Looking Down the Barrel

Kirat Chand lives on one of the hottest spots on the globe, the disputed border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Life is never tranquil in his Galar village. Troops on either side continually take potshots at each other. These days the situation is nothing less than explosive. On Dec. 23, Pakistan lobbed an 81-mm mortar into Chand's courtyard, the first time such heavy ordnance has been used in the area since 1971. The mortar landed in mud and failed to detonate. Now army engineers are trying to extricate it, whacking around the shell with heavy pickaxes. "If that thing had burst," says Chand, observing from a few feet away, "nothing would have survived."

In the final weeks of 2001, the entire subcontinent became an unexploded bomb. The antagonistic neighbors geared up their war machines to a level not seen in 30 years. Colossus India ranged tanks and troops in strike formations along the border, deployed warships in the Arabian Sea and moved medium-range missiles—capable of carrying nuclear warheads—closer to Pakistan. A plan was publicized to pull camouflage tarps over the stately Taj Mahal to protect it from air raids. Vulnerable Pakistan moved troops and hardware from its border with Afghanistan, where they were supposed to be stopping fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, to its Indian border, although it did so without publicity. Both countries have said explicitly over the past month that they were ready to go to war. It would be their fourth major conflict in a half-century. And this time each side is nuclear armed.

Would it come to war? The Bush Administration worked desperately to head off that possibility, with Secretary of State Colin Powell at one point camping in his office to work the phones to Islamabad and New Delhi. The last thing Washington needs as it strives to complete its goals in Afghanistan is a separate, new war in the region. That would distract Pakistan, whose cooperation is essential to the American strategy in Afghanistan, as well as complicate the fortunes of its leader, Pervez Musharraf, who has proved a handy partner to the U.S.

At the same time, the U.S. war against terrorism has actually helped set the stage for a new conflagration on the subcontinent. The proximate cause of the current tensions was the outrageous Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament complex in New Delhi by suspected Muslim rebels who India claims were tied to Pakistan. India's response to the assault was conditioned by America's reaction to Sept. 11. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee immediately equated the attack to the Sept. 11 devastation in the U.S., blamed Pakistan for backing terrorists, demanded that Musharraf crack down on them and made plain that the alternative was war. Late last week the two leaders met at a regional conference in Kathmandu and even shook hands—significant in tense times—but they were still far from resolving the crisis. Musharraf talked of distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters, while Vajpayee said he would welcome friendship as long as Pakistan prevented terrorists from "mindless violence" in India.

The Sept. 11 comparison has been strenuously promoted by India. "Dec. 13" is now accepted parlance among Indian politicians and journalists, even if the analogy is a stretch; 14 people, including the five attackers, were killed that day, and despite the apparent intentions of the assailants, the Parliament was left standing. Still, in the post-Sept. 11 environment, India finds itself on a new moral plateau. Its government has vehemently protested Pakistan's active support of armed insurgents—which is well known, even if Islamabad has denied it. In the past, the world paid little attention. The U.S. war on terrorism changed that. "It's a different world now," Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes told TIME. "Sept. 11 made the U.S. realize the damage that a couple of terrorists can cause." While fearful that New Delhi's military maneuvers would set off a new war, Washington—to avoid hypocrisy—had to mute its protest. Though feeling protective toward its new pal Musharraf, Washington pressed him to rein in the militants.

So far, Musharraf is doing just that, buying what Washington assesses will be a cooling-off period of several weeks. "We now have a breathing space," says a senior Bush Administration official. However, it remains unclear whether Musharraf's actions will appease India sufficiently to reverse the escalation toward war. Clearly, neither side wants to unleash its ultimate arsenals. "Nobody is going to use the weapon," says Fernandes. But, notes a State Department official, "it's a question of unintended consequences. You never knew where it would end up, and you always knew they had nuclear weapons."

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