Pakistan and India on Verge of All-Out War?
Shelling Along the Kashmir Line of Control
SHELLING along the 450-mile Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir has increased fears that the region is heading for all-out war. Given that both India and Pakistan have recently tested nuclear devices, the conflict could be catastrophic.
Two of India and Pakistan's three wars have been fought over Kashmir. The present border bombardment, which locals describe as heavier than that during the entire 1948 and 1965 wars put together, has seen an estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition expended so far, and heavy artillery used for the first time.
But while no formal declaration of war has been made - and few, in the sub-continent, believe it likely - there is little doubt among the soldiers entrenched in the forested mountains.
"I'm fighting a war," said Brig Jasbir Singh Lidder, as he drove along the narrow, stony road, high above the Jhelum river, to a front-line post on the Line of Control last week. "Whether it boomerangs into full-scale war is up to other people. But as long as my men are fighting in one of the hottest and most crucial sectors, that's the way I have to see it."
At that moment, a Pakistani gunner on the hillside across the river opened up, sending heavy machine-gun fire ricocheting off the track around us. The Sikh brigadier regularly comes under fire on that stretch of road and had been expecting the attack. "You wait, I'll see to him," he said. "My mandate is to protect the LOC - any act interfering with that will be dealt with - and dealt with forcibly."
For eight days, Brig Lidder's Blackmountain 12 Brigade headquarters, which is situated about six miles from the LOC, had been in an underground bunker as shells rained down, destroying houses in the town of Uri and spoiling the brigadier's cherished golf course in what he regards as a personal act of war. By the end of the week, most of the guns had fallen silent.
Taking advantage of what he called "the lull in the storm", Brig Lidder had offered to take me on his first inspection of the worst-hit post in his sector of the LOC.
An estimated 80,000 Indian and Pakistani troops face each other off along the LOC, which meanders from the Chanab river in southern Kashmir to the world's highest battlefield, on the Siachen glacier, bordering China.
For the past four years, as the snow melts in summer, Indian and Pakistani troops have sparred across the border in sporadic, low-intensity exchanges of fire. But although each side possesses heavy artillery - 155mm guns with a range of 22 miles - set deep inside the LOC, neither has fired them before.
At 6,500ft, the Chaukas post, which is reached by driving along the banks of the Jhelum through empty villages and orchards of pears and walnuts, has a sweeping view of Pakistan and the Pakistani gun emplacements on the opposite ridge.
Last week, the post, a small warren of sandbagged gun emplacements and communications trenches, took more than 3,000 hits. The steel-reinforced roof of a heavy artillery emplacement had caved in under an 85mm armour-piercing shell, and a bunker manned by two officers had a shell embedded in its roof, but miraculously, neither man was hurt.
The situation was further complicated last week by three massacres in Indian Kashmir, in which 79 people died. India claims, with some credibility, that the increased border fighting is part of a strategy by Pakistan to internationalise the Kashmir issue. It also dismisses as patronising the world's fears of nuclear war in the subcontinent.
Nonetheless, the Indian army has been ordered to retaliate with what Brig Lidder called "compound interest" and, according to their intelligence reports, has inflicted heavy damage on the Pakistan side.
But although India dominates Pakistan in conventional military terms, and sanctions-crippled Pakistan can ill-afford a protracted fight, Indian military analysts admit that neither side is capable of gaining and holding territory.
Since May's nuclear tests, India and Pakistan have declared that they will develop their nuclear weapons. Both possess short range missiles; Pakistan recently tested the 1,000-mile-range Ghauri missile, which India will match with its 1,250-mile Agni; and last week, India tested the Akash, an air-defence ballistic missile. All are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Although India has forsworn a first nuclear strike and is likely eventually to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the fear internationally is that Kashmir may at some point provide the spark that ignites a nuclear war.
For the past 51 years, Kashmir has been a running sore to India and Pakistan. The dispute began when the independent Maharajah of Kashmir, Hari Singh, terrorised by Pakistani raiders at the gates of his capital, Srinagar, ceded the territory to India in 1947. Since then, the mainly Muslim state has been coveted by Pakistan and fiercely held by India.
Many within the subcontinent believe that the disputed LOC, which has existed since the 1947-48 war, should become the border; and that India and Pakistan should end their costly dispute. However with battle raging in Kashmir, such a solution seems unlikely.
The London Telegraph, August 9, 1998 |
