This isn't posturing - we're on the brink of a nuclear war

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 05/31/2002 | Ahmed Rashid

[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.

[DoughtyOne]

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Am I the only one who doesn't care if the Indians and the Pakistanis all kill each other?

I care about the killing of millions of people anywhere it occurs. It concerns me even more that there is a finite chance that they could take us with them.

[FlyVet]

The scenarios I've seen talk of limited nukes hitting cities close to the border. Sorry, but I see new Dehli and Islamabad as much more likely targets.

City Populations: New Delhi - 11,680,000 (2000 estimate, Source: United Nations Population Division, 1996) Islamabad: 5,800,000 (source unknown).

This would indeed be ugly. I'm surprised the numbers aren't much higher.

[Dog Gone]

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.

I think most of this article was pretty accurate, but I don't think that statement is correct, unless it's referring to a pretty small minority. Musharraf had nowhere near the 96% (or whatever it was) vote claimed in the election, but every indication I've seen shows that he's still popular, editorials by former PM Benazir Bhutto notwithstanding.

But, this is also an article which implies that if Jack Straw can't solve the problem, it can't be solved and nuclear war can happen any second.

Let's set the record straight. Jack Straw is an idiot, and he's a British idiot trying to intervene in a country that just threw the British out 50 years ago.

Let's wait until Boucher and Rumsfeld visit there before tossing in the towel and heading for the fallout shelters.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

It is also clear that there is little that we can do except urge these countries to think clearly, and otherwise wring our hands.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Let's wait until Boucher and Rumsfeld visit there before tossing in the towel and heading for the fallout shelters.

So that means we need to have fallout shelters available next week. Where are we supposed to get them?

[Dog Gone]

Now China does have a chunk of Kashmir themselves which isn't often noted.

Yeah, what the heck is up with that? How is it that China claimed something that was a dispute between India and Pakistan, and nobody really cares?

Is it basically uninhabited but useful as a defensive boundary for China?

[aruanan]

Where's Ghandi when you need him? :p

In this situation Ghandi would be completely and totally irrelevant. You need a British Empire to respond to a Ghandi. Neither India nor Pakistan has the philosophical presuppositions that would allow either to be manipulated as Ghandi manipulated the British. Both Pakistan and Hindu India would squish Ghandi like a bug and not give him a second thought.

[DoughtyOne]

Imagine upwards of 15 million people gone in a matter of minutes. I hope these two nations give this a lot of thought.

[Davea]

I posted this as a separate thread but thought it would fit here also...

Conflict Spirals As Pakistan Begins Troop Reinforcment

AFP | 05/31/02

Posted on 5/30/02 5:12 PM Pacific by Davea

Friday May 31, 3:03 AM

Conflict spirals as Pakistan begins troop reinforcement

AFP

Conflict escalated sharply along the Indian-Pakistani border with Islamabad bolstering its military presence as the US said it would send a top level diplomatic mission.

The Indian army reported the heaviest shelling since relations between the hostile neighbours plummeted two weeks ago following a massacre in Kashmir India blames on Pakistan.

US President George W. Bush said he was dispatching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to India and Pakistan "early next week" in a bid to defuse the situation.

"Yes he's going there. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is going this week and then Secretary Rumsfeld is going ... next week, yeah, early next week," Bush told reporters.

But tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals continued to mount Thursday with Pakistan redeploying troops from its western border with Afghanistan to the eastern flank with India.

Pakistan's military said in a statement read out on state television that the redeployment from the Afghan frontier was made "in view of the adverse posture of the Indian armed forces".

An Indian army spokesman said India was aware of the troop movements amid US warnings that "irresponsible elements" in the two nuclear-armed countries could spark a war.

"We are in full knowledge of the situation and Pakistani troop and tank mobilisation," spokesman Colonel Sruti Kant told AFP. "We are in complete control of the situation."

Kant said India had information that the Pakistani troops were being moved to areas flanking India's western border states of Rajasthan and Punjab, the theatre of previous wars between the two arch-rivals.

Musharraf said war between India and Pakistan would only break out if India initiates the conflict.

"We will try to avoid a conflict. Conflict will only take place if it is initiated by India," he said at a press conference.

Earlier in the day, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called an unscheduled meeting with his three key advisers on security matters -- Defence Minister George Fernandes, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani.

Singh afterwards said "various issues" had been discussed, without elaborating, although the chiefs of the Indian army, navy and air force did not attend.

Fernandes later said Musharraf has told British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that he would end support to Kashmiri Islamic separatists.

"The stated intention of Musharraf is that within a certain period cross-border terrorism will come to an end," the defence minister said, citing Straw's talks on Wednesday with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi.

"But the point is how does one believe it? Cross-border terrorism is at the hands of Pakistan army, backed by the ISI and other such elements," he said of Pakistan's military intelligence which India blames for all its troubles in turbulent Kashmir.

Fernandes was to late Thursday leave for Singapore where he would attend a regional security conference that would enable India to brief world leaders on its stance with Pakistan, the defence ministry said.

A defence spokesman in Jammu, southern Kashmir, said heavy shelling, mortar and gunfire had raged across the Indian-Pakistani borders overnight into Thursday.

At least seven people were killed in a fierce artillery duel in Poonch district that continued deep into the night, Indian police said.

Tension was raised even higher when, according to police, two Muslim rebels attacked a police post at Doda, 172 kilometers (106 miles) north of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu, late Wednesday and killed three policemen on duty.

Another five police were wounded after the militants hid inside a two-storey building with 250 rooms and exchanged fire with Indian soldiers, a police spokesman said.

The guerrillas were finally shot dead Thursday afternoon by soldiers and paramilitaries, the spokesman said.

[Standing Wolf]

Frankly, I believe we'd be living in a saner, safer, much happier world today if we'd nuked the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia as soon as we discovered our nation was attacked by Muslim terrorist savages. The war against terrorist savagry would be won by now, and the entire Islamic world would finally have understood there's no future in attacking the civilized world.

[backhoe]

So that means we need to have fallout shelters available next week. Where are we supposed to get them?

Actually there is info here:

Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare- Survival Skills, Pt. II

Look for the links to "Nuclear War Survival Skills" by Cresson H. Kearney, available online or hard copy.

FWIW, I don't think we'd get a *lot* of fallout, depending on airbursts vs. surface bursts, and the "dirtiness" of the warheads- but we'd get some. There are maps showing fallout from a 1958 Chinese 300 kiloton test here:

The India-Pakistani Conflict... some background information-

[AM2000]

Yeah, what the heck is up with that? How is it that China claimed something that was a dispute between India and Pakistan, and nobody really cares?

Chinese Kashmir was the part of Kashmir the Pakistanis had taken right before the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession to join India back in '47. The Pakistanis awarded that piece of Kashmir to the Chinese later, as a gesture of friendship. India doesn't care because they don't want to take on China yet. They need to fry the smaller fish in their neighborhood first.

[swarthyguy]

One nit: PakistanKashmir has a contiguous border with China. The Karakoram highway was built as a physical expression of the ties between Pakistan and China. Not much trade takes place over the road but it's a symbolic connection.

You may remember the much derided reports of Chinese troop movements in that area last fall. Probably not the numbers reported by D****, but possibly a move by China to stop Jihadis fleeing Northern Afghanistan/Kashmir entering China if the US had taken a whoopa** strategy to the region.

Recently, pakistani papers reported that a Uighur Leader, fighting with the Taliban, had been turned over to the Chinese by the Pakistanis.

Dog_Gone, i think China took over that part, called Aksai Chin when it invaded and occupied Tibet in 1959.

[swarthyguy]

But what would the French have said?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

This could be like the opening of World War One.

I think you are right. Serbian nationalist terrorists killed an Austrian leader. (Bosnia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Serbia claimed it). Austria demanded that Serbia make concessions, and Serbia refused. Austria and Serbia started shooting, then the system of alliances committed all of Europe to the fight. There are no alliances involved here, but it is a regional dispute that could get totally out of hand.

[shaggy eel]

,,, this situation is serving very well to keep the heat off the middle eastern countries you mentioned in post # 31. Islamic militants, remotely controlled, are at work and their leverage is being applied quite efficiently.

[null and void]

But what would the French have said?

Same as always: "We SURENDER!"

[timydnuc]

They, as in both India and Pakistan, will be forced to hit large civilian targets. The idea of nuclear weapons is to inflict enough damage to have the other side "stand down". Niether side has enough warheads to make sugical first strikes an option. The casualties will be huge, on both sides. The on going contamination could reduce the population of both countries by as much as 50 to 60 percent. Pakistan has the most to lose in the exchange because their population is so much smaller that India, but the Islamic, 14th century attitude won't let them back down from this. The above facts combined with the fact that both countries are severly lacking in health care that could help in a devastating nuclear attack, and the fact that most of what little modern technology that both have will be knocked out by the strike (communications, computers, transportation, energy) will be gone as well, makes this a scary deal.

I have noticed that the UN is very quiet, in their caves, about this. As a matter of fact, I see only one nation trying to drench the fire....that would be the good old United States of America. Big surprize, huh? The UN is worthless!

The only bright spot here is, if India does go to launch mode many rag heads of Al Quaida (sp) will be chimney soot as well. India has many more warheads than do the Pakistanis.

[AM2000]

According to indiainfo.com-

• In 1962, China attacked India and thus began the Indo-China War
• China occupied Aksai-Chin (part of the Ladhak region in Kashmir), in the 1962 Indo-China War and overran Arunachal Pradesh.
• In 1963, the Indian Territory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was ceded illegally to China under the so-called Sino-Pak 'boundary agreement'

---

At this point, I'm confused. I always thought the Pakistanis gave the Chinese their part of Kashmir, but now it would seem they got atleast some part of it during the '62 war.