Kashmir Chronicle

Kashmir Chronicle

Monthly news bulletin of 
Kashmir Information Network (KIN)
Vol. 2, No. 6 May 30, 1999

Clouds of War in Kashmir: Pakistan Invasion of Kargil and Indian Air Strikes 

In 1965, Pakistan made probing incursions into India, sending mixed groups of mercenaries and army regulars. India was slow in its response, and the Pakistani incursions escalated, touching off the 1965 war. A very similar strategy has been employed in 1999 by Pakistan. Ironically, implementation of the strategy was probably in full swing when Indian PM Vajpayee made his peace trip to Pakistan earlier this year. The level of commitment of Pakistan and its Islamic proxies in Kashmir to peace was bared for all to see when dozens of Hindu civilians were hacked to death by Islamic terrorists in the state as Vajpayee's trip began. With the bold air strikes at the hundreds of Pakistanis and Afghans holed up in the heights in Kargil, Indians seemed to have recovered the initiative and made it clear that peace can not be achieved while Pakistan continues to support the largest terrorism operation in the world (see the following url)

http://www.kashmir-information.com/Terrorism/TerrUS98.html

If the Indian military succeeds in neutralizing the escalated infiltration and thus discouraging Pakistan from further adventurism, a large-scale war with catastrophic potentialities can be averted. 

The clouds of war have been clearly gathering in Kashmir for several years, seeded by the decade-long support of Pakistan for terrorism in the state. Pakistan is a country that not only acts as the base for the largest terrorist operation in the world, but is unique among nations in facilitating infiltration of terrorists into neighboring territory with diversionary artillery fire. The decade-long terrorism has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hindus (Kashmiri Pandits) from the state. India has acted with incredible restraint so far in not attacking terrorist bases in Pakistan during the last decade. While the situation may calm down this time, the world may not be so lucky next time, and a major war with nuclear end-results could be triggered. 

The international community, led by the United States, can no longer shirk from its responsibility in reigning in Pakistan and pressuring it into abandoning the low level war that it wages through trained mercenaries and terrorists who butcher civilians in Kashmir. In its latest "Global Patterns of Terrorism" report, the US State Department exemplifies this shirking of responsibility by refusing to declare Pakistan a "State Sponsor of Terrorism" despite the report's own statistics (http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1998Report/appa.html) showing that Jammu and Kashmir was the region most affected by terrorism in 1998. If Syria and Sudan have been successfully pressured by the US into abating their support for international terrorism, then why not Pakistan? This long-standing policy of looking the other way has given Pakistan the green light in continuing and now escalating its support of deadly international terrorism, resulting in the clouds of war gathering today.