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| India-Pakistan |
| India and Pak are 'very close' to war |
| 2002-05-21 |
| Pakistan's ambassador to Britain, Abdul Kader Jaffer, said Tuesday that India and Pakistan are "very close" to war. "They are very close," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "And therefore it is necessary for all our friends to get together, bring sanity where there is total insanity." The United States, Britain and the European Union have urged both countries to exercise restraint and recommended talks, which Pakistan favors. It seems like it's totally insane to conduct daily military operations against a neighboring state for year after year while piously denying "official" involvement. Eventually people will get tired of it and hit you. India has refused talks until militants based in Pakistan stop crossing the border to stage attacks. India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and financing the Islamic guerrillas fighting since 1989 for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan. Islamabad says it has no control over the militants and denies assisting them, though it supports their aim of separating the only Muslim-majority state from predominantly Hindu India. If Pak doesn't exercise control over them they'll destroy the entire nation. War will be devastating to both sides, but it will end with the dissolution of Pakistan. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 On this comment and yesterday's "after the monsoon season comes war" comment, I just remembered that the British and Germans fought a 3 year campaign without regards to weather in the North African Western Desert using equipment and command structures not remarkably different from those armies in WW II. I don't think that the weather will be a decisive factor in the movement to war. What will be decisive, as in WW I, will be internal politics. Neither Vajpayee nor Musharraf have political standing which will submit to a protracted Sitzkrieg. The Gujarat communal violence and the inability of Musharraf to control the jihadis is indicative of this. If weather is even important, then the battle will be in Kashmir. But tactical infiltration (as opposed to guerilla warfare) in this land of mountains and valleys will be nearly impossible with nearly 1.5 million troops positioned on both sides of the LOC. |
| Posted by: Tom Roberts 2002-05-22 06:34:41 |