Going by the signals emanating from Almaty and Singapore, and from
Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, the level of official rhetoric
of India-Pakistan hostility has come down by a few decibels during
the past week. This must be heartily welcomed. But the lowering of
the pitch of hostility is not consistent and pervasive, nor yet
reflected on the ground. The military mobilisation at the border
remains as frightful as ever-with more than a million soldiers
eyeball-to-eyeball, and on high alert. Not only is this the greatest
military mobilisation anywhere since World War II. It has an
extraordinarily scary and unique nuclear dimension too.

Compounding this grim reality are shrill calls to discard all
diplomatic options in favour of ìdecisive battlesî to settle
India-Pakistan disputes ìonce and for allî. These calls emanate from
official sources (e.g. Ministers Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Uma Bharati
and I.D. Swamy), political leaders (e.g. Jana Krishnamurthy and
Giriraj Kishore), and Right-wing commentators known more for
obsessive militarism than for wisdom. As if this werenít bad enough,
there is generalised smugness about the danger of a nuclear
catastrophe, whose very possibility is being denied.

Hopefully, if present trends continue, some of the war hysteria will
get diffused as the realisation sinks in of how seriously alarmed is
the rest of the world about a possible nuclear outbreak in South
Asia. The news of thousands of foreign nationals leaving, tourist and
hotel bookings being cancelled, business contracts being put on hold,
and the economy being badly hit will have an impact, favouring a
cooling of India-Pakistan tensions. As will the visits of Messrs
Rumsfeld and Armitage.

The best news, however, is that New Delhi says General Pervez
Musharraf finally seems to be acting on his assurance that he would
put an end to infiltration of militants into Kashmir. The Indian
government has intercepted messages to this effect. If this trend
holds, Pakistan will have substantively addressed the issue that
aroused Indiaís anger and precipitated the present crisis in the
first place.

The time has come to defuse tensions, de-escalate the alert level and
demobilise troops. It is important to reiterate the argument against
war and even against ìlimited strikesî. Politically, in the present
circumstances, war against Pakistan is an inappropriate and wrong
means to resolve the issue of ìcross-border terrorismî. There is no
doubt whatever that Islamabad has over the years fomented and
supported such terrorism. But there is plenty of doubt about its
involvement in recent incidents like the May 14 Kaluchak killings and
Abdul Gani Loneís assassination. No clinching evidence exists of
this. Pakistanís relationship to jehadi militants changed
post-September 11, especially after the stationing of US troops on
its soil. It makes little sense for Gen Musharraf to order the ISI to
conduct terrorist operations when he is under close US watch. If
rogue elements carried out such operations, it makes no sense for
India to punish the non-rogues. Militarily, war is a bad, high-risk
option. There exist no military targets close to the border, which
match specific political objectives and which can be attacked-without
provoking major retaliation, with a spiralling potential for
full-scale confrontation. There is some ambiguity even about the
existence of the 36 (or is it 70?) makeshift ìtraining campsî in
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Indian army itself believes many have
been disbanded. Hitting non-specific targets risks reprisal. There
are no crisis-limitation mechanisms, and no confidence-building
measures between India and Pakistan, to prevent limited engagements
from escalating to full-scale war.

Full-scale war spells a likely nuclear catastrophe. In nuclear war,
there are no winners, only losers. It doesnít matter if a nuclear
adversary has 15 or 60 atomic bombs. One bomb can produce a
Hiroshima-lakhs of deaths, and devastation lasting thousands of
years. Nuclear weapons are Great Equalisers. The damage they cause is
mind-boggling. Studies show that a single nuclear bomb is liable to
kill 800,000 people in Mumbai or Karachi, and poison vast swathes of
land, and water and vegetation, with over 200 radioactive toxins,
some of which wonít decay for hundreds, even thousands, of years. For
instance, the half-life of Plutonium-239 is 24,400 years. And the
half-life of Uranium-235 is 710 million years!

There can be conventional wars that are just, e.g. against tyranny
and occupation, or for liberation. There can never be just nuclear
wars. There is no justice or legality in a war that kills
non-combatant civilians massively, and produces damage lasting a
number of generations. Yet, our hawks irresponsibly talk of ìcalling
Pakistanís nuclear bluffî.

This is an extraordinary proposition. Pakistan isnít bluffing. There
is no doubt that it possesses nuclear weapons and the means to
deliver them to many big Indian cities. By teasing, chiding or
challenging Pakistan to use them, our hawks are in fact threatening
millions of us citizens with genocide. This is morally sickening. It
is irrelevant that India has a second-strike capability and Pakistan
lacks it. Retaliation against a first strike can only be an act of
senseless revenge, not one of gaining security.

A second reason why hawks like K. Subrahmanyam and Brahma Chellaney
cavalierly dismiss Pakistanís nuclear threat lies in their fond hope
that the US will somehow ìneutraliseî Islamabadís arsenal before it
can be used. The assumption is that the US knows where each missile
and warhead is stored, and can safely, reliably, destroy these with
its own weapons. Alternatively, Gen Musharraf will voluntarily hand
America the key to his arsenal.

This assumption is dangerously wrong. No Pakistani ruler will give up
control over that jealously guarded strategic ìassetî or ìtrump
cardî. There have been credible reports since October that Islamabad
has been looking for (and found?) sanctuaries for its nuclear
weapons, possibly in China. It has also dispersed them within its own
territory. The US cannot find or destroy such weapons without risking
a catastrophe. The costs of American failure in this regard will be
colossal. Clearly, our hawksí uninformed but wildly wishful thinking
knows no bounds.

Diplomatically, India has not exhausted all its options to impel
Pakistan to sever links with Kashmiri ìfreedom-fightingî terrorists.
It hasnít even attempted to move the UN Security Council invoking
Resolution 1373 which obligates all states to act against
terrorism-on pain of punitive sanctions. New Delhi has only practised
ìcoerciveî diplomacy based on nuclear brinkmanship. This is now
working against it, just as it is working against Pakistan. There is
all-round condemnation the world over of ìirresponsible South
Asiansîthe caption of a New York Times editorial-for causing todayís
stand-off.

The exodus of diplomats and citizens of many major states from South
Asia will have damaging consequences. Aid cut-offs and sanctions
could follow if the standoff continues. Gen Musharraf seems to have
understood this and ratcheted down his bellicose rhetoric. Mr
Vajpayee too must read the writing on the wall-especially because
there is action on the ground, via interception of militantsí
border-crossing.

This is not a plea for trusting Pakistan and naively accepting that
the interception is permanent. This must be rigorously verified. The
verification should be done not by the US, the UK or NATO, as is
being proposed by the Americans. It is best done by a neutral,
independent multilateral agency on an institutionalised long-term
basis. The road-map for troop demobilisation and restoration of full
diplomatic relations should now be clear:

India and Pakistan should thin out their troops and withdraw from the
International Border and the Line of Control. They must immediately
hold a summit to formalise a solemn commitment to oppose terrorism
and violence in all its forms, to negotiate serious
confidence-building measures, to sanitise their border, and discuss
all disputes and differences in the spirit of the 1972 Shimla Accord
and the 1999 Lahore agreement. Above all, they must move towards
reducing the nuclear danger either through bilateral
denuclearisation, or by creating a nuclear weapons-free zone in South
Asia, which all major states respect and guarantee.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from the present crisis is that there is
no alternative to ridding this part of the world of nuclear weapons.
So long as these weapons exist in South Asia-the worldís sole region
to have experienced a continuous hot-cold war for half a century
between the same two contiguous rivals, there will always be a danger
of nuclear catastrophe. Preventing one is the legitimate business not
just of India and Pakistan, but of the whole world. The consequences
of nuclear war are global. The global community has every right to
prevent such a war.

New Delhi and Islamabad must not wait until such nuclear-restraint
arrangements are put in place. They must return to the Shimla-Lahore
agenda after rapidly restoring diplomatic relations and communication
links. A Shimla-II will, of course, demand will and boldness on the
part of Messrs Vajpayee and Musharraf. In India, Mr Vajpayee must be
pressed by all political leaders and the public to shed the sectarian
sub-agenda behind the border build-up related to the BJPís narrow
political calculations-of diverting attention from misgovernance and
the Gujarat carnage, while fomenting communalism.-end-