Brinksmanship is back

India and Pakistan balance an old conflict and a new weapon

By Wolf Blitzer

(CNN) -- Kashmir's history can be traced back more than 2,000 years. Nestled in the foothills of the Himalaya mountains, it's the oldest society of south Asia. The Persian poet Sheikh Sadia once said of Kashmir, "If there is any heaven on earth, it is here."

But much of heaven on earth has turned into hell.

Tens of thousands have died in fighting between India and Pakistan.

Now, it's feared the disputed territory of Kashmir -- wedged between India, Pakistan and China -- could be the flashpoint for something much worse, something the world has not seen in more than 50 years, a nuclear war.

The so-called line of control that separates Pakistani and Indian in disputed Kashmir, say senior U.S. officials, is now the most dangerous spot on earth, given the long-standing tensions between the two countries and the fact that both now have a demonstrated nuclear capability.

India surprised the world, including the CIA, with the detonation of nuclear devices. Two weeks later, Pakistan followed suit. Both countries celebrated their membership in the nuclear club. And the United States began to worry.

Together, these two south Asian countries possess enough nuclear firepower to kill tens of thousands of people, enough to blanket the region, and much of the world, with radioactivity.

"Our estimate is that India has about 300, 310 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium," says David Albright, an arms control expert. "That's enough material to make about 65 nuclear weapons."

Senior U.S. officials say the situation is more unstable than the nuclear threat during the height of the Cold War. Then, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had thousands of missiles aimed at each other. The sheer number of weapons served as a deterrent.

But India and Pakistan have fewer nuclear warheads, which experts say either side could wipe out with a first strike. That places a "hair trigger" on the sub-continent's nuclear stockpiles: Strike first, or risk not getting the chance to fight back at all.

Add to those nuclear tensions the U.S. intelligence community's assessment of the impact of a planned American missile defense system and it is an accelerated arms race.

China, the largest nuclear power in the region, would be capable of building 200 additional warheads by 2015.

India, and then Pakistan, would, in turn, feel the need to also step up nuclear production -- raising the stakes in the region.

"I think our concern is not so much about accidents or things happening inadvertently, but rather a cycle of step-by-step deliberate decisions that would lead to an escalation and it's the sort of taking one step up the ladder of conflict and a response by the other side that creates a potential for crisis, that creates the greatest danger," says Jim Steinberg, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor.

The tension over who should control Kashmir, India or Pakistan is as old as the countries themselves.

In 1947, Britain, under pressure from the Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, gave India its independence through a partitioning of the country.

Pakistan was carved out of British India to give Muslims a separate homeland from the mostly Hindu India.

Because of its largely Muslim population, Pakistan expected to control Kashmir. Instead, it was ceded to India by its local ruler, setting the stage for decades of war.

In the 53 years since, Pakistan and India have had frequent border conflicts and have fought three all-out wars.

Now, the people of Kashmir are struggling for independence from India. And the Pakistanis have been quick to provide support to what they call their "Muslim brothers" in Kashmir.

"This is a point, a place on earth where the probability of war, and war which can escalate into nuclear war, is very high," says nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodboy.

India has the third largest military force in the world, with 1 million troops.

In contrast, Pakistan's military is roughly half that of India's. U.S. military officials say the Pakistani military is well-trained but low on funds, and their operational readiness is weakened.

That explains, in part, why Pakistan refuses to do what Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh says India has done: Rule out a first strike of nuclear weapons.

"No first use, no first use," says Singh. "India will never be the country to employ nuclear weapons in any offensive mode."

Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Satter says his country has no such luxury.

"Historically, nuclear weapons have been conceived as a deterrence to aggression," says Satter. "Therefore, if one was to completely rule out the use of nuclear weapons, they would lose their deterrent value."

There's another worry, nuclear experts say, that neither India nor Pakistan has the fail-safe mechanisms or even proper intelligence about each other.

"The fact that missiles take three to five minutes to cross from one side to the other makes it impossible to correct mistakes should they occur on either side," says Hoodboy.

"Well, you know, unfortunately you have the two militaries on both sides who basically have major control over the nuclear programs in the two countries," says Pakistani expert and author Ahmed Rashid. "They don't know each other, there's no contact between them."

"In the next ten years or so, if as long as that, there is going to be a war," says Hoodboy. "And so there is, I feel, a great need for the United States to be involved and to stop this immense catastrophe from happening."

Today, the United States has a closer relationship with India than with Pakistan. A huge economic market, India is expected to have the largest population in the world within 20 years.

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan has deteriorated since the Cold War when they worked together to reverse the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan.

"I think there is a deep sense of betrayal and anger to the United States because immediately after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the U.S. literally walked away from both Afghanistan and Pakistan and within six months the U.S. had imposed very severe sanctions on Pakistan, and I think that's had a lot to do with radicalizing society and the army, making it more anti-U.S. and anti-West," says Rashid.

The number of Islamic religious schools, called madrasas, in Pakistan has grown. Twenty years ago, there were 500; today there are about 9,000 madrasas, which have become a fertile training ground for a new generation of Islamic fighters.

The young boys spend virtually all day memorizing the Koran and the other major teachings of the prophet Mohammed.

"We provide religious training for discipline, respect, cooperation, equal justice," says Pakistani spiritual leader Moulana Abdula Haq, the founder of the largest madrasas in Pakistan.

Haq has high regard for Osama Bin Laden, branded by the U.S. as the world's most notorious terrorist. Haq endorsed Bin Laden's 1998 fatwa -- a religious order or edict -- calling on Muslims to kill Americans wherever they may be found. That makes him a hero to Haq and his students.

"He has sacrificed everything for the nation and raised a voice for the nation's independence," says Haq.

Add Islamic fundamentalism to a Pakistan with a shaky economy and a history of political instability, and the potential ramifications are enormous.

Najam Sethi is the outspoken editor of the Friday Times, an independent weekly newspaper published in Lahore, Pakistan.

"If Pakistan tilts into chaos, if political Islam seizes political power as Islam did in Iran, as Islam has done in Afghanistan, if that comes to pass, then the nuclear weapons will no longer be in the hands of pro-West or moderate forces in Pakistan," says Sethi. "Then what happens? We've got to start thinking of that."

At dusk, there is a ceremony designed to symbolize their mutual hatred. Every evening, both countries repeat this choreography. There's an angry glare, a reluctant handshake, disdain and the slamming of the gates.

Nuclear expert Michael Krepon believes both sides must change.

"Unless and until Pakistan carries out a basic reassessment of their Kashmir policy, it's going to be real hard for the United States to repair the relationship with Pakistan," says Krepon. "India also has to reassess its Kashmir policy because that's a failure and a lot of Indians know it's a failure."

The United States, India and Pakistan agree the two nations need to resume peace talks and end the military brinksmanship over Kashmir.

"We're back from the brink we were on around July 4th of last year when there really was a danger of an escalating confrontation between the two sides. But it's always present; it's always a danger that you have to worry about. We will be there to help but they have to take the steps to deal with their problems," Steinberg says.