Two sides of the coin on the subcontinent

Many commentaries on the current face-off between India and Pakistan are predicated on the dishonest notion of moral equivalence between the antagonists. But naive attempts at balanced hand-wringing are both foolish and counterproductive. Morally equating India and Pakistan is as wrongheaded as equating self-defense with suicide bombing or President George W. Bush with Osama bin Laden. Chic evenhandedness may be the currency of relativism, but applying it to the real world is both repugnant and intellectually bankrupt.

India has been repeatedly counseled to restrain itself and to open diplomatic negotiations with Pakistan. Forgotten are Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee's two summit overtures to Pakistan in the last three years. Pakistan's response to these peace initiatives is telling. The first in 1999, a year after the nuclear weapons tests, was rewarded by a Pakistani invasion into Indian-held Kashmir orchestrated by General Pervez Musharraf. The second, last summer, was rewarded with attacks on Kashmir's state assembly and the Indian parliament by terrorist groups operating freely in Pakistan.

Although Musharraf rounded up some terrorists in January, almost all of them were released only two months later, just before the snow melts in Kashmir. This revolving door would make Arafat proud. Meanwhile, India has shown restraint during all three wars with Pakistan-- occurring in 1948, 1965, and 1999--over Kashmir. In the 1999 invasion, India showed great restraint by promising not to cross the line of control established in Kashmir in 1972 and committing to a no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy to avoid nuclear escalation. Pakistan, however, has recklessly issued threats that it may use nuclear weapons first.

Although Pakistan has called for a plebiscite in Kashmir, this call is mordantly ironic and devoid of any meaning since a military junta has used coups and sham referenda to abrogate the ability of Pakistanis to hold free and far elections. Were a plebiscite to be held in Kashmir, Pakistan would export these same tactics, just as it has exported terrorism to the region. Meanwhile, India has remained democratic since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1947.

Pakistan's national character explains, but cannot justify, its behavior towards India. Pakistan's military has ruled the country for most of its history and has stifled democracy in the past. In 1980, East Pakistani parties won Pakistan's elections, but Pakistan's military junta barred the victors from forming a government, thus kindling a movement for East Pakistani independence. In eight months in 1971, in a horror belying Pakistan's pretense of Islamic fraternity, the Pakistani military killed 800,000 East Pakistanis and forced 10 million refugees to flee. India prepared to intervene in order to stop this horrendous genocide, but Pakistan struck first, attacking Indian airbases and starting a war. After two weeks, East Pakistan was freed and became Bangladesh. India seized about 5,000 square miles of West Pakistan and captured 90,000 prisoners of war but relinquished this for an empty promise from Pakistan that future conflicts would be resolved through negotiations.

Asking India to show restraint and diplomacy while dealing with terrorists, their sponsors and their harborers is farcical and suicidal. Whether Musharraf is unable or unwilling to stop the terrorists operating in Kashmir is unimportant. If it is the former, he is irrelevant. If it is the latter, he is a clear and present threat. More than likely, he is little more than an Arafat in a suit-and-tie, masking radical Islamic fundamentalists bent on breaking up India behind his sartorial splendor.

The bottom line is that Pakistan is spawning ground for terrorism. It has long given arms, supplies, training, money, and logistical support to terrorists that kill Indians. It has also coordinated its attempts to break the Indian union with terrorists by sponsoring secession movements in several Indian provinces. Moreover, Pakistan's support if the United States in the war on terror is at best far overstated and at worst a facade masking Pakistan's betrayal of the United States. Pakistan supplied weapons to the Taliban, its creation, even after the United States started bombing in October. Pakistan airlifted hundreds of fighters out from a besieged Kunduz last November and may have given bin Laden shelter and medical treatment.

While fighting an enemy such as this, India should be allowed to apply the Bush doctrine: Those who harbor, arm and export terrorists are themselves terrorists and should be eliminated. The United States should assist India in countering the threat posed by this state sponsor-of-terrorism by cutting off aid and neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear weapons, the number and hazard of which will grow if ignored. Continued inaction while being held at nukepoint will only embolden other terrorist groups. Expediency should not trump principle, because terrorism anywhere threatens freedom everywhere, a lesson learned in the tears of Sept. 11.