The fidayeen attack on women and children in a family station of the Indian army at Kaluchak in Jammu has dispelled whatever doubt may have existed about Pakistani jehadis' intentions towards Kashmir this summer. For several weeks, India and the US had been at cross-purposes on the steps to be taken next to reduce tensions, including the risk of a nuclear war, between Pakistan and India. The US insisted, first in private and then in public, that the level of cross-border infiltration had come down. Based on this assessment it, and its European allies, applied increasing pressure on the Indian government, again both in private and public, to de-escalate the build-up on the border and open a dialogue with Pakistan.
India, on its part, furnished statistics on the number of encounters in Kashmir and the rising number of infiltrators killed to prove infiltration levels hadn't declined. Whatever decline the US noticed had taken place as the passes from Pakistan were snowbound. More recently, as last snows on the high passes melted, India drew US attention to a build-up of jehadis at the usual jump-off points in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and apparently told the US that if Pervez Musharraf did not live up to his January 12 promise not to allow Pakistan to be used as a base for terrorism in Kashmir, it would be left with no option but to cross the LoC to neutralise the jehadis. That threat brought forth a further spate of cautions from the US, including an 'assessment', couched as a leak of former Clinton aide Bruce Riedels' memoirs, that Pakistan's generals were perfectly capable of launching a nuclear first strike at India should it widen the area of military conflict. It also made the US send assistant secretary of state Christina Rocca post-haste to South Asia to urge both countries to exercise restraint.
Behind the sharpening difference of opinion between the US and India lies a fundamental disagreement over Musharraf's future policies. The US professes, at least in public, to be profoundly grateful to Musharraf for his help in ousting the Taliban and destroying the sanctuary of Al Qaeda. It believes Musharraf did this not solely because it left him with no other option but that it was what he had been wanting to do anyway but had, till September 11, lacked the courage to do. Proof of this is his proscription of five Islamic private armies and arrest of over 1,500 of their cadres after his famous January 12 address to the nation.
It also believes that in turning on the Taliban, Musharraf had the support not only of the Pakistani intelligentsia but also of the country's vast silent majority. Consequently, it believes Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan are isolated. While they retain the capacity to carry out terrorist operations designed to embarrass the Musharraf government, they pose no threat to its stability. Washington believes it's just a matter of time before Musharraf realises he can't follow a Janus-faced policy towards Islamic zealots—repressing them at home but supporting them when they go into Kashmir. Thus, India's best course is to exercise restraint till the inconsistency of such a policy becomes apparent to the regime in Islamabad. Once that happens, it will open the way to a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
But New Delhi believes the US has spun a myth around the general for its own convenience. Post-September 11, Musharraf made it clear to his generals, his think-tanks and his people ad nauseam that he had betrayed the Taliban only to safeguard his country's vital interests, because the Americans had left him with no option. By implication, therefore (and no doubt explicitly in his private conclaves), he assured his country that he would only go as far as it was absolutely necessary.His government proved this in a hundred ways: from supplying second-class information to the US on targets in Afghanistan to dragging its feet on the pursuit of remnants of Al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakhtoonistan. But Washington's paean of gratitude to Musharraf has not diminished and it continues to turn a blind eye to the fact that his actions continue not to match his commitments.
Nowhere, says New Delhi, is this more apparent than in his attitude to India. The massing of jehadis at the jump-off points shows that, as he did in Agra, Musharraf continues to distinguish between terrorism across international borders and terrorism in Kashmir. In Kashmir, according to him, a border does not exist and India is in any case an interloper. India is also convinced that Musharraf not only wants but has no option but to separate Pakistan's policy towards Islamic private armies at home from its policy towards Kashmir. The only way he was able to mollify the ISI and his corps commanders after his volte face on Afghanistan was by telling them that it was essential for 'saving' its struggle for Kashmir. This struggle is therefore the last thing he can afford to give up.
It would be too much to expect the US State Department to admit that its assessment of Musharraf and Pakistan could be wrong. But there is one way in which it can put Indian doubts at rest. If Musharraf really was sincere about his January 12 promise, and if the Lashkar and other organisations are out of his control and determined to sabotage his new policies, then he should welcome any Indian action against the jehadis whenever it detects them massing in PoK. He does not have to say so in public. Indeed, he should protest and threaten as much as he can. But his government should privately pass on the message to New Delhi via Washington that it will not retaliate and enlarge the conflict if India does feel constrained to hit the terrorists on 'Azad Kashmir' soil. This would not constitute an attack on Pakistan as by Pakistan's own frequent admission, Azad Kashmir is an independent country and is not part of it.