|
India almost invaded Pakistan in 2002
India was all but ready to invade Pakistan in 2002 but was only held back because some of its leaders felt that the war might spin out of control and because the United States, afraid that it would become nuclear, exerted its influence on both countries to deescalate.According to an interview published this week in The New Yorker, Steve Coll of Washington Post, who was at one time the newspapers correspondent in the region and has first-hand knowledge of many important developments in South and South-West Asia, points out that Pakistani generals have said that the nuclear option would be exercised were the national existence of the country to be at stake. Had the Indian army overrun Pakistan, that situation could well have arisen. One of the scenarios considered at the time was that Pakistanis might use one nuclear weapon on Indian troops in the field, almost as a demonstration, a warning, and that such a limited use on a battlefield might not create the political space for India to escalate. But most people believed that after the first weapon was used the war would escalate to a much more serious exchange. Coll, asked if Kashmir is a national or a religious question, replied that the rebellion against Indias government began in the late eighties as a largely secular nationalist movement, but within the rebellion there was a religious element. Since then, the religious element has become stronger and stronger, to the point now where the original national secularist element has been essentially overrun. The dominant groups among the insurgents today are jihadis, with ambitions beyond Kashmir, and with ideologies that resemble in some ways those of Al Qaeda. According to him, a war between India and Pakistan would have directly involved the United States, so Washington got heavily involved in diplomacy to deescalate the situation. It worked almost continuously from the time of the Parliament House attack in New Delhi until it became clear, later in the summer of 2002, that the Indians had decided not to launch an invasion. In answer to the question how good an ally President Pervez Musharraf was, Coll said the Pakistanis, under Musharraf, have clearly changed their policies on most jihadi groups since 9/11. He added, However, Musharraf has not done everything possible to constrain the Kashmiri groups. He argues that he has done what he can, but most outside analysts believe that the Pakistani Army is quietly continuing to aid some of them. I think the generals see Kashmir as a case apart, as something different from the broader war on terrorism, or, at least, as a case thats full of exceptions from their point of view, and the United States has not fully challenged that view to date, he said. Asked if India and Pakistan had learnt any lessons from the 2002 standoff, he replied that there is evidence that some in the leadership on both sides learned the wrong lessons from this crisis. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-11 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=142315 |