Yet Another Indo-Pak War - who will gain?
-T.G. Jacob
The possibility of a war between India and Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai attacks is certainly becoming stronger and stronger. War hysteria is being whipped up in both the countries not only by the media but by politicians too. This is more so in India than in Pakistan. Pakistan is sticking to the position that the Mumbai attacks had nothing to do with the Pakistan government but are possibly executed by non state forces, indirectly admitting that the government’s control is scant at least in certain areas of the country. Actually this is no news at all. Ever since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and all through the occupation huge areas in the Pak-Afghan border had become a no-man’s land and dumping ground for weapons ostensibly for fighting the Russians. In fact, the Taliban owes its origin to this policy of liberal arms supplies for the anti-Russian forces, which was mainly carried out by the US and China with the active connivance of Pakistan government. It is also to be noted that the weapons thus dumped not only served the purpose of fighting the Russians but constituted a huge arms bazaar by itself with the weapons finding their way to diverse areas of the world and the development of a powerful underworld dealing with weapons and drugs. The Peshavar area of Pakistan became the centre of these activities ever since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Adjoining areas in the North West Frontier Province also were never under the effective control of the Pakistan government and this continues to be so to date. What is meant here is that the Russian invasion catalyzed the whole region into a state of perpetual, vicious instability.
With the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its subsequent ouster from Kabul by the US led forces the situation underwent another turn for the worse in the north west of Pakistan. Forced by the US to join battle against the Taliban in the north-west the Pakistan government had no option but to mobilize the predominantly tribal areas to fight against the Taliban within Pakistani territory. The restive tribals were forced at gun point to fight the Taliban and suicide attacks by the Taliban became routine. Dozens of tribal leaders are already killed in such attacks. And wherever the tribals were unwilling to fight the Taliban the Pakistani air force and now the US bombard the tribal hamlets. This is the situation existing in the whole north west of Pakistan, a situation that can easily flare up into full scale civil war. Right now the tribals are caught in the cross fire and hundreds of thousands have fled the region. The US, Pak army, Taliban, and tribal militias are all heavily involved in the cauldron of the North West. And the Pak occupied Kashmir has also got drawn into the general instability of the region which is only in the logical order of things. It will be a gross mistake to consider Pakistan as a monolithic entity. On the other hand, it is a country that is dominated by the Punjabi nationality and serious ethnic tensions are the order of the day.
Though the Russians were driven out, the situation did not rectify by itself in Afghanistan. The Islamic fundamentalist government that came to power in Kabul showed its fierce independence from the US and Western powers and the fond dreams of the military rulers of Pakistan of becoming a controlling factor in the politics of the region were also crashed due to the intransigence of the new rulers in Afghanistan and ethnic schisms within Pakistan. From day one tensions started mounting between the Western powers and Afghanistan and the West started flaunting the human rights angle to denigrate the new rulers. Already Iran had been lost to the West due to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which made the stakes for the Western powers in Afghanistan doubly loaded. They were clearly upset about the contagious impact of anti-West Islamic radicalism in the strategic oil rich Islamic world. From this point it was a short step for the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to regard the US as their prime enemy and escalate the conflict which is ideological as well as material in content. Worldwide Islamic fundamentalist networks came into being and attacks on western interests became international. And it is this situation that culminated in the occupation of Afghanistan by the US and its allies and the breaking out of a fresh war there. The developments in Iraq triggered by imperialist greed for oil monopoly compounded the situation in the region and made the whole region a war zone.
As the US-led forces dug into Afghanistan the Islamic radicals concentrated on the Pak-Afghan border region making it into a headquarters for their actions within Afghanistan as well as worldwide. The US fully recognized the fact that unless the whole region is pacified Islamic radicalism cannot be snuffed out. Pakistan being their strategic ally is being consistently accused by the US as not doing enough to battle the Islamists. Pakistan certainly has its own internal compulsions and structural disabilities to take on the fundamentalists in a full-scale war and this has resulted in frequent bombings of Pakistani mountain villages by the US bombers in the name of battling the holed up Taliban resulting in good number of causalities of Pakistani tribal people. The frequency of such blatant violations has alarmingly increased during the last few months. Pakistan is helpless and can only whimper meekly against the high-handed actions of its boss. It is in this background that war clouds are gathering and jingoism is becoming the order of the day. Corporate India and its media as well as the powerful Hindu right wing are for “teaching Pakistan a fitting lesson” and no mainstream political party is in a position to effectively oppose such a disastrous move. Mr. Obama is tacitly acknowledging the possibility of such a move. All the peace initiatives in India and Pakistan which were hopefully building up for the last many years are as yet nowhere to be seen when the war threat is looming larger and larger.
The warning issued by the Taliban that they will not be silent spectators if India attacks Pakistan is ominous. This is certainly what the US war strategists are banking on. If India can be forced to take on the Islamic radicals there is nothing better that the US wants. Incidentally, the US had tried its level best to rope in the Indian armed forces in its war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the situation is such that the force of circumstances itself will trap India in a war with the Islamic fundamentalist forces. Any attack on Pakistan is bound to escalate under the current circumstances. The possibility of a limited war, as happened on earlier occasions, is dim. It will be a war of attrition and an escalated one. It will be more like the Iran-Iraq war which lasted for ten years and weakened both the countries considerably, paving the way for the takeover of Iraq by the US. The advantage of a war between India and Pakistan is heavily biased in favor of the US and it will be a trap for India and possible further dismemberment for Pakistan. The US is the most militarized economy in the world and any war between Pakistan and India will be a shot in the arm for the US economy which is currently reeling under conditions of recession. In any case, the US economy demands a permanent state of war in the world, and whether they themselves are directly involved is often immaterial.
Both India and Pakistan can ill afford a war. Global recession has made the Pakistan economy even more bankrupt and they are already kneeling before the World Bank for loan. The Indian economy, with more than 25% of its total population below the poverty line, is fundamentally in the same boat. But a war can temporarily boost up the prospects of the corporate sector because of war demands. Politically, the ruling party may be hoping to reap some benefits from orchestrated patriotic jingoism which can hide the glaring issues confronting the vast majority of the people for a time. But the price to be paid for such paltry advantages will be disproportionately high. Moreover, the ruling classes may hope that the neo liberal economic agenda can be pushed without serious opposition under conditions of war which is not the case now. War can become a convenient mask for pushing through any anti-people measures. People will be asked to sacrifice for the sake of war because, after all, a situation of war by definition is one which threatens the national security and sovereignty. The pertinent question is whether the war is actually justified or not. This question can be brushed aside for a time by raising the bogey of patriotism. But how long such a situation can be sustained is doubtful.
Quite some time back the Pentagon think-tanks had evaluated that South Asia is bound to emerge as a major hot spot of the world in the not so long run. Pentagon evaluation is always, historically speaking, proved to be based on the strategic interests of the US and it is implicit that they will work towards fulfilling their own predictions and evaluation. That evaluation will be fructified if there is a war between India and Pakistan. They never bothered about the horrifying human cost of the Oran-Iraq war that was engineered by them only For the US the sufferings of the people of the warring countries is not a variable at all. On the contrary, the global corporates only stand to gain form such a war which will further consolidate, militarily and politically, the role of the US in the South Asia. This is certainly one way to hem in China and the Russian Federation who, according to the US, are growing too tall for their boots.