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U.S. looks to Kashmir elections to help ease tensions despite fears that Washington is misplacing its hopes

India Report by John E. Carbaugh, Jr.
August 28, 2002

An exclusive report from Washington, D.C. on political, trade and defense issues affecting India.

The U.S. appears to be putting considerable faith in the upcoming Kashmiri elections as a catalyst to help resolve the tensions between India and Pakistan -- faith, however, that is likely to be severely tested.

Some observers caution that pinning hopes on the elections as a major step forward in improving the situation in South Asia could be misplaced. Indeed, just this week at least 11 people were killed in Kashmir in an attack by Islamic militants ahead of the elections. Thus, the U.S. must be prepared to look at alternative ways to help ease tensions in the region, some analysts argue.

RECENT DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in his latest peace mission to South Asia, called for transparent, nonviolent polls in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. Armitage urged the Indian Government to do whatever is necessary to ensure a credible election result that yields a more representative government in the state. American officials have made clear that they see a free, fair vote in the state as crucial to at least some momentum toward peace talks.

Similarly, Secretary of State Colin Powell stressed in his visit to India last month that the vote in the Kashmir could be the first step toward easing India’s tension with Pakistan. He said elections in Kashmir could be part of a broad process to address the grievances of the Kashmiri people and open talks between India and Pakistan.

Powell also urged Indian authorities to free political prisoners, including leaders of the Hurriyat, the main Kashmiri separatist coalition, encourage them to stand, and allow independent observers during the elections that are expected to be held in four phases from September 16 to October 8.

OPPORTUNITY FOR BOTH INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Similarly, U.S. officials also say that Pakistan can show that it can control militants if the elections are not disrupted by violence.

India, too, has said that “the litmus test for defusing tensions must be the orderly conduct of statewide parliamentary elections scheduled in Indian-controlled Kashmir in September and October,” according to Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland.

“From New Delhi’s point of view, the election is a crucial test of the Pakistani government’s commitment and ability to control militants in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir,” another U.S. observer said.

At the same time, however, India has a real opportunity to show that the elections can be free and fair, U.S. officials add. Peaceful and transparent voting will ease violence and deflate support for the separatist movement, Washington hopefully predicts. Charges of vote rigging have marred past Indian elections in Kashmir, with allegedly rigged Kashmiri elections in the late 1980’s helping prompt the armed uprising against India that began in 1989.

“The induction of Islamic militants from around the world has linked the violence in Kashmir to the international jihad movement. But the insurrection in Muslim-majority Kashmir was indigenous in its initial phase and still has support there,” notes Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “It represents genuine Kashmiri frustration with Indian rule. Since the beginning of the insurgency in 1989, India has denied international media and human rights groups access to Jammu and Kashmir. This has limited the potential for Kashmiris to agitate for their rights through political means.”

VIOLENCE-FREE ELECTION UNLIKELY

However, a relatively violence-free election is unlikely, some fear, setting back the prospects for the impetus for improved Indo-Pakistan ties that Washington is looking for.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf “gave a decisive green light to the subversion of the elections by Kashmir terror groups” with his recent saber-rattling independence day vow never to compromise on the disputed territory, Hoagland noted. “Musharraf has isolated himself at home on every other issue of importance,” he said. “He has antagonized political parties by upending Pakistan’s constitution and its version of democracy in a personal power grab. He has antagonized fundamentalist Islamic forces by giving lip service to Bush’s war on terrorism. Now without any constituency of his own except the army, Musharraf cannot afford to appear weak on Kashmir.”

Similarly, Haqqani agrees that Musharraf cannot risk making further concessions to India without some quid pro quo over Kashmir. “Pakistan’s Islamists hold him responsible for abandoning Afghanistan’s Taliban. A perceived sell-out over Kashmir would be just too much for Pakistani public opinion to swallow.”

OTHER PROBLEMS IN ELECTION RUN-UP

A further problem in the run-up to the elections is that the Hurriyat has so far refused to participate in the elections, leaving a clear field to the New Delhi-allied National Conference, which allegedly rigged earlier elections that some argue sparked the insurgency still raging in Kashmir.

In addition, each side still accuses the other of trying to skew coming elections in Kashmir. Indian officials say they believe that Pakistan is planning to encourage violence by militants as a way to disrupt the election and suppress voter turnout, thereby delegitimizing the results.

However, Musharraf has dismissed the elections as an Indian attempt to legitimize its “illegal occupation.”

Nevertheless, one U.S. observer believes that the elections could prove a win-win situation for India. “If India avoids the militant attacks and the polls go off without a hitch, then New Delhi proves to the world that the people of Kashmir support Indian control. If the elections are compromised by militant activity, however, New Delhi has a clear case against Pakistan and may turn the United States against its former ally, allowing India or Washington to take care of the militant problem with a military solution.”

Indian officials, the analyst added, “realize that Islamabad couldn’t restrain the militants even if it wanted to. But New Delhi wants and needs to clearly show the rest of the world, particularly the United States, that Pakistan is an irresponsible neighbor and therefore an untrustworthy ally in the global war against terrorism.”

PRESSURE ON U.S. TO STAY ENGAGED

Even if the elections look like a disaster to the outside world -- marked by violence and accusations of ballot rigging -- the U.S. is still likely to stay engaged in trying to ease tensions between India and Pakistan. “There is an assumption that if left to their own devices India and Pakistan are going to revert to the brink,” said Michael Krepon, a South Asia expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.

India has long steadfastly opposed any third party mediation, but Armitage has told Indian officials that the U.S. would act as a “facilitator” between the two sides to help resolve the dispute and reduce the risk of nuclear confrontation in South Asia -- with Washington greatly alarmed at how close the South Asian rivals came to a nuclear exchange this year.

“If you look at it dispassionately, who would ever want to get involved in the India-Pakistan dispute?” asked Krepon. “There is only one reply to that question: those who want to prevent the world’s first nuclear exchange.”

Other observers agree. “The next flare-up will be even more dangerous if the region’s nuclear confrontation develops in the same direction as the U.S.-Russian standoff -- with nuclear missiles on alert, aimed at each other and ready to launch on warning,” noted Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist on the research staff of Princeton University, R. Rajaraman, a professor of physics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and Frank von Hippel, a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton.

FEARS OF NEW CRISIS STILL HIGH

Indeed, U.S. analysts fear that war is still likely. “India’s leaders are letting it be known in New Delhi that they cannot afford to back down in the face of Pakistan’s open threats to use nuclear weapons to counter India’s overwhelming conventional superiority,” Hoagland noted. “India was, in their view at least, the victim of history’s biggest nuclear bluff last spring. To let Musharraf continue to practice brinksmanship and nuclear deterrence would paralyze Indian strategy and discredit these leaders with their own electorate.”

A report from the Henry L. Stimson Center also warns that a crisis “could return with a vengeance in the fall.” Indian and Pakistani leaders “appear to have learned lessons that are combustible: that brinkmanship and deterrence works; that the U.S. can successively intervene. India is pleased that coercive diplomacy has succeeded, while Pakistan is confident that it has called India’s bluff.”

CONFIDENCE-BUILDING MEASURES NEEDED

If the elections fail to act as the U.S.-hoped for catalyst for easing Indo-Pakistan tensions, the U.S., in its facilitator role, will have to explore other alternatives. A recent report by Swati Pandey and Teresita Schaffer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington suggests that the U.S. should encourage India and Pakistan to develop a better confidence-building system to help avert future crises. “Based on India’s and Pakistan’s previous experience with confidence-building measures [CBMs], future efforts at crisis prevention need to provide more explicit means of adjudicating implementation problems. The two countries also need stronger political will to make a confidence-building system work,” the CSIS report said.

CBMs are generally designed to reduce the risk of deliberate or accidental conflict and build trust by demonstrating the ability of the parties to keep promises. However, currently India and Pakistan, the CSIS report noted, “continue to flirt with the idea of a ‘limited war’ without having defined the parameters of an unlimited, or nuclear, conflict. This conceptual haziness has enabled both sides to indulge in increasingly risky behavior, causing flare-ups of tension. It is precisely these minor incidents that put the region in chronic crisis and pose the greatest risk of war.”

The CSIS report says the first step should be to restart Indo-Pakistani communication, with reviving the hotlines between military officials a key part of this process. “The hotline agreement could require communication from a particular country when any airspace or border violation occurs by that country, thereby reducing the chances of accidental escalation due to halted communication.”

Next, the CSIS suggests, India and Pakistan should implement other existing CBMs, such as the agreements on notification of military exercises and on avoiding airspace violations, and then work on new CBMs, including cooperative aerial monitoring. The latter agreement “could monitor the Line of Control [LoC] and general military movements along the border. Narrow surveillance may leave much unobserved territory, but it can still be effective in detecting possible invasion warnings and ascertaining compliance with agreements regarding military deployments and movement near or over the border and the LoC.”

The U.S. could also be willing to act an impartial source to collect and disseminate data, the CSIS suggests. The Pentagon has already offered India ground-based sensors which could survey the LoC and be locally managed and maintained. “Such proposals, particularly if offered to Pakistan as well, would give both countries the technology necessary to begin immediate monitoring,” the CSIS report points out.

In addition to technology, the U.S. can assist with the establishment of dispute-resolution forums, helping with initial dialogue attempts and providing necessary capital, the CSIS suggests.

LONGER-TERM U.S. ROLE

“The recent events in South Asia suggest that the United States needs to move beyond its traditional policy of short-run crisis management to a long-term relationship of cooperation and engagement with India and Pakistan,” the CSIS report concludes. “The United States has a chance to play an important role and build a lasting relationship with both countries, thereby keeping tensions low and gaining strategic advantages in the region, including in the war on terror. Instead of directly engaging in monitoring or mediating, the United States could provide technological support as necessary, offering advice on maintaining CBMs and overseeing the long-term reduction of militancy and the advancement of economic development.

“Any U.S. involvement must be cautious and calculated, taking into careful consideration the precarious balance of power in the region; the situation in Kashmir; Pakistan’s insecurity regarding Indian military preponderance; and India’s suspicion of third parties,” the report cautions. “If this positive relationship with the two South Asian nations can be preserved, it could pave the way for other substantive talks regarding Kashmir and nuclear deterrence and/or disarmament, a significant long-term strategic issue.”

Haqqani also contends that the basic problem that India and Pakistan have failed so far to address is mutual mistrust -- an area where the U.S. can help. “The U.S. must continue its efforts to bring India and Pakistan to the negotiating table’” he said. “India feels it cannot trust Gen. Musharraf, in view of his strong commitment to seeking an end to Indian rule over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir. New Delhi sees this as hostility towards India and points to Gen. Musharraf’s role in the Kargil conflict in 1999 as well as to his belligerent pronouncements. Pakistan, on the other hand, is convinced that India will use every excuse available to avoid negotiations leading to Kashmiri self-determination.”

The Henry L. Stimson Center stresses the critical need for the U.S. to stay involved. “The Bush Administration will have to work at very senior levels to make good on Musharraf’s commitment [to permanently stop infiltration] and to secure reciprocal Indian steps. South Asia needs a ‘process’ and a framework away from repeated crises. This won’t happen if India and Pakistan are left to their own devices. Waiting to intervene until the next crisis is a dangerous strategy that has a high probability of failure. A proactive U.S. facilitation strategy is required.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

The bottom line, stresses George Perkovich, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of ‘India’s Nuclear Bomb,’ is that “U.S. policy must also make plain that neither Pakistan nor India is going to acquire parts of Kashmir it does not already hold -- and that the sooner they both accept that fact the better off they’ll be.”