By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction #20 for Tuesday, July 6th,1999

Pakistan Will Face a Nation Threatening Crisis in Coming Months

• Prediction:
  Over the next months Pakistan will face the worst crisis since it came into being in 1947 --- so serious that it could lead to its dissolution.

• Outcome:
  Prediction # 20 will be evaluated on Tuesday, October 26, 1999.

In October snow will begin to fall over the Himalayas. The fighting will cease between the Indian Army and their shadowy foes in the high altitude Buddhist Kargil region of Jammu and Kashmir.

By that time three outcomes of the Kargil fighting are possible:

(a) the Line of Control (LOC) which has separated Indian and Pakistani armies since 1947 will have been restored.
Or
(b) India will have been unable to dislodge the shadowy forces.
Or
(c) Pakistani forces will have suffered defeat.

My prediction is based on the third possibility being the most likely outcome of the current hostilities.

In 1971 India defeated Pakistani forces in what was then called East Pakistan. The result was the rise of the independent country of Bangladesh. In what had been called West Pakistan a political revolution occurred. The radical Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who received a degree at my university, the University of California at Berkeley, became prime minister. He was ousted in 1977 by General Zia ul-Haq and executed in 1979. From that time on Pakistan became politically unstable, socially troubled and, despite significant progress, suffered economic decline.

There is a good chance that a Pakistani defeat in the Kargil fighting could again trigger a political revolution in that country. It now even looks like acceptance by both sides of option (1), re-affirming the LOC, could incite significant political change in Pakistan.

In the material I studied for Prediction #20 an article by the Arab writer Hadi al-Husseini struck me as touching on just about all the key points in this complex war. The article was printed in the Arabic newspaper, "Ash-Sharq Al-Ausat" (July 3), whose Internet edition I read every day.

In the light of Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif's hurried trip to Washington the article's heading was significant: "Pakistan is prepared to test its Ghauri long range missile and warns Washington to stop taking India's side." In the fairly lengthy article no mention is made of the Ghauri until the last sentence: "Pakistan is preparing to test its Ghauri long range missile as a serious show of determination vis-a-vis India in the event the latter escalates the fighting by pushing into Pakistani-held Kashmir ("Azad ['Free'] Kashmir").

If the response to such an incursion is only a missile test the warning can be read as meaning Pakistan is ready to fire Ghauri missiles at Indian cities in the event major political upheavals break out within the country sparked by defeat in the LOC region.

Here are some key excerpts from the article followed by my comments on each paragraph:

1. "India has been accusing Pakistan of wanting to occupy key heights in Indian-held Kashmir that would cut the strategic Kargil-Leh road, push the LOC farther to the east and rekindle the revolution against the Delhi government within Indian Kashmir. That will force the Western powers and the UN to intervene in the Kashmir conflict. "
   Comments: Pakistan has been trying to draw the US in as "mediator" while Washington keeps on saying no. India prefers the Indo-Pak conflict remain "bilateral."

2. "It seems that the coalition government in India headed by the BJP is using the Kargil fighting to show voters in the forthcoming elections that it is a staunch defender of Indian national rights. The opposition parties all support the government on Kargil. However they accuse it of not having done more and faster."
   Comments: Up to a point both the Indian and Pakistani governments find the proto-war as useful in their respective domestic political battles.

3. "On the other hand Pakistan keeps accusing India of suppressing Islamic fundamentalists in Indian Kashmir and intending to cross the LOC into Azad Kashmir in order to pressure Pakistan to get rid of the 'jihad fighters'."
   Comments: This is the nub of the article. Since the beginning of the fighting on May 26 India has kept claiming that the shadowy forces are not Kashmiri but "Afghan," meaning Islamic fundamentalists linked one way or another to the Taliban. And in the same sentence Hadi Husseini implies that its aim in that war --- an aim that could take its forces north across the LOC into Pakistan-held Kashmir --- is to wipe out these "Afghans." And while he doesn't say so explicitly he might have added some more words to the effect that: before the fundamentalist creed arouses Kashmiri Muslim youth.

4. "It is well known that the Pakistani military and intelligence services have taken radical positions on Kashmir and that Pakistani governments have no choice but to follow them. So it's virtually impossible for any Pakistani leader to haggle over this issue."
   Comments: As in Turkey the military is the ultimate ruler in Pakistan. The intelligence services refers to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (usually called ISI). If Nawaz Sharif "haggled" in his latest visit to Washington then, according to Hadi Husseini's analysis, neither the Pakistan military nor ISI would automatically go along.

5. "But from its beginnings Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif exploited the Kashmir issue to divert attention from Pakistan's terrible economic crisis as well as contain growing discontent in the peripheral regions of the Northwestern Provinces, Baluchistan and Sind. And especially he wants to dampen the force of those parties which want to overthrow Pakistan's political elite and institute an Islamic revolution."
   Comments: Hadi Husseini has touched on the three sorest spots in the Pakistani body politic: the rise of Islamic militancy, the economic crisis and regional discontent. Re-affirming the LOC would be an acknowledgment of defeat by Nawaz Sharif. That would worsen both economic crisis and political dissent. And it would add even more fuel to the fires of Islamic militancy.

   A linguistic clue points a way into the future. The Indians have repeatedly charged that the shadowy forces they are fighting are both Pakistani troops and "Afghans." In reports of their radio monitoring of those shadowy forces they have said they could hear Urdu and Pashto spoken but not Kashmiri. That means no Kashmiris are involved in the current battle for the liberation of Kashmir.

   Pashto is an Iranian language distantly related to Persian/Farsi. It is the language both of Afghanistan's Pashtuns and Pakistan's Pathans. In fact the two are the same people and Pathan is simply a dialectical variation of Pashtun or the other way around.

   Today just about all of Afghanistan is controlled by the radical Sunni Taliban. The "northern opposition" is fragmented, dispersed and disheartened. The Taliban won their victories more through the Qur'an than with weapons. Their creed has appealed to many different peoples. Nevertheless the history, leadership and driving force of the Taliban is Pashtun. And since the Pathans are a kindred people it has long since been reported --- even in the Western media --- that many of them have accepted that creed.

   Both Pushtuns and Pathans are warriors by tradition. Not surprisingly when the British ruled India they recruited heavily from among the Pathans. The new state of Pakistan continued that tradition. And while the Pakistani military is now ethnically diverse nevertheless the Pathan element remains strong.

   While in international discourse Afghan now designates any citizen of Afghanistan within the country the word Afghan is another way of saying Pashtun. So when the Indians heard Pashto spoken those "Afghans" easily could have been Pathan soldiers in the Pakistan army. And they also could easily have been supporters of the Taliban creed.

   That the Taliban creed is rapidly spreading in Pakistan has been widely reported. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif acknowledged this by last year decreeing Pakistan to be an Islamic state. The sharply negative reaction against the Nawaz-Clinton accord by the Jamaat-e Islami (See Sidebar) already reveals how many cracks there are in the brittle Pakistani body politic.

   For two decades at least religious, political and drug-related violence has been growing in Pakistan. There are many in Pakistan who look at Afghanistan and see how the Taliban have restored order to that tragedy-wracked country. There are many others who, as in Iran in 1979 and 1980, are terrified of fundamentalist rule.

   Suppose there were a political upheaval over the next months. What could happen other than an outflow of frightened refugees? Judging from the discontent in the Sind region --- where the Bhutto family has its base --- it is conceivable that secessionist currents could rise. There also is discontent in the far western province of Baluchistan. And while West Punjabis have long dominated the Pakistani political scene few of them would look with favor on a fundamentalist government.

   The waters of Pakistan are turbulent and troubled. It also is not inconceivable that, given their current victories in the Kargil region, the Indian armed forces could decide to lunge over the LOC and aim to take the town and region of Skardu, the capital town of the Baltistan region (where the people speak Tibetan but are Muslim and where many Americans trek in the high mountain areas).

   If such a lunge by India occurred would Nawaz Sharif consider firing Ghauri missiles at Indian cities?

   There is no doubt that if this happened it would create one of the worst global crises since the world became global. In particular it could bring Russia and America into a confrontation not seen since the early days of the Cold War. Russian weaponry accounts for three quarters of India's military arsenal (Izvestiya, June 24). The American Seventh Fleet dominates the Indian Ocean from its base on Diego Garcia island just south of India.

   Russia is fiercely opposed to Islamic fundamentalism and Afghanistan's Taliban. America, on the other hand, has been bit by bit coming to terms with Islamic fundamentalism, evident in the US-Iran rapprochement. Though America has drifted away from its decades-long relationship with Pakistan the bonds are still there. And, through its military ties, Russian bonds with India remain strong.

   The Kargil crisis is local. What makes it dangerous is that equilibrium has been broken. In the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan the equilibrium has also broken as India grows stronger and Pakistan weaker. The global equilibrium has also weakened as Russia declines even further and America is becoming "the Lord of the Earth," as the Chinese say.

   Last year it still looked as if the world was moving in the direction of peace, prosperity and freedom, as Clinton said in a key San Francisco speech. Now it looks like what a Chinese saying calls "dangers lurking from all four directions."

   Outcome:
   

   The prediction is correct. Even the timing was off by only two weeks.

   The Basis for the Prediction was: "There is a good chance that a Pakistani defeat in the Kargil fighting could again trigger a political revolution in that country."

   This part of the prediction also is correct. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lost political control last June when he went to Washington and, under pressure by President Clinton, agreed to withdraw Pakistani forces from Kashmir. Subsequent to this Pakistan was roiled by increasing domestic trouble, notably the killings of Shi'a Muslims by Sunnis especially in the violence-ridden Sind region and its huge chief city, Karachi.

   The coup and the new ruler, General Perwez Musharraf, have been welcomed by Pakistani public opinion. But the challenges facing him are daunting: the economy is in terrible shape, socio-political murder is rife and international distrust as great as never before. The latter arises mainly out of fear of an Islamic fundamentalism that is entrenched in neighboring Afghanistan and spreading fast in Pakistan including the armed forces which General Musharraf heads. Facilitating the spread of fundamentalism is the often observed new reality that the Pakistan-Afghanistan border no longer exists. Since the same people, Pathans/Pushtun, live on both sides, Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province is becoming a conduit for trade and influence going both ways.

Sidebar: The Terrain Between Kargil (Indian Kashmir) and Skardu (Pakistani Kashmir) "Many people are saying the war is over," Indian Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani told a gathering of Hindu right-wing activists in New Delhi. ``I say no, it is not over. The military operations will continue until the eviction of the last Pakistani intruder.'' (AP 6 July 1999) Jamaat-e Islami [leading Pakistan opposition party --- FS] condemns Kashmir sell out at Nawaz-Clinton parley. Addressing a large meeting of Muslims in Atlanta, Georgia, Sunday, the Jamaat leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed said that Nawaz Sharif's declaration to use Islamabad's good offices for the withdrawal of the entrenched mujahideen in Kargil was against the larger and basic national interests. (Lahore, July 5) The Bharata Janata Party (BJP) said it almost was a war-like situation and the entire nation stood as one. The Vajpayee Government had a firm grip on the happenings and would defeat the evil design behind the intrusion by Islamabad-backed infiltrators, party spokesman J P Mathur said. (New Delhi, May 27).