The wounds of South Asia's partition

By Mark Tully

After last month's attack on the Indian Parliament the government declared a war on terrorism and demanded that Pakistan end all support for Kashmiri separatists operating from any territory it controls.

Pakistan has taken some action to curb the separatist groups but India continues to demand more and makes preparations for military action.

Although the Indian government insists that it does not want an armed conflict its aggressive diplomacy and deployment of troops could just provoke that.

Indian television is showing crowds cheering soldiers as they leave their barracks for the front-line.

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The newspapers have pictures of tanks and artillery loaded on trains making their way to the border with Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee speaks of a war against terrorism and refuses to rule out armed combat as a means of waging that war.

But there are voices protesting against the dangers and the futility of war.

At a meeting of leaders of all the parties, which gave broad support to the prime minister, a veteran communist objected to "ministers talking uninhibitedly about war."

Dangers of "saber rattling"

In the Indian Express, Kanti Bajpai, one of India's most respected scholars of international affairs, has warned those" infected by war fever" that they are in danger of "shaming their government into action which can only lead to disaster."

Gautam Sen, an academic from the London School of Economics, has written in the daily Hindu of the danger of "saber-rattling taking over and leading to war."

The government has upped the anti so far that it is in danger of being bounced into a war, and will find it difficult to pull back unless all its demands are met by Pakistan.

India's bellicose voice is making it more difficult for President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to take the measures it is demanding.

He can't afford to be seen to be acting because of India's threats.

The risk of warlike noises

All the warlike noises and the risks they carry could lead to military action that would cost India dearly and achieve nothing.

It is not at all clear what military action India could take with any guarantee of success.

The risks are all too clear especially now that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.

A limited objective would be to change the Indian army's rules of engagement and allow soldiers to cross the line of control in Kashmir to pursue militants who have infiltrated from the Pakistan controlled side.

The snows and winter weather don't make that an easy option.

Any success would be so limited that it would not satisfy the political aim of the government, which has to show some decisive outcome of the "war against terrorism," it has declared.

Talk of bombing

There is much talk in India of bombing what the Indian government describes as terrorist camps in Pakistan or Pakistan administered Kashmir.

But Pakistan is not Afghanistan, India is not America, and who is to say that the militant Kashmiri separatists are sitting in their camps waiting to be bombed.

This would not be the time of year for India to advance across the line of control in Kashmir to try to expand the territory under its control, and the terrain is in Pakistan's favor.

An attempt to move across the western border, where India advanced successfully in the 1971 war, could possibly mean capturing territory, which would serve as a bargaining counter in subsequent peace negotiations.

But this would almost certainly lead to all-out war and the danger of nuclear retaliation.

Any of these options, even the most limited, runs the risk of escalation.

As it is no one can rule out the possibility of an accident sparking off a conflagration with the two armies standing eye ball to eye ball along the international border and the line of control in Kashmir.

They exchange fire almost daily across that line. A hot-headed officer leading troops in pursuit of militants over the line of control, an aggressive deployment of armor could cause a panic reaction on the other side.

Wounds of partition

India's belligerency is not only dangerous if it spills over into military action.

It will prove futile to whoever emerges victorious.

Three wars, and Pakistan's occupation of terrain on the India side of the line of control in Kashmir in 1999 have shown that there can be no military solution to the Kashmir problem, and war only deepens the other wounds which still fester from partition.

The collapse of Pakistan's policy in Afghanistan has given Musharraf an opportunity to revise the policy of supporting those he calls freedom fighters in Kashmir.

He has shown signs of willingness to do that. What is needed now is for India to give him space, and to acknowledge that it too needs to do a lot of rethinking about Kashmir.

The problems there can't all be blamed on Pakistan.