Journal - June 1 2002

What you should be reading now:

KASHMIR /INDIA/ PAKISTAN:

When I was still living in Ohio, a good friend of my mom's was from a wealthy Parsi family in Karachi, in Pakistan. They all sold out and left the country years ago, seeing what sort of sectarian violence and mindlessness was coming. And brother, it has been a while coming, but it's here.

We seem to be looking at an extra-special mess, lined with nuclear weapons and loaded with a lot of nationalist screaming and shouting of my-nuclear-bomb-is-bigger-than-yours-nyah-nyah.

As some of you know, I've got a few areas of expertise/interest, and this sort of thing falls into it. Every scenario I have run out says that a nuclear war would kill off over one hundred million in the first day or so, and utterly wreck the economies of Pakistan and India. The major cities of both countries would be devastated, with their centers turned to ash and rubble.

In a land where the railroad is still king, shipments of food and goods are at an end when the major railroad cities are levelled, and the economic and transport crisis that would follow would send both countries to the level of Somalia very fast. In which case, the level of resultant chaos and death and starvation, plus zillions of sick, irradiated, burnt and dying go off the scale. Picture a reduction in the population of India by half or more, and about 2/3rds that of Pakistan, which deals with a more reduced set or arable land and transport systems.

The subcontinent is now in a heat wave, with temps easily going into the 110s and better. Which is followed by full Monsoon. So we're not talking about a easy time of it, weather-wise. What this would do to the world around these two states, God alone knows. Let's hope we never find out and all of this thrashing around ends.

Here's some ways out of the present mess. Some good ideas, seen from the outside. Also another sum-up article from the UK Economist.

A clarification: when the British were in charge of India, they essentially claimed the whole thing as an Empire that the King of England was the Emperor over. (In other words, the last Empress of India just died, and there was a independent India all along.) They also had subsidiary Maharajahs, Rajahs, and so forth (about a thousand of them) - all were semi-independent states who had never been conquered and owed allegiance to the King-Emperor as the Emperor, and ran their own show pretty largely. Some of these states were very big, some very small.

In this century, the Indians demanded independence for the whole thing as one country, and by the time of WW2, the Muslims in India looked at the number of Hindus around and decided that they wanted their own part of India that would be 'pure' Muslim - Paki-stan = 'land of the pure'. The British played the Muslims off against the Hindus for years to hold off the political pressures. This is part of the reason now that the two countries are so touchy with each other.

After WW2, they gave up and tried to settle up the split between an Indian and Pakistani nation. The land the British 'Emperor' controlled directly could be directly made an independent India, but the Rajahs and suchlike wanted to stay the big shots of their own principalities, et cetera. (Think US tribal reservations that were run more like independent countries from within, and you'll get the idea.)

Realizing that this would shoot an independent non-British Pakistan/India literally full of holes (43% of what we know of of either India or Pakistan was owned by these guys, along with 100 million people - see this for an idea of the crazy-quilt), the British essentially forced these dudes to either sign up with India or Pakistan - their choice, but one or the other. The people they ruled had no say in the matter. In a couple of cases, the ruler was religion X and the ruled were religion Y, and the British leaned heavily on the ruler to Make The Least Amount Of Trouble and go with the state that was of the people's religion.

(This article at the BBC runs through a lot of this. There are a couple of other exceptions, like Jungadh. It was a Muslim-ruled Hindu state inside India proper, and the Indian Army just overran it even though it signed off to Pakistan. )

Save two, and that was Kashmir and Hyderabad. Hyderabad was almost all Hindu, with a Muslim ruler who wanted to stay independant, and the state was in the middle of India. After a year and a half of hemming and hawing to keep the Indian Army out, the Army came in and took over.

Similarly, in Kashmir, the Maharajah of Kashmir (who was Hindu and most of his people Muslims) really wanted to remain his own boss and stay separate from either country. He diddled around until Muslim raiders stormed over the border to take over Kashmir and then (a) yelled for help from India, and (b) signed off to join up with India. They've fought over the thing ever since.And the big reason for India's stickiness on this is that Nehru, the leader of India was from there. India says that the law's the law and that's that. The Pakistanis scream about the injustice of it all. And everyone cleans their guns.

In the process of the last fifty-plus years, this whole ficking mess has generated three major wars, a whole lot of skirmishing, over a million dead and ten million displaced people. Yes, it is largely a lot of rocks and mountains, and the Vale of Kashmir, a place so beautiful that poets had proclaimed it as the real site of Eden. The fight is all emotions. That's what makes it so hard to control.

A reader wrote: And how many bombs, and delivery systems, do you think India and Pakistan actually *have*? How many deliveries are you assuming with these numbers?

The delivery systems are a number of IRBMs and high performance airplanes, and can hit virtually anywhere in each other's territory - and if it's a one-way mission, I would posit that air defenses on either country are leaky enough to let the planes through. With a plane, you can be at high altitude and still trigger it off just fine - you don't need to be dead-on accurate. In the chaos of war with no good air defence, I'd say 70 to 80% get through or detonate somewhere.

Numbers of weapons? I've seen all sorts of estimates. Janes' says 150 nukes on the Indian side, and 50 on the Pakistani side. Any estimate is somewhat of a SWAG, but I'll stick with Janes'. The real answer is that nobody really knows. Size on then goes from 20kt (bigger than Hiroshima/Nagasaki) to 150-200kt for some of the Indian bombs to be mounted on bigger rockets. Note that none of these rockets have any serious sharp targeting - they're city busters.

Abbas Panjwani, the director of the company Innovative Minds, which produces Islamic Fun! said: "The game does not target any human beings including soldiers, it targets Israeli tanks. From that point of view it's no different from any other war game. It does not target any religious or racial group including the Jewish community. In fact its educational content teaches children the difference between Judaism and Zionism."

And to be equal-opportunity to Hindus, considering the above material, try this response to a reader:

I've been thinking about Mr I's comment that the India/Pakistan war is simply explained in terms of male dominance theory; since it's a dangerous and wrong idea, I thought I'd comment.

The theory is popular but wrong (does anyone have any data to prove it's right?). The current crisis, like all the current warefare in the East, is at the edge where a critical mass of Moslems meet with non-Moslems. This conflict stems from deeply held religious beliefs; placed another way, it's about interest, power, and honor, not about chest-thumping.

OK, lingam-waving.

Here's two to-the-point references in the BBC on some related issues. I'm looking at both sides here, and the Hindus and the Muslims have both been making provocative, nationalist, belligerent statements. And what's behind that lingam is the male sense of 'power', amongst other things. See this Tehelka report for starters. Or this BBC one.

Here's a bit on the from the BBC:

Anti-Muslim violence

To many here, this sequence of events justifies Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's belligerent stance.

But the timing is also politically expedient. Mr Vajpayee's party, the BJP, has been under growing domestic pressure in recent months, performing poorly in a series of state elections and, most recently, criticised at home and overseas for its handling of the recent widespread killings and destruction in Gujarat.

Many independent reports have accused the BJP state government of supporting the anti-Muslim violence, in which, according to some of those reports, more than 2,000 people died.

The central BJP leadership stood staunchly by its party members, refusing to condemn their role in the violence. Mr Vajpayee has held together a fragile coalition government by presenting a moderate, liberal face of the right-wing Hindu agenda his party represents.

But to many, horror about Gujarat seemed to lift the mask, revealing ugly and dangerous fundamentalism beneath.

Now the threat of war with Pakistan has succeeded in knocking Gujarat off the front pages.

International challenge

When applied to Pakistan, the BJP's hawkish rhetoric becomes politically acceptable, sounding less like vitriol directed against India's Muslim minority and more a desirable display of national patriotism.

Not even the political opposition, which took the BJP so much to task on Gujarat, dare criticise. The dispute over Kashmir - and Pakistan-sponsored terrorism - is perhaps the one deeply emotive rallying cry which unites all politicians and indeed almost all Indians.

The challenge facing the international community is distinguishing between the tough threats on Pakistan - enhanced to woo an Indian audience - and the likelihood of those threats materialising into actual conflict.

Some of the posturing can be factored out as political bluster. But even so, it is a dangerous game to play. Tension this high may be hard to dissipate without either bloodshed or the risk of lost political face.

Journal - June 1, 2002
\| contacting me by E-mail	main journal page \| home page \| Meredith's page
<== Last episode, our hero...	In our next thrilling adventure ==>
What you should be reading now: KASHMIR /INDIA/ PAKISTAN: When I was still living in Ohio, a good friend of my mom's was from a wealthy Parsi family in Karachi, in Pakistan. They all sold out and left the country years ago, seeing what sort of sectarian violence and mindlessness was coming. And brother, it has been a while coming, but it's here. We seem to be looking at an extra-special mess, lined with nuclear weapons and loaded with a lot of nationalist screaming and shouting of my-nuclear-bomb-is-bigger-than-yours-nyah-nyah. As some of you know, I've got a few areas of expertise/interest, and this sort of thing falls into it. Every scenario I have run out says that a nuclear war would kill off over one hundred million in the first day or so, and utterly wreck the economies of Pakistan and India. The major cities of both countries would be devastated, with their centers turned to ash and rubble. In a land where the railroad is still king, shipments of food and goods are at an end when the major railroad cities are levelled, and the economic and transport crisis that would follow would send both countries to the level of Somalia very fast. In which case, the level of resultant chaos and death and starvation, plus zillions of sick, irradiated, burnt and dying go off the scale. Picture a reduction in the population of India by half or more, and about 2/3rds that of Pakistan, which deals with a more reduced set or arable land and transport systems. The subcontinent is now in a heat wave, with temps easily going into the 110s and better. Which is followed by full Monsoon. So we're not talking about a easy time of it, weather-wise. What this would do to the world around these two states, God alone knows. Let's hope we never find out and all of this thrashing around ends. Here's some ways out of the present mess. Some good ideas, seen from the outside. Also another sum-up article from the UK Economist. A clarification: when the British were in charge of India, they essentially claimed the whole thing as an Empire that the King of England was the Emperor over. (In other words, the last Empress of India just died, and there was a independent India all along.) They also had subsidiary Maharajahs, Rajahs, and so forth (about a thousand of them) - all were semi-independent states who had never been conquered and owed allegiance to the King-Emperor as the Emperor, and ran their own show pretty largely. Some of these states were very big, some very small. In this century, the Indians demanded independence for the whole thing as one country, and by the time of WW2, the Muslims in India looked at the number of Hindus around and decided that they wanted their own part of India that would be 'pure' Muslim - Paki-stan = 'land of the pure'. The British played the Muslims off against the Hindus for years to hold off the political pressures. This is part of the reason now that the two countries are so touchy with each other. After WW2, they gave up and tried to settle up the split between an Indian and Pakistani nation. The land the British 'Emperor' controlled directly could be directly made an independent India, but the Rajahs and suchlike wanted to stay the big shots of their own principalities, et cetera. (Think US tribal reservations that were run more like independent countries from within, and you'll get the idea.) Realizing that this would shoot an independent non-British Pakistan/India literally full of holes (43% of what we know of of either India or Pakistan was owned by these guys, along with 100 million people - see this for an idea of the crazy-quilt), the British essentially forced these dudes to either sign up with India or Pakistan - their choice, but one or the other. The people they ruled had no say in the matter. In a couple of cases, the ruler was religion X and the ruled were religion Y, and the British leaned heavily on the ruler to Make The Least Amount Of Trouble and go with the state that was of the people's religion. (This article at the BBC runs through a lot of this. There are a couple of other exceptions, like Jungadh. It was a Muslim-ruled Hindu state inside India proper, and the Indian Army just overran it even though it signed off to Pakistan. ) Save two, and that was Kashmir and Hyderabad. Hyderabad was almost all Hindu, with a Muslim ruler who wanted to stay independant, and the state was in the middle of India. After a year and a half of hemming and hawing to keep the Indian Army out, the Army came in and took over. Similarly, in Kashmir, the Maharajah of Kashmir (who was Hindu and most of his people Muslims) really wanted to remain his own boss and stay separate from either country. He diddled around until Muslim raiders stormed over the border to take over Kashmir and then (a) yelled for help from India, and (b) signed off to join up with India. They've fought over the thing ever since.And the big reason for India's stickiness on this is that Nehru, the leader of India was from there. India says that the law's the law and that's that. The Pakistanis scream about the injustice of it all. And everyone cleans their guns. In the process of the last fifty-plus years, this whole ficking mess has generated three major wars, a whole lot of skirmishing, over a million dead and ten million displaced people. Yes, it is largely a lot of rocks and mountains, and the Vale of Kashmir, a place so beautiful that poets had proclaimed it as the real site of Eden. The fight is all emotions. That's what makes it so hard to control. A reader wrote: And how many bombs, and delivery systems, do you think India and Pakistan actually have? How many deliveries are you assuming with these numbers? http://www.tehelka.com/channels/currentaffairs/2002/may/27/ca052702nuc.htm http://167.216.192.98/faceoff/3story310502.shtml http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_2012000/2012543.stm The delivery systems are a number of IRBMs and high performance airplanes, and can hit virtually anywhere in each other's territory - and if it's a one-way mission, I would posit that air defenses on either country are leaky enough to let the planes through. With a plane, you can be at high altitude and still trigger it off just fine - you don't need to be dead-on accurate. In the chaos of war with no good air defence, I'd say 70 to 80% get through or detonate somewhere. Numbers of weapons? I've seen all sorts of estimates. Janes' says 150 nukes on the Indian side, and 50 on the Pakistani side. Any estimate is somewhat of a SWAG, but I'll stick with Janes'. The real answer is that nobody really knows. Size on then goes from 20kt (bigger than Hiroshima/Nagasaki) to 150-200kt for some of the Indian bombs to be mounted on bigger rockets. Note that none of these rockets have any serious sharp targeting - they're city busters. Abbas Panjwani, the director of the company Innovative Minds, which produces Islamic Fun! said: "The game does not target any human beings including soldiers, it targets Israeli tanks. From that point of view it's no different from any other war game. It does not target any religious or racial group including the Jewish community. In fact its educational content teaches children the difference between Judaism and Zionism." And to be equal-opportunity to Hindus, considering the above material, try this response to a reader: I've been thinking about Mr I's comment that the India/Pakistan war is simply explained in terms of male dominance theory; since it's a dangerous and wrong idea, I thought I'd comment. The theory is popular but wrong (does anyone have any data to prove it's right?). The current crisis, like all the current warefare in the East, is at the edge where a critical mass of Moslems meet with non-Moslems. This conflict stems from deeply held religious beliefs; placed another way, it's about interest, power, and honor, not about chest-thumping. OK, lingam-waving. Here's two to-the-point references in the BBC on some related issues. I'm looking at both sides here, and the Hindus and the Muslims have both been making provocative, nationalist, belligerent statements. And what's behind that lingam is the male sense of 'power', amongst other things. See this Tehelka report for starters. Or this BBC one. Here's a bit on the from the BBC: Anti-Muslim violence To many here, this sequence of events justifies Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's belligerent stance. But the timing is also politically expedient. Mr Vajpayee's party, the BJP, has been under growing domestic pressure in recent months, performing poorly in a series of state elections and, most recently, criticised at home and overseas for its handling of the recent widespread killings and destruction in Gujarat. Many independent reports have accused the BJP state government of supporting the anti-Muslim violence, in which, according to some of those reports, more than 2,000 people died. The central BJP leadership stood staunchly by its party members, refusing to condemn their role in the violence. Mr Vajpayee has held together a fragile coalition government by presenting a moderate, liberal face of the right-wing Hindu agenda his party represents. But to many, horror about Gujarat seemed to lift the mask, revealing ugly and dangerous fundamentalism beneath. Now the threat of war with Pakistan has succeeded in knocking Gujarat off the front pages. International challenge When applied to Pakistan, the BJP's hawkish rhetoric becomes politically acceptable, sounding less like vitriol directed against India's Muslim minority and more a desirable display of national patriotism. Not even the political opposition, which took the BJP so much to task on Gujarat, dare criticise. The dispute over Kashmir - and Pakistan-sponsored terrorism - is perhaps the one deeply emotive rallying cry which unites all politicians and indeed almost all Indians. The challenge facing the international community is distinguishing between the tough threats on Pakistan - enhanced to woo an Indian audience - and the likelihood of those threats materialising into actual conflict. Some of the posturing can be factored out as political bluster. But even so, it is a dangerous game to play. Tension this high may be hard to dissipate without either bloodshed or the risk of lost political face.