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Asia Watch: Western self interest and instability in S. Asia

by Lynn Ockersz

The West has reason to be relived. Despite a spell of intense bilateral tensions, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has ruled out the possibility of India going to war with regional rival Pakistan.

"I don't think war is a necessity. I will put in all efforts to avoid it .... If diplomatic methods can be applied to resolve the existing problems, I don't see why we should resort to other means", Vajpayee was quoted telling reporters while on his way to attend the SAARC Summit in Kathmandu, Nepal. However, the Indian Premier also ruled out bilateral talks to resolve current disputes with Pakistan until the latter "stops cross-border terrorism".

Troubled Indo-Pakistani ties deteriorated dangerously in mid-December when the Indian parliamentary complex in New Delhi came under a terror attack by armed militants whom India suspects to be Kashmiri separatists. Besides leading to a war words between the estranged South Asian neighbours, the mid-December terror onslaught compelled New Delhi and Islamabad to amass troops on their common border in a display of combat readiness.

Rising tensions on the Indo-Pakistani border set off alarm bells in Washington which has enlisted the support of both India and Pakistan for its war in Afghanistan. An armed flare-up between the South Asian neighbours would have blunted the effectiveness of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan and this had US President George Bush worried. Reports said that the spectre of war on the subcontinent had promoted Bush to seek the assistance of British Premier Tony Blair to defuse tensions in Indo-Pakistani relations.

Now that the Indian Premier has ruled out the possibility of war with Pakistan, the Western Alliance is likely to be less concerned about its military campaign in Afghanistan being harmed but Indo-Pakistani relations will remain troubled. India accuses Pakistan of fuelling the armed rebellion in Kashmir and unless and until the Kashmir problem is brought down to containable proportions, Indo-Pakistani relations are likely to remain tense and unpredictable.

The fact that Indian and Pakistani leaders attended the SAARC Summit gives ground for hope that Indo-Pakistani relations could be saved from crumbling and even revived in the future, but the satisfactory functioning of SAARC depends considerably on how quickly India and Pakistan defuse bilateral tensions. Getting SAARC countries to cooperate vibrantly in core areas, such as trade and commerce, investment and poverty reduction, is the need of the hour. Such cooperative efforts are likely to founder if the biggest SAARC countries, India and Pakistan, continue on a collision course.

Kashmir is the thorny issue in Indo-Pakistani relations and the chances of resolving it are slim as long as religious polarities and antagonisms in the region are allowed to flare. The conflict in Afghanistan, however, is only likely to aggravate these divisions and India's support for the Western alliance would have the unwelcome effect of provoking Kashmiri militant groups into increasing the ferocity of their separatist revolt. The end result would be increasing Indo-Pakistani tensions because the issue of "cross border" terrorism would be kept fully alive, shattering hopes of quickly normalising relations between the regional rivals.

Territorial unity and consolidation are priorities for India and Pakistan and this is the reason why Kashmir is continuing to be an inflammatory problem in bilateral relations. The question is, how concerned is the West about this tangled web in which the region is finding itself? The impact which troubled Indo-Pakistani ties has on regional cooperation should have the rest of SAARC worried over developments between the giant neighbours.

But until the big powers see the need to actively collaborate in easing tensions on the subcontinent, South Asia would continue to be a troubled and somewhat ignored region, which would nevertheless ensure a steady exodus of political refugees to the West. Such developments bring problems in their wake for the West because their societies too would be destabilized by the law and order problems refugees fired by religious zeal pose. The West would do well to remember that a policy of pursuing its interests mainly is likely to boomerang on it.

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