Leaders locked in a terrifying game of chicken
AT THE very moment President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are meeting in an attempt to reduce the global threat from a standoff between the US and North Korea, another terrifying flashpoint has grabbed the headlines.
India and Pakistan are trading blows with escalating aggression across their mutual boundary in Kashmir.
What makes it so dangerous is that both countries now have nuclear weapons. It is the first time two nations with such capability have been involved in military action against each other.
Not even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war over the Soviet installation of missiles on the Caribbean island – was a shot fired in anger.
In skirmishes across the de facto border which divides the disputed Kashmir region, Pakistan has downed two Indian jets and taken one pilot captive, while India claims to have shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet.
The number of casualties is sure to rise but neither side will want to lose face by being the first to back down. And the risk is clear that step by step India and Pakistan could be approaching all-out war.
Indeed Pakistan’s prime minister, the excricketer Imran Khan, raised the spectre of such conflict yesterday, telling his counterparts in New Delhi that ‘better sense’ is needed ‘given the weapons we have’.
The simmering issue of Kashmir has boiled over into war between India and Pakistan three times since Britain abandoned its Indian Empire in 1947.
After independence, the vast sub-continent was split into a Muslim Pakistan and a mainly Hindu India. But the mountainous province of Kashmir in the far north was left out on a limb. Its mainly Muslim population wanted to join Pakistan but its traditional ruler was a Hindu who chose to join the new India.
The result is that a guerilla insurgency by pro-Pakistani Muslim fighters has confronted India’s people – along with half a million Indian soldiers and police – for more than 70 years.
India is the world’s biggest democracy but it refuses to stage a referendum on Kashmir’s future. The government argues that the region is already part of India’s democracy and so doesn’t need a special say on its future.
Pakistan, however, sees Kashmir as a Muslim colony of a largely Hindu India – a colony where its people are permanently outvoted by the rest of the country.
The current crisis began when a Muslim suicide bomber killed 44 policemen in Kashmir on February 14. What has made a volatile situation worse is the fact that India’s hardline Hindu prime minister, Narendra Modi, is running for re-election in May. Rallying his fervently nationalist supporters, Mr Modi threatened revenge not just on the Kashmiri rebels but on their backers in Pakistan.
India responded by bombing what it claimed was a jihadi terrorist training camp inside Pakistan itself on Tuesday, raising tensions dramatically.
The trouble is that neither government can be seen to try to take the heat out of the situation.
Mr Modi could lose the election if he is considered weak.
And Imram Khan, who has himself just won an election, cannot afford to be seen to be pushed around by the country’s much bigger and stronger neighbour.
His government is a shaky coalition which includes religious hardliners who have enjoyed the backing of the Pakistani secret service in recruiting fighters for the ‘jihad’ in Kashmir. He needs the support of staunchly Muslim MPs to stay in power, and the once glamorous playboy on the London scene has become more obviously religious himself in recent years.
THE events of the past two weeks are Khan’s first real test. He is acutely aware the only weapons that give his country parity with India are nuclear weapons.
Yet whatever the anger of Pakistani Muslims over the disputed territory, whatever the outrage felt by Indians at the violence in Kashmir claiming their policemen and soldiers, one thing is certain. Hundreds of millions of people live within range of India and Pakistan’s nuclear missiles. Carnage on a scale never seen in history would ensue if they were used.
The trouble is that with each new downing of a plane, with every new casualty, compromise becomes harder and harder.
Nor will Pakistan’s decision to parade that captured Indian pilot, his face bloodied, on television have made things any easier. Remember the outrage here when Saddam Hussein did exactly that to downed Tornado RAF crewmen during the First Gulf War and it is easy to understand how Indian public opinion will react.
Perhaps there is hope to be gleaned from Trump and Kim Jong-un. If they can manage talks after hurling all their bombastic abuse at each other, there is surely a chance that the democratically- elected leaders of India and Pakistan can find a way to calm the emotions which risk dragging their countries – and the entire region – towards catastrophe.