Mohammed Ayoob 

It is not since the Cuban missile crisis that the world has come so close to nuclear war. Rising tensions between India and Pakistan following the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament have created a scary scenario. Defusing South Asian tensions has, therefore, become an American priority. However, these tensions can be defused and the world saved from the horrors of nuclear confrontation if the Bush administration fully comprehends the political and nuclear issues involved in the crisis.

There are basically two political issues that affect India-Pakistan relations. The first is the territorial dispute over Kashmir. Without going into the history of the dispute, it would be salutary to remind ourselves that the self-definitions of the two nations are inextricably intertwined with this issue. India considers Kashmir to be a touchstone of its secular and civic nationalism. The presence of 140 million Muslims in India, of whom barely four million or five million live in Kashmir, means that New Delhi cannot accept another partition of India on the basis of religion. Doing so would reopen the issue of the status of Muslims as Indian citizens and refresh the wounds of partition.

Similarly, Pakistan cannot afford to give up its claim to the only Muslim majority state in India without forfeiting the "two-nation" theory-that Hindus and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent form two different nations, on which it is founded. The corollary of this theory is that no Muslim majority region can legitimately form a part of the Indian Union. The separation of the majority of Pakistanis from Pakistan in 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh has not disabused the Pakistani political elite from this idea. It has made them even more strident in their demand that Kashmir should be detached from India and attached to Pakistan.

The Pakistan-supported insurgency beginning in 1990 and the subsequent infiltration of jihadist elements trained and armed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is the latest phase in Pakistan's attempt to change the status quo in Kashmir. There is convincing evidence, known not merely to the American intelligence community but to reporters of the national dailies and their readers as well, of Pakistani complicity in the insurgency-cum-terrorism in Kashmir. The terrorist attack on the Indian parliament on Dec. 13 has been the latest demonstration of this complicity and has escalated tensions to the current high level. Terrorism, therefore, is the second political component of the problem. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan and armed by Pakistanis, with close ideological links to al Qaeda, have become the main vehicle for the anti-Indian campaign in Kashmir for the past five years. The terrorist attacks of September 11 have finally awakened the American administration to the threat such groups pose, not only to India, but to the United States as well. This has led to pressure on the Pakistani government by Washington. However, Pakistan's Gen. Musharraf has attempted to get the best of both worlds. While cooperating under duress with the United States in the latter's war against terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan has attempted to build a firewall around jihadi groups operating in Kashmir. The attack on the Indian parliament and the subsequent Indian military mobilization, however, has changed the terms of the terrorism debate. Although Gen. Musharraf has taken cosmetic steps, such as arresting the leaders of two terrorist outfits in Pakistan, to demonstrate his commitment to the anti-terrorism cause and deflect Indian anger, this is not enough. Pakistan must cut off all support to insurgents and terrorists in Kashmir before its sincerity can be accepted.