[sacw] Kosovo, Kargil, Kashmir

[aiindex@mnet.fr]

June 19, 1999
=46YI
(South Asia Citizens Web)
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D

=46rom: Times of India, Saturday 19 June 1999 / Op-Ed

Kosovo, Kargil, Kashmir :
Towards South Asia's Denuclearisation

By PRAFUL BIDWAI

THREE weeks into the conflict, Kargil highlights three sour ironies. First t=
hose
who rationalised Pokhran II by citing the Chinese ``threat'' -- i.e. the
vast majority
-- are now praying for normalised relations with China, hyping up the
significance
of Mr Jaswant Singh's visit. Second, many who misrepresented the largely
symbolic, importance of the Lahore summit as a substantive breakthrough and
radical transformation of India-Pakistan relations are now talking about
immutable
mutual rivalry and impossibility of conciliation. Third, from total
opposition to
external involvement in India-Pakistan affairs, New Delhi has swerved toward=
s
soliciting active support for its stand on Kargil from all and sundry,
especially the
G-8. This major change has salient implications for Kashmir's future. The
realisation is dawning of the weakness of India in its potential equation wi=
th
Pakistan, one-seventh its size.

Operation Vijay has ballooned into India's biggest military mobilisation
since the
Brasstacks (1986-87) and Zarb-i-Momin (1990) crises which nearly precipitate=
d
war. We have deployed elite troops and top-of-the line weaponry, including t=
he
entire combat aircraft range barring the Sukhoi-30. All our forces are on
high alert.
And the meter is ticking -- Rs 70 crore in lost aircraft, Rs 200 crore for
artillery
ammunition, Rs 600 crore for other ordnance and supplies. It is now plain th=
at
evicting the intruders will be a long drawn-out and bloody operation. The ar=
my
conceded that a month ago. Now even chief of Air Staff Tipnis says the
airstrikes
are ``not the most effective means of using air power''. Therefore, there
is growing
pressure to open another front or otherwise extend the conflict and demand
that the
military be given a ``free hand'' to cross the LoC and surround the
intruders. The
conflict's intensification/extension could precipitate a runaway
confrontation, with
potential nuclear consequences.

`Nuclear Sword'

This is why the Kargil conflict must not be allowed to escalate, whatever th=
e
provocation. If Pakistan could ``brandish the nuclear sword'' even before th=
e
Chagai tests, there is a much higher probability now of its doing so.
Crossing the
LoC is the surest way for India to lose international goodwill. Yet our
media is full
of war-mongering.

Any recipes for nuclear holocaust must be summarily rejected. But they
underscore
how profoundly strategic equations have been transformed after the
subcontinent's
nuclearisation. The change is decisive, indeed epochal. This at once limits
India's
options, eliminating some. In particular, the internationalisation of
Kashmir now
seems inevitable. So long as India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, Kashmi=
r
will remain a flashpoint for a potentially runaway conflict. It is in the
vital interest
of Indian and Pakistani citizens as well as the international community
that their
forces in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation are physically separated, moved
out of
the range of fire. The long-term agenda in Kargil is not just to repulse
the intruders,
but make and keep the LoC truly inactive, free of skirmishes, shelling and
incursion -- till the Kashmir problem is resolved through negotiations
involving the
Kashmiri people, India and Pakistan.

Accurately speaking, Kashmir was sharply internationalised not in 1999 but o=
n
May 18, 1998, when Mr L K Advani famously warned Pakistan of ``hot pursuit''
and a ``pro-active'' policy in the now-changed ``geostrategic''
circumstances. For
Islamabad, this was India's way of taunting it into testing. For the world, =
it
highlighted a dual danger -- aggravation of the Kashmir crisis, with
serious rights
violations; and subcontinental nuclear war. Since then, nuclearisation has
served
not to enhance security or induce stability and confidence, but to
dangerously raise
the threshold of conventional conflict -- limited intrusion, low-intensity w=
ar,
prolonged engagement. Kargil is only one of the many forms this can take=
under a
nuclear shadow.

Universal Values

International concern regarding Kashmir will grow not merely because New Del=
hi
and Islamabad have failed to prevent, defuse and limit tension in what is,
after all, a
part of Kashmir. The main reason for concern derives from far-reaching
changes in
the way vast numbers of people view national sovereignty and its limits.
The world
has moved away from the absolute, unlimited, sovereignty embedded in the 164=
8
Treaty of Westphalia, which granted states the inherent, unfettered right
to define
and defend their security as they please. The change, beginning with World
War II,
was formalised in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
Convention on Genocide.

These put citizens' rights and natural justice on a par with, if not higher
than, state
sovereignty. The principle is that sovereignty can be overruled where there =
are
gross human rights violations, or a community's very survival is threatened.=
In
parallel, jurisprudence on war (jus in bello) evolved, which placed limits
on the
methods of warfare that sovereign states may use. The 1996 World Court verdi=
ct
declaring nuclear weapons ``generally incompatible'' with international law =
and
directing nuclear states to speedily conclude negotiations for disarmament=
was a
landmark.

Whatever one's view of the Kosovo war -- and this writer opposed NATO's
unilateral intervention, the UN's bypassing and use of disproportionate
force -- it
undeniably invoked the principle that human rights limit sovereignty; potent=
ial
genocide must be prevented, if necessary, through military intervention.
Universal
values precede state interests. Kosovo, like Nigeria and Uganda's
interventions in
West Africa or India's in Bangladesh, could be only justified on that
criterion. The
criterion is unexceptionable, although its use in specific situations may be
questionable.

Global Viewpoint

=46rom the global viewpoint, Kashmir could be a fit case for this criterion.
So long
as India and Pakistan retain nuclear weapons and the capacity for
mass-destruction,
quintessentially of non-combatants, they cannot convincingly cite
bilateralism to
resist international attention on, even mediation in, Kashmir. New Delhi can=
not
keep waving the Simla agreement, which deals with process, to thwart a
discussion
on substance. Pakistan cannot invoke the ``unfinished agenda of Partition''.
Kashmir has gone way beyond that, especially after the fateful tests 13 mont=
hs
ago. Kashmir's internationalisation should be welcomed, provided it is
effected in
a multilateral, non-manipulative, transparent and just fashion -- not by a
handful of
self-avowed defenders of human rights, selectively defined. It is hard to ar=
gue
against a reference to the World Court or a UN force that sanitises the LoC.=
The
only alternative to that is South Asia's denuclearisation.

=A9 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 1997..

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