INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE AS INDIA - PAKISTAN LURCH TOWARD AN ALL-OUT REGIONAL WAR
by DEBKAfile
1 June 2002
NOTE: DEBKAfile sees possibility of three wars raging in the Middle East by mid-September. These three wars are: India/Pakistan, U.S./Pakistan, and Israel/Palestinians and Israel's immediate Arab neighbors. Such a conflict would likely spread uncontrollably to engulf the entire region.
Now, listen to this most interesting DEBKAfile Intelligence review:
"Two of the three wars fought by India and Pakistan since independence were over divided Kashmir. The fourth conflict looming ever closer focuses once again on the perennial dispute between the two nuclear neighbors. Yet DEBKAfiles military and intelligence sources report that, if the match is lit, the two belligerents are planning to take the combat beyond Kashmir and deep into each others heartlands. The vulnerable areas of India are Punjab in the north opposite Pakistani Punjab, Ganganagar in Haryana State in the center on the fringes of the Indian Desert and Rajasthan in the south. Pakistan sees danger to its northern towns of Gujranwala and Lahore, its central region of Bahawalpur and Sind in the south.
Both New Delhi and Islamabad are gravitating towards war for the following reasons:
A. The Kashmir dispute is the overriding ideological, emotional, national and
religious cassus belli though not the only one. According to New Delhi,
the cross-border Islamic terrorism plaguing Kashmir is backed by Pakistans
Inter-Service-Intelligence agency. Pakistan terms the escalating combat in Kashmir
a national war of liberation waged by Muslim Kashmiris against the oppressive
Hindi Indian occupiers.
B. According to DEBKAfiles exclusive Asian sources, the war buildup is
also the outcome of circumstances. The US-led war in Afghanistan and its impending
offensive against Iraq created conditions in the Indian subcontinent and Arabian
Sea that invite the two neighbors to stake all on a final strategic decision
of their fifty-year old conflict.
The Vajpayee government sees its chance of wielding its military preponderance
1.2 million troops against a Pakistani army half that size, and an air
force and navy standing in the same quantitative ratio to Pakistans
to seize large parts of Pakistan for one or more of gains: 1. To take out Pakistans
nuclear weapons capability; 2. To enfeeble the Musharref military government
and render its army a long-term non-threat to Kashmir; 3. To topple the central
government in Islamabad.
C. The Musharref government likewise feels its has been offered a great opportunity
to cut India down to size at last. With the help of the superior nuclear weapons,
missiles technology and guidance systems supplied by China, the Pakistani army
believes it has a chance for the first time in half a century to beat Indian
might and bring New Delhis pretensions as Asias number one power
to naught. Islamabad believes that by going to war it will force the big powers,
United States, Russia,China and Iran, to treat Pakistans interests with
more respect.
As to these powers, despite the frantic diplomatic comings and goings, none
has tried too hard to avert the hostilities until the eleventh hour, each for
its own reasons.
The United States: The Bush administrations dominant objectives in its
ongoing war on terror can be summed up at present as being, first, to pre-empt
a terrorist nuclear strike against the United States and, second, to strip of
their nuclear weapons regimes capable of letting them pass into the hands of
terrorists or elements hostile to America. These were not the goals President
George W. Bush started out with after the September 11 suicide attacks on New
York and Washington, but as the counter-terror war unfolded, the nuclear threat
loomed ever larger until it took center-stage. This concern governs Bushs
dogged determination to go to war on Baghdad the next most likely date
is the coming fall and divest Saddam Hussein of his nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons at all costs.
Judging by the way international crises are going at present, DEBKAfiles
military experts do not rule out the possibility of the fall months of September
and October 2002 seeing three full-scale wars raging at one and the same time,
between India and Pakistan, the US and Iraq and Israel and the Palestinians.
To ward off an additional complication, Bush applied all his powers of persuasion
to making Russian president Vladimir Putin cut back on technological and military
aid for completing the development of Irans nuclear weapons capability.
This was the main topic at issue between the two presidents when they met in
the third week of May. Putin promised to see what he could do, but nothing has
so far been known to happen.
Pakistans nuclear weaponry is a worry to Washington, as much as the Iranian
and Iraqi nuclear capabilities. Though saying little, the US administration
has been haunted by the thought of Pakistans nuclear weapons falling into
the hands of Muslim extremists like al Qaeda. It would therefore welcome the
elimination of Islamabads nuclear option, even if this came about as a
result of a full-scale Indo-Pakistani war."