Or so one would think. In fact, America’s new cold war against terrorism has upended the chessboard in South Asia, and the pieces seem to be falling into familiar positions. Pakistan has again assumed a critical strategic importance because of its proximity to and influence over Afghanistan. The United States has lifted sanctions placed on the country for conducting nuclear tests, promised at least $50 million in aid and rescheduled an additional $379 million in debt. The Americans continue to insist that no deal has been struck on Islamabad’s obsession–its struggle with India over Kashmir. But neither is Washington interested in entertaining India’s complaints against its neighbor at the moment. New Delhi could be forgiven for thinking the new cold war is freezing India out.
What’s ironic is that the issue of terrorism has forced that role reversal. Ever since Pakistani troops were caught infiltrating Indian-held Kashmir in 1999, India has imagined itself to hold the moral high ground against guerrillas it says are condoned and at times coordinated by Islamabad. Last week’s suicide attack by Muslim militants on the legislature in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, which killed nearly 40 people, was only the latest incident in an insurgency that has claimed more than 30,000 lives since 1989. Indians have long insisted that most of the rebels are trained in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and financed in part by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. They are appalled by Islamabad’s rehabilitation as an ally in the fight against terror.
To bolster their case, the Indians are emphasizing any and all links between the Kashmiri militants, Pakistan’s ISI and terror financier Osama bin Laden. The group that initially took responsibility for the Srinagar bombing, Jaish-e-Mohammad (Mohammad’s Army), has a relevant history. The hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet in Katmandu on Christmas Eve, 1999, diverted the plane to the Afghan city of Kandahar, spiritual home of the Taliban movement, and demanded the release of three Muslim militants held by India. The trio were eventually brought to Kandahar and, along with all five hijackers, allowed to cross freely into Pakistan. “We kept asking the Taliban to hand over the hijackers to us,” says a top Indian official who was part of the negotiations. “But… it seemed they were protecting them and the freed terrorists.” One of the three extremists, an urbane 28-year-old named Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is now believed to have funneled more than $100,000 to the Sept. 11 hijackers on behalf of bin Laden’s network, Al Qaeda. Another, Masood Azhar, went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammad.
The Srinagar attack came just a day after Pakistan’s leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced that there were no terrorist groups operating from Pakistan. But Azhar still lives in the country–traveling between Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. (Jaish-e-Mohammad later denied responsibility for the bombing.) New Delhi also points out that alleged terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia don suspected of sponsoring a 1993 bomb attack on the Bombay Stock Exchange that killed more than 100 people, continue to live freely in Pakistan.
Indian hawks warn that Musharraf may be tempted to increase support for the Kashmiri militants in order to placate fundamentalists at home. Washington has carefully not made any mention of targeting guerrilla-training camps in Pakistani-held Kashmir along with those in Afghanistan. The fear is that not only Kashmiri militants–many of whom train and even fight in Afghanistan–but terrorists of all stripes could seek refuge in those bases if their own are attacked by American forces.
More sober analysts, too, argue that Pakistan’s interests do not ultimately jibe with America’s. Despite pulling all their diplomats out of Afghanistan, Pakistani officials continue to push to leave the Taliban in power, or at least some other equally malleable regime. At the same time, Islamabad continues to strengthen its links to Beijing, which has expressed similar reservations about the scope of any U.S. retaliation against bin Laden and the Taliban.
Some of India’s annoyance comes from having its initial and wholehearted offer of intelligence and military support downplayed in favor of Pakistani help. Something closer to anger has been provoked by the Srinagar attack: Kashmiri Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah gave a tearful address in the legislature the next day arguing that Indian forces should bomb guerrilla-training camps on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. At the same time, with elections due this winter in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh, the governing Bharatiya Janata Party is especially sensitive to accusations that it has not defended India’s interests strongly enough.
Still, Indian authorities say they’re willing not to upset the carefully crafted coalition that Washington is building. Top Defense and Foreign Ministry officials insist that despite provocation, India will not strike at camps within Pakistan or Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. New Delhi is well aware that any assault would most likely provoke a backlash that would only weaken Musharraf and strengthen the position of Islamic fundamentalists within Pakistan.
But it remains to be seen how long India’s patience will last. U.S. officials have not been receptive to New Delhi’s claims that its rival is a rogue state: “I don’t think at the moment there is a movement to review our list of countries that are state sponsors of terrorism,” a U.S. State Department spokesman said last week. But the fluid nature of terrorist networks–and the disparate backgrounds of the Sept. 11 hijackers themselves–illustrates how no local jihad can be isolated from all others. “If the United States really wants to win the war against terrorism, at some point soon it has to bring Pakistan to book,” says J. N. Dixit, a former Indian ambassador to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In this new cold war, unnatural allies may have no place.
