Winning without a war

But if they fail, if the two sides finish this round of talks exchanging abuses and allegations, and if the conflict in Kargil intensifies, the pressures to widen the conflict, to bring to bear the entire strength of India8217;s armed forces and economic might, and to teach Pakistan a lesson are bound to grow. Nobody wants to go to the polls as a wimp.

Besides, the popular mood isalready viciously angry 8212; some of it was reflected in the questions by ordinary people at Star TV8217;s call-in programme on which George Fernandes appeared on Monday evening.

Three months after the Lahore bus ride, this is Vajpayee8217;s moment of truth. Since he went out on a limb seeking peace with a neighbour, nobody in his establishment wishes to trust he has already been pushed on the defensive. He is being accused by his detractors in the opposition and rivals within his party of being woolly-headed in having let his guard down.

It is quite ironic to hear even veteran BJP leaders go around talking loosely of how a Mrs Gandhi Indira, not Sonia would never have walked into such a trap. How she was always suspicious of the Pakistanis and so on.

Obviously, they have all forgotten how she allowed herself to be flattered and conned by Bhutto into signing the Simla agreement. They now remind Vajpayee of 1965, of the way Shastri responded to another infiltration challenge by giving his armies the freedom tocross the international borders.

It is a tempting thought, but also a lazy one, because war is no longer a choice among the basket of options available to a nation in pursuit of national interest. A punitive strike, like Serbia and Iraq, yes. But a war with any possibility, howsoever minuscule, of an uncertain outcome, or of outside intervention, is to be avoided unless forced by an irrational adversary. This is key to the way India moves to bring the region8217;s first post-nuclear crisis to a favourable resolution.

It is a tough call, but it would help to begin by presuming that the Pa-kistanis are not irrational. They may enjoy their short moments of glory 8212; the audacious ingress in Kargil and the shooting down of two Indian MiGs 8212; but they understand 1999 is not 1965. Then they enjoyed several military and political advanta-ges and yet the war went quite wrong for them. But they are also desperate to bring Kashmir back on the international agenda.

They have watched with bitter disappointment thesituation stabilise in the Valley, the world get distracted by Kosovo, and are generally amenable to accepting the status quo, or a division of Kashmir along the Line of Control. No Indian in authority ever says it, but the main achievement of the Simla accord was giving the LoC the status of a de facto international boundary.

India and Pakistan have had relative peace for almost three decades as that principle has been honoured on the ground, though never mentioned formally. The Pakistanis are now alarmed that the new generations of world leaders and diplomats, indeed many of the younger Indians and the Pakistanis, are beginning to treat this division of Kashmir as a given.

The Pakistani intrusion in Kargil, therefore, is a shrewd and conscious effort to put the clock back on the Simla accord and to shatter the growing notion that a final solution to Kashmir lies in a division along the LoC. The ruling establishment there would prefer to revert the LoC to its earlier status of a ceasefire line, a live8217;frontier that may require UN monitoring.

In any future negotiations that would give Pakistan much greater leverage than a stable, quiet LoC. Once we accept that Kargil is a clever operation with the wider involvement of the Pakistani establishment and not the freelance adventure of some ISI or army buccaneers, it is possible to look at the situation differently.

While we celebrate the fact that the world, by and large, has responded to the crisis with sympathy and understanding, that almost nobody buys the Pakistani line that the combatants in Kargil are merely Kashmiri quot;freedom fightersquot; and that the crisis has come at a time when Pakistan is exposed to much international opprobrium over its suppression of dissent, cynical concessions to the clergy and economic mess, we must not overlook Pakistan8217;s gains.

For once, the world is again aware of the crisis in Kashmir. Almost every major newspaper in the world has written editorials on the current crisis with a common refrain: the West should not get sodistracted by Kosovo as to forget a probable nuclear flashpoint such as Kashmir. This is a common concern even though the papers do seem to accept that the trouble in Kargil has been caused by Pakistani infiltrators, not because India says so but because their own reporters on the spot have said so.

India must exploit this appreciation of its current predicament and the general irritation with Pakistan, which is being seen as a spoiler of sorts. Pakistan8217;s message to the world is: we are fighting over Kashmir, the conflict can widen, this is a likely nuclear flashpoint, so please intervene.

Pakistan is hoping to cash in on the western stereotype of two poor countries with weak governments getting involved in a war and nuking each other. India has to defy that and reassure the world while evicting the intruders from Kargil and keeping the rest of the frontier secure.

India has to be conscious of its strengths, of its growing economy, political stability that encourages the FIIs to keep buying on itsstock markets even when the country heads for its third election in three years, of the narrowing gap between the living standards and incomes of its people and its neighbour8217;s 8212; five years ago the Pakistani per capita income was 60 per cent higher than India8217;s, today it stands at 23 per cent.

There will be elements in Pakistan who watch this with dismay, who have been surprised by the resilience of the Indian system and the economy after Pokharan while sanctions have devastated Pakistan8217;s and driven it close to bankruptcy.

For them a war, or a wider conflict, will be a great leveller. India8217;s challenge now is to deny them that while cleaning up Kargil. This will require a great deal of patience and statesmanship. But that is only to be expected of admittedly the more responsible among the new nuclear neighbours facing their first post-nuclear crisis.