Waiting for the next crisis?

Published September 24, 2016
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

IT isn’t as if we haven’t been here before. We have, on far too many occasions to be comfortable. After all, Pakistan and India are both armed with nuclear weapons. So where do we go from here? The best answer has to be nowhere or back to where we were a couple of weeks ago.

Hardliners and their cheerleaders in the media can say what they want; social media warriors can launch imaginary punitive assaults. They can’t change the reality. A nuclear-armed subcontinent can’t be poised on a primed hair-trigger solely for their excitement as the cost of one ill-conceived decision could run into millions of lives.

I am not a nuclear expert but those who are paint a horrible, Armageddon-like scenario, if all-out war were to break out between the two countries. The deployment of nuclear weapons would be just a step away even if what was desired was a conventional conflict. One side could trigger a war but neither can control its direction if it got out of hand.

A similar stalemate was evidenced between the East and the West following the development post-Second World War of nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems in the shape of intercontinental ballistic missiles which could target rivals thousands of miles away.


India killing its own soldiers no matter what the gain sounds implausible as does Pakistan engineering the attack.


It was called balance of terror, mutually assured destruction (MAD) and even described by the use of the analogy of two scorpions. Whatever it achieved, it prevented the nuclear-armed powers from locking horns with each other directly.

Rivalries — ideological, political and/or historical — did not go away. Neither could territorial disputes be wished away. There was though a realisation of what could happen if such differences spiralled into a conflict and that too a nuclear one.

Hence, the development and deployment of the so-called non-state actors to bleed the adversary, the enemy, which was so effectively put to use by the United States and its allies, most notably Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to counter the Soviet Red Army after it moved into Afghanistan in 1979.

As the Geneva peace agreement was beginning to take effect in the late 1980s and the Soviet Army had started its pullout from Afghanistan, there was no doubt about the efficacy of the type of ideology and its adherents, ie the militants, that had inflicted this ignominy on Kremlin.

In fact, the Soviet Union as the world had come to know it for a better part of the 20th century had started to crumble — such was the power of those who had bled it.

Kashmir had remained disputed between Pakistan and India since Independence in 1947. The last of the two wars over the disputed territory had also happened in 1965 and now we were in 1989. Pakistan may have spent the intervening 25 years looking for a way to reassert its claim over the disputed region but opportunities had been few and far between, especially after the 1971 war ended in total disaster.

Then of course corruption in India-held Kashmir, mass discontent over it and a rigged election triggered a popular uprising. Pakistan, which had not flexed too many muscles for a number of years, saw a golden opportunity to ‘slow bleed’ India via a low-cost weapon, the non-state actor, to wreak havoc in the valley.

Personally, I believe that the introduction of these non-state actors motivated by an ideology that was mostly alien to Kashmir and their indiscriminate and brutal ‘jihad’ discredited the indigenous movement, even alienated many Kashmiris.

Varying degrees of violence were witnessed in the occupied valley but the huge presence of Indian security forces finally seemed to overwhelm the militants and contain rampant violence with some draconian measures. Also post 9/11 Pakistan had to take its foot off the non-state accelerator pedal.

Now of course an entire new generation of Kashmiris seems to be raising the ‘azadi’ slogan and are being punished for it. There, however, seems to be no let-up in the intensity of their demand, despite having to pay a price with over 100 killed, hundreds blinded by shotgun pellets deployed callously by security forces and injuries to thousands of others.

Then Uri happened. The Indians believe that Pakistan-based and backed terrorists carried out the attack in which 17 soldiers were killed. Many Pakistanis are indifferent as to who did it as they can only focus on the brutality with which the Kashmiri protesters have been dealt with since the start of the latest round of the Kashmir intifada.

Some Pakistanis close to the military also suggest that Uri was a ‘false flag’ operation ie Indian intelligence engineered it to change the narrative, to gain support as the perceived victim, ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting where it was inevitable that the Kashmir rights violations would resonate.

I have no means of ascertaining which view is correct but India killing its own soldiers no matter what the gain sounds implausible as does Pakistan engineering the attack as it would shift focus away from the oppression unleashed in the valley by Indian security forces.

What can’t be ruled out is India-based militants seeking retribution or Pakistan-based non-state actors seeing the ground situation ideal again for their brand of jihad. Whatever the case, the incident has triggered a crisis. Both countries aspire to attain rapid economic growth, tackle rampant poverty, hunger, disease. The present is hardly conducive to that.

For the subcontinent to get off the boil it is imperative that Pakistan pushes ahead with the trial of those accused of the Mumbai carnage. Any more delays will only weaken its case that it has abandoned the use of non-state actors for its policy goals. It needs to start to disarm all non-state players as well.

For its part, India has to see reason and be prepared to sit down and find a way forward on Kashmir so the people of the occupied valley can feel free and empowered to take their own decisions. This will lead to de-escalation. Otherwise we will visit, in fact revisit, crises after crises.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn September 24th, 2016

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