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The Drum Beating in Kashmir

The Pakistani Army has not shifted its attention from the northwest, where it is trying to fight Islamic insurgents, to face India, which was undoubtedly one of the goals of the Mumbaiterrorists. The two nuclear powers on the subcontinent are not in a dangerous confrontation, at least notyet.

Cooler heads have prevailed, at least for the time being, even though some Indians are saying that if the United States and Israel can attack countries from whence terrorists come, why can’tthey?

But that is where the good news ends. Pakistan can no longer deny that the attacks were planned and orchestrated from Pakistan by Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the terrorist group that was largely founded by Pakistani intelligence to be a goad to India in theKashmir.

There is no clear evidence that the Pakistani government either knew or approved of the Mumbai raid, nor is there evidence that Pakistani intelligence wasinvolved.

But Pakistan is not going to bow down before India, and although there have been some arrests, there is not the political will necessary in Pakistan to thoroughly dismantleLashkar. The best that can be expected is that enough of the usual suspects will be rounded up to assuage Indiananger.

This is a shame. For, as Pakistanis point out, they are fighting Islamic extremists the same as India is, and the strike on Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel preceded the attacks onMumbai.

The sad truth is that the Kashmir issue still riles too many passions among Pakistanis for any government to completely give up the cause.

The even sadder truth is that the Pakistani government does not have complete and uncompromised control over its armed forces or its intelligenceservices.

One of the reasons India is not pushing Pakistan harder is that India is well aware of how fragile its neighbour is. A collapse of the Pakistani state into chaos would be an Indian nightmare, and an American nightmare,too.

Pakistan has had an identity crisis since it was formed as a separate state for India’s Muslims in 1947. Kashmir, with its Muslim majority, should have gone to Pakistan, but its Maharaja was Hindu, and India’s leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a Kashmiri. But it wasn’t just theKashmir.

“Ethnic, linguistic, and regional nationalism [has] splintered the country,” as Ahmed Rashid writes in his authoritative “Decent IntoChaos.”

There have been constant insurgencies in Balochistan, tensions in the Sindh, and alienation among the Pashtuns of the Northwest Frontier Province.

Resentments against the majority Punjabis runs high in all three, and the Pakistani government has lost control of much of the border region with Afghanistan to Islamicextremists.

Fear of being out-flanked by India caused Pakistan to back the Taleban in Afghanistan in the first place, and the national change of heart to which Pervez Musharraf committed the nation does not reach down through all levels of thebureaucracy.

Islam has always been sensitive to perceived wrongs everywhere, even before the Internet and modern communications made it easy. Islam is like a “vast drum,” said the French colonialist Louis Lyautey a century ago. “Strike it in Bengal, it resounds in Casablanca, and viceversa.”

The ability of Al Qaeda to link pockets of Muslim resentment across the Muslim world has been remarkable, as the sinister attack on the Jewish centre in Mumbai illustrates.,

Lashkar-e-Tayyeba used to concentrate on India’s role in the Kashmir. It did not normally attack Jews and Crusaders, as Al Qaeda likes to callWesterners. Hezbollah, so far, concentrates on Israel and improving its own position in Lebanon.

Hamas concentrates on Israel and improving its own position inPalestine. But that could all change. As the Palestinian issue inflames Muslims in the Middle East, so do the injustices of Kashmir inflame Muslims in the subcontinent! In the future, the drum beating in Kashmir will resound in the Middle East, and vice versa. Mumbai suggests it alreadydoes.

© IHT