Posted on 05/30/2002 4:25:59 PM PDT by Pokey78
Jack Straw's departure from the Indian sub-continent - without securing concessions from either Pakistan or India - has left the situation where it stood on his arrival: the prospect of war and peace still hangs in the balance. India may launch punitive air attacks and commando raids against the camps of Kashmiri and Pakistani militants based in Azad or Pakistani Kashmir. Pakistan would retaliate against army bases in Indian Kashmir.
After weeks of fighting, with neither side being able to claim an advantage in the high mountainous terrain and as both become bogged down in raids and counter-raids across the disputed Line of Control, one side may attempt to break the logjam by crossing the international border and launching an invasion. Yesterday's cross-border shelling and the attack by Islamic militants on an Indian police station is another step towards war.
Or India may carry out a naval blockade of Pakistan's only artery to the outside world - the port of Karachi. India's huge advantage in troops and armour would quickly win it territory, which may force a desperate Pakistani military to use missile-launched tactical nuclear weapons on Indian forces.
The 55-year dispute over Kashmir, a legacy of the partition of British India in 1947, has led to two wars, many crises, military mobilisations, threats and counter-threats, which have lulled the international community into believing that this is an oft-repeated shadow dance. In fact, never has the situation been so fraught with danger as it is now.
The world is changed after September 11 and the international war against terrorism. India is furious that the world has ignored Pakistan-based Islamic extremists, who continued with their bloody terrorism in India and Kashmir even after September 11. India says it cannot join the world in fighting al-Qa'eda when the world ignores these attacks on its own soil. At the same time India believes that it can ignore the plight of the Kashmiri people, who have suffered 40,000 dead over the past 12 years of conflict. So India has used the global war on terrorism to push back dialogue with the Kashmiris.
Pakistan's military regime believed that it could comfortably carry out a U-turn on its support of the Taliban and join the US alliance to topple them, while the world and India would turn away from Islamabad's support for Kashmiri and Pakistani militants, who have turned the Kashmiris' genuine political struggle for self-determination into a jihad. The army's refusal to understand how much the world had changed after September 11 and its failure to offer anything other than militancy and terrorism in Kashmir gave India just the opportunity it sought to deal finally with Pakistan.
President Pervaiz Musharraf divides militants into three camps: al-Qa'eda and the Taliban; the sectarian extremists inside the country who have butchered thousands of innocent Pakistanis; and the "freedom fighters" of Kashmir. The world has now told him forcefully that there are no such distinctions. The Pakistani militant groups that fight in Kashmir also fought for the Taliban and al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan. The 29 Arab al-Qa'eda operatives arrested in Pakistani cities last month were being given sanctuary and safe houses by the largest Pakistani group fighting in Kashmir. All these groups are now closely interlinked, no matter how the Pakistani state tries to differentiate between them.
The Pakistan military's poor tactics have now turned the world against Pakistan. India has won the international community to its side and isolated Pakistan - but that has not made it amenable to de-escalating tensions, as there is a wider agenda. The hardline Hindu fundamentalist wing of the ruling BJP party has long argued that Pakistan has to be militarily beaten, so that it never again rises to question India's hegemony in South Asia. For them, the issue is not merely terrorism, but beating Pakistan into a final submission.
To his credit, the moderate Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has twice taken major initiatives to talk to Pakistan. His inability to succeed has led to a strengthening of the Hindu fundamentalist wing. The BJP's recent electoral defeats in regional elections and the killing of some 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat state by Hindu fundamentalists have further weakened Mr Vajpayee's influence on the New Delhi power-brokers.
Gen Musharraf is also on the ropes. Last month's rigged referendum making him president for the next five years, fears of a rigged general election in October and the army's unwillingness to share real power with civilians have turned all the major political parties against him and continued army rule. For the first time in Pakistan's history, and with the experience of three wars with India, people are not rallying around the army to defend the motherland, but are demanding Gen Musharraf's resignation. Many people in both countries believe that he and the BJP would prefer the diversion of a limited war to the continued weakening of their political positions at home.
Meanwhile, the trivialisation of nuclear war by both armies and their macho ideologies - jihad and martyrdom on the one side, Hindu fundamentalism on the other - coupled with the elite's refusal to educate their public about the horrors of nuclear conflict, only add to the dangers. Many Pakistanis think a nuclear bomb just makes a bigger bang than an ordinary one.
So all these factors have come together to produce a crisis which is unprecedented, even in the constantly crisis ridden sub-continent. The danger of war is greater than it has ever been.
No one side is seeing the logic of a climb-down. And so enormous is the lack of communication between the two sides that anything could spark a conflict - a missile test gone wrong, another terrorist attack or a macho junior officer on the Line of Control wanting to teach his opponent a lesson. The need for international intervention has never been greater, not just to prevent a war but to force the two sides finally to resolve the Kashmir dispute.
Who really knows? Neither country is currently bragging.
I've seen a lot of estimates, and they all suggest that India has between 30 and 100 nukes. Pakistan has between 25-50.
That sounds like a lot, and my guess is that both are too conservative. Pakistan surely has been on a crash program to build them since their perceived defensive needs are greater.
But nobody thinks they are bigger than about the 25 kiloton range, and many much smaller. Nasty bombs if they land on your house, but if you're five miles away, you'll probably live.
Why?
Think of it. Under MAD both nations knew for certain they would both be annihilated! And although the Soviets had more nukes than the States, we still had enough to ensure we could destroy the USSR several times over. Thus even if they had more than us we still had more than enough, meaning mere numbers were not a viable way to analyze this strategy.
However against the Jihadis we have a foe that is not afraid to launch, and does not care about a retaliation. After all there affiliation to 'Allah' is such that they 'know' they are going to heaven, thus death is welcome to them.
In the old system both the Soviets and the US feared fro the destruction fo their culture and their people, thus they would never launch unless there was no alternative. All they did was sabre rattle.
However my question to you is this. What would UBL or his peers do if they got their mits on a WMD, especially a nuke? And had the ability to deliver it to the west?
I bet the only lapse in time between them acquiring the weapon and them detonating it would be due to the time spent in trasnporting the weapon. Then boom!
Even that might be overstating it. We used to set these things off above ground right here in the USA. We've been nuked MANY more times than Japan ever was.
5 million? Could be more like 500 million. A full-scale launch by China would very likely earn the same from us in response.
Trouble is, even 20 nukes is, well, pretty bad... China ain't India and Pakistan, cobbling together 1945-era 12-kiloton atomics; the Chinese have *real* nukes, and they are *big*... probably a 2 megaton warhead atop each DF-5 ICBM. Figure a kill-potential of at least a million each -- the math ain't pretty.
Worse, China will probably have them all MIRV-ed up within a decade... triple the warheads, triple the fun. Now the math really ain't pretty.
All the more reason to accelerate the National Missile Defense, ASAP.
Ask the people in St. George, Utah and other points east about that. Despite the fact that the bombs we tested were ultra-clean compared with what would be let loose in Paki-India, there were plenty of medical problems including cancer. My own daughter contracted Hashimoto's Disease, a thyroid-destroying ailment that's usually fatal, from milk contamination caused by fallout from "dirty" Russian bomb tests. Fortunately she survived it but not without many problems, fear and pain. This is very serious stuff, for us as well as Asia in general.
This may be true, but I don't believe it. When faced with true nuclear fire, the ragheads will scream like little girls. I KNOW it.
Simply because, I know, as do they, that a nuclear weapon of the roughly 12 kiloton size that the Paki and the Indian governments wield, will kill 2/3 of it's victims slowly and horribly from radiation poisoning.
This is quite different than going out in a clap of thunder with 75 lbs. of Semtex strapped to your ass.
I welcome the opportunity to witness my theory being proven wrong.
Historically, just about every major invasion into the subcontinent has come through Kashmir and what's now modern-day Pakistan (although it hopefully won't exist much longer). It's India's major vulnerability point on land, since the Himalayas serve as a natural barrier to their north.
,,, now, that's a realistic statement.
From the CIA factbook on Pakistan
Labor force - by occupation: agriculture 44%, industry 17%, services 39% (1999 est.)
Agriculture - products: cotton, wheat, rice, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables; milk, beef, mutton, eggs
Exports: $8.6 billion (f.o.b., FY99/00)
Exports - commodities: textiles (garments, cotton cloth, and yarn), rice, other agricultural products
I'm actually pretty content with the estimates I've seen putting Pakistan at 25 and India at 60.
Pakistan no doubt wants a lot more bombs, but the unregulated Khushab reactor probably only produces enough Plutonium for one or two bombs a year. So that tends to put an upper limit on how fast the Paks can expand their arsenal.
Meanwhile, a really high-ball estimate of 200 nukes has been made for India if one assumes total employment of all possible Plutonium production at India's six unregulated reactors, but most observers don't seem to think that India is running their program that aggressively, or that she has in the past. Ergo, most of the estimates fall around 60 or 70 constructed warheads for India's stockpile.
But, I'm no expert. I like www.fas.org for their analysis.
but the Trans-Pacific fallout danger to the US is... let's call it moderate to serious, not necessarily grave. ~~ Even that might be overstating it. We used to set these things off above ground right here in the USA.
Good points, and totally agreed; I just didn't want to totally downplay the threat, either.
Do you think that the U.S. goverment has thrown around the idea to India that if they were "wink, wink" to nuke Pakistian, that the U.S. would be very grateful if they were to maybe...i dunno...accidently send a nuke into western Pakistan and bump off a large popualtion of Al Quaeda and probably even Bin Laden?
Just something to think about
Bloody Sam Roberts:"I also believe that the one thing that will keep this from happening is that Pakistan has to know it will be swatted like a bug if it uses nuclear weapons against India."
The Telegraph wants to sell papers -- Bloody Sam Roberts has it right.
Well, such an event would be the Mother of All Martyrdoms. Some of those idiots might go for the idea.
Gandhi's victory came in 1947 when India won independence. The subcontinent split into two countries (India and Pakistan) and brought Hindu-Muslim riots. Again Gandhi turned to nonviolence, fasting until Delhi rioters pledged peace to him. On Jan. 30, 1948, while on his way to prayer in Delhi, Gandhi was killed by a Hindu who had been maddened by the Mahatma's efforts to reconcile Hindus and Muslims--Encyclopedia Britannica
One-side of the story This habit of one-sided thinking is ingrained in our culture. As an example of our contentment with one-sided thinking, consider the multi-Academy Award winning movie "Ghandi", about the life of one of the great 'saints' of the twentieth century. Two key ideas this movie sought to convey were Ghandi's beliefs in the virtues of nonviolence and nondiscrimination. Ghandi's name is closely associated with the position of uncompromising nonviolence as a way of achieving political change. He is also credited with the idea that all men are equal regardless of race, colour or creed. Who can forget the opening scenes of this movie where Ghandi, in his young postgraduate days in South Africa, so boldly challenged the blatant racist policies against non-whites.-- http://members.ozemail.com.au/~opposite/magazine.html
However, some time ago, Richard Grenier in an article The Ghandi Nobody Knows (Quadrant May 83) challenged these almost universally accepted myths of Ghandi's life and teaching. Grenier provided strong evidence that Ghandi had ardently supported the British Empire in no less than three wars in the early part of the twentieth century. In the early days of the struggle for Indian independence, evidence also indicates that Ghandi accepted the inevitability of, and perhaps the need for, violence in the process of his country gaining its independence.
Grenier also reminds us that Ghandi, himself a member of a high caste family, was a supporter of the Hindu caste system until very late in his life, a system which discriminates against people according to the conditions of their birth.
The Hollywood interpretation of Ghandi's life actually presented us with only one side of a rather more complex story. And the movie obviously received very widespread acclaim. So we can't blame Hollywood or the other story-tellers of our time for the distorted pictures they offer us. There is something very appealing and comforting about these simple pictures. But life is not always pure good or pure bad as in the movies. In life, good contains the seeds of bad just as bad contains the seeds of good.
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