Heat Wave India's domestic problems are getting hotter

SEPTEMBER 2001, NORTHEASTERN INDIA: As dawn breaks, an Indian armored column slashes through the Pakistani defense line on the Punjab border and rushes towards Lahore. Three hundred kilometers to the south a Pakistani tank division that earlier made its own move is being mauled in the Rajasthan desert. The Reserve Strike Corps of the Pakistani Army in Multan swings into action. But that force is met by hundreds of Arjun tanks lumbering out of India. Threatened with a rout of its ground forces, Pakistan fires a Hataf-1 missile carrying a small tactical nuclear warhead behind Indian lines into a barren piece of desert. It is meant as a warning. But in the few minutes between the time it is fired and actually hits the ground, India has already retaliated. A nuclear tipped Prithvi missile streaks toward Islamabad. Pakistan responds with its own nuclear heavyweights. Previously targeted Ghauri missiles lock into New Delhi and Bombay. In less than an hour, 20 million people are killed on both sides of the border.

Get used to this new anxiety. Doomsday scenarios like the one above, developed by Indian defense strategists in the wake of nuclear weapons tests in May by both India and Pakistan, are sure to become more common in coming months. Jasjit Singh, director of New Delhi's Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), attempts to put a positive spin on the worst-case scenario: "Such an engagement is unthinkable - India and Pakistan are never likely to use nuclear arms against each other."

The fact is, nuclear engagement in South Asia has become substantially more thinkable in the last four weeks. First India tested five bombs - including one so-called "city killer" five times as powerful as the device dropped on Hiroshima - on May 11 and 13. Two weeks later, in the face of intense, competing international and domestic forces, Pakistan exploded six nuclear devices in the remote Chagai hills of its western Baluchistan province. U.S. analysts said Pakistan's blasts were generally much smaller than India's.

The international reactions were predictable. U.S. President Bill Clinton, who had telephoned Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif repeatedly to urge him not to order the tests, said after they were a reality: "I deplore the decision. By failing to exercise restraint, Pakistan lost a truly priceless opportunity to strengthen its own security and improve its political standing in the eyes of the world." Sharif said publicly that his hand had been forced by India's tests - "We could not ignore the magnitude of the threat." In private, he was reportedly more blunt with Clinton: the decision, Sharif said, was "out of my hands." Japan, the largest foreign aid donor to Pakistan, announced sanctions that will cut subsidized loans and grants to Islamabad. Japan is a key trading partner with Pakistan and its foreign donor - $400 million in grants and subsidized loans last year. On June 3, Pakistan welcomed Japan's offer to mediate the Kashmir dispute.

China expressed "deep regret" at the tests and called on South Asia to abandon its new nuclear arms race. A variety of Beijing sources disputed the widely held belief that China had helped Pakistan go nuclear. "China never has and never will transfer nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan," says a senior analyst for a research group under the Foreign Ministry. This analyst, who asked not to be identified, legitimized India's nuclear tests even as Beijing slammed New Delhi's rationale for testing because of a fear of China: "As a large country with an ancient civilization, India's desire to become a world power cannot be easily denied. The atomic bomb is the poor man's way of saying to the world - 'I count.'"

In Pakistan itself, Sharif harvested the domestic support he had expected to receive in the days following the explosions. Sharif had told Clinton he would be thrown out of office in a matter of days if he did not respond. Indeed, a snap poll by the Pakistan Institute for Public Opinion in major cities following the tests found 97% of people supported the decision. In response to near-riotous celebration, Pakistan President Rafiq Tarrar declared a state of emergency hours after the first tests.

However, as India is realizing now, nationalist euphoria can be fleeting. For one thing, Pakistan can expect sanctions equal to what had been levied upon India - but at a higher cost. Pakistan's economy is less than one-fifth the size of India's, and its reliance on foreign aid represents a much bigger proportion of the whole. Some estimates suggest the impact of sanctions could be between two and five times as heavy on Pakistan as on India.

But economic sanctions aren't nearly as worrisome as nuclear bombs. Analysts agree that the intensity of Pakistan's rivalry with India, particularly over Kashmir, a region that spans the northern border between the two countries, makes a nuclear arms race especially dangerous. After all, these are two countries that have fought three wars in the last 51 years, and continue to trade gunfire across a disputed border.

Fortunately, the same kinds of realities that make a nuclear conflict in South Asia more likely also mitigate against one. "Nuclear bombs are not for use," says a strategist at New Delhi's IDSA, Svita Pande. "They are for deterrence." Pande says that the very geographic closeness that heightens tensions suggests both sides will be careful. Lahore, Pakistan's second-biggest city, is only 45 km from Amritsar in India, a Sikh holy city. A bomb big enough to destroy Lahore would in turn cause massive radiation in Amritsar.

If there is a silver lining in the mushroom cloud hanging over South Asia today, it is that world attention is newly focused on Kashmir. Quickly, the first five nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France, asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to offer his peace-making services. But Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said India would not accept third-party mediation. Sharif said he is willing to talk to India provided Kashmir is on the agenda, a condition New Delhi rejects.

Vajpayee and Sharif made conciliatory gestures following Pakistan's tests. Both said they would consider signing the new Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons. They are due to meet on July 21 at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Sri Lanka. Says Inder Kumar Gujral, India's prime minister before his coalition lost its mandate to the BJP early this year: "As tempers cool and the passions aroused on both sides abate, we have to face the reality. Both sides have demonstrated deterrence." Gujral told Asiaweek he is optimistic: "Unless we are both mad, there is more chance for peaceful negotiations."

That would be a dramatic change for two countries that for decades have been unable to resolve their conflicts, especially over Kashmir. Jahangir, the late 16th century son of perhaps the greatest Mughal emperor of all, Akbar, was apparently bewitched by Kashmir. Jahangir visited the valley as often as he could, and on his deathbed, when asked if there was anything he wanted, he is said to have murmured: "Kashmir. Only Kashmir." That sentiment, dangerously, now appears to be shared by rival governments armed with nuclear weapons.

- With reporting by Shahid-Ur-Rehman/Islamabad and David Hsieh/Beijing

The conflict between India and Pakistan predates even Partition in 1947, when the two countries were born. Prior to that, the roots of the alienation were more social, cultural and religious than nationalistic.

HISTORIC DIFFERENCES: In 17th-century India, Islamic thinker Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi gave intellectual voice to early desires for a Muslim state on the subcontinent. Later, after the British began assuming administrative control over great swaths of India, Muslims felt isolated as they lost traditional roles in government and legal affairs.

PARTITION: In 1930, the poet Muhammad Iqbal proposed a separate Muslim homeland in India's northwest. When the nation-states of India and Pakistan came into being in 1947, the fate of Kashmir was undetermined. A planned vote to allow Kashmiris to decide their own fate was never held.

WAR: Just two months after Partition, India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. The conflict ended a few months later when the U.N. stepped in to mediate a settlement. But at the start of the war, the Maharaja of Kashmir agreed to align with India in exchange for military help to repel the invaders. In 1965, Pakistan and India fought again over Kashmir, and for a second time the U.N. Security Council intervened. The third and last time Pakistan and India went to war was in 1971 when East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh.

DIALOGUE: In the aftermath of the 1971 war, a Line of Control was established between India- and Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir. The next year, New Delhi and Islamabad agreed to resolve their differences over Kashmir through bilateral negotiations. Little progress has since been made, however. Last year, former Indian PM Inder Kumar Gujral met with Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif, and it seemed a new era of détente was at hand.

NUCLEAR STANDOFF: Gujral's shaky coalition was defeated in elections early this year, and the more bellicose Bharatiya Janata Party took over. The Hindu-nationalist BJP had long advocated restarting India's dormant nuclear weapons program, and New Delhi's recent tests put Pakistan under intense internal political pressure to follow suit. Tensions remain high in Kashmir. Authorities in New Delhi accuse Pakistan of funding an Islamic insurgency in the India-controlled portion.