"The
Kashmir Time Bomb"
"'Look,' he said, 'I don't know what you're worried about. You can die crossing the street, hit by a car, or you could die in a nuclear war. You've got to die someday anyway.'" (Celia W. Dugger)
News and commentary on the ominous conflict between India and Pakistan.
September 2002
"Indian Hindu Temple Under Siege, 29 People Killed" (Thomas Kutty Abraham, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/24)August 2002
"Nothing is sacred" (The Times, 2002/08/07)
"Hindu pilgrims killed in Kashmir attack" (BBC News, 2002/08/06)July 2002
"Religious Riots Loom Over Indian Politics" (Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/07/27)
"Mr Greenway, please listen..." (Francois Gautier, Rediff, 2002/07/21)
"Gunmen Disguised as Holy Men Kill 24 in Kashmir" (Ashok Pahalwan, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/07/13)
"Al Qaeda thriving in Pakistani Kashmir" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/07/02)June 2002
"Stepping Back From the Edge" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/06/14)
"India plans war within two weeks" (Rahul Bedi, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/06/06)
"Eyeball to Eyeball, and Blinking in Denial" (Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/06/02)
"'They can't see that disaster would overwhelm them'" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/06/02)
"India and Pakistan on the Brink" (George Perkovich, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/06/01)
"Pakistani President at the Fulcrum of Crisis" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2002/06/01)
"U.S. citizens urged to leave India" (Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times, 2002/06/01)May 2002
"This isn't posturing - we're on the brink of a nuclear war" (Ahmed Rashid, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/31)
"How the world could end" (M.J. Akbar, The Spectator, from the 2002/06/1 issue)
"U.S. Tells Pakistan To Stop Militants" (Alan Sipress and Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2002/05/31)
"The Most Dangerous Place in the World" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2002/05/30)
"Taliban, al-Qaeda linked to Kashmir" (John Diamond, USA Today, 2002/05/29)
"Triangle of Tension: India, Pakistan and the United States" (STRATFOR, 2002/05/28)
"Taliban and Qaeda Believed Plotting Within Pakistan" (James Dao, The New York Times, 2002/05/28)
"Militants storm Kashmir army camp" (BBC News, 2002/05/14)
"The Kashmir Time Bomb" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/05/10)March 2002
"A Modest Proposal From the Brigadier" (Peter Landesman, The Atlantic, from the March 2002 issue)January 2002
"Pakistan's Constitution Avenue" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/01/20)
"1,430 Being Held in Pakistan as Part of Terror Crackdown" (Erik Eckholm and Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/01/15)
"This time, India means business" (Richard Beeston, The Times, 2002/01/03)December 2001
"India on alert after parliament shootout" (CNN.com, 2001/12/13)
"Indian Hindu Temple Under Siege, 29 People Killed" (Thomas Kutty Abraham, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/24)
"Gunmen hurling grenades and wielding AK-47s stormed a Hindu temple in western India on Tuesday, killing 29 men, women and children and trapping others inside as Indian commandos laid siege to the building. The attack in Gandhinagar, capital of the western state of Gujarat where at least 1,000 died in Hindu-Muslim bloodshed earlier this year, stoked fears of fresh communal unrest. Police said more than 70 people were injured and at least 25 people were trapped inside the Akshardham Temple complex along with between two to four unidentified gunmen. ... Without naming Pakistan, [Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani] implicitly pointed a finger at Islamabad by saying that "the enemies of the country" were using the attack to shift attention from disputed Kashmir. State elections are currently under way in Indian Kashmir. "I see in this a very deliberate design," he told reporters.""Nothing is sacred" (The Times, 2002/08/07)
"Islamic terrorists in Kashmir appear determined to pile outrage upon outrage. Yesterday’s killing of eight Hindu pilgrims came less than a month after the slaughter of 28 residents of a shantytown in Kashmir by militants disguised as Hindu holy men. On Monday gunmen killed six staff at a Christian school in Pakistan, claiming to be avenging Muslim deaths in Palestine, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Militants whose own children’s education is steeped in the culture of war are taking that conflict directly into the schools and holy places of their perceived enemies." (See also: "Hindu pilgrims killed in Kashmir attack" (BBC News, 2002/08/06))"Hindu pilgrims killed in Kashmir attack" (BBC News, 2002/08/06)
"At least 13 people have been killed in attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir. Nine people died and 37 were injured after a camp of Hindu pilgrims at Nunwan, near the resort town of Pahalgam, was attacked by suspected Islamic militants. One of the militants was also killed. A few hours later, three people died in a gun battle north of Srinagar. The Hindu pilgrims were attacked in the early hours of Tuesday morning, while they were sleeping at a camp on their way to a shrine in the foothills of the Himalayas. Gunmen threw a grenade and then opened fire on the travellers.""Religious Riots Loom Over Indian Politics" (Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/07/27)
"Here in the adopted hometown of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the great apostle of nonviolence, Hindu mobs committed acts of unspeakable savagery against Muslims this spring. Mothers were skewered on swords as their children watched. Young women were stripped and raped in broad daylight, then doused with kerosene and set on fire. A pregnant woman's belly was slit open, her fetus raised skyward on the tip of a sword and then tossed onto one of the fires that blazed across the city. The violence raged for days and persisted for more than two months, claiming almost 1,000 lives. It was driven by hatred and sparked by a terrible crime: a Muslim mob stoned a train car loaded with activists from the World Hindu Council on Feb. 27, then set it on fire, killing 59 people, mostly women and children. ... But official statistics provided in June by the Police Department, now under new administration, show that the state of Gujarat - the only major one in India governed solely by the Bharatiya Janata Party - failed to take even elementary steps to halt the horrific momentum of violence. ... Police officials and survivors said in interviews that workers and officials of the party and the council were complicit in the attacks and, in some cases, instigated the mobs. "This was not a riot," one senior police official said angrily. 'It was a state-sponsored pogrom.'""Mr Greenway, please listen..." (Francois Gautier, Rediff, 2002/07/21)
Gautier responds to a column by H.D.S. Greenway i Boston Globe, in which he equated Hindu extremism with Muslim fundamentalism: "You speak of a Hindu genocide on the Muslims in Gujarat, but you forget to mention that the rioting in Gujarat against Muslims was in reaction against the murder of 58 innocent people, 30 of them being women and children, who were burnt alive in a train by a Muslim mob, only because they were Hindus. In fact, Hindus have been for centuries at the receiving hand of Muslim extremism: some historians put at 25 millions the number of Hindus killed during 10 centuries of bloody Muslim invasions in India, a genocide probably unparalleled in world history. Today this persecution goes on: there were 400,000 Hindus in 1947 in the valley of Kashmir and barely a few hundred today. Thousands were killed in the late eighties by Islamic fundamentalists, trained, armed and financed by Pakistan and the rest fled the valley. Today Hindus have become refugees in their own country, a first on this planet." (See also an interview with Francois Gautier: "The Rediff Interview/Francois Gautier" (Rajeev Srinivasan, Rediff, 1999/02/12): "This said, the massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese. In the words of another historian, American Will Durant: 'the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilisation is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying within'.")"Gunmen Disguised as Holy Men Kill 24 in Kashmir" (Ashok Pahalwan, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/07/13)
"Gunmen disguised as Hindu holy men shot dead at least 24 civilians, including a child, in a mainly Hindu slum in Indian Kashmir Saturday, police said. The attack is likely to stoke tensions between neighboring nuclear powers India and Pakistan, locked in a military standoff for more than six months over the disputed Himalayan region that has raised fears of war. Five men opened fire near a makeshift Hindu temple in Jammu - Jammu and Kashmir state's winter capital - in the evening attack before fleeing. The army has launched a manhunt. At least 12 women were among the dead and 20 people were injured, police said, adding the toll was likely to rise. ... No one has so far claimed responsibility for the killings and there was no independent confirmation it was carried out by Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir.""Al Qaeda thriving in Pakistani Kashmir" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/07/02)
"A week-long investigation uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda and an array of militant affiliate groups are prospering inside Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, with the tacit approval of Pakistani intelligence. ... Mohammad Muslim, the regional chief of Pakistan's powerful Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agency, says there are no Al Qaeda cells operating inside Kashmir. But he bitterly denounces what he calls the US government's "war against Islam." "The US government destroyed the World Trade Center so that it would have an excuse to destroy Afghanistan," he says, drinking tea in the office of the regional police chief, who nods in full agreement. "After that, the US military killed tens of thousands of women and children in Afghanistan." ... In the '90s the ISI paid for Kashmiri guerrilla training camps to be moved into Afghanistan with the help of groups like Harakat ul Mujahideen. Now, these same jihad fighters are flocking back to Kashmir. ... Shabir Ahmed Madani, an armed activist with Harakat ul Mujahideen, whose own mountain redoubt is reached by a small cable car that swings precariously across an immense gorge, says his organization has played a vital role in moving thousands of Afghan and Arab fighters across northern Pakistan and into Kashmir.""Stepping Back From the Edge" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/06/14)
"India and Pakistan this week stepped back from the brink of nuclear war over Kashmir. In a world where so many conflicts only seem to get worse, it's important to understand why this one got better. It might even provide a few lessons for dealing with the world's most maddeningly intractable problem - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ... Musharraf, in particular, deserves credit. For my money, he is the most courageous and visionary leader on the world scene today. What Musharraf decided was that, in the end, India and Pakistan were fighting a common enemy in the remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban that had infiltrated Kashmir. This common enemy was responsible for last December's bombing of the Indian parliament, just as it was responsible for recent bombings of a church in Islamabad and a French group in Karachi. The same common enemy threatened two countries that were on the brink of war. That insight made all the other diplomatic moves possible. What's more, I'm told by one of Musharraf's close military advisers that the Pakistani president concluded that elements of his own intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, were in part responsible for the rising wave of terrorism that was afflicting both Pakistan and India.""India plans war within two weeks" (Rahul Bedi, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/06/06)
"India's military is seeking final authorisation to invade the Pakistani side of divided Kashmir in the middle of this month to destroy the camps of Islamic militants. The planned campaign would be similar to the American attack in Afghanistan, in which air strikes would be followed by ground assaults by special forces transported by helicopter, military sources said yesterday. ... As Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, strengthened his warning to Britons to leave the region, military planners in Delhi expressed confidence that a war would not boil over into a nuclear exchange. ... One officer said he believed there was only the "slimmest chance" of nuclear weapons being used. "We will call Pakistan's nuclear bluff," he said. It [the nuclear factor] cannot deter us any more.""Eyeball to Eyeball, and Blinking in Denial" (Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/06/02)
A report from New Delhi on "nuclear denial" in India and Pakistan: "While many Indians and Pakistanis say there will be no nuclear war, they often paradoxically acknowledge the possibility in the next breath, exhibiting also the unspoken assumption that these two hugely populous nations - India has a billion people and Pakistan 150 million - would survive. Mr. Santhanam, the Indian physicist, said his hunch is that a war would remain conventional, but he also said, "If we're hit, we'll know how to handle it. If there's a nuclear attack, India's policy is severe retaliation." Asked at a public meeting in Islamabad last week if there could be a nuclear catastrophe, General Beg, the former Pakistani army chief, said more people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that millions have been killed by small arms fire. "Look," he said, 'I don't know what you're worried about. You can die crossing the street, hit by a car, or you could die in a nuclear war. You've got to die someday anyway.'""'They can't see that disaster would overwhelm them'" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/06/02)
"The British and American Governments are seriously contemplating a doomsday scenario in which there is an unstoppable momentum towards a nuclear war in India and Pakistan that would kill millions of people and make millions more homeless across the sub-continent. ... The sombre warning on travel from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to all British citizens in India came after similar stark advice given last week to Britons in Pakistan. ... According to diplomatic and defence sources, the judgment made after Mr Straw's return to Britain from India and Pakistan was that neither President Musharraf of Pakistan nor Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, appeared to be taking into account the sheer scale of the disaster that would follow if nuclear weapons were used, and that they seemed incapable of visualising the disaster that would overwhelm their countries as a result. It was even said that George Fernandes, the Indian Defence Minister, and his senior officials seemed to have made the cold calculation that in the event of a nuclear war, India would survive and could then march into Pakistan.""India and Pakistan on the Brink" (George Perkovich, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/06/01)
"Nuclear war is a real prospect in South Asia; to prevent it, the U.S. must relentlessly press and encourage Gen. Musharraf to act decisively against jihadi organizations and rogue elements in Pakistan's intelligence service. These elements threaten the future of Pakistan, the Indian subcontinent, and the U.S. campaign against terrorism. The stakes are so high that the uppermost levels of the U.S. government need to clarify that the war on terrorism in Kashmir is its top priority in relations with Pakistan. ... As unthinkable as it seems, Washington must reprioritize its battles in the war on terrorism. Failure to combat terrorism in Kashmir can lead to nuclear war, the collapse of Pakistan and the rupture of U.S.-Indian relations. These threats pose deeper and more lasting danger to the U.S. than the possible loss of Pakistani help in hunting al Qaeda remnants.""Pakistani President at the Fulcrum of Crisis" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2002/06/01)
"Just how much the Pakistan government helps the Muslim guerrillas is at the heart of the current standoff along the border, where a million Indian and Pakistani troops are facing off in a confrontation made all the more dangerous by the nuclear weapons each side possesses. In his remarks this week, Mr. Bush suggested endorsement of the long-held Indian view of the Kashmir conflict: that the insurgency in India's only Muslim-majority state is not a homegrown uprising against Indian rule, but a guerrilla war orchestrated and controlled by the Pakistani government. ... By many accounts, American and Indian, General Musharraf's attempts to rein in the militants have been either futile or cosmetic. The infiltration persists, and most of the 2,000 or so militants detained late last year and early this year are now back on the streets. ... "I personally don't feel that Musharraf can control these groups," said Tariq Rahman, a professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. 'There are groups that want to embarrass him; they have their own version of Islamization.'""U.S. citizens urged to leave India" (Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times, 2002/06/01)
"The State Department, citing the rising risk of war between India and Pakistan, yesterday urged 60,000 Americans in India to leave the country and authorized the departure of nonessential diplomatic staff and all dependents. The U.S. move was followed by other Western nations, including Britain, Canada and Germany, which, like the United States, had already significantly reduced their embassy and consulate personnel in Pakistan because of militant attacks against Westerners.""This isn't posturing - we're on the brink of a nuclear war" (Ahmed Rashid, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/31)
"The world is changed after September 11 and the international war against terrorism. India is furious that the world has ignored Pakistan-based Islamic extremists, who continued with their bloody terrorism in India and Kashmir even after September 11. India says it cannot join the world in fighting al-Qa'eda when the world ignores these attacks on its own soil. ... The Pakistani militant groups that fight in Kashmir also fought for the Taliban and al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan. The 29 Arab al-Qa'eda operatives arrested in Pakistani cities last month were being given sanctuary and safe houses by the largest Pakistani group fighting in Kashmir. All these groups are now closely interlinked, no matter how the Pakistani state tries to differentiate between them. ... So all these factors have come together to produce a crisis which is unprecedented, even in the constantly crisis ridden sub-continent. The danger of war is greater than it has ever been. No one side is seeing the logic of a climb-down. ... The need for international intervention has never been greater, not just to prevent a war but to force the two sides finally to resolve the Kashmir dispute.""How the world could end" (M.J. Akbar, The Spectator, from the 2002/06/1 issue)
"The conflict between the two is a war between frustration and hypocrisy. India is frustrated by its inability to settle its longest and most cancerous problem - the status of Kashmir, which has an independence movement; and Pakistan has spent more than 50 years using this problem to spread the cancer across the region. Given the values of our age, it is perfectly in order that hypocrisy should have the edge.""U.S. Tells Pakistan To Stop Militants" (Alan Sipress and Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2002/05/31)
"President Bush used his toughest language yet yesterday in demanding that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf choke off the incursions of Muslim militants into Indian-held territory that are threatening to trigger open warfare between the nuclear-armed rivals. Bush announced that he was dispatching Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to India and Pakistan next week, underscoring the administration's deepening concern that the military standoff is on the brink of war and diverting Pakistani troops required for flushing out fugitive al Qaeda fighters.""The Most Dangerous Place in the World" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2002/05/30)
"Like two aged wrestlers fighting on a cliff, India and Pakistan are locked together, rolling ever closer to the edge. But their ancient hatred is no longer a matter only for them. The risk of a nuclear battle, however improbable, makes Kashmir everybody's problem. Right now it's the most dangerous place in the world. These pathetic old fighters must be pulled apart, and soon. Yes, that probably does mean intervention by the West, though Russia seems eager to help as well, which is useful. ... But who in the West wants that - it's just the old colonialist-imperialist power trip, isn't it? And who's supposed to pay for all this peacekeeping, anyway? The answers to those questions are also questions: What's the alternative? Do you have a better idea? Or shall we just stand back and keep our postcolonial, nonimperialist fingers crossed? Will it take mushroom clouds over Delhi and Islamabad to make us give up our ingrained prejudices and try something that might actually work? In the immortal words of the Spice Girls, 'Will this déjà vu never end?'""Taliban, al-Qaeda linked to Kashmir" (John Diamond, USA Today, 2002/05/29)
"Al-Qaeda and Taliban members are helping organize a terror campaign in Kashmir to foment conflict between India and Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and foreign diplomats say. The strategy of the terrorist network and its allies in the ousted Afghan government: Relieve pressure on al-Qaeda members hiding in western Pakistan by forcing the Pakistani government to move troops searching for the terrorists to the eastern border with India. Destabilize the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf by raising tensions with India and pushing Musharraf to crack down on domestic Islamic militants who support al-Qaeda." (See also: "Pakistani Intelligence Officials See Qaeda Peril in Their Cities" (Howard W. French, The New York Times, 2002/05/29): "Senior Pakistani intelligence officials said today that recent terror attacks pointed to worrisome links between local extremists and fugitive Qaeda leaders who - far from being concentrated along the Afghan border as American officials contend - have filtered across the country into major cities. Rather than Afghanistan, these officials warned in a rare interview, the battle at hand may be one for Pakistan itself, a nuclear-armed and traditionally unstable Muslim nation of 145 million people that has become a pivotal ally in America's campaign against terrorism.")"Triangle of Tension: India, Pakistan and the United States" (STRATFOR, 2002/05/28)
An analysis of the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan: "India's calculus is not the same, however. If it is accepted that Pakistan represents a permanent strategic threat to India, the question of war is not whether but when. Given the current political situation and correlation of forces, if this isn't the perfect time, what is? If war is inevitable, it is difficult to see how India can act without taking out Pakistan's nuclear capability. It is unclear how India could take those out without nuclear weapons, or without U.S. precision-guided munitions, Special Operations and other covert forces. ... We are therefore in an extraordinarily difficult crisis. The three players each have strategic interests that simply don't mesh. If Washington convinces New Delhi to wait, it will have to convince Islamabad to stay in India's crosshairs and India to put up with intolerable attacks. If India proceeds, it essentially would save al Qaeda by shattering Pakistan. In the event of complete mismanagement, a nuclear exchange costing millions of lives is a genuine possibility.""Taliban and Qaeda Believed Plotting Within Pakistan" (James Dao, The New York Times, 2002/05/28)
"Virtually the entire senior leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been driven out of eastern Afghanistan and are now operating with as many as 1,000 non-Afghan fighters in the anarchic tribal areas of western Pakistan, the commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan said today. ... But on a second level, General Hagenbeck was expressing the view, widely held in Washington, that it is up to Pakistan to move more aggressively against the Qaeda forces, which are considered particularly fierce and well disciplined. He estimated that 100 to 1,000 non-Afghan Qaeda fighters were in the tribal areas, including Chechens and Uzbeks, as well as Uighurs from western China.""Militants storm Kashmir army camp" (BBC News, 2002/05/14)
"At least 30 people have been killed in Indian-administered Kashmir after suspected separatists attacked an army camp. The dead include women and children as well as the three attackers. The militants, reportedly wearing army uniforms, also fired on passengers aboard a bus they had been travelling on before going into the camp. ... It coincides with a visit to Delhi by US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca aimed at cooling tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. ... "It is precisely this type of barbaric terrorism that the international war on terrorism is determined to stop", she was quoted as saying.""The Kashmir Time Bomb" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/05/10)
"What would Pakistan, a state with nuclear weapons and sophisticated missiles to deliver them, do in response to an Indian military move? Pakistan is vague about its nuclear doctrine, so it's hard to be sure. But many analysts fear Pakistan's missiles are targeted against Indian cities, and that facing an Indian conventional onslaught, it would launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on, say, New Delhi, that would leave millions dead. India would probably retaliate with its own nuclear weapons, probably dropped from bombers - killing many millions more. Welcome to what a senior State Department official calls "the other crisis." It's difficult these days to focus on anything other than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with its grisly daily death toll. But in this case it's essential. Because if the India-Pakistan situation gets out of hand, the death toll could run, not to dozens, but to tens of millions.""A Modest Proposal From the Brigadier" (Peter Landesman, The Atlantic, from the March 2002 issue)
"Aman, in his early fifties and now retired, is lithe and gentle-natured and seemed to me slightly depressed. He works in a small office behind Zardari House, where, as the secretary to Benazir Bhutto in Islamabad, he coordinates Bhutto's efforts to return to Pakistan and regain its prime ministership. ...
We both looked up at the painting in silence. "A rocket ship heading to the moon?" I asked.
Aman tipped his head to the side. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "No," he said. "A nuclear warhead heading to India."
I thought he was making a joke. Then I saw he wasn't. I thought of the shrines to Pakistan's nuclear-weapons site, prominently displayed in every city. I told Aman that I was disturbed by the ease with which Pakistanis talk of nuclear war with India.
Aman shook his head. "No," he said matter-of-factly. "This should happen. We should use the bomb. ... We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities - Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta," he said. "They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people. They should fire at us and it would all be over. They have acted so badly toward us; they have been so mean. We should teach them a lesson. It would teach all of us a lesson. There is no future here, and we need to start over." ...
I asked him if he thought he was alone in his thoughts, and Aman made it clear to me that he was not.
"Believe me," he went on, "If I were in charge, I would have already done it."
Aman stopped, as though he'd stunned even himself. Then he added, with quiet forcefulness, 'Before I die, I hope I should see it.'""Pakistan's Constitution Avenue" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/01/20)
"Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's Jan. 12 speech to his nation has the potential - the potential - to be the kind of mind-set-shattering breakthrough for the Muslim world that has not been seen since Anwar el-Sadat's 1977 visit to Israel. Why? Because for the first time since Sept. 11, a Muslim leader has dared to acknowledge publicly the real problem: that Muslim extremism has been rooted in the educational systems and ruling arrangements of many of their societies, and it has left much of the Muslim world in a backward state. But he also laid out a road map for doing something about it - not just throwing extremists in jail, but confronting their extremist ideas with modern schools and a progressive Islam. Ever since Sept. 11 it has been clear that we need a war within Islam, not with Islam, and at least one leader has finally declared it. It would be nice if some Arab Muslim leaders now did the same.""1,430 Being Held in Pakistan as Part of Terror Crackdown" (Erik Eckholm and Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/01/15)
"The Pakistani government has rounded up 1,430 people across the country in recent days and sealed 390 offices of militant groups as part of a widening crackdown on extremists ordered by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a senior police official said today. ... The Pakistani authorities have identified a total of 3,000 people, including its Kashmiri sector, they want to detain, the official said, adding that both India and the United States should clearly see that General Musharraf was serious about his pledges.""This time, India means business" (Richard Beeston, The Times, 2002/01/03)
"From ordinary working men and women, up to Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Prime Minister, there is a strong consensus that the Kashmiri insurgency, which has been dragging on for a decade, with support from Pakistan, must be tackled with the same determination that the United States has shown in its campaign against the Taleban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11. 'You can't fight terrorism in Afghanistan and spread it in Kashmir. This can't go on,' Mr Vajpayee said yesterday, addressing a conference of mayors in Lucknow, his home town. 'You can’t see terrorism in two ways, it can’t be seen in pieces, it has to be seen in totality . . . Pakistan is also bound by United Nations Security Council resolutions which are against terrorism.'""India on alert after parliament shootout" (CNN.com, 2001/12/13)
"India has pledged to crush terrorism after an unprecedented suicide attack on parliament that put the country in a state of high alert. A fierce 30-minute shootout came just after lawmakers adjourned inside the New Delhi building. No group has claimed responsibility so far for the assault, which left at least 12 people dead. ... The region is tense because of the Afghanistan situation and continuing terrorist activities in the northern state of Kashmir, which India blames on its nuclear neighbor, Pakistan Within hours, Vajpayee went on national television and vowed to crush terrorism. "This was not just an attack on the building, it was a warning to the entire nation. We accept the challenge," Vajpayee said."
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