injured. Are India and Pakistan determined to play stupidly into such a design?

Indian, Pakistani and US intelligence sources say that rather than just retreating to and hiding out in tribal areas in northern Pakistan, numerous al-Qaeda operatives have infiltrated Pakistani cities and the India-controlled portion of Kashmir preparing for terrorist acts and acting as a fifth column behind Indian lines should war break out. They are also said to be in touch with several jihadi groups active in Kashmir. A classic false-flag operation with al-Qaeda-led jihadis committing another terrorist act on Indian territory can readily be seen in the making.

In that case, would India retaliate across the LoC against training and base camps in Pakistani-controlled Azad ("Free") Kashmir, counting on the ridiculous idea propounded by analyst Chellaney or, more dangerously, Defense Minister George Fernandes, that Pakistan would comply with India's wishes to fight a limited war? That would appear to be the Indian plan and accompanying expectation - and it could trigger the World War I-style pre-programmed sequence of moves and countermoves leading to nuclear catastrophe.

No quick, premeditated pre-emptive nuclear strike by either side is likely. It would come as a last resort. But given the overall correlation of forces, patterns of deployment, and geographical realities, rapid arrival at the nuclear threshold is a distinctive possibility. Like West Germany in Cold War days, Pakistan faces numerically superior conventional ground and air forces with little strategic depth to fall back on. And like West Germany and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in those good old days when an East Bloc push through the Fulda Gap at the center of the front line would have split its forces, Pakistan might very soon after the outbreak of hostilities see its national integrity threatened by massed Indian mechanized forces punching through from the Rajasthan desert and driving toward the strategic North-South Highway from Peshawar to Karachi to sever northern Punjab from southern Sindh. In light of its predicament, NATO could not and did not renounce first use of - at least tactical - nuclear weapons then, Pakistan cannot and will not do so now.

Thus, suppose India launches a sizable incursion into Pakistani-controlled territory across the LoC. At points, the LoC is less than 100 kilometers away from Pakistan's capital Islamabad. An attack across the LoC from, let's say Poonch would not only put Islamabad at risk, but also threaten to cut off Pakistani forces in the northern areas of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. It would be militarily idiotic for Pakistan just to confront invading Indian forces at the points of intrusion. But, of course, flanking action elsewhere would call for Indian flanking response. How long would 3,000 or more Indian tanks in Rajasthan sit still?

There is no need to draw this out further. Retired (March 31) Indian Lieutenant-General D B Shekatkar, a former additional director general, perspective planning (covering nuclear doctrine and planning), has no doubt that Pakistan is in possession of low-yield (five kilotons or less) battlefield nuclear weapons, perhaps developed or acquired with Chinese assistance. Such weapons have an effective one-mile destruction radius and can stop an advancing tank battalion.

Indian leaders' "limited war" fantasies aside, would Pakistan use such a capability when push comes to shove? Sure it would. And would India then retaliate with its larger-yield (15-20 kilotons) second-strike capability? Ask L K Advani - and then watch bin Laden cheer, wherever he may be.

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