The Cauldron of the East

The Twentieth Century has been the most violent in recorded history with the emergence and use of increasingly lethal weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. Over this turbulent era characterised by a number of unforeseen technological and unpredictable ideological shifts, the persistence of primitive political structures and sectarian and national antipathies have in no measure been diluted by the processes of what we divergently conceive of as ‘civilisation’.

If anything, the New Millennium promises even greater turbulence, with a vast proliferation of weapons and their increasing accessibility to the forces of disorder, including particularly, the growing armies of terrorists that plunge region after region into the emerging patterns of low intensity warfare.

Within this context of escalating international instability, an unfortunately wide variety of reasons make South Asia one of the most volatile regions in the world. Radical shifts in the geopolitical architecture of Asia place the Indian sub-continent – comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan – in a unique position within the emerging international order. The most obvious and consequential of these changes is, of course, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and with it, the destabilisation of cold war equations, and the haphazard emergence of a variety of conflicting international ‘strategic interests’ that have exacerbated tensions between nations in this region, and that have contributed enormously to destabilisation in neighbouring Afghanistan as well. A devastated Afghanistan is today a source of great present and potential anxiety to South Asia. These factors have further compounded influences emerging from the religious ferment and ethnic entanglements of Muslim Central Asia. And sporadic support, both moral and material, from the West as well as from hostile neighbours, to various brands of sub-nationalism in South Asia, has added strength to the rash of terrorist movements and insurgencies that plague the region.

Adding urgency to the mounting sense of crisis and instability is the emergence, in May 1999, of two nations within the region – India and Pakistan – as nuclear weapon states. Their history of belligerence and outstanding territorial disputes, an accelerating weapons and missile programme, the conflicting demands and pressures of their newly acquired nuclear status, and the enormous economic and internal security challenges within each of them fuel the prospects of continued and heightening violence. The confrontation over the intrusion of Pakistani regulars and mercenaries into Kargil in May-July 1999 have underlined the deepening dangers of these present instabilities and historical animosities.

Adding to the uncertainties of surviving in a ‘bad neighbourhood’ is the inscrutability of China’s intentions and its past hegemonistic predilections. China’s increasing belligerence in South East Asia; covert, though waning, support to some regional insurgencies; the backdrop of the 1962 War against India; the continued occupation of, and oppression in Tibet; and a systematically mischievous policy of arms sales and sensitive technology transfer give adequate grounds for concern to the countries of the sub-continent – though some of them may temporarily benefit from some of these policies.

This backdrop acquires particular significance in the context of fundamental changes that have taken place in the very nature of conflict between nations. Strategic configurations are no longer expressed in the traditional nomenclature of ‘external security threats’. While the nations of this region do have impressive conventional military capabilities arrayed against each other, and against their other neighbours, it is a fact that the danger of open warfare between nations has certainly diminished. The territorial and strategic ambitions, both of regional and extra-regional powers, are now translated into a range of ‘non-standard’, ‘irregular’ and ‘low-intensity’ wars that prey on domestic discontent.

Terrorism is at the very heart of this new paradigm of international conflict. It is, moreover, an increasingly popular ideology of conflict within nations, as discontented factions, disappointed with the attainments and impatient with the processes of democracy, obtain freer access to large arsenals of sophisticated small arms and explosives, as well as to the skills to use them, and the organisational techniques for their deployment. Indeed, the power, the weaponry, and the proficiency of terrorist groups throughout this region appears to be accelerating at a rate much faster than the countermeasures available to civilised society.

The combined impact of these international and internal factors is the veritable rash of terrorist movements and separatist insurgencies that has swept across South Asia in the recent past, the most prominent of which are Sikh and Kashmiri separatism in India, and the persistent insurgencies in its Northeastern states; Sindhi, Mohajir and Baluchi movements, as well as sectarian (Shia-Sunni) strife in Pakistan; and the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Gorkha question in Bhutan, the conflict between the Terai and Hill People in Nepal, and the Chakmas in Bangladesh are among the more obvious of the numerous other areas of emerging and potential strife within the sub-continent that have or are acquiring a terrorist dimension, and which could easily escalate into areas of low intensity warfare in the foreseeable future.

Another extremely disturbing aspect of the Indian sub-continent is that two of the three largest drug growing areas of the world are located on its periphery; as the region becomes an increasingly important transit route for the international drug trade, it is progressively drawn into the destabilising dynamics of organised crime and narco-terrorism, with hitherto unforeseen implications for peace and security far beyond the region.

These factors are superimposed, in this region, on societies deeply fragmented by their obsession with caste and community; and with linguistic, regional and cultural differences. Societies, moreover, which are enormously unequal and inequitable. Given the mixed administrative and political record of successive regimes in the various constituent countries, it is unsurprising that the manifestations of discontent in explicit conflict and violence have seen a continuous escalation over the last half-century.

Rapid technological change is adding to the complexity of the situation, as the implements of war are become more lethal, more difficult to detect, and more easily available. Societies, moreover, are becoming far more complex and less tolerant of intrusive policing methods.

The stability of South Asia, and the success and failure of initiatives for the resolution of existing conflicts will, in the 21^st Century, depend on the exploration of new ideas, ideologies and strategies that provide concrete and effective alternatives to violence as a means to political ends; and these alternatives must appeal, equally, to the establishment and to the alienated groupings that currently believe that violence is the only method to secure some relief within the prevailing system.