The Hindu : War is no option

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

War is no option

AS MILITARY PREPARATIONS continue apace and tension spirals along the India-Pakistan border, a question of enormous significance begs to be answered: is war an option? It is a question with a hard practical edge which raises issues of life-threatening immediacy and, therefore, demands to be addressed with a cool and clear-headed pragmatism. The answers cannot be clouded by the legitimate indignation about the outrage at Kaluchak or be determined by a growing lack of patience about being subject to repeated terrorist attacks by Pakistan-based jehadi groups. While the calls for effective intervention to end this unceasing onslaught are understandable, there is — in the existing circumstances — an enormous difference between the rhetoric of war and the actual practice of it. Despite the sabre-rattling, it appears that a number of people, both within the Indian Government and outside it, have realised that a full-scale war with Pakistan would be a catastrophe. (Even an inveterate fanatic such as the Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray has admitted this is not `affordable' in view of the nuclearised environment in the subcontinent.) However, what is extremely worrying is the pervasive and reckless chatter about the possibility of launching limited strikes which, at the very least, could take the shape of surgical raids against militant camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Apart from the fact that such limited strikes are unlikely to achieve their stated objective, something which is acknowledged by a number of defence experts, there is an enormous risk that such an operation could spin dangerously out of control.

The unspeakable, a nuclear conflagration, is the worst but by no means the only hazard of escalation. A full-fledged conventional battle — in these days of long-range missiles tipped with devastating payloads — would cause extensive damage to both countries. The Kargil example is sometimes used to establish that a limited war with Pakistan is a wholly feasible proposition. But the dynamics of the Kargil conflict, which was essentially a battle to recover a piece of Indian territory, were entirely different from what is being envisaged in some quarters now. It is more than likely that an Indian attack on PoK, or on specific militant camps within Pakistan, will result in a dangerous widening of the conflict.

Sections of the Indian establishment are resentful about what they perceive as the United States' `double standards' — reflected in that country's continued calls for restraint even as it zealously proclaims its right to launch both retaliatory and pre-emptive strikes pretty much where it pleases. Be that as it may, the Vajpayee Government cannot but factor the U.S. in when it takes whatever decision it eventually does. The American presence on Pakistan soil and its transparent interest in mopping up the residual Al-Qaeda operatives with the assistance of Pervez Musharraf are at least two of the factors that New Delhi can hardly afford to overlook. Among the things that India needs to do is to press the U.S. to get much tougher with Islamabad about its attitude to jehadi groups and the issue of cross-border infiltration. The point must be forcefully made that any talk of a global war on terror can be meaningful only if it covers all terrorists and not merely those who threaten the U.S. In the meanwhile, Mr. Vajpayee must resist the temptation to play to a gallery which understands nothing more than revenge and retaliation and which is clamouring for some drastic action against Pakistan. War rhetoric has already attained a shrill and fervent pitch even though it is clear that war is no option.

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