- NEW DELHI - India
and Pakistan are edging closer and closer to war.
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- Pakistan confirmed yesterday that it is moving troops
away from the Afghan border, where they have been helping the US hunt for
Al Qaeda fighters, due to the looming military threat on its eastern flank.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will head to the region next week
to try to defuse tensions.
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- Indian military sources say India has secretly told the
US and Britain that it will wait two weeks to see if international diplomatic
pressure halts infiltration of Islamic militants into Indian territory.
"This could be easily verified by monitoring [radio and telephone]
intercepts," says Ret. Major Gen. Ashok Mehta, an Indian military
analyst. If infiltration does not significantly drop, a senior Army official
says India plans a 10-day assault in Kashmir. "It will be like Kargil
[the 1999 war between India and Pakistan]," says Mr. Mehta. "The
military action will be predominantly infantry led and intensively supported
by the Air Force."
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- The short Indian military operation is designed to capture
territory and destroy the infrastructure of Islamic militants quickly.
The battle-field scenario, says a senior Indian military official, is premised
on the calculation that it will operate under the nuclear threshold and
that the international community will step in to prevent the conflict from
escalating.
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- Within the first 48 hours, India is expected to attack
the Neelam Valley Road across the Kupwara sector in Indian-held Kashmir,
says an Indian Air Force officer involved in the planning. The Indian Air
Force will try to destroy an important bridge over the Jhelum River which
connects Pakistan with Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. But "Indian action
will attract heavy Pakistani punishment," says General Mehta.
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- In the Kargil conflict, the Indian government decided
not to cross the 460-mileLine of Control that divides Indian-held Kashmir
from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This policy was to ensure that the "limited
conflict" did not escalate into a full-fledged conventional war. The
two nations have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain
in 1947. Two of the wars were over Kashmir.
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- In the last two weeks Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee has given bellicose speeches decrying Pakistani "cross-border
terrorism" and calling on Indian soldiers to "prepare for sacrifices"
in a "decisive fight." Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has
responded by donning his general's uniform, testing short- and long-range
ballistic missiles this past week, and vowing that any Indian attack would
be met with a swift response.
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- While few expect India and Pakistan to use their nuclear
weapons against each other, the possibility of a bloody conventional war
between two key allies in the US "war on terrorism" is shaking
the international community. Indeed, some analysts say India is stealing
a page from Israel's game plan to initiate their own "war on terrorists."
Others see a classic brinksmanship strategy that India, in particular,
is using to invite external pressure on its enemy.
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- "The Indians are practicing a policy of 'compellance,'
" says Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow in security issues at the Brookings
Institution, reached at a conference in Tokyo. "They are threatening
to use force to compel another country to alter its behavior. In this case,
their target is both Pakistan and the US, and they are compelling the US
to put pressure on Musharraf to rein in cross-border terrorism."
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- It may be working. Numerous diplomats have visited the
region since January, including US Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca. This week,
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw arrived with a proposal to beef up
the 35-member UN monitoring force.
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- According to Pakistan's UN ambassador Munir Akram, Mr.
Straw said that a helicopter-borne force of 300 could "effectively
monitor [the Line of Control and verify] whether the Indian charges are
right or not." Next week, Richard Armitage, a deputy Secretary of
State, will also arrive in Islamabad to impress on Mr. Musharraf America's
concerns in the region.
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- The leverage of the Western powers is significant. The
US could withdraw further economic support, thus sending Pakistan's rebounding
economy back into a tailspin. In addition, the US could put Pakistan back
on its watch list of terrorist countries, alongside North Korea, Iraq,
and Iran. But this lever works both ways. The US depends on Pakistan to
rein in Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives hiding in Pakistan; any loss of
Pakistani support undermines the US "war on terrorism."
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- Meanwhile, in New Delhi, it's clear that Indian officials
are offering the Pakistani state no easy way out of the current imbroglio.
Those close to the prime minister and to External Affairs Minister Jaswant
Singh say that India intends to keep up the pressure on Pakistan until
Musharraf follows through on promises made in a Jan. 12 speech to "break
from the jihadi mindset" and to shut down terrorist groups based on
Pakistani soil.
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- "It was the international powers led by the US that
said we are in a global fight against terrorism, and the US would shoulder
the responsibility for Pakistani misbehavior," says K.K. Nayyar, a
retired rear admiral and behind-the-scenes participant in Indo-Pakistani
negotiations over Kashmir. "But you see the result. There is an escalation
by the militants."
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- But India's tough talk of war may create an environment
into which the US and other Western nations may feel compelled to intervene
and to seek lasting solutions to the Kashmir conflict.
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- "This is the ultimate nightmare of India, to have
the US meddling in this issue," says Sumit Ganguly, a political scientist
at University of Texas in Austin, and author of a book on Indo-Pakistani
wars called "Unending Conflict." "There is a deep reservoir
of suspicion among Indian intellectuals toward the US, because of its past
alliance with Pakistan during the cold war."
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- Yet in the present environment, India may feel the need
to bloody Pakistan's nose.
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- "The question is, how do you get out of the present
bind?" says Dr. Ganguly, the UT professor. "The Indians cannot
afford to back down without looking silly to the Pakistanis."
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- Admiral Nayyar agrees. "Conventional war is inevitable,
and the later it takes place, the fiercer will be the campaign and the
higher the death toll."
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- Still, some analysts say that the tough talk by India
and Pakistan are just rhetoric, aimed at domestic hard-liners in both countries.
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- "Frankly, I don't think there's going to be war
and there's not going to be peace," says Mr. Cohen. "This reminds
me of sumo wrestling. There's a lot of posturing between two giants, a
lot of throwing of salt, but neither one wants to crash against the ther."
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- http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0531/p01s04-wosc.html
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