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Do Peacemakers Make
Peace? US Diplomacy and Conflict on LOC
Praveen
Swami
Conventional
wisdom has it that the United States' energetic diplomatic activity
in South Asia helps ensure that nuclear-armed India and Pakistan do
not go to war. Recent events along the Line of Control (LoC) have
once again underlined the impression, however, that United States'
peacemaking may in practice be encouraging sub-conventional
aggression by Pakistan - and protecting that country from a
proportionate response by India.
Speaking in Islamabad on August 23, 2002, military spokesperson
Major-General Rashid Qureshi - known for his obfuscation and more
than occasional dishonesty on the role of his Force during and since
the 1999 Kargil war - claimed that Pakistani troops had beaten back
a air-supported Indian military offensive in the Gultari area,
facing Drass and Kargil on the Indian side of the LoC. Scores of
Indian soldiers, he claimed, had been killed in the Pakistani
military response to 'Indian aggression'. Qureshi made his remarks
at the time when Deputy-Secretary of State Richard Armitage was in
New Delhi as part of a larger mission to secure de-escalation along
the LoC.
Two questions are key here. First, what actually happened? And
second, what did Qureshi hope to achieve by proclaiming that the
situation on the LoC was especially fragile?
Towards the end of July 2002, there was, in fact, a clash in which
India used air power against Pakistani Forces for the first time
since the Kargil war, but it was on the Indian side of the LoC, and
followed the discovery that Pakistani Forces had occupied Indian
positions. At 1:15 PM on July 29, eight Mirage-2000 aircraft sorties
were carried out against Pakistan-held positions at Loonda Post, on
the Indian side of the LoC in the Machil sector. 1,000-pound
precision-guided bombs were used to obliterate four bunkers occupied
by Pakistan, while 155-millimetre Bofors howitzers were used to hit
troops who had dug into forward trenches prepared by Indian troops
in earlier years. At least 28 Pakistan soldiers, Indian military
intelligence officials believe, were killed in the fighting.
It isn't entirely certain just when and how the Pakistan Army
managed to take Loonda Post, and those who might know aren't
talking. The affair, however, made two things clear. First, India
was willing to respond with massive force to any violation of the
LoC. If the Pakistan Army believed India would not be willing to
risk either horizontal or vertical escalation of localised conflict,
the expectation was belied. The fact that the air strikes were
carried out in broad daylight was an easy-to-read Indian gesture
underlining its determination.
There is, on the other hand, no evidence that the clash Qureshi
spoke about ever actually took place, though it is known that the
situation in the Kargil sector has been fraught since at least May
2002. Earlier this summer, Indian troops reoccupied Point 5070 in
the Drass sector, a peak named, like others, after its altitude in
metres. Point 5070 dominates the strategically-vital Mushkoh nullah
(stream), to the east of Drass sub-sector, the scene of some of the
bloodiest fighting during the Kargil war. Fighting continues over
Point 5303 in the Marpo La area, to the west of Drass. The conflict
last lead, on August 19, to intense artillery exchanges up and down
the LoC in the Kargil sector.
Both these offensives, particularly the effort to recapture Point
5303, have been hampered by Pakistani fire from Point 5353, the
highest feature in the Drass area. The mountain was occupied by
Pakistan after the end of the Kargil war, as a result of local
tactical errors by the Drass-based 56 Brigade, which were compounded
by high-level command failings, provoked by the political need not
to concede that a crucial position had been lost. The Indian Army,
which has lost seven soldiers and nine civilian high-altitude
porters in the fight, has been arguing for the use of full-blown
artillery and air strikes to regain the position, which gives
Pakistan the ability to bring accurate artillery fire to bear on a
section of the Srinagar-Leh highway. So far, aware of the possible
consequences, the Union Defence Ministry has blocked calls for an
assault on Point 5353, but patience is wearing thin.
Qureshi, it seems probable, may have resorted to his Gultari fiction
in order to prevent precisely such an assault. His fiction did serve
to suggest that any localised conflict along the LoC could spiral
out of control - or, indeed, that Pakistan would seek to ensure it
did. This stance is at par with the tactical thinking that led to
the Loonda Post occupation. Pakistani strategists apparently and
deliberately ignored the prospects of a major Indian response, and
the potential for the conflict to widen, given that both armies
currently have troops massed along their frontiers. They did this,
secure in their belief that American 'peacemaking', however
well-intentioned, provided a kind of insurance policy for
ill-considered and irresponsible military adventures.
Armitage, to his credit, does not appear to have fallen for the
Pakistan military's loud protestations. If they are actually serious
about de-escalating tensions along the LoC, however, the
Deputy-Secretary and his policy-establishment colleagues do need to
think carefully about just what they are doing in South Asia, and
how their actions impact on the regional conflict and its potential
for resolution.
Author
is Chief of Bureau, Mumbai, Frontline
By
special arrangement with Institute of Conflict Management,
New Delhi
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