Policy Differences
Over Kashmir Grow in India
NEW
DELHI: Yashwant Sinha is unstoppable. At the Rajya Sabha he went
further than what he has been saying in recent weeks. Pakistan,
said the foreign minister, was a "fitter case" for preemptive
action because it was creating terror in Jammu and Kashmir, fitter
than Iraq.
It
did not fall in the same category as Iraq but in a "much
worse" one. Answering American criticism of India's stand,
he said, "We should not be too sensitive about who is saying
what. We should show confidence as a nation of one billion people."
What's
behind the yapping? Not a preemptive strike, defence, foreign-office
and intelligence officials chorus. Standard preparations for a
war, even a limited one, or a surgical strike against terrorist
camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, have not been taken. The 27
division which was to return to its headquarters in Kalimpong
has been retained in its wartime location in J & K, but officials
do not consider it significant. "If you have to attack preemptively,
you do not announce it in Parliament, and declaim from every housetop
for weeks," an official said.
Sinha
could be addressing a domestic audience. Foreign-office officials
say the minister goes ballistic after visits to the prime minister's
office. PM A.B.Vajpayee has been ironically quiet on a preemptive
strike, saying oddly that terrorism is being overcome. Deputy
PM L.K.Advani is also silent on the subject of attacking Pakistan.
It seems Sinha's show all the way – but officials refuse
to delink it from the PMO. It could be connected, they say, to
the BJP's plank of terrorism for the coming November assembly
elections, having left the Hindutva and Ram temple issues to the
RSS and VHP to raise (Intelligence, "Terror, not temple,
BJP poll plank", 3 April 2003). But they are not impressed
– and point to the growing gap between official and political
thinking.
Defence,
diplomatic, and intelligence officials are unanimous that 80 per
cent of J & K's solution is in Indian hands while Pakistan
accounts for 20 per cent of the problem. In 1995-96, the outgoing
P.V.Narasimha Rao government authorised covert action against
Pakistani terrorism after the successes in Punjab in the early
1990s – but the United Front governments put a stop to it,
embracing the Gujral bhai-bhai doctrine with all its pitfalls.
Since
then, counter-terrorist operations in J & K have also petered
out. Successive prime ministers heard out detailed action plans
prepared by the Research and Analysis Wing (two), the Intelligence
Bureau, and Indian Army (one each) – but cleared none. For
all their security-fixation, Vajpayee and Advani have been blocking
updated anti-terrorism strategies in J & K. The planners have
indemnified their entire earnings and savings, and undertaken
to resign their government positions, if their strategies fail
– and yet, Vajpayee and Advani are unwilling to risk it.
In
the absence of counter-insurgency (CI) operations, the CI machinery
is feeding off terrorism. The IB has noticed a rise in kidnapping
and extortion cases involving security forces. Leakage in secret
service funds is growing. Fake sources are on the rise. A two-year-old
Vietnamese appreciation of CI ops in J & K has hardly a good
word about the security forces – which are compared to pampered
US soldiers during the Vietnam War.
And
while Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's "healing-touch" policy
may be winning the hearts and minds of Kashmiris, there is little
to no contribution of the security forces in this. In the past
two years, the IB has recorded at least a thousand cases of late-night
cordon-and-search operations where pregnant women and children
were made to stand in the freezing cold for hours. In the interior,
in the absence of enough lady constables, the forces continue
to frisk women. "Why would they want to support us?"
asked an official.
With
a ban on covert action against Pakistan, and a marked reluctance
to resume determined, intelligence-led, CI operations, the Vajpayee
government is risking everything on diplomacy – and the
returns are diminishing. Indian and Western diplomats hint a ceiling
may have been reached on what the US can deliver on J & K.
"It cannot pressurise Pakistan endlessly, because Pakistan
has its own compulsions," a Western diplomat said. India
is also accused of seeking selective Western assistance, pleading
for help against cross-border terrorism, but repelling suggestions
for a dialogue with Pakistan.
"Diplomacy,"
said a French diplomat, "is about give and take. India wants
to take and take and take. It is not always possible." Adds
a senior Indian foreign-office official, "We are considered
inflexible. I have been told to my face our Kashmir policy is
rigid. The tragedy is we don't have a Kashmiri policy. A policy
that seeks the impossible return of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
is not a policy."
It
is pigheadedness. Sinha's hardtalk is also pigheaded because it
swings the pendulum from craven diplomacy to threats of war –
with no attempt to bridge the middle distance. It is so mad –
the only method in it could be to win votes. Before every consequential
election in the last two years, the BJP has picked the terrorism
theme, and raised the temperature against Pakistan – and
the Vajpayee government has rejected every anti-terror plan subsequently.
Either the terror threat is exaggerated by the government (not
true) – or it seeks no early end to it (which looks increasingly
the case). This seems not about Kashmir anymore. - Courtesy
Newsinsight
