Author: Brahma Chellaney
Publication: International Herald
Tribune
Date: December 29-30, 2001
The border skirmishes and the largest
military build up between India and Pakistan since their last war in 1971
could escalate to a full-blown confirmation unless Pakistan is willing
to go beyond symbolic steps against the terror groups that its military
and intelligence service have nurtured and directed for years.
The Dec 13 attack by Pakistan-based
Islamic terrorists on the Indian Parliament was a signal of how deadly
and audacious these forces have become. It was an attempt to wipe out India's
political leadership and to bring about chaos in the world's largest democracy.
In terms of what the terrorists
sought to achieve, Dec 13 was comparable to sept.11. It is thus understandable
that India's resolve to respond to these terrorists is as firm as America's
resolve to defeat terrorism after Sept 11.
These Islamist terror groups, nurtured
in Jihad by religious schools, are instruments of what Pakistani officials
call their war of "a thousand cuts" against India.
The crisis will be ended not merely
by action against these groups, however, but by the Pakistan military stopping
its undeclared war against India, based on terrorism through these organizations.
The Pakistani military, licking
its wounds from its ruinous Afghan jihad policy, now it faces the consequences
of its jihad-inspired war on India. It should now be clear to the international
community that the military has had a large role in turning that nation
into a staging ground for global terrorism. Even now, the military equates
Pakistan's future with its own hold on power.
It would be a serious mistake to
read the Indian military preparations as political posturing and a tactic
to generate more American pressure on Islamabad. While New Delhi certainly
would like Washington to employ its formidable leverage to make the Pakistani
military regime disband the terrorism operations, India is clearly willing
to move against Islamabad on its own.
For India, the move from facing
an undeclared war to engaging in a declared war no longer seems like an
impossible leap. After all, the cumulative economic and human costs of
the indirect war have been far greater than those of all the direct wars
India has fought since independence.
As targets of Jihad terrorism, both
the United States and India want the dismantling of Pakistan's terrorist
infrastructure and the capture of Qaida members and other terrorists who
have taken refuge there. Both seek the reform of Pakistan's Islamic schools,
which are producing tomorrow's "holy warriors."
They differ markedly, however, on
how to achieve those goals. The United States has put its money on the
military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, whom it portrays as a moderate. Washington
needs Pakistan' military, but India believes there cannot be regional peace,
or an end to transnational terrorism, or even nation-building in Pakistan,
unless the military's iron grip is shattered.
Despite warming U.S. Indian relations,
Washington has undercut its influence with New Delhi by disbursing aid
totaling $1.1 billion to Islamabad and by helping Pakistan obtain international
debt relief and credit from International monetary Fund without requiring
the Musharraf regime to end its terrorism against India.
There appears no early end to the
crisis on the subcontinent, but Washington can help avert an open war by
intensifying pressure on General Musharraf to end the military's jihad.
Not only should such a change be
a condition for further disbursement of American aid, but Washington should
also be pushing in Pakistan what it has helped establish in Afghanistan
- a broad-based civilian government.
(The writer, a professor of strategic
studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, contributed this
comment to The New York Times.)
