Kargil And Beyond:
Danger of Western intervention in Kashmir

by Prakash Karat

After more than a month of intense military operations to clear the 
Pakistani intrusion across the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kargil area of 
Kashmir, the battle still continues. The Indian armed forces are working in 
extremely difficult conditions to dislodge the entrenched Pakistani 
soldiers and armed intruders in mountainous terrain and icy climatic 
conditions.

Every day casualties are mounting — by June 22 the official report was: 
163 dead, 323 wounded and nine missing. The actual toll is higher.

The whole country is anxiously watching the course of the battle in Kargil 
and there is all round support for the immediate task of ensuring that the 
systematic and well planned violation of the Line of Control by Pakistan is 
rolled back and the legitimate right of India to defend the LoC is 
exercised fully.

It is this position which has helped India to convince world opinion that 
the present round of hostilities have been provoked by Pakistan.

The diplomatic efforts made towards mobilising international public opinion 
on this point are a necessary part of the overall drive to foil the 
Pakistan regime's plan to change the jurisdiction of the Line of Control.

Internationalising Kashmir

The [BJP-led, right-wing] Vajpayee Government, however, has not confined 
itself to diplomatic efforts to mobilise international public opinion. It 
has gone considerably further in its efforts to enlist the help of the 
United States to end the present conflict.

The Vajpayee Government and the BJP [ruling party] have appealed to the US 
to follow up its stand that the LoC should not be violated, with concrete 
steps to make Pakistan withdraw its forces from the intruded areas.

These moves by the Vajpayee Government have the dangerous potential of 
internationalising the Kashmir issue.

The Government has cited the G-8 communique on the Kashmir issue as a big 
victory for India.

The G-8 statement, while pointing out that the infiltration of armed 
intruders violating the LoC was the source of the current military 
confrontation in Kashmir, and criticising any military action to change the 
status quo, also calls for an immediate cessation of the fighting.

This can be used against India for continuing operations against the 
intruders.

Alongside the statement on Kashmir, there is another resolution on the 
missile and nuclear tests by India and Pakistan reiterating the G-8 
position taken one year ago and calling upon both the countries to join 
non-proliferation measures as set out in the UN Security Council 
resolution.

While it is valid to state that the G-8 has recognised the source of the 
current provocation as the armed intrusion violating the Line of Control, 
it is equally important to note that the stance of the G-8 lays the basis 
for future Western intervention, particularly since the basic question of 
Kashmir and the issue of nuclearisation of India and Pakistan have been 
taken together.

The US agenda

The US administration has clearly indicated that there is sufficient 
evidence to establish that armed intruders backed by the Pakistan army have 
crossed the LoC and entrenched themselves.

To deduce from this that the United States will come forward to rein in 
Pakistan and that the earlier tilt towards Pakistan will change to a tilt 
towards India is illusory.

The United States has its own agenda for Kashmir. In the present world 
situation, the United States is prepared to support the demand for national 
self-determination by any ethnic group provided it serves US interests.

This is the new doctrine enunciated by Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary 
of State, on behalf of the Clinton administration. This has already been 
put into practice in the Balkans.

Reality of Pakistani regime

What the Vajpayee Government overlooked in the crucial period between 
September 1998 and February 1999, when it was deeply engaged in strategic 
talks with the United States, was the reality of what the Pakistan regime 
is today.

In Pakistan, increasingly, Islamic fundamentalist organisations like the 
Lashkar-e-Taiba have infiltrated the higher echelons of the armed forces.

Nawaz Sharif's choice of the army chief of staff, after he removed General 
Karamat, was Pervez Musharaff who, according to Selig Harrison, the 
American South Asia expert, "has long standing links with several Islamic 
fundamentalist groups". 

The rise of Islamic fundamentalist forces and their influence in the 
Pakistani establishment parallels the US-Pakistan nexus with the Islamic 
fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan and their joint military support to 
them.

Despite the formal trappings of democracy, Pakistan continues to be a 
military-dominated set-up with the armed forces increasingly having Islamic 
fundamentalist linkages.

The United States, with its great influence over India's Vajpayee 
Government, led it to believe that Nawaz Sharif and his civilian Government 
in Pakistan should be helped to counter the more fundamentalist forces 
represented by the army.

But the years of American nurturing of the military in Pakistan and helping 
the ISI in Afghanistan have come home to roost. Unlike what the Vajpayee 
Government believes, there is no guarantee that the US can rein in the 
Pakistan establishment, even if it wished to do so.

Correct approach

Instead of falling into the trap of invoking US intervention and thereby 
internationalising the Kashmir issue, the only correct approach at present 
is to push ahead with the military operations designed to clear the area on 
the Indian side of the LoC, of all Pakistani encroachment.

This must be pursued steadfastly by taking the people of the country fully 
into confidence about the progress of the military operations and allied 
diplomatic efforts.

Any move to widen the conflict, by opening up new fronts for military 
operations, will only end up helping Pakistan to internationalise the 
Kashmir issue and invite immediate Western intervention.

The record of the Vajpayee Government in dealing with the Kargil crisis has 
so far been dismal. The lack of any vigilance in tracking down the large 
scale intrusion, the failure to realise the enormity of the encroachment 
and its military threat, the deceptive and contradictory positions taken to 
cover up this failure have all been widely noted and commented upon.

Last year in May when the BJP-led Government conducted the Pokhran nuclear 
tests, it adopted a nuclear doctrine which stated that India has now 
acquired the strength to ensure peace and stability and protect its 
security interests.

Nuclear weaponisation by India and Pakistan was presented as a step for the 
preservation of peace as it will maintain a "balance of terror" just as 
during the Cold War.

In his statement on March 15, 1999, Prime Minister Vajpayee expounded this 
new doctrine: "Now both India and Pakistan are in possession of nuclear 
weapons.

"There is no alternative but to live in mutual harmony. The nuclear weapon 
is not an offensive weapon. It is a weapon of self-defence. It is the kind 
of weapon that helps in preserving the peace. If in the days of the Cold 
War there was no use of force, it was because of the balance of terror." 

As against this, the Left has been arguing that nuclear tests will start an 
arms race between the two countries leading to a spiral of tension and 
confrontation.

Nuclear weapons will not end armed conflicts but provide the opportunity 
for low intensity conflicts as happened during the period of the Cold War.

Pakistan could utilise the nuclear shadow to provoke intrusions into 
Kashmir to facilitate international intervention.

In deliberately provoking an armed conflict on the Line of Control in 
Kashmir, Pakistan knows that India cannot utilise all forms of conventional 
warfare against it, as in 1965 and 1971, without a nuclear confrontation 
becoming a reality and invoking international intervention. 

When Pakistan retaliated with its own nuclear tests and India found itself 
isolated internationally, the Vajpayee Government began its journey of 
seeking US recognition and approval. Faced with a difficult situation and 
under US pressure, Vajpayee readily agreed to visit Lahore (Pakistan).

The visit to Pakistan and the Lahore declaration was then depicted as a 
great achievement and a breakthrough in Indo-Pakistan relations. The Lahore 
visit was portrayed to be a logical result of the Pokhran tests.

As the editor of The Organiser (the paper of BJP ally the RSS) put 
it on March 7, "Barely eleven months in office, Vajpayee has earned a 
distinct place in the nation's history... Both the nuclear tests and the 
Lahore visit has shown that it requires inner strength and political will 
to act, not mere military might or parliamentary democracy."

It is these two ideas — that the nuclear tests have made India a great 
power and that the Lahore visit is a peace dividend from this policy — 
which created the mindset in the Vajpayee Government to overlook or 
disregard any possibility of Pakistan behaving in a manner to utilise the 
new nuclear situation to its advantage on Kashmir.

Resort to Chauvinism

The BJP is now groping for a new posture; it has fallen back on national 
chauvinism. Desperate to cover up its monumental failure, the BJP is now 
resorting to aggressive rhetoric with demands that the military operations 
should lead to the capture of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK).

With this posture it is only one step further to the insane demand that 
Pakistan be subjected to a nuclear attack as demanded by 
Panchajanya, the RSS Hindi paper.

With this dangerous rhetoric and chauvinism, the BJP will be susceptible to 
pressure to open new areas for military operations in order to circumvent 
the difficult task of clearing the intruders from the Drass-Kargil-Batalik 
sector. Widening the conflict is a danger which can arise from hawks on 
both sides of the border.

This will be a sure recipe for undoing whatever India has achieved in the 
past six weeks. Such a war provides no guarantee of a successful conclusion 
for India, except ruin for the peoples of both countries and direct 
facilitation of imperialist intervention as in the Balkans.

* * *

People's Democracy, paper of the Communist Party of India 
(M).