Kashmir crisis could be nuclear tripwire in a volatile region

June 6, 1999

UNITED NATIONS -- Last year’s nuclear tests which shook the Rajasthan desert may have roused India’s nationalism and self-esteem but as assuredly, have rocked the political status quo in a volatile region. Now recent fighting between Indian and Pakistani proxy forces along their fragile northern frontier have renewed fears that disputed Kashmir may be the nuclear tripwire between the world’s newest nuclear powers.

In 1998, India carried out five nuclear tests at the Pokharan site in uneasy proximity to neighboring Pakistan. The tests were a slap in the world’s face as much as a shot of political adrenaline for India’s nationalist Hindu government. Though the Indian Express newspaper showed a playful cartoon of “on mushroom cloud nine--nation enters elite club,” the outside world--and especially uneasy neighbors Pakistan and China don’t share New Delhi’s hubristic humor.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry stressed that “The South Asian region has been thrown into turmoil and its security has been severely endangered.” Before long, Islamabad matched New Delhi’s ante and tested its own nuclear weapons.

Recall that while purportedly pacifist India has had a nuclear weapons capability since 1974, the electoral victory of the Hindu-nationalist BJP government has triggered a series of rash and jingoistic statements. While the actual military balance of power has not been altered, the political perception concerning the use of that power has changed dangerously.

Divided Kashmir has been a traditional flashpoint; India and Pakistan have fought two full scale wars over the disputed mountain region. Yet a conflict between two virile and viritrolic members of the nuclear club raises the strategic stakes given that emotion can often outpace realpolitik.

There’s a domestic angle to the conflict too. London’s Financial Times argues editorially, India’s “outgoing Hindu nationalist government stands to gain electorally from a crisis in Kashmir, it will rally voter support and reinforce doubts about the foreign origin of Sonia Ghandi, leader of the opposition Congress Party.” For Pakistan, “Trouble in Kashmir is a useful distraction especially if it discourages the International Monetary Fund from being too tough in imposing its economic targets.”

Despite heralded diplomatic talks between the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers earlier in the year to defuse the dispute, the perennial problem has returned.

Not long ago the Economist advised, “Pakistan used to live off its strategic importance to the West--now it trades on its capacity to scare. Few parts of the world seem more combustible.”

Naturally a spark is needed to ignite the predominantly Muslim Kashmir region divided since 1947 at the creation of independent India and Pakistan. While Pakistani- backed Islamic insurgents have gone across the cease-fire line into Indian-controlled Kashmir, the New Delhi government has used a mailed fist to strike back.

One of the U.N’s first peacekeeping missions still monitors the lonely truce line in Kashmir. As important, and quite forgotten, remains the 1948 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a plebiscite for the Kashmiris to decide whether to join India or Pakistan. Ironically, most would probably prefer independence from both!

Diplomatically India’s long relationship with the former Soviet Union ensured that should the Kashmir case ever come before the Council, Moscow would use its powerful veto. China has a stake in the conflict too as part of Kashmir is under Beijing’s control.

In recent years Washington has had a long overdue and much improved political and commercial relationship with New Delhi; this has a much to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union--India’s longtime angel--as much as the fact that modern India has cast aside some of the socialist nonsense which long inspired but crippled the Ghandi Dynasty. Warming in U.S./Indian business ties have been beneficial to both sides. But as history reminds us, close commercial links between states don’t necessarily sidetrack strategic interests.

What is clear is that the Albright State Department has fallen victim to a frightening foul-up deciphering India and Pakistan’s strategic capabilities, intentions, and plans. Washington would be wise to dust off and refine the 1948 U.N. plebiscite plan so that the Kashmiri’s themselves may have a say in their own future.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.