Too little, too late

Kashmir could become the world's most dangerous region - and the west's lack of interest is partly to blame
When the three men dressed in army fatigues boarded the bus, most of the passengers were asleep. They bought three tickets and sat down. It was only when the tourist bus approached Ratnuchak army camp near the Indian town of Jammu that the carnage started. The men shot dead six passengers and the driver before running amok inside the camp. They gunned down whoever they came across - women getting their children ready for school, the children themselves and army personnel.

India immediately held Pakistan "directly responsible" for the attack, in which 34 people died last week, and said it was determined to "punish" its nuclear rival. No one is sure how this latest stand-off will end, but the signs are ominous.

The assassination yesterday of a leading moderate Kashmiri separatist leader, Abdul Ghani Lone, plunges the region into further confusion. Lone was shot dead at an open-air rally in Kashmir's capital Srinagar, probably by pro-Pakistani hardliners.

Last weekend India expelled Pakistan's high commissioner to New Delhi, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. This modest diplomatic gesture fell well short of the swift military strike which many hardliners in India's ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party demanded. But many analysts believe a war has merely been postponed, most probably to September or October. Privately, India's generals admit the army needs a few more months to prepare.

At the border, where nearly 1 million troops from both sides have been dug in since January, Indian gunners are shelling Pakistani bunker posts. Thousands of villagers have fled. Pakistan is reported to be moving its Shaheen nuclear missiles into position.

The prospect of a conflict between the world's two newest nuclear powers has appalled London and Washington. The White House is rushing its heavy-hitting deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, to the region. Other senior officials are also piling in: the British chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, arrives in Delhi today, to be followed by the EU commissioner Chris Patten.

But this flurry of diplomatic activity is all a bit late. In recent years, the west has shown scant interest in Kashmir, where about 50,000 militants, civilians, and soldiers have died since the valley's Muslims launched a revolt against Indian rule in 1990.

Since last autumn, the US and Britain have struck up a shamelessly expedient friendship with Pakistan's suave military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, their ally in the battle against al-Qaida. They have chosen to overlook the fact that Gen Musharraf has continued to allow Pakistan-based militants to creep across the border into Indian Kashmir, despite his promises of tough action against "terrorists".

The west's disengagement from Kashmir and, as India sees it, its double standards on terrorism have brought the region to the brink of crisis. India claims Gen Musharraf has "suckered" the international community, by promising to rein in the jihadis while privately encouraging them. It has a point. In January Gen Musharraf locked up several thousand Islamist extremists. The following month he let most of them go.

India blamed last week's raid on Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based militant group that specialises in flamboyant suicide operations. Pakistan says it had nothing to do with the killings. But until recently Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the ISI, armed and trained militant volunteers in secret camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, close to the border with In dia. Pakistan still believes it was cheated out of Kashmir at partition.

Since joining the coalition against terrorism, Gen Musharraf has found himself caught between a cause that goes to the heart of Pakistan's Muslim identity and his desire for respectability among his new western friends. It has been a difficult tightrope to walk and Gen Musharraf, the most charmingly dextrous of dictators, is falling off. The situation is as dangerous as at any time since 1971, when India and Pakistan last went to war.

The west should convince Gen Musharraf to call off the jihad in Kashmir, or it will take back the generous loans given last year as a reward for dumping the Taliban.

Britain also needs to urge India to come up with a more creative response to the Kashmir problem, which is fuelled by political alienation and economic misery. The Indian establishment seems to believe the solution is to crush all opposition, rather than to offer political reform, development or meaningful autonomy. As a first step, the west must ensure that September's elections in Jammu and Kashmir are free and fair and not, as on previous occasions, rigged by New Delhi.

At the moment, though, nobody is in the mood to listen. "It ought to be possible to avert a war," a British diplomat in New Delhi said yesterday. "War would be an expression of frustration rather than an effective device." But Kashmir, rather than Ramallah, now seems the most dangerous spot in the world.

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