Both moves are seen as heralding a new Indian ground offensive aimed at dislodging the anti-Indian force that entered Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistani-held `Azad' (free) Kashmir and now occupies strategic heights in Dras and Kargil sectors, several thousand meters beyond the Line of Control (LOC) demarcating Pakistani and Indian Kashmir. Indian troops were "consolidating recent gains from where further operations will be launched soon," army spokesman Brig Mohan Bhandari told a press meet Saturday.

On May 31 India agreed in principle to a visit by Aziz, but the two sides have been unable to settle on a date.The only explanation given by India for rejecting June 7 was that it was `inconvenient.'

Speaking in Lahore shortly after India had announced the `postponement' of Aziz's visit, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif warned events could easily spin out of control. "Chances of a war between Pakistan and India cannot be ruled out," declared Sharif. Kashmir was the principal issue in two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought in their 52 years of independence.

Earlier last week, Pakistani foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmad made an implicit threat of a nuclear strike against India, when he declared that Pakistan would not refrain from using `any weapon' in its arsenal to uphold its territorial integrity.

A combustible political situation

Throughout the 1990s, Indian security forces have been engaged in a fierce struggle against Pakistani-supported, and in many cases Pakistani-armed, Kashmiri secessionists, some of who favour an `independent Kashmir' and others who seek a `united' Kashmirwithin Pakistan. Nevertheless, the current Indo-Pakistani tensions over Kashmir are the most acute since the early 1990s.

Whatever the exact composition of Kashmiri secessionist force now fighting on the Himalayan ridges of Kargil-Dras region, its size and the inhospitable locale of its operations are such that it had to have had Pakistani logistical support.

India has taken great exception to a statement made by Aziz last week that the LOC is ill-defined, seeing it as a thinly-disguised justification for the intrusion and an indication Pakistani troops may overtly intervene to prevent the destruction of the anti-Indian force in the Kargil-Dras region.

A Pakistani general on the LOC frontline, where Indian and Pakistani forces are regularly exchanging artillery fire, told journalists India and Pakistan are already at war. "There was a war in 1948, 1965, 1971 and now it is in 1999," affirmed Brigadier Nusrat Khan Sial. "Let them attack and we will retaliate."

Adding to the combustibility of thesituation is the weakness and crisis of both the governments. India's coalition government, which is led by the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party, is a caretaker regime that remains in power only until India goes to polls next fall. Pakistan is in the throes of a wrenching economic crisis.

The Indian political opposition has seized on statements by defence minister George Fernandes to try to prove that they are more hawkish on the Kashmir conflict than the government. To the dismay of Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee and home minster LK Advani, Fernandes said Sharif may not have known about the incursion in Kashmir. Then Fernandes indicated India might be willing to allow `Pakistani intruders' safe passage back to the other side of LOC. The main opposition party, the Congress, has accused Fernandes of "being more concerned about the well-being of the aggressors than the defence of the nation."

When the Kashmir incursion first emerged as a major issue, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) demanded toknow how the government had allowed such a situation to develop, suggesting the government might have ignored early warnings in the belief that it could reap political gains out of a confrontation with Pakistan. But the CPI (M) and the other major Stalinist parliamentary party, the Communist Party of India (CPI), have quickly fallen into line. The CPI (M) has strongly criticised Fernandes for his "irresponsible" statements.

The role of the United States

An important factor in India's decision to delay opening negotiations with Pakistan may well be the position US has taken on the Kashmir crisis. For decades Pakistan has been a close ally of US. The US ambassador to India, Richard Celeste, has made several statements which, in light of traditional US views on south Asia, are highly favourable to India. "The US," Celeste told the Sunday Observer, "will never interfere (in Kashmir). Never. Kashmir is an issue which can only be settled by peaceful talks between the two countries, without anyintervention. The US realises this."India is also claiming that letters US President Clinton sent to both the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers Saturday support India's position. The text of the letters have not been made public, but Indian spokesmen claim that in calling for a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir dispute, Clinton urged Pakistan to respect the LOC.

As is the case with other regional conflicts, the Western media present the Kashmir dispute as rooted in primordial communal and national-ethnic identities. In fact, the Kashmir conflict is a legacy of India's colonial domination and has endured largely part because it has become enmeshed in imperialist power politics.

Up until weeks before the August 1947 transfer of power, British maintained that princely states would revert to their `natural state' of independence, when British (as opposed to Princely) India became independent. Encouraged by the British stance, the Maharaja of Kashmir maneuvered in the hopes of transforming his principalityinto an independent state. But when Pakistan fomented a rebellion against him, the Hindu ruler agreed to Kashmir's accession to India.

In the decade prior to India's independence and partition, Indian National Congress enjoyed close relations with Kashmir's largest political organisation, the Kashmiri National Conference. It had begun as an exclusively Muslim organisation -- Kashmir's royal family and landowning elite on which it rested were predominantly Hindu-but, under the influence of Congress, the National Conference evolved a non-communal program of democratic and social reform. Yet Kashmir's accession to India was ultimately realised not through a mass mobilisation from below, but rather through a deal with the Maharaja which was predicated on Congress having become the successor -- or at least principal inheritor-of the state machinery of British Raj.

Subsequently, the Kashmir conflict became embroiled in Cold War, with US emerging as the primary military and economic backer of Pakistan. Asignificant factor in the rise of an armed secessionist movement in Kashmir over the last decade was the political and military support the US gave to the Muslim fundamentalist opposition to the Soviet intervention in nearby Afghanistan.

Bordering China and former Soviet Union, Kashmir is of great strategic value. But the Kashmir question is also bound up with the political- ideological foundations of bourgeois rule in both Pakistan and India. Unlike Bangladesh, Kashmir, the only majority Muslim state in India, was considered an integral part of Pakistan project from its inception in the early 1930s.

In recent years, Kashmiri conflict has become a vital means for Pakistani rulers to counterbalance mounting national-ethnic tensions within Pakistan as privileged layers among the Pathans, Baluchis, Sindhis, and the Urdu-speakers who moved to Pakistan from north India following partition challenge Pakistan's predominantly Punjabi elite for greater power. Having proven incapable of providing a progressivesolution to India's myriad problems, the Indian ruling class has increasingly turned to Hindu communalism. This retrograde ideology serves to deflect social tensions and provides an alternative `national' ideology to discredited Congress `socialism' with which to resist a growing number of national-ethnic and communal insurgencies that, because of endemic poverty and gross social inequality, have been able to gain popular support.

Excerpted with permission from WSWS