India takes a leaf out of Israel’s book
Abdeljabbar Adwan
The danger of war breaking out between the world’s two poorest nuclear powers
India and Pakistan is real.
So is the prospect of their conflict extending beyond the two countries’ borders and
influencing developments further afield, not least in the way the US conducts its
“war on terror,” and in fueling a broader religious conflict which need not
necessarily be confined to Hindus and Muslims.
Like the Middle East conflict, the dispute between Pakistan and India has its roots in
British imperial policy in this case the colonial era’s “divide and
rule” tactics used to pit Muslims against Hindus, which culminated in the
subcontinent being partitioned, while the Kashmir problem was left unsolved.
But also as in the Middle East, the latest flare-up over Kashmir is related to the
policies of the US administration, specifically its black and white approach to the war on
terror.
New Delhi felt encouraged to emulate Washington by branding any armed opposition to it as
“terrorism,” threatening those who support it with ominous consequences. While
Pakistan deems Kashmiri resistance legitimate so long as India refuses to comply with the
UN resolution on determining the territory’s future, India deems any challenge to its
control in Kashmir as terrorism. New Delhi has been helped to portray the dispute as such
in the present international climate of “Islamophobia,” by the fact that the
rebels are predominantly Islamist and have support in Muslim Pakistan which is
unsurprising, given Kashmir’s 75 percent Muslim majority.
India seized the opportunity to ape the policy adopted by the United States against
Islamist movements and the states that support them, without referring back to the United
Nations or the international community.
In so doing, New Delhi took a leaf out of the book of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
who seized on the US posture to launch a devastating war against the Palestinian people on
the pretext of protecting Israeli civilians from Palestinian suicide operations, without
heeding UN resolutions, and without committing himself to the pursuit of a political
settlement or to ending occupation even in the event of the resistance dying down.
One of the complicating factors in the standoff on the subcontinent is that both sides
believe that ultimately they are the party favored by the United States.
The Indian government depicts itself as fighting the same war as the United States, and
sees its burgeoning ties with Israel as qualifying it for backing from its lobby in
Washington.
For its part, the Pakistani government believes that it has borne more of the burden
of Washington’s “war on terror” than
any other government in the world. It has pledged to continue doing so despite the
domestic dangers to which that exposes it, and has also complied with Western demands to
go through some motions of democratization. Islamabad sees itself as indispensable to
Washington as a major allied Muslim nation that has allowed US forces free use of its
territory and airspace and is Afghanistan’s most important neighbor.
The Bush administration, for its part, is unlikely to abandon its black and white approach
or suddenly opt to impose a peaceful international settlement to the Kashmir issue. Thus,
the outlook is for continued tension until a solution is found or an explosion occurs.
Although India and Pakistan have fought three wars in the past half-century, the situation
between them has never been as dangerous, due to the changed international climate and the
fact that both countries now possess nuclear devices and the missile capacity to deliver
them some 1,500 kilometers away.
It has been argued that their nuclear capability could actually serve as a deterrent to
war, as the nuclear arsenals of the rival Soviet and American superpowers did during the
most nerve-racking moments of the Cold War.
But the analogy is hard to sustain. Politically, both India and Pakistan are convinced
they are right, that the Americans are with them, and that they command overwhelming
domestic support. Both are prone to behaving recklessly toward each other a product of
their long history of animosity, conflict and mistrust. Their propensity to expect the
worst from each other is exacerbated by the fact that Pakistan happens to be ruled by the
military and India for the first time in its history, by a chauvinistic anti-Muslim party.
Even in technical terms, the safeguards against a Cold War nuclear exchange were stronger
than those in the case of India and Pakistan. The United States and the former Soviet
Union had the technology to forewarn themselves against surprise attack, with hotlines
between their leaders. They had massive intelligence capabilities, denying either side the
ability to keep its facilities secret from the other. And they had so many warheads that
neither side could even contemplate taking out its rival’s nuclear capability in a
first strike, as both knew any nuclear exchange would spell mutual and total destruction.
None of this applies to India and Pakistan. Neither country would have more than a few
minutes notice of an impending strike. And the limited size of their nuclear arsenals may
encourage either to believe perhaps with the encouragement of, and intelligence
supplied by, a third party that it could deal a decisive blow by means of a
well-targeted first strike that eliminates the other’s capacity. Moreover, the
deterrent of mutually assured destruction does not apply. It has been estimated that a
nuclear exchange between the two countries could claim 12 million lives a horrific
prospect, but short of total extermination.
For these and other reasons, it is complacent to assume that the two sides’ nuclear
capability reduces the risk of war.
In addition to the death and destruction that a war would inflict on the two neighbors, it
would have a devastating impact on what remains of Hindu-Muslim coexistence in the
subcontinent. The renewal and intensification of intercommunal tension and conflict within
India would be almost inevitable, and could extend to other parts of the world with
substantial Indian and Pakistani communities, such as Britain or the Gulf Arab states. Abdeljabbar Adwan is a Palestinian analyst. He wrote this
commentary for The Daily StaR
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