Main Presentation

MILITARIZATION, NUCLEARIZATION, AND THE QUEST FOR PEACE

By Parvez Hoodbhoy

Five decades of conflict between India and Pakistan has solved nothing, brought nothing but misery to their peoples, and offers nothing but more of the same in years to come. A hard line Hindu nationalist government is in power in India for the first time, infatuated by dreams of national grandeur and dismissive of the real problems of the people. On the Pakistani side there is a government headed by soldiers, and obsessed with Kashmir to the exclusion of all else. The two states are rapidly creating the conditions for an apocalyptic nuclear showdown.

A full-fledged confrontation cannot fail to be catastrophic. Yet, the failure of the Musharraf-Vajpayee talks in July 2001 is one more lesson that the hawks are incapable of making peace. These meetings bring together men of two tribes who can barely conceal their mutual animosity, but whose mind-sets and perceptions are cloned from the other. They can generate no recommendations, no discussions of relevance and substance, and no good will for future initiatives.

The Indo-Pak conflict has strong negative implications for the region in general, and Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in particular. SAARC has been rendered ineffective, trade between states is very limited, and fundamentalist religious and ethnic forces have thrived because of overt and covert assistance.

Making peace will therefore have to be a task for the people of the subcontinent and its diaspora, now spread far and wide. Only activists, scholars, journalists, and others who feel the urgency for breaking with the past, can generate the goodwill needed for peace efforts to eventually succeed.

The most urgent Indo-Pak issues today, none of which were successfully addressed by the two leaders, are:

 

• Kashmir continues to bleed. The daily casualty count for militants, Indian security forces personnel, and civilians has now been maintained for years. Pakistan officially denies that it maintains camps for training jihadists for fighting in Kashmir, but the evidence is out in the open. They are thought to be behind the massacres of Hindus that occur from time to time in Kashmir. Indian security forces, on the other hand, are hated by the Kashmiris and are responsible for horrific brutalities.
• Nuclear weapons are multiplying. There are an estimated 90-100 atomic fission weapons in the Indian nuclear arsenal, and 30-50 similar sized weapons possessed by Pakistan. Each of these can devastate a medium-sized city and produce hundreds of thousands of deaths. India, after the May 1998 nuclear tests, declared that it had successfully weaponized its earlier device tested in 1974 and that it was now developing a much more destructive weapon, the fusion (or hydrogen) bomb. Pakistan responded by testing its own devices only 17 days later, and its bomb-making facilities are in full-production now.
• Missiles production is in full swing. India and Pakistan have extensive missile programs. India has the short-range Prithvi (with a range of 150-350 km) and the intermediate range (1200-2400 km) Agni ballistic missile. Both missiles can, in principle, be fitted with nuclear warheads. Pakistan has responded by building its own long-range Ghauri and Shaheen missiles, as well as by purchasing Chinese M-11 missiles with ranges of a few hundred kilometers. If missiles are deployed, they will need only a few minutes to cross the contiguous border before reaching a city in the other country. Warning and response times are extremely small. Geography also ensures that aircraft pose a similar danger. In August 1999, India announced its draft nuclear doctrine. The doctrine advocates a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets to be "fully employable in the shortest possible time".
• Limited wars are now much more attractive and possible. With nuclear weapons, it is presumed that wars will not escalate. Kargil offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having initiated a war rather than deterring one. It was precisely the unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation in 1999, which indeed could have been the very last one. After the smoke had cleared, it turned out that Pakistan had been severely humiliated and damaged. But, India lost over a thousand men and suffered much trauma. Perversely, it was actually the BJP that, by ordering Pokhran-II, actually fathered Kargil.
• Unauthorized and accidental use of nuclear weapons pose a significant threat. The poor quality of information from the early warning systems available to Indian and Pakistani military commanders means that any warning of an attack would be undependable. In such circumstances, accidental nuclear war becomes a real possibility. If missiles are deployed in the field, dangers will multiply many-fold because missiles, once launched, cannot be recalled.
• The minimal deterrence concept is breaking down. During these decades of arms racing, India and Pakistan have acquired some of the most extensive and sophisticated armed forces in the world. Successive Indian governments have claimed a Chinese "threat" based on the border war with China in 1962, which India lost. Prior to this war, however, India and China had very good relations, and they have been making significant efforts in recent years to resolve their territorial issues. In 1993 an "Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas" was signed, and this was followed up with a 1996 agreement on military confidence building measures, which included reductions in the numbers of troops, tanks, infantry combat vehicles, heavy artillery and missiles deployed by both states along the border

However a new arms build up has begun. In 1999-2000, India increased military spending by 10%. In its 2000-2001 budget, India increased military spending by 28%. This 130 billion rupee increase was equivalent to Pakistan's total military budget. In its 2001-2002 budget, Indian military spending increased another 7.7%. The military budget is now about $14 billion. Pakistan has not been able to keep up. Its military budget is about $ 3 billion. Some selected military statistics are given below:

 

Selected military statistics for India and Pakistan, 1996-1997*
	India	Pakistan
Active armed forces	1,145,000	587,000
Tanks	3,500	2,050
Artillery	4,355	1,820
Aircraft carriers	2	0
Submarines	19	9
Destroyers and frigates	24	11
Attack helicopters	309	32
Combat aircraft	846	434
*The Military Balance 1996/1997, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 1996

 

• A pointless and bloody war on the icy wastes of the Siachen Glacier continues unabated, where death by freezing and lung-damage from breathing cold air competes with casualties from bullets.
• Poisonous propaganda is regularly used by both countries against the other. Textbooks filled with historical distortions, exaggerations, and lies, are used as tools to create generations that will ensure conflict for decades to come.
• Militant religious fundamentalism is growing in all countries of the region — India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have seen an upsurge of violent forces struggling to establish their supremacy.

 

 

Who Pays The Price?

The answer is obvious: it is the people who must pay for the grand illusions of their leaders. Nothing can fairly indicate how great the price has been, and how much could otherwise have been saved in human and material terms. Nonetheless, some grim statistics indicate where things stand for India and Pakistan:

 

Human development indicators for India and Pakistan.
	India	Pakistan
life expectancy, years	61	62
infant mortality rate, per 1,000 births	79	95
child (under 5 years old) mortality, per 1,000 births	119	137
Malnourished children, %	53	40
without access to health services, %	15	45
without access to safe water, %	25	50
without access to sanitation, %	71	67
Literacy rate, %	51	36
Source: Haq. M., Human Development in South Asia 1997, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1997

In recent years, Pakistan’s military expenditure has typically been about one-third that of India. The smaller size of Pakistan’s economy has meant that its annual military spending now exceeds $3.5 billion — about a quarter of its total government expenditure — and consumes about 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP). India’s $13 billion annual military budget consumes almost 3% of its GDP. Finding the resources for maintaining such a drain on resources has been, and will continue to be, an increasingly acute problem for Pakistan in particular, given a total debt equal to 93% of its GDP and a growing debt service. Currently, Pakistan’s budget allocates 37% to defense, 44% to debt-servicing, and only 19% is left for all other functions of government, education, health, etc.

 

 

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

A Draft Resolution

 

1. Recognizing the immense destruction that will be caused by a nuclear war, India and Pakistan must agree not to deploy their nuclear forces and work towards their eventual elimination.
2. Recognizing that nuclear war may be caused by unauthorized use or accidental detonation of nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan must immediately engage in talks on nuclear risk reduction measures. They must implement existing confidence building measures in good faith, and seek further measures as well.
3. All states of the region must recognize that any claim to possession of a territory can be legitimate only if it has the collective consent of the people inhabiting that territory. It is a fundamental right of a people to choose association with any given state, or to terminate that association.
4. All states of the region must forthwith end their covert wars, and stop using tools of terror against another state.
5. India and Pakistan must immediately end their pointless and costly battle on the Siachen Glacier.
6. All states of the region must end visa and travel restrictions, enabling free exchange of the people and goods.
7. All states of the region must allow and encourage academic and cultural exchanges. Such exchanges will enrich each state and be to the benefit of all.
8. All states of the region should immediately remove those materials from school textbooks that serve to create or incite religious or ethnic hatreds. Hostile propaganda on television should be curbed forthwith.
9. All states of the region must recognize the equality of all their citizens, and in no matter discriminate between them on the basis of religion, gender, or ethnic origin.

 

2nd INSAF Conference Report

The Vancouver Declaration

Charter

Main Presentations

Tapan Bose
Parvez Hoodbhoy
Zafar Meraj
Vinod Mubayi
K. N. Panikkar
Shree Mulay
Abha Sur
Daya Varma

Resolutions

Special Articles

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