THE KASHMIR WARS

Jammu &Kashmir is not the Main Battleground 

There is a general impression on both sides of the LoC that Pakistan could have done much more in the wake of India’s ham-handed actions against the Kashmiris. The people of Jammu and Kashmir now think that military action against India is the only option left to emancipate the Kashmiris reeling under the Indian occupation. 

 Pakistan, in the past, had exercised the military option twice, in 1947 and 1965, to liberate Jammu & Kashmir. The first Kashmir War resulted in Pakistan getting control of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Together, these two areas constitute one-third of the former princely state. 

Azad Kashmir is a sliver of territory, a mountain barrier that separates IHK from West Punjab and thus provides a cushion between Pakistan and India in this sector. GB is like a huge plug that prevents India from expanding into Afghanistan and thence into Central Asia. It is a strategically important area where the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor is being developed. 

The 1962 Sino-Indian border war indirectly influenced the Indo- Pakistan hostility paradigm and led to the 1965 War. The 1965 War was a blunder where Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto tried to snatch power from President Ayub Khan. It was due to incorrect conclusions drawn from this border war, and the lust for power to oust Ayub Khan from office, which made  Bhutto believe that the time was ripe for launching an operation in the Valley. Pakistan tried to spark up an insurgency in IHK during a brief period between the Rann of Kutch conflict and the launching of Operation Gibraltar and failed because of the short incubation period and lack of preparation. 

I had written earlier:

It is generally believed that the plan for the 1965 War was endorsed by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the Foreign Minister. Bhutto and the Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmed had assured Ayub Khan that fighting would be confined to Jammu & Kashmir and India would not attack across the international border. The combat Power ratio (western front) at the start of the war was 2.3: 1 in India’s favour. We started the war in the Valley and then reacted to the enemy’s moves. India responded to Operation Gibraltar by occupying the heights in the Kargil sector, Neelam Valley, and the Haji Pir Bulge. Pakistan reacted with Operation Grand Slam in the Chamb sector. India responded by attacking along the International border, and there was a stalemate.  

The 1965 War resulted in a stalemate. Both India and Pakistan had realized that they lacked the conventional punch to defeat the enemy in a straight war, hence the recourse, particularly by India, to resort to an indirect approach.

After the 65 War,  whereas the dispute between Jammu &Kashmir still remained, the main battle arena shifted to the periphery of Jammu & Kashmir, i.e. Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia. India and Pakistan also hit each other in the psychological and information dimensions. 

Indirect Approach 

After the 71 War, and particularly after the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, a pattern can be discerned where both India and Pakistan have resorted to an indirect approach to address their mutual differences. The India-Pakistan rivalry has shifted to a lower plane where proxy operations against each other have replaced conventional warfare. In this scenario, nuclear deterrence acts as a stabilizer that prevents the events from getting escalated beyond a certain level.  

We notice manifestations of this approach in the Indian support of various separatist forces in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh, and its infiltration of religious extremists in Punjab. Many Taliban groups are also on the payroll of Indian intelligence agencies. 

Pakistan is supporting the Kashmiris in IHK by maintaining that theirs is a freedom movement. It is logical for Pakistan, a weaker power, to resort to an indirect approach for the achievement of its strategic goal: recovery and integration of IHK with Pakistan.

What were the other Indian motives to adopt an indirect approach for destabilizing Pakistan? I have discussed earlier how cautious and risk-averse Indian civil and military leadership is when it comes to settling scores on the battlefield. 

India attacked and absorbed small states like Hyderabad, Junagarh, Goa, and Sikkim, etc. because militarily they were no match for India. In 1962, Nehru tried to test the waters by provoking China through his forward policy. After India’s defeat, China declared a unilateral  ( and well thought out ) ceasefire, restricting India from ever approaching within twenty kilometers of the Line of Actual Control, and, to this day,  India obliges China. 

In 1971, India attacked East Pakistan only when it was absolutely sure of its victory, but the Indian Army stopped in its tracks in the western theatre because of the human and material risks involved. In the future, India will resort to armed intervention in Pakistan only when it is absolutely sure that its offensive will be a walkover. Covert Indian intervention in Pakistan should be viewed in this context. 

 During the period between the 1965 and 1971 wars, India embarked upon a comprehensive plan to dismember Pakistan through the Soviet borrowed power, and with the US connivance. We witnessed the manifestation of the indirect Indian approach to destabilize Pakistan in October 1968 when student protests started in Rawalpindi. The protests were started on the excuse that some students while traveling between Peshawar and Rawalpindi, were stopped at a customs check post where the smuggled goods they were carrying were confiscated. 

Who was the invisible drummer on whose drumbeats the students were dancing? Some power or organization was sponsoring and financing them. The protests soon snowballed into a countrywide agitation resulting in President Ayub Khan’s abdication and handing over power to General Yahya, the Army Chief. Such an agitation had never happened in the history of Pakistan.

In retrospect, one can say that the United States, in coordination with India, had decided to oust Ayub Khan and thereafter dismember Pakistan through a choreographed war with India.  Corresponding to the Indian indirect approach, the main battleground, in 1971, would shift from J&K to erstwhile East Pakistan. In December 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan augmented Indo-Pakistan confrontation, even as the Sino-Indian war had earlier influenced the Indo-Pakistan rivalry. A significant addition, during this period, was the Khalistan insurgency, which was supported by Pakistan to interdict India’s line of communications to J&K.

Zia ul Haq did not start the Sikh insurgency. After the 71 War, whereas the IHK remained  calm, Pakistan found a new battleground in 1984 to pay India back for 1971 India choreographed war. According to Raman (2012) a retired officer of RAW:

“ …. In 1971, one saw the beginning of a joint covert operation by the U.S. intelligence community and Pakistan’s ISI to create difficulties for India in (Indian, sic) Punjab…. The U.S. interest in Punjab militancy continued for a little more than a decade and tapered off after the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

During the Sikh insurgency the battleground had shifted to the Indian Punjab but would keep reverting to J&K whenever a low-hanging fruit offered itself to the belligerents. Unable to do anything significant to neutralize Pakistan’s direction and control of  the Afghan War, and while the Pakistan Army’s attention was focused on the western border, India exploited the gap between the northernmost point of the LoC and Pakistan’s  border with China in the Trans- Karakoram Tract, and, in 1984, occupied the Siachen glacier.

  Kashmiris were fed up with the corruption rampant in IHK under Abdullah’s rule. Conditions for a fresh uprising were thus being created in the Valley. Pakistan was monitoring the situation prevailing at the time in IHK. In 1982 Pakistan decided to exploit the vacuum that was created after Sheikh Abdullah's death. It took Pakistan six years to operationalize its plan. In July 1988, a series of demonstrations, strikes, and attacks on the Indian government began the Kashmir insurgency, which during the 1990s escalated into the most important internal security issue in India.                                              

The Kargil, according to Vajpai, was a “near war”. We categorize it, like the Indian operation in Siachen, as a lesser war. Thereafter, the Subcontinent was plunged into a grand season of proxy wars such as the terrorist war waged in Pakistan by the Taliban, and the Indian sponsored civil war in Karachi, interior Sindh, FATA, and Balochistan. Indians accuse Pakistani proxies of launching terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament and in Mumbai. All the while, Jammu & Kashmir remains in the eyes of the storm. 

The Neighborhood Battlefields

Sri Lanka

India -sponsored Tamil insurgency gripped Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009.  The world knows how his insurgency wreaked havoc on this island nation. During the insurgency, Pakistan assisted the Sri Lankan government by supplying high-tech military equipment, arms, and ammunition to their army. After about three decades of intense fighting, the Indians realized it was a futile war and decided to call it quits.  

Afghanistan I had written :  As a result of the First Kashmir War, Pakistan had secured one-third of the state of Jammu & Kashmir but failed to dislodge the Indians from the Valley. Moreover, India still controlled the sources of the Indus river system. Yet everything had not gone as planned by the Indian leadership. In the twilight years of the British Raj there was a Congress-led government in the restive Muslim- majority North WestFrontier Province (NWFP), contiguous to Jammu & Kashmir. And the Congress had laid claims to the province. It had planned to manipulate the accession of the NWFP with India through its ally Ghaffar Khan and, with India in possession of Jammu & Kashmir through the Radcliffe Award; the road would be open for the Indian dominance of Afghanistan and ingress into Central Asia. That was not to be. Despite its machinations, the Congress party failed to hack off NWFP from Pakistan. Iran India had been using, till the US withdrawal, border areas of Afghanistan and Iran as staging areas for launching covert operations against Pakistan. Since the 1990s, India has tried to outflank Pakistan and open up a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The port of Chabahar, next to Gwadar, is central to India’s intentions.  India and Iran agreed to develop Chabahar in 2003 but the venture moved slowly because of the sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme. India thinks that its presence in Chabahar will neutralize the Chinese presence in nearby Gwadar.  To this end, India and Iran, and Russia, have talked about creating a Russo-Iranian- Indian transport corridor.  Indian access to the Iranian ports and military bases will present Pakistan with the threat of a two-front war. Not only Iran but also the other Gulf states, particularly UAE, consider the development of Gwadar Port and the projected China–Pakistan Economic Corridor as a threat to their economies. They, along with India, are supporting various separatist Baloch groups that have sprouted along the coastal belt of Balochistan during the last decade.

                                                                                                         Saleem Akhtar Malik

                                                                                                          September 18, 2021

REFERENCES

1.      Bazaz, S. (2009). Greater Ladakh vs Union Territory. Greater Kashmir. Retrieved from www.greaterkashmir.com.

2.      Dashti, N. (2007). The Baloch and Balochistan: A Historical Account from the Beginning to the Fall of the Baloch State. Trafford Publishing. p. 280.

3.      Hathaway, M. (2014). The “strategic partnership” between India and Iran. Woodrow Wilson Centre.

4.      Nicholas, S. (2007). "Waiting for the prosperity: Baluchistan, 2006".Virginia Quarterly Review.

5.      Raman, B. (2012). The Kao Boys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane. Lancer Publishers.

6.      Rajnath, A. (2004). BJP used underworld for terrorism in Pakistan, Indian officials admit. SouthAsian Tribune.Retrieved from www, southasiatribune.com.

7.      Siddiqui, F.H. (2012). The Politics of Ethnicity in Pakistan: The Baloch, Sindhi, and Mohajir Ethnic Movements. Routledge. pp. 64.