[sacw] SACW #1 | 23 May 02 [ Sri Lanka / India Pakistan standoff ]

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch #1 | 23 May 2002
http://www.mnet.fr

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#1. Sri Lanka's 'peace train' carries hope, doubts (Feizal Samath)
#2. Nuclear instability and militancy (M V Ramana)
#3. Limited war: unlimited folly (Praful Bidwai)
#4. The peon has the nuke trigger (Abheek Barman)
#5. A decade of political violence has left Kashmiris devoid of jobs, 
security, hopes for peace (Anthony Spaeth )
#6. Condolence Meeting For Mr. Abdul Ghani Lone (New Delhi)
#7. Invitation to Join South Asians Against Nukes Mailing List

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#1.

IPS-Inter Press Service
22 May 2002

Sri Lanka's 'peace train' carries hope, doubts
By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO - Children waved, women washing clothes on stones alongside 
village streams looked up with amusement, and rice farmers with 
sarongs tucked at their waists raised their heads as Sri Lanka's 
first peace train chugged toward the north of this island nation.
To many residents, the train, colorfully painted with peace signs and 
symbols hoping to raise Sri Lanka's peace process to higher levels, 
reflected little more than curiosity. But in weeks, perhaps months, 
according to the organizers, the diesel-powered train to the northern 
town of Vavuniya, 250 kilomters north of the capital Colombo, will 
mean much more. "People on the railroad and at railway stations will 
hopefully recognize this as Sri Lanka's peace train and what it 
symbolizes," says Sujeevan Perera, program director of the Neelan 
Tiruchelvam Trust (NTT), which organized the project with financial 
assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
It is an encouraging step in the government's efforts to end the 
ethnic conflict, which has raged for nearly 20 years and cost some 
64,000 lives since 1983. Since that year, Tamil Tigers guerrillas 
have been fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils, who 
have accused successive majority Sinhalese-led governments of 
depriving minority communities of equality in education, land use and 
jobs.
The rebels have said they are prepared to drop their demand for an 
independent homeland if the government is ready to provide the Tamils 
sufficient powers to run the country's northern and eastern regions, 
where most of the Tamils live. A ceasefire has been in effect since 
December between the government and the rebels and both sides are now 
getting ready for peace talks due to begin next month in Thailand.
While there has been growing concern about the five-month delay in 
the actual holding of peace talks (now set to begin in Thailand next 
month), there is also relief, particularly in the capital and the 
countryside where most of the recruits for the country's armed forces 
come from. "Many villagers are thankful for the tranquility in 
village homes as there are fewer sons and daughters coming [home] in 
body bags. There is relief all around," explains Sunil Shantha, a 
railway employee and leader of a railway union, who was traveling on 
the peace train.
Jehan Perera, political columnist and an activist attached to the 
National Peace Council, a privately-funded peace promoter, says that 
an estimated 1,500 lives have been saved during the past five months 
of relative calm since December 24 when the rebels declared a 
unilateral ceasefire. "We normally have an average of 10 people [a 
day] dying as a result of the war. This is a tremendous saving in 
terms of human life due to the ceasefire," he says.
Residents in Colombo, while doubtful about whether the truce will 
last, are relieved to be able to walk the streets without fear of 
suicide bombers or rebel attacks. Roadblocks have been lifted and 
checkpoints reduced. The last rebel attack here was the pre-dawn raid 
last year on an air force base adjoining the country's international 
airport.
Trading has also perked up as Sri Lanka's once-indifferent business 
community raises the stakes for peace by playing a leading role. 
Unilever, the multinational home and personal care company which is 
now Sri Lanka's biggest firm, told a business meeting on Tuesday that 
turnover - after a disappointing 2001 - in the first quarter this 
year had risen sharply by 40 percent.
The business community, led by the chambers of commerce and 
SriLankaFirst, a group of chambers and business association promoting 
peace, has been a driving force in the current peace process. Unlike 
in the past when the businesses fought shy of involvement in the 
peace process and said they had no role in politics, the private 
sector has, since the July rebel attack on the airport, reversed its 
role and led the charge for peace. It is widely believed to be 
responsible - and in a big way - for helping and funding the 
business-friendly United National Party-led coalition to its sweeping 
win at parliamentary polls in December. In the past few months, 
delegations of businesspersons have been visiting the war-torn town 
of Jaffna and discussing plans to set up supermarkets, hotels and 
revive trade with the once-shut north. Business sentiment has never 
seen such a boom in the north.
But the lack of a wider civil society movement - apart from smaller 
initiatives like the peace train - in promoting peace is seen as a 
serious drawback in the current process. "We need to create a civil 
movement toward peace and that is absent unlike in previous occasions 
when there was a peace process," notes Rev Baddegama Samitha, a 
moderate Buddhist monk from a temple at Baddegama in southern Sri 
Lanka. He said that due to the peace process being shrouded in 
secrecy, people were unaware of what was happening and showed little 
interest. "There is a public vacuum and that's not a good thing. 
People's participation is essential if the peace process is to 
succeed," the monk, who is also an opposition parliamentarian, said 
while traveling on the peace train. Prime Minister Ranil 
Wickremasinghe's strategy has been to clear the bottlenecks before 
resorting to peace talks with the rebels. Since coming to office, the 
government has lifted an economic embargo, allowed food and medicines 
into rebel-controlled territory, and opened - with rebel consent - 
the main highway to Jaffna that had been closed for years.
Most of these issues have in the past come as demands from the rebels 
while talks were often bogged down the discussions. Filmmaker 
Vasantha Obeysekera, also on the peace train, said of the conflict: 
"This is a futile war. Sinhalese youth are getting killed. Tamil 
youth are getting killed. No one benefits." The well-known filmmaker, 
who has produced films and documentaries on peace and conflict 
focusing on the futility of war, noted that the younger generation is 
far less communally-minded than older folk. "The older generation is 
imprisoned by caste, creed and race conflicts and they find it hard 
to alter their views." He blamed Colombo's intelligentsia for "being 
cowards ... without a backbone" for failing to put pressure on 
politicians to end the conflict. "Except for some artistes like us 
and some intellectuals, few people in Colombo are ready to stand up 
and say enough is enough."
The bulk of the country's armed forces come from poor, rural homes 
while the children of middle and upper class urban homes rarely join 
the military. Even if they do so, it is at a higher rank and they are 
unlikely to be in the line of fire.
Somasunderam Sriskandarajah, a 60-year Tamil government pensioner, 
said the peace train gave him some hope but he doubts whether the 
peace will last. "It has never worked in the past," he said, looking 
out of a window of one of the carriages. Another Tamil woman 
passenger, who declined to be named, was also not too optimistic. "I 
can't see this [peace process] getting us anywhere. I hope I am 
wrong."
(Inter Press Service)

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#2.

Daily Times (Lahore)
Thursday, May 23, 2002 Main News
Op-ed: Nuclear instability and militancy

M V Ramana
Deterrence is a problematic concept at best. But even if India and 
Pakistan were to meet the postulated conditions for deterrence to 
work, the potential for large-scale war would not vanish
The two gruesome attacks in Kashmir within the space of 2 weeks have, 
once again, brought India and Pakistan to the brink of full-scale 
war. It is with some trepidation that the term "brink" is used here - 
by the time this article appears, it is quite possible that actual 
war may start. Though India and Pakistan have fought wars in the 
past, this one would be different, for it will be fought under a 
nuclear shadow.
War is hugely destructive even in the absence of nuclear weapons. 
South Asia has been witness to this more than once in the past. But 
nuclear weapons immensely raise the level of destruction. The use of 
just one nuclear bomb can kill hundreds of thousands of people, not 
to mention the resulting disruption of society. Under such 
circumstances, war between nuclear weapon states like India and 
Pakistan is, as the recent statement by the Indian Coalition for 
Nuclear Disarmament and Peace calling for a halt to the preparations 
for war puts it, not an "acceptable option".
What has been happening in South Asia points even more directly to 
the imprudence of depending on nuclear weapons for security through 
the deterrence argument. Deterrence is a problematic concept at best. 
But even if India and Pakistan were to meet the postulated conditions 
for deterrence to work, the potential for large-scale war would not 
vanish.

The standard model for deterrence talks about rational and unitary 
actors weighing the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons use 
and deciding not to go to war. Even accepting the patently 
unrealistic descriptions of countries as single-minded objects (When 
was the last time the PPP and the Muslim League, or the BJP and the 
Congress, saw eye-to-eye on the full details of any issue?) the South 
Asian situation is different because there are other players in the 
game.
This is borne out by the recent history of previous agreements that 
the two governments have come to. It has usually been a case of one 
step forward, two steps backward. After the nuclear tests and much 
muscle flexing came the Lahore agreement where the two governments 
decided to have limited transparency on their nuclear programmes and 
settle their disputes peacefully. Shortly thereafter was the Kargil 
conflict, which effectively buried the Lahore agreement. Similarly, 
there was the attempt at Agra towards establishing better diplomatic 
relations but events post-9/11 and the December 13 attack on the 
Indian Parliament brought things back to the brink of war.
What is common to both of the above-mentioned disruptions is that 
they were not the result of publicly stated official Pakistani 
policy, but were carried out by militants. The relationship of the 
militants to the Pakistani military, or whether President Pervez 
Musharraf can indeed exert greater control over them, is irrelevant 
to this argument. If the government controls the militants, then for 
the attacks of December 13 or the more recent ones to have gone 
forward represents the height of bravado and brinkmanship. Certainly 
not the kind of behaviour that is indispensable for stable 
deterrence. If there is no direct control, as the official claim 
goes, then the operations of militant groups that carry out attacks 
of such magnitude that they may well provoke an Indian 
counter-attack, possibly leading to full-scale war, is proof that 
they are important enough players to affect the calculations of India 
and Pakistan. There can be no stability as long as they are in the 
picture.
In the context of deterrence the recent report by Bruce Riedel, 
American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House, is 
revealing. Riedel discloses that the US detected evidence that 
"Pakistan were preparing their nuclear arsenals for possible 
deployment." This is disturbing in itself. But what is much more 
disturbing is that during the meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz 
Sharif and President Bill Clinton, Sharif seemed "taken aback" when 
confronted with this fact.
Though it is quite possible that these preparations constituted mere 
posturing and only intended to attract American attention, the fact 
that the Prime Minister of the country did not know about plans for 
use is alarming. It is clearly extremely dangerous if in a country 
possessing a nuclear arsenal, the leader loses control over the 
actions of military, especially its nuclear armed sections. One 
cannot be completely confident of President Musharraf's control over 
the entire army either, especially given his professed lack of 
control in the border areas in the Kashmir region.
Riedel's report also demonstrates something else that goes in the 
face of the often-parroted claim that nuclear weapons protected 
Pakistan and kept the war from escalating. What comes through in the 
report is the sense that India, and Prime Minister Vajpayee, did not 
stop the war fearing Pakistani nuclear weapons. It was reassurance 
from the US that Prime Minister Sharif would behave himself and order 
Pakistani troops back from the Line of Control that set the 
conditions for the cease-fire.
There are multiple lessons to be learnt here. First, that nuclear 
weapons are not to be relied on to keep the peace. Instead they offer 
the threat that on top of the devastation from war would be that of 
nuclear destruction. The second is that the ongoing militancy is 
extremely dangerous and detrimental to both countries, bleeding them 
slowly to death. Nuclear weapons add to this problem by allowing 
political leaders to assume that their nuclear arsenals provide a 
cover that would prevent the conflict from escalating. Such an 
assumption is unwarranted; by increasing the number of small-scale 
conflicts, nuclear weapons only amplify the probability of 
large-scale conflict.
Finally, it underscores the importance of genuine and honest 
negotiations towards solving the problems between the two countries 
politically, getting rid of nuclear weapons in the region and 
establishing a lasting peace. But such negotiations cannot be carried 
out with any confidence unless actors on both sides can be made to 
see the futility of holding on to extreme positions which has set the 
action-reaction dynamics in the region.
M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton 
University's Program on Science and Global Security. He is the author 
of "Bombing Bombay? Effects of Nuclear Weapons and a Case Study of a 
Hypothetical Explosion" (Cambridge, USA: International Physicians for 
Prevention of Nuclear War, 1999). Some of
his writings can be found at http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nuclear.html

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#3.

The News (Pakistan)
May 23, 2002
ISSN 1563-9479

Limited war: unlimited folly

Praful Bidwai

When it comes to the enunciation and elaborate fabrication of 
dubious, woolly or altogether spurious strategic doctrines, otherwise 
impoverished South Asia must be the world's most productive region. 
It is certainly hard to beat as regards the practical pursuit of such 
doctrines through military strategies and ground-level operations -- 
at an enormous cost to the public.

Take a few examples: "strategic depth", "minimum nuclear deterrent", 
"striking terror in the heart of the enemy" (as a method of winning 
war), "search for parity", "stability through nuclear deterrence", 
and now, "limited war" between two de facto nuclear powers.

This latest is the rationalisation which many of India's self-styled 
strategic "experts" proffer in support of military attacks on 
Pakistan to avenge the revolting butchery of 30 people, at Kaluchak 
near Jammu, on May 14. The Vajpayee government claims to have 
identified the terrorists involved in Kaluchak as Pakistani citizens. 
But it has produced no significant evidence that they acted as 
Islamabad's agents.

Put simply, the Kaluchak incident does not on present evidence 
constitute a casus belli, or reason for war. Responsible states do 
not start wars without establishing serious causal connections 
between real threats and military action.

As with other kindred doctrines, the notions of "limited strikes", 
"targeted attacks", or "limited war" mask a devious intent -- in this 
instance to "teach Pakistan a lesson", like the US did to the 
Taliban/Al-Qaeda, or the Israelis to the Palestinians.

Such conceptually bogus doctrines have always served the South Asian 
public badly. "Strategic depth" -- an archaic notion of refuge in the 
event of a hostile pursuit -- was used for eight long years to 
support Pakistan's disastrous Afghanistan policy of recruiting, 
arming and supporting the Taliban. The result was Afghanistan's 
devastation, the growing Talibanisation of Pakistan, the 
strengthening of Islamic-fundamentalist forces (and of 
Hindu-extremist reaction to them), and the eventual entry of the US 
into this region.

Logically, it is ludicrous to equate "limited strikes" and "limited 
war", as many Indian strategists seem to do. The first only denotes 
the action taken by a state; the second one of many possible 
outcomes. These outcomes depend on the adversary's response and the 
initiator's counter-reaction too.

You might launch a limited, small-scale, strike. That you use, say, 
20 guns or six warplanes, instead of the hundreds you have, is no 
guarantee that the conflict will remain limited, localised or small 
in magnitude.

Barring situations of great asymmetry, where one state is simply 
overwhelmed and collapses, there are no reliable in-built mechanisms 
which can limit military engagement once it is initiated. In the 
India-Pakistan case, there are certainly none. Despite India's 
conventional 2:1 or 3:1 superiority -- and nuclear superiority 
doesn't matter given the mass-destruction potential of these weapons 
-- the disparity between the two isn't so large as to inhibit a 
retaliatory attack that escalates the conflict.

Thus, India is vulnerable on many points on the Line of Control in 
Jammu and Kashmir because of the terrain. Pakistan would be tempted 
to exploit that weakness by crossing the LoC at some of those. India 
could then take counter-measures where Pakistan's vulnerability is 
high. Full-scale war would follow.

Pakistan is not the equivalent of the Palestinian Authority in the 
Middle East analogy. The PA has essentially municipal powers, with no 
regular army or sovereign territory. Pakistan has an army half of 
India's size, although it is a proportionately smaller country. 
India's conventional superiority will of course matter in the long 
term. In the short term, it won't get easily translated into 
battlefield supremacy.

Pakistan and India have a rich history of strategic miscalculations. 
In 1965, Ayub Khan thought that parachuting soldiers into the Kashmir 
Valley would instantly ignite a popular revolution. He started a war 
which he did not win.

Even routine military exercises by either state can spin out of 
control, as happened in 1986-87 and 1990. Misperceptions about each 
other's capabilities, strategies or intentions can enormously 
complicate matters by fuelling suspicions and hostility.

Even our stated nuclear doctrines are not exempt from misperception. 
Thus, India presents No-First-Use to signal strategic restraint and 
sobriety. But many Pakistani strategists see it as a menacing, 
confident assertion of India's capacity to absorb a Pakistani first 
strike AND then visit devastation upon Pakistan with a second strike.

Contrariwise, Indian strategists see Pakistan's refusal of a 
No-First-Use pledge as indicating a willingness to use nuclear 
weapons to pre-empt defeat in a conventional conflict. To add to 
this, there is fundamental confusion about the circumstances in which 
either state might use nuclear weapons to deter "unacceptable" 
damage, or how each state defines how much damage is "unacceptable".

There are few worthwhile confidence-building or crisis-defusion 
measures in place between the two strategic rivals. The "hot line" 
between their two Directors-General of Military Operations is often 
not activated, as it is supposed to be at a fixed hour every week. 
The failure is especially pronounced during crises.

There has never been a stable deterrent equation between India and 
Pakistan at the nuclear or even conventional level. We know from the 
history of the Cold War that there never was a viable, long-term 
nuclear deterrent equation between East and West, or the US and the 
USSR. That deterrence was always fraught with mishaps, accidents, 
misperceptions, panic responses -- and above all, an arms race, which 
altered the balance of power, and hence the original deterrent 
equation.

The India-Pakistan situation is much, much worse. The two hostile 
neighbours have fought three and a half wars, without resolving any 
of the issues that fuel their mutual rivalry. As the last Column 
argued, this is the only region of the world which has witnessed a 
continuous hot-cold war between the same two adversaries for over 
half-a-century.

In India-Pakistan, a crisis with a potential for escalation can be 
triggered off by any number of causes or factors: suspicious military 
movements, territorial incursions (or fear of these), extra-regional 
events (Pakistan joining a Western alliance in the 1950s), or purely 
internal developments (eg the Sindh agitation of the 1980s, or the 
Babri mosque demolition).

Today, a "limited strike" will probably precipitate a full-scale war, 
with a significant possibility of escalation to the nuclear level. 
Yet, there is some desperately wishful thinking in India that the US 
would somehow prevent such escalation by restraining Pakistan.

This seriously underestimates Islamabad's bargaining power vis-a-vis 
Washington. In today's circumstances, the US priority is to secure 
Musharraf's participation, whether through coaxing or bullying, in 
its war against Al-Qaeda in the tribal "agency" areas. It also 
grossly overestimates Washington's capacity to enforce restraint and 
cap hostilities -- at the eleventh hour.

"Limited war" was overblown by Defence Minister George Fernandes, one 
of India's most reckless politicians, into a strategic principle or 
doctrine. In February 2000, he declared that Kargil's main lesson is 
that nuclear weapons can only deter nuclear weapons. Two nuclear 
weapons-states can "safely" fight a limited conventional war. 
Fernandes then promptly challenged Pakistan to such a war at a place 
and time of its choosing -- and be defeated!

These ideas are insane and dangerous. Those who want peace must 
oppose them. The way out lies in decent diplomacy and, yes, joint 
patrolling of the LoC by India and Pakistan to prevent militant 
infiltration.

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#4.

The Economic Times (India)
Wednesday, May 22, 2002 | Updated at 21:41 hrs
EDITORIAL

The peon has the nuke trigger
ABHEEK BARMAN

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2002 12:08:38 AM ]
WHY is the government so keen to fight Pakistan? The ostensible 
answer, dinned deafeningly into our ears by India's ineffectual home 
minister, L K Advani, is 'cross border terrorism in Kashmir.' Wait a 
minute.
Is the government saying that it'll risk one billion lives in India 
because it can't police J&K? It's also suggesting that J&K will live 
happily ever after if we just have another war with Pakistan - the 
fifth in 52 years.
This is bunkum. One, the troubles of Kashmir won't get over by taking 
a swipe at Pakistan. Two, the risks of war are too horrendous to bear 
thinking about. Three, remember, no matter how much Advani froths at 
the mouth, terrorism is never 'cross border'.
The roots of militancy are the failure of politicians to do the right 
thing by their constituents. After they fail and frustrations boil 
over into violence, the same wretched politicos point across the 
border and yell, 'they did it.'
For nearly 20 years, politicians told us that militancy in Punjab was 
fuelled and inspired by Pakistan. Yes, many militant outfits were 
funded and supplied by Islamabad, which likes watching India squirm.
But Punjab's militancy was wiped out without going to war with Pakistan.
It was wiped out with efficient policing, lots of back-breaking 
political negotiation and finally, because folks on the ground, 
exhausted by terror, preferred peace to violence.
No Indian government can end trouble in Kashmir by attacking 
Pakistan, because the root of trouble is squarely back home in the 
Valley.
But the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, a failure at governance, wants 
something to airbrush its dreadful image. In 1999, a war with 
Pakistan just before elections seemed to work wonders for the party: 
it won 182 seats in Parliament and came to head today's ruling NDA.
Since then, it has lost every state, municipal and panchayat election 
and looks certain to lose the next general elections whenever that is 
held. Why not have another lovely war?
The BJP's limited intelligence and its anti-Muslim prejudices blind 
it to the risks of war. There's no guarantee that a limited military 
adventure won't spiral out of control, that crazy generals on either 
side won't run berserk, and no evidence to show that India and 
Pakistan have the maturity, sense of responsibility and institutional 
controls that nuclear powers need. In fact, nobody knows whether 
India and Pakistan have functioning control systems for their nukes.
Somewhere in a bunker, minutes after a Pakistan nuclear strike:
Georgeji: "Atalji, wake up and press the button."
Atalji: "What button? How dare you ask me to press some button? D'you 
know I was in Parliament before you were born? Go press your own!"
Advaniji: "Arre bhai, where's the button?"
Generalji: "Sir, Jokhanlal the peon was bringing it over."
Advaniji: "And where's Jokhanlal?"
Generalji: "He's off, sir. The Union says No Work After First Strike."
Acharyaji: "The Dharmsansad must meet to determine an auspicious day 
for our counter-strike."
Georgeji: "Never mind. Lemme see if I can cut a quick deal with 
Westend for a button lookalike. A million dollars, cheap. Blinking 
lights and batteries for free."
Get the picture?
I'm amazed at people who say that mutually assured destruction (MAD) 
- a Cold War game theory model that predicts nuclear powers won't use 
the weapons because that would finish everybody off - will keep New 
Delhi and Islamabad from annihilating each other.
These complacent cretins, therefore, goad us to war: without nukes, 
our limitless supply of cannon fodder is supposed to guarantee 
victory over Pakistan.
These guys don't have a clue. The no-nuclear-war prediction of MAD 
works only if a very stringent assumption holds: both sides are fully 
rational and equally accountable to their people. Here, you have a 
bunch of incompetent Hindutva fanatics on one side and a military 
dictator hemmed in by Islamic fanatics on the other. I wouldn't trust 
these guys with a tricycle in a park, and we're talking nukes!
Thank your stars that US troops are stationed in Pakistan, that 
Musharraf is forced to talk peace, that the BJP risks the wrath of 
the world by pushing for a war.
Because what this regime is pushing you towards is the most cynical, 
mindless and destructive gambit that any Indian government has ever 
tried to pull off. Stand up, say no to war.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=10592609

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#5.

Time
MAY 27, 2002/VOL. 159 NO. 20
Asia

No Place for Kids
A decade of political violence has left Kashmiris devoid of jobs, 
security, hopes for peace-and a homeland to raise their children
BY ANTHONY SPAETH

Photo: PRASHANT PANJIAR/LIVEWIRE IMAGES FOR TIME
Khalid Zahoor's parents, Dilshad and Sheikh Zahoor Ahmed in Srinagar

Procreation implies optimism. Mothers and fathers must believe that 
society will provide a haven, an environment in which their children 
will thrive. What does it say, then, if parents no longer have that 
faith? If rather than raise their children themselves, parents would 
send their beloved to far-flung corners of the world, anywhere, 
really, to escape the carnage of Kashmir?

Dilshada and Zahoor Ahmed Sheikh faced that bleak reality when their 
son Khalid was 16. Khalid was looking up to some dangerous role 
models: a few older friends who had gone across the border to 
Pakistan to join up with the anti-India insurgency raging in Kashmir. 
He developed a schoolboy enthusiasm for AK-47s. Then Khalid announced 
there was no point studying because, in his words, "Everyone is going 
to die anyway." The couple had to make a decision. "We summoned up 
our courage," says mother Dilshada, "and sent him away."

It was the best thing that could have happened to a young Kashmiri in 
the 1990s. Ten years later, Khalid has a master's in business 
administration from Ohio University and is planning to go back to the 
U.S. for an additional degree, this one in finance. His friends who 
stayed behind to study medicine or law don't have a hope of 
practicing their professions: there are no jobs in Kashmir. Of his 
ten closest schoolmates, four joined the militancy-at least one died 
in action-and others left town. When Khalid returns for holidays, he 
finds Kashmir stiflingly oppressive. Last month, he and his 
49-year-old father were ordered out of their car by Indian soldiers 
for a security check. "They were so rude, I couldn't believe my 
father was being all soft and pleading, giving them explanations. But 
he told me later: 'This is the way things are here.'"

To call Kashmir the subcontinent's West Bank or Gaza Strip would be a 
stretch. The Kashmir Valley, the heart and soul of the territory, is 
one of the earth's lovelier places. Many Kashmiris are poor, but no 
one lives in 50-year-old refugee settlements. Unlike the 
Palestinians, they have a homeland.

But it's a homeland more and more are abandoning because Kashmir is 
where the tension between India and Pakistan always surfaces. Kashmir 
is the biggest bit of unfinished business from the partition of the 
subcontinent 53 years ago. Pakistan still believes it shouldn't have 
gone to India, the Indians will probably never let it go, and both 
sides are more than willing to fight over it-potentially with atomic 
warheads. Two of the three wars fought between the two countries 
started off in Kashmir. Since the beginning of the year, both have 
mobilized their armies along their common border and kept them at 
high alert, a state of war readiness prompted by a December terrorist 
attack intended to blow up the Parliament building in New Delhi. And 
last week, 30 people were killed by some fidayeen, a suicide squad 
that sneaked in from Pakistan, setting off a fresh round of 
accusations, the possible expulsion of Pakistan's ambassador from New 
Delhi, and some heavy shelling at the Line of Control, the de facto 
border that splits Kashmir.

Stuck in the middle, Kashmiris have either stolidly borne up, joined 
the separatist militants, or been forced to find a decent life far 
away from family, the mother tongue and the mountains, orchards and 
idyllic lakes. "The militancy turned out to be a blessing for me," 
says Khalid. "If there had been no violence, I would have studied at 
home and joined the family business." Khalid's family has a 
substantial textile and carpet business. They could afford to buy 
their son freedom.

Most other Kashmiris have no such luck. Their home is the disputed 
prize in what may be the most dangerous conflict on earth. In the 
early months of 1999, Pakistani soldiers took control of a mountain 
ridge on the Indian side of the Line of Control. In the spring, when 
they were discovered, that sparked the Kargil War, named for the 
region where it was fought. Both sides had tested nukes a few months 
earlier; last week in Washington, Bruce Riedel, senior director at 
the National Security Council, revealed that the Pakistani army, 
without informing its own government, had mobilized its nuclear 
arsenal at the height of the conflict. Former U.S. President Clinton 
persuaded then-Pakistani Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif to withdraw 
his forces, ending what appears to be one of the closest brushes with 
nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Last week, the countries went back to the brink. Shortly before dawn 
on Tuesday, three men in army uniforms, who were later identified as 
Pakistani citizens, boarded a Himachal Roadways passenger bus on its 
way to Jammu, winter capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state. On 
board for 15 minutes, the men asked to be dropped off near an army 
barracks. After the bus had stopped, the men ordered the sleepy 
passengers to the back of the vehicle and opened fire. They tossed a 
grenade into the bus full of screaming passengers, killing three 
women, two children, one man and the bus driver.

Meanwhile, on the barracks grounds, parents were getting their 
children ready for school, wrapping chapatis, polishing shoes and 
knotting ties. The three men strolled into the compound and started 
shooting and lobbing hand grenades. They trotted from house to house, 
murdering mothers and their children. Indian troops arrived within 
minutes but it would take over three hours to hunt the terrorists 
down. By the time the army had finished the intruders off, 23 people 
were dead, including 11 children.

Some hitherto unknown militant group claimed responsibility and India 
immediately blamed its neighbor, announcing that a chocolate bar 
carried by one of the terrorists was made in Pakistan. Islamabad, as 
usual, denounced the carnage, denied complicity and added that India 
had no real proof. It's a familiar pattern. Gruesome attacks against 
Indian targets-frequently suicidal-have been a regular feature of the 
Kashmir imbroglio for the past decade.

But the attack in Jammu was no ordinary strike at India. It occurred 
the very day that a senior U.S. diplomat, Assistant Secretary of 
State Christina Rocca, was in New Delhi trying to arm-twist some 
peace. After the attack on Parliament in December, India went to war 
footing, demanding that Pakistan crack down on its anti-India 
terrorists-almost all of them working to stir trouble in Kashmir-and 
demanded the extradition to India of 20 named terrorist suspects. 
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf ordered some militants 
arrested-many of whom have been subsequently released-and refused to 
extradite any of those on India's list. That's why the troops are 
still eyeballing each other on a searingly hot border. India has 
signaled for months it might launch its own strike on Pakistan, 
probably in Kashmir. The most likely impetus: another outrageous, 
high profile terrorist strike.

In fact, India probably won't be goaded into military action by a 
well-timed terrorist attack. State elections are due by October in 
Kashmir, and New Delhi has hopes that they will take some steam out 
of the indigenous militancy. Many of the candidates are former 
insurgents won over by the government. (India's time-honored method 
of defusing insurgencies is to woo tired separatists to run for 
election, after which they can get their hands on loosely-watched 
government coffers.)

Once the elections are over, however, all bets are off as to whether 
the peace will hold. Pakistani-based separatists will filter across 
the Line of Control all through the summer. Then the attacks, 
ambushes and suicide missions will start. The talk in New Delhi these 
days is of some kind of war in September or October. It's pretty 
clear where it will start: Kashmir.

After 13 years of such violent tides, Kashmir's children are all over 
the map-some literally, others in the myriad ways they view their 
home and the possible futures it holds for them. Moulvi Imran Mushtaq 
decided to stay. He was ambitious, with dreams of becoming a doctor, 
and worked hard to win admission to Srinagar's Government Medical 
College. Violence, however, shut down his school for long periods; 
Moulvi's four and a half year curriculum took seven years to 
complete. "It was full of risk sending him to college," says his 
father Moulvi Mushtaq Ahmed. Avoiding an ambush was one challenge. He 
also had to be wary of being picked up by Indian troops as a 
suspected militant and tossed in one of the valley's 
detention/torture centers. Imran, 27, avoided both fates and actually 
got a job at the state health department.

Muhammed Amin Butt, a Srinagar lawyer, says he could barely afford to 
send his son Omar away for education. However, the worried attorney 
believes he really had no choice. "Kashmir was politically too hot 
and everybody's life was at peril. Secondly, the educational system 
had been cast to the dogs." Omar went to Kolhapur and earned an 
engineering degree and then came home to Srinagar, but has failed to 
find work. (Virtually the only employers in Kashmir are the state 
government, the despised police force and the carpet weavers and 
handicraft factories.) Omar is wondering whether to leave home 
again-the U.S.? the Middle East?-and his mother Hafiza is encouraging 
him, still frightened at tales of revenge killings and boys being 
tossed into Indian jails. "Kashmir is still not a place worth 
living," she says, "particularly for boys of his age."

Kashmiris are a people in-between, stuck in the vise of a vicious, 
intractable geopolitical mess, and even when they leave, their fate 
sometimes follows. Syed Shahnaaz Qadiri decided to move out of 
Kashmir four years ago. His choice was to go to another state, where 
the school years start and end on time and students aren't afraid to 
walk to class. But Qadiri is a Kashmiri Muslim. He chose a college 
near Ahmadabad, the main city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. 
Two months ago, a mob of Muslims torched a train carriage near 
Ahmadabad, killing 58 Hindus. In the aftermath, nearly a thousand 
Muslims have been killed in reprisals that fail to simmer down. 
Qadiri's parents are spending a fortune trying to keep in touch with 
their son by phone, hoping he won't be the next victim. Qadiri had 
the luck of the Kashmiris: he found the only other place on the 
subcontinent as dangerous as his own hometown.

_____

#6.

CONDOLENCE MEETING

for

MR. ABDUL GHANI LONE

AT 4.30 pm On Thursday

the 23rd May 2002

at the Auditorium, Indian Social Institute

10 Lodhi Road, New Delhi-3

N.D.Pancholi

Secretary

Co-ordination Committee On Kashmir

_____

#7.

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