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US-based Kashmiris fear war in the Valley

Vaishali Honawar in Washington

Kashmiris settled in the United States fear that the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan will encourage terrorist activity in their homeland and spark off a war, further reducing chances of a lasting peace in their homeland.

Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, president of the pro-plebiscite Kashmiri American Council based in Washington, said he fears the fallout of the Indo-Pak nuclear activity is "most likely to land on 13 million Kashmiris with cataclysmic consequences."

International leaders and policy experts have for years claimed that Kashmir is the most likely flashpoint of a global nuclear conflagration. Leaders of India and Pakistan have indulged in sabre-rattling over Kashmir since the days of Partition. But the past month's nuclear tests are likely to add a dangerous new element to the old game of threats and counter-threats.

Thus, within days of India's nuclear tests, Home Minister Lal Kishinchand Advani warned that Pakistan must now recognise the new geostrategic equations in the region, and that any interference in Kashmir would be dealt with severely.

Underlying the recent nuclear one-upmanship is the Kashmir dispute, and that is a given. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief provided evidence of this after his country's second round of testing on Saturday, May 30.

Blaming the tests on the continuing dispute over Kashmir, Sharief called on the United States and the United Nations to help resolve it. "Until the issue of Kashmir, which is the root cause of all security problems in the subcontinent, is resolved, there will be no peace here," he said.

The BJP's militant stand on the dispute has not helped matters much either. The party's much-publicised claim that it wants to reclaim Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has only served to heighten fear and suspicion in the volatile state.

In view of the BJP's demands to "abrogate Kashmiri special autonomy, professedly protected by Section 370 of the Indian Constitution, annex Azad Kashmir, and build a Hindu temple atop the destroyed Babri mosque, the possibility of a war for Kashmir has climbed into the stratosphere, to say the obvious," Dr Fai said.

Deploring the nuclear tests by both nations, Dr Fai said what scares him even more is the war of words between India and Pakistan, which is the "nuclear fuse that ignites nuclear volleys."

In South Asia, he said, "The nuclear fuse is the 50-year-old dispute over Kashmir that ignited two wars between India and Pakistan during their pre-nuclear days."

Kashmiris loyal to India, however, welcome the BJP's statements. "We should have been proactive instead of reactive, right from the start," said Vijay Sazawal, founder-member of the Indo-American Kashmiri Forum.

Lalit Wanchoo, president of the Kashmiri Overseas Association which deals with the plight of Kashmiri Pandits forced to flee their homeland, however, looked at it a shade differently, when he said Pakistan's tests will further encourage terrorists in the region who "have always reacted very actively" to such developments.

Also, said Wanchoo, "Whenever there has been any international dimension to the issue, or an international leader has reacted to Kashmir, terrorists there have reacted very aggressively," he said.

Dr Ashok Raina, president of the Indo-American Kashmiri Forum, agrees that the belligerence that goes with the Pakistani tests is scary. While he said it is hard to predict whether the small Indo-Pak border skirmishes will escalate into a serious war, the threat of increased terrorism was very real and "all pleas to stop it have led to nothing. The region has been totally destabilised."

In Sazawal's view, however, the nuclear tests are "more show than reality" and are not likely to change Indo-Pak relations in any significant way.

"The tests had a strategic meaning and were not part of the Indo-Pak rivalry," said Sazawal. However, he said, India's possession of a nuclear bomb was far less threatening than Pak's, as the "command control system in India is much more stable than that in Pakistan, where the political institutions are very weak."

Pretty much all shades of opinion, however, are in agreement that there is a strong possibility of war following these tests. Dr Fai sums up the consequences thus: "A third war in their post-nuclear phases of weapons development would be catastrophic, not only for Kashmir but for the world."

Wanchoo too foresees a possibility of war following the imposition of internal emergency in Pakistan "which indicates the army is in control." He is quick to add, however, that a war would not be in the interest of either Pakistan or India at this point.

The solution now, said Fai, would be to have "genuine Kashmiri leadership conducting negotiations and carrying out a plebiscite. Negotiations looking toward a political settlement of Kashmir should proceed without preconditions. No specific solution should be excluded from the negotiating cloister."

But Raina says a plebiscite -- which has been suggested as the best possible solution -- would be futile at this point of time, as there are barely any Hindus remaining in the valley. "How can you call a plebiscite when demographics have changed?" he asks, pointing out that the number of Hindus in the valley has dropped from 350,000 in 1989 to around 6,000 today --- just 5 per cent of the total population of Kashmir.

The only difference in the post-test scenario, everyone agrees, is that Kashmir now has not one, but two bombs hanging over its head.

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