Need for restraint

THE INTENSIVE SHELLING of some Pakistani military positions by the Indian Army on Monday night has exposed the fragility of the Vajpayee administration's strategic thinking on the Kashmir issue in the present volatile international situation. New Delhi should first guard against making any move that might result in a dangerous drift towards full-scale hostilities with Pakistan. To say this is not to ignore or belittle the sense of outrage that the Indian Army in the Mendhar and Akhnoor sectors of Jammu and Kashmir obviously felt as regards the Pakistan-encouraged terrorist infiltration into the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) in this particular instance. However, an apparently trigger-happy response to the perception of a provocative infiltration carried the elementary hallmark of routine ground- level tactics. The available accounts indicate that India's field commanders considered it prudent to target some Pakistani military infrastructure in a ``punitive action'' that was aimed at pre-emptively discouraging such terrorist infiltrations in the future. In a sense, there is nothing very unusual about the latest infiltration or even the Indian response except for their timing, but this reality is of critical importance. There can be no two opinions indeed about the need for utmost vigil by India's military forces. Not arguable, too, is the principle of sustaining their morale at a very high pitch. However, New Delhi should move beyond the threshold of statesmanship while meeting the suspected efforts by Pakistan to raise the diplomatic- military stakes concerning Jammu and Kashmir at this enormously sensitive stage.

The spiralling tensions in India's extended neighbourhood are undeniably the direct consequence of Washington's ongoing war in Afghanistan. Moreover, official Pakistan was among the first to make common cause with the U.S. over what is now turning into an unpredictable and messy adventure. The ongoing American military offensive in Afghanistan is also beginning to cause considerable discomfort within the Islamic bloc. In the books of the Vajpayee administration, Pakistan therefore figures as an increasingly unstable state in quest of America's strategic support over the Kashmir issue at this time. New Delhi's transparent concern is that Islamabad may see the Kashmir `cause' as the political glue that could keep Pakistan together in these circumstances. This explains the External Affairs Ministry's denunciation of Pakistan for ``exaggerating'' Monday night's ``incidents along the LoC'' so as to ``misuse'' the U.S. Secretary of State's current visit to South Asia.

What New Delhi has so far failed to see in today's nebulous international environment is the sagacity of adopting a policy of strategic restraint in regard to Pakistan. Instead, some policy- planners, such as Mr. L. K. Advani with no hands-on responsibility for navigating India's foreign policy through uncharted but troubled waters, have even advocated a ``hot pursuit'' of the Kashmir-related terrorists behind the Pakistani lines along the LoC. Now, it requires no elaborate reasoning to recognise that India's national interest will be best served at this moment by a decision against imitating America's current ideas and manoeuvres that include the notion of a hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden, don of international terror. A policy of meaningful caution about the U.S.' aims will indeed enable New Delhi to exercise strategic restraint in respect of Pakistan too. It will be a foolhardy recipe at this juncture if New Delhi were to shift its stance, unwittingly or otherwise, from its own admirable record of military and political restraint as practised with consummate ease at the height of the Kargil crisis not long ago. In a sense, India's stature on the international stage rose dramatically in that Kargil context. Those moral and political gains must not be frittered away. Given also the inter-linked political destinies of India and Pakistan, the two can and should seek to coexist through a continuous process of dialogue before and after a settlement of the Kashmir issue.

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