The
following KHALISTAN CALLING newsletter has been published in the leading
Punjabi-English newspaper of the Sikh diaspora, Surrey
Canada-based CHARHDI KALA, (Issue of January 23-29, 2002 : Vol. 18 ; No.
04). (http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/) It was also published
in the fourth week of January, 2002, in the Vancouver-based PUNJAB GUARDIAN,
Toronto-based SANJH SAVERA, Calgary-based SIKH VIRSA and numerous
other Punjabi/English weekly and monthly publications which cater to the three
million strong Sikh diaspora in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. It can be
viewed on the Khalistan Affairs Centre web site: (http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/main/k_calling/kc01232002.htm)
The Overseas Sikhs, unlike their 20 million
compatriots captive in India, are free and prosperous and they are determined -
as they believe it is their destiny and pray for it every day; Raj
Karay Ga Khalsa; Sikhs will rule
- to carve a sovereign, democratic, egalitarian Sikh buffer state of KHALISTAN
in South Asia, stretching from the Jumna river on the East to the
Pakistan border on the West, China on the Northeast and Kashmir on the North.
Khalistan Calling newsletter dated
January 23, 2002.
* Please E-mail newsletter to a friend, opinion
maker & / or a newspaper.
====================================================================
India is
provoking a war with Pakistan, which will destroy Sikh Punjab,
if it
continues to divert the Chenab river a NO NO
under
the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty and International Riparian Law
----------
Hindu
judges at the Indian Supreme Court taunt the Sikhs
with
their SYL canal order which decision was
synchronized
with the January illegal diversion of the Chenab river water
-----------
Washington
Post article by a distinguished American paints a grim picture
- for Sikh
Punjab and New Delhi - of an Indo/Pakistan nuclear war
BY
Dr. Amarjit Singh
956-National Press
Building, Washington DC 20045 USA
Tel: 202-637-9210 :: Fax: 202-637-9211
INTERNET SITE INFORMATION:-
Web Site: http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/
E-mail Address:
Washington DC: Jan. 23, 2002: Appended below is an excellent article
on the current Indo/Pakistan nuclear confrontation headlined, "It
doesn't start in Kashmir, and it never ends well," (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6820-2002Jan19.html) which was
published on the front page of the OUTLOOK section of the Washington
Post, on Sunday January 20, 2002, which ridicules the talkative Indian army
chief General 'Sunder' Padmar-abhan for his ignorance about nukes and
endorses, in a way, Sikh survival concerns highlighted consecutively in the
past three issues of the weekly Khalistan Calling which were published
in the month of January 2002. The Washington Post article is a MUST read
for all Sikh compatriots. Please also see: http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/main/k_calling/kc01162002.htm
and http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/main/k_calling/kc01092002.htm
and http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/main/k_calling/kc01032002.htm
.
The
January 20 Washington Post article is written by a distinguished retired
American Airforce officer, Colonel Sam Gardiner, visiting professor at
the prestigious National Defence University & American Air War College, who
has 'fought' in more than 20 'war-games' between India and Pakistan, over the
past decade, each one of which took the form of two-week-long simulations
played out by American war colleges to educate American officers about South
Asian military balance. Col. Gardiner's views endorse, in many ways, the Sikh
survival concerns/dangers and the suggestion that the ageing, morally
repugnant, 'Brahmin-caste Bombers' who misrule India are either mad or
completely ignorant about matters nuclear. These Hindu-fundamentalists risk the
future of the Sikh homeland, its holy shrines, its people (and nearly a million
Sikhs living in New Delhi) on 'the throw of a dice' brinkmanship policy that
hopes (nay day-dreams) that: a) Pakistan, because of the current Afghanistan
situation, and heavy American presence in the area, will not dare to bare its
superior 'nuclear teeth' even if provoked and, b) the Sikhs busy in
electioneering, and their genuine concern about the confrontation on the
Indo/Pakistan border, will not notice the 'legalization' of the future theft by
Haryana state of their life-giving river water via the SYL canal a la the
Indira Gandhi canal which has been stealing Punjab water for non-riparian
Rajasthan for decades and water-logging fertile farmlands in South Western Sikh
Punjab in the process.
The
above expose` should explain the raison d'etre of two recent (obviously
synchronized) simultaneous illegal actions of the Swastika-worshipping
Hindu-fundamentalist Vajpayee government, taken under cover of the artificial
tension on the Indo/Pakistan border, which effects the life-giving water supply
for the twenty million Sikhs in the Indian Punjab and ninety million
inhabitants of the Pakistani Punjab. The first action is the unconstitutional
Indian Supreme Court SYL canal anti/Sikh verdict handed down after waiting for
nearly two decades for an opportune moment by two Hindu judges, (Justice G. B.
Pattanaik and Justice Ruma Pal) last Tuesday which orders the state of Punjab
to open the SYL canal which will carry Punjab's rivers water to non-riparian
Hindu-majority Haryana free of charge. The second very risky action (the French call it casus belli, a war provoking event),
and as illegal as the first, is the January 2, 2002, secret decision by the
Indian government not only to divert and block the
water of the River Chenab allotted to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus
Waters treaty but to start construction of an illegal so-called hydro/electric
project at Baghliar on the Chenab river from where water can be
transferred via a hidden tunnel into the Ravi, a la the Himachel Pradesh tunnel
which pumps Beas water into the Sutlej.
It
is obvious the ignorant and swollen-headed morally repugnant Brahmins in Delhi
have not calculated the financial loss Indian investors will suffer at the
Bombay Stock exchange, or the fear that will haunt the demoralized Indian
people, or the stampede of foreign investors out of India, if Pakistan wakes
up from its slumber and steels its spine, (or 'hawks take over that country)
and decides to send a 'peaceful message' via an unarmed missile off Bombay in
the international waters of the Arabian Sea in retaliation for the illegal
diversion of the Chenab river a casus belli if there was one. The
Brahmin fundamentalist rulers in Delhi also under estimate an aroused Sikh
nation who may decide to do something - like reducing the flow of water to a
level where only the Sikh farmers in Rajasthan are serviced - to the wretched
Indira Gandhi canal which has caused water logging to the once fertile
farmlands of South Western Sikh Punjab which has driven many a Punjabi Sikh
farmer to suicide! Please read on:
===================================================================
Per kind Courtesy
of Washington Post
"It Doesn't Start in
Kashmir, and It Never Ends Well"
By Sam Gardiner
"If
we have to go to war, jolly good." Those were the words India's army
chief, Gen. Padmanabhan, used at a news conference on Jan. 11 to describe the
prospect of war with Pakistan.
I'm
sorry, general. Maybe you were trying to show resolve, or prove that you're
tough. But I can tell you from experience, war between
India and Pakistan would not be jolly good. It would be very bad.
I've
fought in more than 20 "wars" between India and Pakistan. I've seen
skirmishes turn into conflagrations. I've seen ferocious attacks across the
border, and defending divisions worn down. I've seen Pakistani commanders turn to
nuclear weapons to fend off advancing Indian divisions. I've seen New Delhi --
a city of more than 11 million -- destroyed and hundreds of thousands of its
residents killed in a flash. I'm sorry, Gen. Sunderajan Padmanabhan, I've seen
nothing that came close to jolly good.
How
have I seen these things? In "wars" that took the form of games
played out by American war colleges and military services over the past decade
-- ever since the United States began to seriously worry about the consequences
of a clash between India and Pakistan. These are not fanciful intellectual
exercises, but serious, two-week-long simulations used to educate American
officers, choose weapons systems they will need for the future and better
prepare the United States to respond to complex international conflicts. In the
past, these "games" have proven to be extraordinarily good
prognosticators of events. In the case of India and Pakistan, the outcome was
nearly always catastrophic. And even after the carnage, the fundamental
problems dividing the two nations remained unresolved.
In
each of the simulated conflicts in South Asia, some incident provoked the two
countries into putting their forces into a high state of readiness along their
border. Sound familiar? A recall by Pakistan of its troops participating in
peacekeeping operations throughout the world was on our list of actions that
would indicate a conflict was near. My own sense of the gravity of the current
situation was sharpened when Pakistan recently took this action.
On
the balance sheet, India has a stronger military force. India can field more
than a million soldiers; Pakistan around 650,000. For both countries, most of
these troops are infantry. But in a major attack, the decisive forces are the
armor and mechanized divisions, which have large concentrations of tanks.
Although the balance still favors India, in this area the gap is not as great
and Pakistan could overcome some of the disadvantage by the wise use of its
units.
That
means striking quickly, and striking first. To wait is to be at a disadvantage.
When it became apparent in the simulations that conflict was inevitable, one of
the sides -- usually Pakistan -- always initiated combat. That's why face-offs
such as the current one make me extremely nervous.
The
historical root and most visible cause of tension between India and Pakistan
has been Kashmir, the region controlled by India but claimed by Pakistan as
part of its territory. But in previous real-life wars and in the
"wars" I've seen, the important fighting doesn't take place in that
contested area. The mountains there just don't offer a good place to fight a
decisive battle. Both sides look to other parts of the 2,000-mile border that
divides them.
The
critical terrain for both sides is the Punjab valley, where key north-south
roads lie. On the Indian side of the border, these roads are the link to
Kashmir. On the Pakistani side, they link the southern part of that country
with Lahore and Islamabad. These are strategic lifelines for both nations.
In
the earliest games I took part in, before we thought Pakistan possessed nuclear
weapons, the conflict tended to move in a relatively benign pattern, based in
part on the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973. I recall a discussion with a
colonel on the faculty of the Pakistani defense college who told me that he had
his students study that war. I assumed he was interested in how the Israeli
army surrounded the Egyptian forces toward the end of the fighting. To my
surprise, he said they were interested in Egypt's strategy. They thought it the
best example of a weaker country that was defeated in war but achieved its
policy objectives.
The
lessons of Egypt in 1973 were not lost on Americans playing the role of
Pakistani leaders in past years' games. They would engage in some direct
fighting, but would also carry out cross-border attacks in areas where Indian
forces were not present in strength. It was a take-territory-and-go-to-the-U.N.
strategy. It was a pattern repeated from the earlier wars between the two
countries.
But
war games try to imagine the future, and the U.S. military's view of South
Asia's future changed around 1993, when we began to assume that Pakistan would eventually
acquire nuclear weapons. (Pakistan did not test a nuclear weapon until spring
1998.) That changed the strategy of the Pakistani leadership. Conventional
forces were used differently, and the wars certainly ended differently.
Since
then, these war games have unfolded in much more lethal ways. An initial attack
by Pakistan generally cuts the Indian link to Kashmir. India responds against
the Pakistani units in India, but rushes its main forces toward Lahore --
Pakistan's second-largest city, and the country's cultural and intellectual
center. The Indian teams assume, probably correctly, that, as they advance,
Pakistan would be forced to withdraw from its forward positions.
As Indian units advance toward Lahore, which lies just 18 miles from
the border post, Pakistan realizes the war is reaching a critical point. If the
Indians take the city, they will split Pakistan in two and the Pakistani
nuclear weapons will be of little or no use. The Indians must be stopped and
must be stopped quickly.
In
our scenarios, the only way for Pakistan to do that is by using nuclear weapons
on India's forces inside Pakistan. Strange as that sounds, using nuclear
weapons on your own territory has some political advantages, and bears some
similarities to NATO strategic options in place during the Cold War. The world
would see it as a defensive measure. India would be seen as the aggressor.
It
takes three or four nuclear weapons to stop the massive Indian attack. Pakistani
forces also suffer heavy casualties from the blasts and radiation, but the
Indian advance is halted.
India
is left with a dilemma. Does it retaliate against Pakistan with nuclear weapons?
Should it hit Pakistan's cities in its initial strike? That would only further
cede the moral high ground to Pakistan. India picks four or five Pakistani
military targets for its first use of nuclear weapons, but the attacks also
cause significant civilian casualties. In the simulation, Pakistan responds by dropping a nuclear bomb on New Delhi.
The
casualties from this exchange vary depending on the exact targets and the
winds, but they would be measured in the millions. If Pakistan drops a
relatively primitive nuclear weapon of 20 kilotons, 50 percent of the people
living within a one-mile radius of the blast would die immediately. Fires would
ignite as far away as two miles, and blast damage would extend to buildings
three miles from the point of impact. People 3 1/2 miles away would suffer skin
burns and radiation could extend hundreds of miles, depending on the weather.
The
participants in these games took no pleasure in unleashing their weapons of
mass destruction. To them, it represented failure. In 1998, when India and
Pakistan first tested nuclear weapons openly, many strategists said Cold
War-style deterrence might prevent war. Yet the danger is that Indian and
Pakistani leaders still believe it possible to have a small conventional
conflict. Soviet and American leaders didn't think that way during the Cold
War. As a result, Soviet and American forces never traded shots across the Iron
Curtain the way India and Pakistan have exchanged fire across the Line of
Control in Kashmir. NATO and the Warsaw Pact never went to the level of
mobilization in Europe that has emerged between India and Pakistan over the
past month.
What
can the United States do? One of the objectives of the war games is to
understand how the United States might make a difference, even if it means
using our own combat capabilities. After my 20 wars, I still don't know how to
do that once hostilities begin. Any use of U.S. forces would mean taking sides;
three-sided wars are not possible. The United States would have to side with
the weaker party, meaning Pakistan. But that still might not prevent a
cataclysmic outcome.
A
far better strategy would be for the United States to insert itself strongly
before armed conflict begins, and get India and Pakistan to realize what they
must do. We're not going to quickly solve the underlying problem of Kashmir,
but we can press the two sides to stand down, start talking and recognize how
easily they can stumble forward to disaster. In the war games, we did not call
a timeout and allow the two countries to negotiate. India and Pakistan
exchanged messages through their actions. The current cycle might be broken if
the United States can bring about a pause for talks.
A
few years ago, I ran a war game with my sophomore class at George Mason
University. With a little instruction on doctrine and weapons, the two teams
managed to fight their way to the all-too-typical results. After the Pakistani
team used nuclear weapons on Indian combat formations, I stopped the game and
asked them to reflect on the experience.
I
heard standard answers. "If we would have moved more divisions to the
point of attack, we would have been able to hold out," said one student.
"A heavy air strike as the first move would have changed things,"
said another. Toward the end of our discussion, one young woman in the class
asked a question I've never been able to answer: "Why
don't they do this kind of game with the leaders of the countries so they won't
let it happen?"
Now that, my dear general, would be a jolly good idea.
(Sam
Gardiner, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, is a visiting professor at the Air
War College and the National Defense University. His opinions do not
necessarily reflect U.S. government policy)
KHALISTAN
ZINDABAD : LONG LIVE KHALISTAN
Thank you for browsing
http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/
Internet site of
Khalistan Affairs Centre
956-National Press
Building, Washington DC 20045 USA
Tel: 202-637-9210 ::
Fax: 202-637-9211
Permission
to quote or reprint material from this site is granted in advance as long as
you make the proper acknowledgment
* Please E-mail
to a friend, Think-Tank, Library, opinion-maker & or newspaper/Magazine.
=====THE
END=====