CONTRARY to the expectations at the outset, US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s detailed talks with the leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad did not lead to any perceptible lessening of the tensions in the region. However, there are indications that the overall atmospherics have marginally improved and, going by the statements from the two sides, the risk of a war has for the present receded.

All the same, whether India will give up its warlike posturing is anybody’s guess. It is encouraging that Mr Colin Powell was discouraged by the outcome of his efforts and expects to continue with his role as a peacemaker without much delay.

The Indian Minister for parliamentary affairs, Pramod Mahajan, who has been described as Prime Minister Vajpayee’s ‘hatchet man’ in a report from New Delhi, continues to be adamant that the Indian military formations on Pakistan’s border will stay on in their positions until such time as Islamabad complies with India’s demand for handing over some 20 persons who were allegedly involved in crimes and terrorist activity in that country. The list provided by India includes some Pakistani nationals, and President General Pervez Musharraf has made it clear that no Pakistani nationals will be handed over to India. The President, nevertheless, feels confident there is no strong possibility of an armed conflict between the two countries. From the political or military point of view, a resort to war would be senseless.

The prospects are that for the present India will keep its forces massed on the Pakistan border and along the Line of Control (LoC) regardless of the risk of an accidental conflict. This is because of the pressure of Indian’s domestic politics, with elections in two crucial states (Uttar Pradesh and Punjab) due to be held within the next few weeks. Many Indian commentators maintain that in view of the erosion of its popularity at home, the BJP-led coalition headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee would want to present the image of a strong government capable of protecting the country’s interests against all odds.

Nonetheless, there is a a general feeling that the situation in the subcontinent is beginning to de-escalate. In a media interview, General Pervez Musharraf has stated quite categorically that India has lowered the state of alert of its forces on the border and also refrained from any further deployment of troops that would be required to mount an offensive against Pakistan. However, he has once again warned that Kashmir remains the core issue between the two nuclear-armed countries and therefore constitutes a potential flashpoint, putting the peace of the region and perhaps of the rest of the world at risk. At the same time, he has reiterated that the Kashmir issue can be resolved provided there is a shift away from the traditional mindset on both sides.

Reports that two key officials of India and Pakistan, Brajesh Mishra, India’s national security adviser; and Mr Abdul Sattar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, would hold a bilateral meeting in Munich in early February, on the occasion of an international conference on security, could mean a possible resumption of the dialogue between Indian and Pakistan.

However, it is too early to place too much hope on whatever developments may take place in Munich. However, it is not without significance that the US secretary of state, at the end of his talks in Islamabad and New Delhi, said: “I don’t want to minimize the dangerous nature of the situation (in the subcontinent). It is going to take sometime before sufficient confidence is built up between the two sides and before the troops start moving back. The important thing is that I think that a political decision has been made that ‘let’s find a diplomatic solution and let’s not let our finger be on the trigger of this loaded gun that we now see on the border’...”

President Pervez Musharraf has not lost any opportunity to reiterate his commitment to peace with India. His message to Colin Powell for India was: “We are for peace.... reconciliation, dialogue, moving forward on Kashmir...” In his meeting with a group of American strategy experts (ASPEN), he expressed the importance of finding an end to the Kashmir dispute. As a practical approach, he also proposed a four-stage process to defuse the crisis in Kashmir. His proposal was: first, India and Pakistan should resume an official dialogue (and he attached no conditions). At the next stage, they need to accept that Kashmir is central to the disputes, and differences between the two countries.

At the third stage, they should agree to eliminate from discussion what each side finds as unacceptable: and, finally, they should construct an agreement on the basis of alternative to their long-held positions. While he did not put it in so many words, what he said could mean that Pakistan should step back from its traditional demand for a plebiscite in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions while India should stop harping on the theme of Kashmir being an “integral part” of India.

There is a view (and this has been expressed by Prof Alastair Lamb whose approach to the Kashmir has generally found favour in Pakistan) that the very concept of a unitary plebiscite for the whole state, with a simple “either all or nothing” option for Pakistan and India is “fundamentally flawed”. He believes that the concept fails to take into account certain ground realities. He also believes that the regional plebiscites approach proposed by Sir Owen Dixon (of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan) in 1950 was more practical. Dixon visualized regional plebiscites for the various Muslim and non-Muslim majority regions of the State of Jammu and Kashmir as it existed at the time of partition. This would also be in line with the basis on which India’s partition took place in 1947 and appears to be relevant even in today’s context.

The strong opposition to the division of the disputed state along communal lines expressed by some senior and seasoned observers of the Kashmir situation is difficult to understand. As it is, parts of the state (e.g. Gilgit) have already been divided along communal lines and India appears reconciled to the situation. It is indeed difficult to visualize that the situation could now be altered.

The suggested division of some parts of the state along communal lines which are under dispute would seem like a logical thing to do. The approach would really affect only the valley which has been virtually, and apparently unutterably, alienated from the Indian Union, if the twelve-year long armed insurgency against Indian occupation is viewed. It is a fact of life and should be accepted as such. India’s secular character should also absorb the shock of a communal approach being adopted in the case of a part of Kashmir which has firmly refused to be merged with the Indian Union.

Incidentally, Prof Alastair Lamb has quoted the eminent Indian journalist and writer, Khushwant Singh, from an article published by him in the Telegraph of Calcutta in November 1993. Khushwant Singh accepted the reality that the state of Jammu and Kashmir as it was constituted at the time of partition comprised many disparate parts and was in no sense homogeneous. He also recognized that the question of accession really concerned only one part of the state, i.e. the valley. According to Prof Lamb, Khushwant Sindh also wanted it to be accepted that “despite the instrument of accession”, the majority of the Muslim inhabitants of the disputed territory, i.e. the valley, did not really look upon themselves as Indians; they were Kashmiris. He wanted India to respect the wishes of the Kashmiris “to become an autonomous entity whose existence would be guaranteed by its neighbours — India and Pakistan. He believed that this approach would mean an “Andorra-like” solution for the disputed state. (Andorra is loosely affiliated to both France and Spain who guarantee its autonomous status).

Commenting on Khushwant Sing’s proposal, Prof Alastair Lamb maintains that there is no simple solution, such as unitary plebiscite to the problem of Kashmir. He believes that in practical terms, India and Pakistan only have to agree that their vital interests should be preserved and that they are not faced with “political humiliation.”

In today’s situation, more than ever before, the plan proposed by Khushwant Singh should commend itself to all those who believe in a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue. It would inevitably mean abandoning the present mindset and agree on a partial partitioning of whatever remains of the state. This could restore peace and stability to the region.

THE long-awaited second act of President George Bush’s worldwide ‘war against terrorism’ opened last week with the official announcement that 650 US troops would conduct ‘military exercises’ in the southern Philippines against the Muslim rebel movement, Abu Sayyaf.

In fact, it is learnt that the US troops have secretly been conducting operations with the Philippine military against Abu Sayyaf since last fall. Once again, the US is getting embroiled in a complex region about which very little is known.

This is the second time in just over 100 years that the US troops are in action against the Moros, or the Muslims of the southern Philippines. After the US ousted Spain from the Philippines in 1901 and made the island nation an American colony, the Moro sultanates of Mindanao and Sulu resisted fiercely as they had fought the previous Spanish occupiers for 350 years.

The famed Colt .45 pistol was invented specifically to knock down sword-wielding Moro warriors whose courageous but suicidal attacks gave us the Malay term, ‘running amok.’ After heavy fighting and the massacre of large numbers of Moro civilians, the US finally conquered the southern Philippines. The American colonial government moved large numbers of Christian settlers into the southern Phi