To Denuclearize, Solve the Problem Dividing India and Pakistan

By M. M. Ali

The likelihood of nuclear proliferation, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is greater in the Indian subcontinent than ever before. To avert the threat of nuclear weapons to the area's more than one billion inhabitants, causes of the suspicions, misgivings and fears that have driven them to a suicidal nuclear race need to be addressed. Step one should be to identify major points of friction that continue to plague the area and have bloated the military budgets at the cost of more pressing needs.

Once the confrontational politics ended between the U.S. and present-day Russia, it became much easier for the two giants to agree to destroy a large part of their respective nuclear arsenals. The process is likely to continue, and once other issues that divide the two blocs are removed, we may very well have a nuclear-free world.

On a smaller scale, the same approach holds good for India and Pakistan, and perhaps it can produce better results. Efforts to achieve a nuclear freeze may continue, but the United States needs to exert pressure on both India and Pakistan to resolve their major outstanding disputes over Kashmir.

The truth is that besides Kashmir, there is no other quarrel between the two countries serious enough to warrant the present militarist posturing. The way to solve the Kashmir problem is to facilitate an environment wherein the feuding parties, including the Kashmiris themselves, are induced to discuss the various options in a rational manner. A discreet beginning has been made in recent months with trilateral unofficial meetings arranged by American think tanks. Where outside venues like Washington help, it would be more desirable to initiate Kashmir conferences inside India, Pakistan and Kashmir itself.

Time is significant. Delay will enable India and Pakistan to increase their nuclear capability, while the political changes underway in India will not be conducive to peaceful resolution of the Kashmir question. If steps are not taken now to defuse the primary cause of Indian-Pakistani tension, prospects are not too bright in India after its next elections.

Just imagine the subcontinent without the Kashmir issue! Nuclear questions, for instance, would not be as troubling. It would not be too difficult finally to convince an impoverished country with over 800 million people to reorder its priorities, China or no China. Therefore, it would be a prudent policy for the Clinton administration to help smooth the major cause of friction between India and Pakistan as the first step toward denuclearization of the subcontinent.

Official Participation Alleged in India's Descent Toward Chaos

The destruction by Hindu extremists of the 400-year-old Babri Masjid on Dec. 6, 1992, was a spark that set off a conflagration. Killings continue and hardly any part of India remains unaffected. Wanton killings by members of radical Hindu organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Shiv Sena are regrettable but predictable. They never made any secret of their hatred for the Muslim minority.

What is disconcerting is the now acknowledged culpability, and alleged direct complicity, of Indian police and security personnel in large-scale murders of Muslims in India. Prime Minister J.V. Narasimha Rao seems unable to contain and quash the spread of riots in major urban centers.

In a Feb. 4 report from Bombay, New York Times correspondent Edward Gargan wrote: "Day after day after day, for nine lays and nights beginning Jan. 6, mobs of Hindus rampaged through this city, killing and burning people only because they were Muslims. No Muslim was safe—not in the slums, not in high-rise apartments, not in the city's bustling offices—in an orgy of violence that left 600 people dead and 2,000 injured."

Equally shocking was Gargan's statement that "transcripts of conversations between the police control room and officers on the streets, taken from the regular police radio band and made available to The New York Times by an Indian reporter, show that the officers at the police headquarters repeatedly told constables in the field to allow Muslim homes to burn and prevent aid from reaching victims."

Quoting former Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Nani Palkiwala, Gargan reported: "Some of the happenings in Bombay do bear resemblance to Germany in the 1930s. " Wrote the editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India: "At the end of the tunnel we are in, there is no light. There are only gas chambers. We have to decide whether we want to do something about it, or head straight into the blinding darkness."

The riots were not confined to the western metropolis of Bombay. Reports of similar incidents throughout north and central India also circulated by word of mouth. The reports were kept out of the press by a media blackout. Although foreign journalists filed whatever stories reached them, only patches of the whole ugly picture found their way into the foreign press. There is no doubt that, with police complicity, hundreds of Hindu extremist Shiv Sena bands rampaged unhindered for days.

Secularists suddenly found themselves a tiny, cowed and silenced minority. Some of them, like Rajni Kothari of Delhi's Center for Policy Research, interpreted the mayhem in Bombay as the work of criminals and gangsters, egged on by demagogues like Bal Thackrey, a former cartoonist now leading the Shiv Sena.

There were no excuses, however, for the negligence of state governments and the indifference of the central government. If anything, the recurrent carnage provided belated vindication for proponents of the two-nation theory, who had sought a separate country, Pakistan, for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. Though many would disagree, these original advocates of partition felt vindicated after 45 years.

Is Pakistan Moving Toward Domestic Political Detente?

Pakistan is one of many developing countries that have yet to define the role of opposition parties in political life. Nor have opposition parties assumed a responsible position in the Pakistani legislative bodies to which they are elected. The relationship between the government and the opposition at both the provincial and national levels is essentially one of suspicion and bad faith. It is a rare occasion when election results are not questioned and post-election no-confidence campaigns are not launched. Then, when efforts within the assemblies fail to dislodge the incumbent government, opposition takes to the streets.

These were the tactics employed by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto against incumbent Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last November and December. Before her campaign could gain national momentum, however, it was derailed by the Babri Masjid incident in India. Public attention in Pakistan was diverted totally by the Indian riots and the mass killing of Indian Muslims.

Nawaz Sharif took advantage of the situation and neutralized Bhutto's campaign. As in some other parts of the world, religion takes the front seat in affairs of the subcontinent. Bhutto had to abandon, or at least postpone, her street politics. She knows, however, that she is the only viable alternate to Nawaz, who also is aware of it.

Now this mutual recognition has brought about a remarkable, and unprecedented, change in the politics of Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif unexpectedly has agreed to the appointment of Benazir Bhutto as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee in the National Assembly, where his Islami Jamhuri Ittehad commands a majority.

The appointment indicates either that Benazir has acquiesced to letting Nawaz finish his full term, or that she was too preoccupied personally (she delivered her third child in London in February) to undertake the rigors of street fights. Another factor, or result, of the seeming detente was the release of Benazir Bhutto's husband, Zardari, from prison, where he had been held for two years on bribery charges. His prison term did not include those months when the National Assembly was in session. As an elected representative and because his case was still pending, he was freed to attend the sessions.

While the Babri Masjid incident may have sounded the death knell for Indian secularism, the actions of Nawaz Sharif and the new appointment of Benazir may signal the dawn of actual democracy in Pakistan.

Pakistani-U.S. Relations

The Bush administration, before relinquishing office, succumbed to U.S. congressional pressure and placed Pakistan on a six-month probationary status before deciding whether or not to put it on the list of states harboring terrorists. The Clinton administration so far has left the probation unchanged.

Washington may have done this to keep Pakistan from encouraging the Kashmiri Mujahedeen, Muslims who have launched an armed struggle inside Indian-held portions of Kashmir, while the U.S. encourages New Delhi to settle the dispute.

Such tactics can backfire, however, especially when used against a country like Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim states. U.S. pressure, instead of producing moderation, could cause Islamabad, which no longer receives U.S. economic and military assistance, to search frantically for nuclear weapons. That could create a chain reaction in India, and damage severely American hopes of bringing about a nuclear-free subcontinent.

There are other disturbing ramifications of the American ultimatum that could destabilize U.S. allies among the Arabs. The Arab masses see the U.S. decision as a case of blatant discrimination. Just as in the case of nuclear arms, the U.S. decision on terrorism smacks of prejudice against Islamic countries. Other countries, like Israel, which may be guilty of more serious violations, continue to receive U.S. political, military and economic patronage.

The freedom struggle inside Kashmir has taken on a life of its own. Putting Pakistan on notice not to support it will serve no purpose, since Pakistan will be forced to ignore U.S. wishes in this case.

The Financial Times of London, in a Jan. 25 editorial, wrote: "India maintains a force of some 400,000 in Kashmir . . . Its cause suffered a severe setback on Jan. 6 when paramilitary troops went out of control in Sopore and killed 50 local people. . .By insisting that Kashmir is a domestic problem and seeking to solve it by little other than brute force, India has alienated most Kashmiris"

With insensitive policies, the U.S. could do the same.