January 24, 2003

By Brigadier General Feroz Hassan Khan

Feroz Hassan Khan is visiting fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies. He is a brigadier general in the Pakistan army and has served as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs Division of the Joint Services Headquarters of Pakistan.

For the past 55 years Pakistan and India have remained embroiled in intractable conflict and chronic rivalry. At stake is the largest concentration of Muslims and Hindus in the world, the fourth and the seventh largest armed forces in the world, holding an unspecified number of nuclear weapons. Deep-seated historical animosities compounded by structural asymmetries contribute to an imbalance that is unprecedented in this day and age. Two years ago President Bill Clinton described the region as "the most dangerous place in the world." As the Bush administration took office in 2001, the CIA director asserted that "the regional situation remains volatile, making the risk of war between two nuclear-armed adversaries unacceptably high." By the end of last year, as the war on terrorism in Afghanistan raged on, India and Pakistan were locked eyeball-to-eyeball and had amassed an estimated one million soldiers on operational alert along their common border. The fusion of nuclear capability with unresolved political, strategic, and economic disparities presents a disturbing threat to an enterprising region with great promise otherwise. Recent times have shown that a nuclear standoff in such a crisis-prone engagement can swiftly drive the volatility of the region to a dangerously high level. South Asia is a veritable tinderbox that could explode at any moment.

Perils of an Ideological State

The rivalry between India and Pakistan is analogous to a divorce in a New York court. In the state of New York, people seeking a divorce must go beyond the simple reason of "irreconcilable differences" and prove mutual wrongdoing. Fifty-five years ago the Muslims and Hindus, after living together acrimoniously for centuries, decided on an amicable divorce. However, it took an outside power, Great Britain, to separate them and execute an "amicable" partition.

India and Pakistan followed two very different models. India followed the model of an umbrella state that encompasses a multiethnic and pluralistic polity under the banner of secularism.

Pakistan, in contrast, pursued the path of a modern Muslim nation-state, religiously homogeneous, pluralistic, but ideological.

However, India continues to blame the partition as a wrongdoing of the departing British and to consider the creation of Pakistan a mere accident of history. India accuses Pakistan of being a theocratic polity and a haven of Islamic militancy. Meanwhile, Pakistan faces a hostile and unreconciled neighbor that it believes holds hegemonic ambitions and is bent upon making Pakistan a pliant and subservient state. It also insists that India is a Hindu state in the garb of secularism. Pakistan considers that only a militarily strong country, independent of India, will ensure balance in the region. In reality, both India and Pakistan have failed to live up to the visions of their founding fathers.

Like Israel, Pakistan faces the perils of establishing a modern state based on ideology rather than theology. Israelis want a Jewish democratic and pluralistic state, the Pakistanis want a modern democratic and pluralistic Muslim state. That was the idea of the original partition, yet both nations face the many contradictions and challenges from the rightists within their respective communities. Like Israel, Pakistan faces major challenges from the right to revert the polity to the original vision of its creation. Both Israel and Pakistan underwent identical circumstances and motivations that drove their security policies. Structural and geophysical asymmetries and hostile neighbors challenged their existence and forced the two states to seek a "security intensive" way out. Both countries sought outside alliances to redress the security imbalance and both went ultimately nuclear to offset their conventional force imbalance and geophysical disadvantages. Both realize that outside help will be insufficient to ensure national security. Pakistan's fear of India is underscored by the experience of the 1971 war, which in effect dismembered it. Therefore, an extremely strong sense to survive as a Jewish and Muslim state, respectively, prevails in both the countries.

Intrinsic to the creation of Pakistan was a vision that sought solution to the Hindu-Muslim communal problem, not the beginning of a new one. In fact, Pakistan’s creation was supposed to encompass greater security, rather than insecurity, for India. On December 30, 1930, at Allahabad (India), Dr. Muhammad Iqbal offered for discussion the idea of Pakistan in his presidential address of the All-India Muslim League session. In that pivotal discourse regarding the future of Muslims in India, Iqbal said Pakistan was to be "the best defender of India."

Further, Iqbal made it clear that he did not envision a theocratic Islamic state inimical to the Hindus. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, not only echoed Iqbal’s sentiment, he asserted that India and Pakistan could declare a "Monroe Doctrine of their own where the two could tell the whole world, ‘hands off India.’ " Jinnah, in his famous speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, explicitly rejected theocracy in Pakistan. About the nature of Pakistan, he left no doubts with these words, ". . . in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims as Muslims, not in a religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state."

Three reasons contributed to the acrimony between the two neighbors that lasts to date: the trauma of the partition, the distribution of the assets between the parted countries, and the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Over time, this last issue, still unresolved, became increasingly more complicated with the injection of Cold War alliances and geopolitics. More importantly, India and Pakistan became adversaries due to a mix of historical biases and unresolved issues. In Pakistan the hostilities have turned into belief that India never was reconciled to the partition and continues to do everything in its power to weaken, if not undo, Pakistan.

The Sacred Offerings and Nuclear Shrines

In May 1998, some 50 years after partition, Hindu devotees in saffron robes were seen picking up radioactive sand as souvenirs and sacred offerings from India's nuclear test site. Although India had conducted nuclear tests before, in 1974, such images reveal the transformation of Gandhi’s and Nehru’s India. The images transformed the country's nuclear capability into a "Hindu" bomb.

Similarly, in the capital of Jinnah’s Pakistan, Islamabad, replicas of the Chagai rock, the site of Pakistan’s nuclear test, and models of Pakistan’s Ghauri and Shaheen missiles sit in the medians of major rotaries. Such tasteless displays demonstrate the pettiness and, indeed, speak of what few symbols are left upon which an ordinary Pakistani can base his or her sense of national pride.

Expression of such tacky nuclear nationalism has simply made both India and Pakistan laughingstocks in the eyes of the world. These symbols, even after a half century of independence, reflect that South Asian commitment to "pluralist and pacifist principles [has] descended into a baser mix of crude militarism and religious chauvinism". Indeed, such nuclear nationalism belittles the great achievement of the scientists and technicians, the resolve of the state institutions who supported them, and the national efforts and sacrifices that were made to meet the challenges of the nonproliferation regime. For South Asians, the success in creating a nuclear deterrent for their respective nations is a matter of great pride. However, realization of the roles and responsibilities conferred upon them by joining the nuclear neighborhood has yet to mature. Both India and Pakistan are on the learning curve, but their pride will not let them admit that.

Since the September 11 crisis and the war on terrorism, the dynamics in South Asia have not changed for the better and, if anything, have worsened. Despite U.S. engagement and involvement with both India and Pakistan, the two countries have not developed a sense of common interests. Instead, both have exploited each other’s vulnerability. In the fall of 2002, both sides remained mobilized and deployed in a bitter standoff, an end to which has commenced, though the tension in the region remains.

Save for a major breakthrough, South Asia’s security future in the foreseeable time frame will likely remain in the shadow of crisis instability, a state of constant tension and intermittent crisis. The specter of a conventional war turning into nuclear war will also be ever present. On their own, India and Pakistan will likely continue this pattern of crisis instability. In the absence of outside involvement, at best, both sides will reach a fragile peace. Although both are responsive to U.S. mediation in periods of crisis and tension, India resists mediation because it thinks it is stronger and can thus prevail on its own and therefore must not yield to outside pressure. Pakistan believes that involvement will not only mitigate the imbalance but also make transparent Pakistan’s moral and principled stand on the question of Kashmir and other disputes.

Why Peace Is Ephemeral in South Asia

Four major factors contribute to South Asian instability and fragility of peace. First, the potential of religious extremism fusing with nuclear nationalism is a constant threat to peace. Second, nuclear doctrinal asymmetry between India and Pakistan raises the risk of misperception and misunderstanding, which could lead to war. Third, deterrence stability has not assured crisis stability, primarily because no progress has been made toward permanent conflict resolution. India refuses to recognize, much less negotiate, the core issue of conflict: Jammu and Kashmir. Lastly, in the absence of a real peace structure, arms control agreements and confidence-building measures are fragile and fall apart as soon as crises erupt.

The South Asian brand of nationalism in the twenty-first century is a reflection of how low politics have replaced the high ideals of its founding fathers—Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah. The leaders of independence fought bigotry, and Gandhi was a victim of it. Jinnah was bitterly opposed by the religious Muslim parties. Today, extremism in Pakistan and fundamentalism in India are major sources of tension in the region. Religious fundamentalism poses a significant challenge to the otherwise progressively minded masses with a distinct outlook toward modernity. Most Indians and Pakistanis aspire to dynamic and progressive societies that are second to none, and given the pride and immense potential of the two countries, this is doable and achievable.

Religious extremism has many different roots. In India, secularism has gradually weakened, giving rise to greater Hindu influence in internal policy and media. Over the past 50 years, general intolerance against minorities has gradually replaced the pluralism elites once valued. The pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat (India) in the spring of 2002 is a testimony that Indian society has an intrinsically intolerant Hindu community that matters politically. No external circumstances caused it, it was a purely domestic phenomenon. Poverty and ignorance nourishes extremism and multiplies the "vote banks"—socially marginalized groups who tend to vote similarly—which are then exploited by the right wing, proving the ultimate perils of democracy. Gujarat and Kashmir spell out the imperative of domestic politics in India, where the state machinery stood silent as a massacre of its own Muslims citizens went on. It is unfortunate that India's brand of democracy produced intolerance toward minorities, rekindling a historical fear expressed as early as 1885 by Muslim leader Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

In contrast, Pakistan’s religious bigotry is nourished primarily by the absence of sustained democracy and broad education. In the 1970s and 1980s religious extremism was encouraged by the patronage of the most powerful institution of the state, the military regime under Zia–ul Haq. International developments also played a part: Khomeini’s revolution in Iran has had resonance in the Shia sect in Pakistan. The Mujahideen's war in Afghanistan against the Soviets was eulogized among the poor and disenfranchised. Later, the Talibanization of Afghanistan brought the Wahabbi Sunni sect and other brands of extremism to Pakistan. The 1991 Gulf War and the crises in the Middle East also affected the domestic scene in Pakistan. Failure of educational institutions in Pakistan also enabled the rise in influence of the Madaris, private religious education institutions which do little to alleviate ignorance and much to enflame hatred of minorities.

Unlike India, in Pakistan, religious extremism was not and is not generally expressed through the formal political system. Throughout Pakistan’s history, political parties espousing religious extremism have been emphatically and repeatedly rejected in virtually every election. Despite being rejected at the polls, however, the extremist religious political parties have been able to display enough street power that the state has had no choice but to pay attention.

In the region, therefore, the potential fusion of nuclear power with ideological fervor is not something that can be taken lightly—religious fervor tends to undermine rational thinking. Unless a binding peace structure is established in the region, such tendencies will lead to wars and crises not based on issues but on simple hatred.

The second major cause of instability is the asymmetry of India and Pakistan's nuclear doctrine. India has adopted a "no first use" doctrine and a "no high alert" status; therefore, it requires large conventional forces to keep the nuclear threshold high. India feels that the mere existence of nuclear weapons precludes a big war and thus it gives a free hand to use conventional force. Because of its conventional advantage, it has a more relaxed deterrent policy of "no first use" (NFU) while maintaining retaliatory use of nuclear weapons.

The Pakistani position is akin to NATO’s nuclear force doctrine. With its relatively smaller conventional force, NATO relies on a nuclear defense policy that does not rule out first use of nuclear weapons to deter conventional attack. Its declaratory policy is kept deliberately ambiguous in order to deter aggression. Unlike the situation in Europe during the Cold War, however, the South Asian situation of "doctrinal asymmetry" is volatile because of the constant danger of conventional war. Kashmir, among other situations, constantly brings the two nuclear powers to the brink and undermines mutual agreements on "non-provocative" military posturing. Agreements to avoid escalation, like those between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, are precluded in South Asia because there is no culture of concession and accommodation. Thus, in the present political-strategic environment, India and Pakistan's nuclear doctrines are in themselves a threat to stability. A transformation of the political and strategic culture is therefore an important step towards assuring stability in the region.

The third cause for concern is that nuclear deterrence has not assured crisis stability. After Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, India conceded that with overt nuclearization, conventional war between the two neighbors was no longer feasible. Pakistan, while agreeing with this notion, went further to include that nuclearization conferred a responsibility for speedy conflict resolution, particularly on the issue of Kashmir, which has been the casus belli since partition, most urgently since 1990. The world community has been clear that the two nuclear neighbors must develop new relations, as is manifested in UN Resolution 1172 of June 6,1998, that urged both countries, among others, to resolve the issues bilaterally.

In early 1999 India and Pakistan held a bilateral summit at Lahore. Although it raised hopes, the dramatic Lahore process yielded little progress. Soon after the Indian delegation returned to Delhi, India stepped back from negotiations on Kashmir, underscoring the power of the hawks in India.

Pakistan sought to up the ante by asymmetric means, sending troops over the Line of Control LoC in May 1999 in support of the freedom struggle in Kashmir. The resulting conflict highlighted the fragility of the political-military relations of the two countries. By the summer of 1999, Pakistan and India were engaged in a bitter conflict at Kargil, which ended only after direct involvement by the U.S. president. These events showed that unless serious attempts are made to redress the root causes of instability in the region, overt nuclearization and nuclear deterrence will not contribute to stability.

In the Lahore Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of 1999, both sides had agreed to "engage in bilateral consultations on security concepts, and nuclear doctrines, with a view to developing measures for confidence building in the nuclear and conventional fields, aimed at avoidance of conflict." But with deeper political mistrust and strategic intent of outmaneuvering the other or that of leveling old scores, dramatic events, such as the one at Lahore in the spring of 1999, do not result in durable peace. The Simla treaty was a structure that came about as a result of Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 war. But the spirit of the agreement lasted a decade before India ended it by occupying Siachen. This event, in turn, created a norm of violability of the LoC, leading up to the Kargil conflict in 1999. The euphoria of Lahore lasted only a few weeks and lacked the seriousness of a sustained process and a structure to support such a tall promise.

Peace agreements, such as the 1972 Simla Accord and confidence-building measures, fell apart because they were not based on any sort of deep mutual understanding, nor were they a result of a sustained peace process. Until the main issues are addressed in a serious manner, with both sides mutually recognizing the need to overcome their biases, any slapdash agreement reached in haste or under coercion will inevitably fall by the wayside.

Assertion in both countries that the presence of nuclear weapons is stabilizing enough to free them to act—conventionally or unconventionally—is dangerous. It misses two points: For one, it tests the limits of the deterrent value of nuclear weapons beyond acceptable limits—nuclear weapons do not truly replace conventional military capability at all levels. Second, this notion ignores the risk of inadvertent use when crises are pushed to the brink and the fog of war makes control of military forces more difficult.

The Paths Ahead

India and Pakistan, in their march into the twenty-first century, can take two possible paths: The first alternative is confrontation, which will involve an unconstrained arms race, dangerous military practices, and possible nuclear force deployment or a "hair-trigger" environment, resulting in increased security requirements to avoid accidents. The second is mutual accommodation and development of a cooperative security framework that connects the two countries to the visions of their forefathers. This path requires efforts to reduce the influence of the extremists in both India and Pakistan and to encourage pluralism, modernity, and progression; a political change of attitude toward resolving issues; acceptance of an arms control regime to stop the arms race; and the creation of an environment that improves the socioeconomic welfare of the people.

Should the region remain embroiled in the current intransigence toward each other, crises in various forms will continue to reoccur. Perpetual tensions will undermine efforts to alleviate the poverty and suffering of millions, and thus both countries will remain under a vicious cycle of violence. Neither India nor Pakistan can attain the prosperity and security without the other. The second path is the only way forward, but for that, both states must be compelled to do so.

The resumption of sustained bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan is highly improbable under the circumstances. The United States needs to step in. For a starter, the U.S. must consider appointing a special presidential envoy. The role of the United Nations will be crucial. With the U.S. in the lead, a multilateral initiative can be undertaken to usher in a new era of peace and security for the one billion people of South Asia.