Introduction:
If one goes by the headlines in the US media, the danger of a nuclear war breaking out between India and Pakistan is less this week than it was last week when the US State department, Britain, Australia and others advised their citizens to leave the region. According to the US president, the threat of an Indo-Pak war still remains high and it is the top priority of his government to prevent such a war. The Eurocentrist prejudice that the western nuclear powers can be expected to act “responsibly” and the two nuclear powers of South Asia may be less responsible has been subtly but surely popularized. 

If it is indeed true that Mr. Armitage and Mr. Rumsfeld were able to defuse a war between India and Pakistan, then we has reason to worry because it means they could also be capable of doing the opposite as easily.  The threat of war between India and Pakistan did not arise because of a lack of US involvement in the region. Nor was the aim of the war rhetoric between India and Pakistan to draw in the US or the “international community” to broker a peace. If the “international community” has become the arbiter of war and peace between India and Pakistan, one would come to the absurd conclusion that the people of India and Pakistan have ceased to be the ones who can decide the fate of their countries as a result of what has just happened. Fortunately, this is not the case. The fate of war and peace in South Asia is still in the hands of the peoples of India and Pakistan even though the danger of conflicts in the region has increased. 

It is being openly suggested that a war between India and Pakistan will harm US interests in South Asia – especially its “war against terrorism”. At the same time both India and Pakistan are reporting a higher intensity of terrorist attacks in their territories. If you connect the two together – that the US led war against terrorism in South Asia is accompanied by more terrorist attacks in South Asia – you can draw your own conclusions. Add to this that the US considers Asia as the frontline of its war against terrorism and that the US is giving itself the right to pre-emptive strikes against terrorists - and you begin to get a picture of where things are headed in South Asia. 

Headlines that declare either peace or war breaking out in South Asia are meant to keep the people disoriented and unprepared for the reality that war preparations are constantly underway. If people can reject such illusion-mongering and build the anti-war movement on the basis of opposing war preparations in their own countries, they will not be caught off guard. They can stay the hands of their governments to take their countries to any war, or better still, they can form anti-war governments in the future.

The Source:
The threat of war between India and Pakistan arises from the hegemonic ambitions of both these countries who dream of having their own zones of influence, and access to resources and markets. India and Pakistan came out of the empire that the British had carved out in the region over two and a half centuries. The big business houses and landlords of that colonial India hijacked the anti-colonial movement and dreamed of themselves emerging as an imperial power in the style of the British. The division of the one-time single British colony to three countries today - India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – is connected with the imperial dream of the rulers of India and Pakistan. 

It is said that the Kashmir issue is the root cause of the Indo-Pak conflict. Kashmir had opted to become an independent country when the British Crown relinquished its paramouncy over the colony in 1947 but was quickly carved out into zones occupied by India and Pakistan through the first Indo-Pak war in 1947-48. India and Pakistan fought two more wars afterwards, the last one leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh in 1971. A brief military engagement took place in 1999 over the line of Control in Kashmir between Indian and Pakistani troops, within the context of a decade long insurgency inside Indian part of Kashmir. India today equates the Kashmir insurgency with Pakistani-sponsored terrorism and wants to use the context of US-led war against terrorism to settle scores with Pakistan in its territorial dispute over Kashmir. This is a very brief rendering of the historical context. 

But it will be a mistake to view the territorial ambitions of India and Pakistan as limited to Kashmir. The role of Pakistan in Afghanistan before and during Taliban rule has been discussed in the western media. It is also known that India was working with the Northern Alliance when Pakistan was allied with the Taliban and that the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, the assassinated leader of the Northern alliance was backed by New Delhi.  What many of you may not be familiar with is that the Afghans had twice established empires with a capital in today’s Delhi, or that Kabul belonged to the kingdom of Punjab not long before the British conquered the Punjab, which is today divided between India and Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan have pretensions of hegemony over Afghanistan.  Pakistan’s pretensions to be the lead nuclear power of the Organization of Islamic States (OIS) and India’s activities through the Indian Ocean Rim Countries or even through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) are also well-known. Both India and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan have ambitions to control the sea routes through the Arabian sea and Indian ocean which are lifelines of global commerce. Control over the Asia-Europe land-route as well as the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia are also being eyed by both countries. In other words, the Indo-Pak conflict has its roots in the imperial aims of the rulers who took power from the British in 1947.  
 

What is New:
Add to this the new dynamics of geopolitics after the US launched its war in Afghanistan. The US interest in that region has now come to clash with the interests of India and Pakistan. The US is strengthening its presence in Central Asia and this is directed not only against the interests of India and Pakistan, but also against Iran, Russia and China.  India had been cozying up to the US during the last two years of the Clinton administration under the assumption that India’s interests vis-à-vis China and Pakistan were converging with those of the US.  But after the World Trade Center attacks last September, the US saw new grounds to ally with Pakistan and has pursued an aggressive Central Asia policy.  India has become alarmed over these developments because its ambition to emerge as a major power in the post Cold War world are on the line. One symptom of this alarm is that India has become more willing to flex its muscles over Kashmir under the pretext of stopping cross-border terrorism. But the new factor that has come to the fore is that this desperation by the Indians has brought the US and India into a direct contest. That is what the developments of the last month in South Asia suggest. That is what the pronouncements of the US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld about Al-Qaeda operating or not operating in Kashmir suggests. That is what the advice to US citizens to leave India suggest. The relationship between India and the US today is one of collusion and contention, not unlike the old super power rivalry of the Cold War era but at a different level.  

India’s claims of being outraged at the deaths of 13 people in the Indian Parliament attack in December 2001, or of the 34 people who died in the Jammu army camp attack in May 2002 look hollow because this same government did not lift a finger to prevent the continuing killings of over 2,000 people of Muslim faith in the state of Gujarat. in March. The Indian government’s credibility that it can provide protection to the people is in severe crisis and no one in India is deluded into believing that the Vajapayee government’s war rhetoric will solve any of the internal of external problems of security.  I want to mention that no Indian or Pakistani that I have met has shown support for India and Pakistan to go to war and each one of them has been very suspicious of the panic exhibited by the US and others about the imminence of war in that region.  It is this lack of popular support for war that has been the main reason why war has not taken place – not the international pressure as the US media suggests. There is as yet no unified voice of the anti-war movement in India or Pakistan, but it is a matter of time before the multitude of anti-war voices coalesce in to a visible and conscious anti-war opposition movement. 
 

The Dangers Ahead:
You will have noticed that in the last month, the US and other governments have openly called on President Musharraf of Pakistan to stop terrorist infiltration from Pakistani Kashmir to Indian Kashmir.  It seems as if finally the international community has accepted the Indian government’s view on the Kashmir uprising.  But that is not the case – the same world leaders have called upon India and Pakistan to deal with the Kashmir problem. They treat the issue of infiltration from Pakistan and the resolution of Kashmir conflict as two separate issues, and although Pakistan is being isolated on the first count, India can equally be isolated on the second.  General Musharraf has expressed his satisfaction that the Kashmir issue has captured the imagination of the “international community”.  In sum, India’s calculation that its hegemonic aims in Asia could be realised by isolating Pakistan is a trap. 

If President Musharraf is isolated by the international community as unable or unwilling to deliver on his pledge to stop cross-border infiltration, he would become yet another casualty of the American formula used against Saddam Hussain in 1991, Slobodan Milosovic in 1999, and others after they ceased to be useful to US policy. A weak and destabilized Pakistan on India’s doorstep will not be an asset for India but pose a grave danger.  It will immensely complicate the solution of the Kashmir problem and all other national problems like that of the divided Punjab in the west, divided Bengal on the east, national movements in Manipur and other places. Rather than India achieving its territorial ambitions, such a development could unravel the entire territory of India that was patched together by the British through wars of conquest in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It would immensely complicate the program of the Indian people to create a free and equal union of nations, nationalities and tribes. Such is the threat. 

More immediately, a war between India and Pakistan is essentially a war against the peoples of both India and Pakistan. They are already paying for the cost of full military mobilization and increased defence expenditures. India’s weapons purchases from abroad increased by 50 percent last year and many of these arms merchants supply to both India and Pakistan. You may have heard about the bomb attack in Karachi in April when 13 French technicians building the dock for a French submarine sold to Pakistan for three quarter of a billion dollars were killed.  You may or may not know that France has just signed a contract to sell India more Mirage fighter planes.  The British and the US are doing the same thing.  Russia is the principal supplier of weapons to India while China is a major supplier of arms to Pakistan. Recently, Russia also started supplying military helicopters to Pakistan. A prolonged standoff between India and Pakistan is in the interests of all these arms sellers and a huge drain on the resources which ultimately hurts the peoples. Already the rights of the peoples are being curtailed under draconian laws – I can give you a list of laws and how they are being used to attack the civil and political rights in India and Pakistan – but you all have your own experience about how the “war against terrorism” is a war against the rights of the citizens of the US itself, who are also paying for it. The situation in India and Pakistan has many parallels. 
 

In sum, the people of India and Pakistan have everything to lose if there is a war. The people of the world have everything to lose because such a conflict will involve all the big powers. There is reason to believe that the US doctrine of non-proliferation beyond the old Nuclear Club is not dead, and a nuclear blackmail of the peoples of India and Pakistan will serve the aim of keeping countries like economically powerful Germany and Japan away from acquiring nuclear capability. The US, which has already used nuclear blackmail at the end of Second World War and which had contemplated using nuclear weapons during the Gulf War, is capable of sanctioning a nuclear strike in South Asia (directly or indirectly) in the “fog of war”.  The fate of the 21st century as a century of wars or a century of progress is at stake. India is not a factor for peace in Asia or the world and in fact, it is a partner in the conflicts more than ever. This calls for response from the people urgently. 

Anti-War Movement and Anti-War Government:
I alluded to the need for global anti-war movements in my introduction and also to the idea of anti-war governments. This is a suggestion that comes directly out of the assessment of current developments and tendencies. The fate of war and peace is not settled by any means. If anything, the recent developments in Indo-Pak conflict have made the issue of an anti-war movement very urgent. If people do not take a stand against war, the powers of the world will consider war as an option.  The destruction of human resources that has been accomplished in the past decade due to the anti-social offensive will dwarf the destruction these powers are capable of inflicting on humanity if they are permitted to consider war as an option.  Thus, the demand of the people everywhere, especially those fighting the anti-social offensive, also must be a resolute NO to war. They must force the existing governments to become anti-war governments or prepare to install anti-war governments if they do not reject war as an option. This is what will give the initiative to the people in the face of the dangerous situation that is unfolding half a world away.  

To conclude, I want to highlight that it will be an illusion to think the US has brought peace to the Indo-Pak conflict or that people can look up to the US or the “international community” of these big powers to bring peace. All the evidence points towards a shift in the conflict - with the US as an involved party.  In spite of everything said, what is not seen in the media reports these days is any mention of cordiality between India and the US.  The interests of the US and India in South Asia have collided head-on and there is both collusion and contention between the two as a result.  The Indian government under A.B. Vajpayee is severely compromised and cannot lead the Indian people under the present situation to defeat the US plans in South Asia.  It is the people of India who have to develop their struggle against war preparations and war, and at the same time take steps towards establishing an anti-war government.  They must view the anti-war struggles around the world as their allies, against the so-called “international community” of big powers who are their enemies. The people of the world have a lot at stake in this conflict and as the US is adopting a doctrine of pre-emptive military intervention to its dictum of “might makes right”, anti-war struggles must be stepped up all over the world. People will have to win this contest of forces between those who oppose war and those for whom war is an acceptable option to establish their hegemony. That contest is here and now. 

Thank you.