A million men wait for war

The heat falls like a hammer on India and Pakistan, and the land is everywhere scorched and brown. It is a terrible time to wait for battle.

It is not war yet - the vast armies are not exactly bayonet to bayonet - but they are very close and very tense. Their grim trade in artillery shells sounds like some thunderous prelude to a bloody showdown.

Around a million men are massed along a frontier that was drawn 55 years ago and has been a cause of tragedy and disaster ever since, an enduring source of danger in the subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world's population. The soldiers' fathers fought each other in the war of 1965, their grandfathers in 1947.

It is not war yet - but there are sound reasons to be pessimistic about the outcome of this latest stand-off.

The relationship between the two countries, mutual mistrust at best, has never been worse.

India's exasperation with Pakistan is close to volcanic. Millions of Indians ache to see their neighbours taught a brutal lesson. They are sick of the terrorists who emerge from bases in Pakistan to launch shooting and bombing rampages in India.

Tempers raged again after three suicide gunmen killed 31 people at an army base last week. The outrage stoked anger that followed the terrorist attack on the Parliament in New Delhi. And that raid followed a suicide bombing of the assembly building in Kashmir.

As ever, beautiful Kashmir is the poisonous heart of the quarrel. In 1947 the departing British partitioned India, the jewel in their imperial crown, to satisfy Muslim leaders who insisted that Hindus and Muslims could not share one country.

Pakistan was invented as a homeland for the sub-continent's Muslims. But the ruler of Kashmir, who had the choice of joining India or Pakistan, chose India, to the unassuagable fury of Pakistan's leaders. They assumed that, because Kashmir was predominantly Muslim, it would join Pakistan. Hence the war of 1947-48, when Pakistan tried to wrest it from India, and the war of 1965.

More than half a century on, the quarrel is not simply about a delectable territory. It never was. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, envisioned India as a magnificent secular state embracing religious and linguistic diversity, with Kashmir emblematic of his daring concept.

Pakistan, though, believes it was robbed in 1947. It sees Kashmir as the unfinished business of British partition. In a country uncertain of its identity - where democracy withered and military rule prospered, where Islam has not been a reliable cement - Kashmir is a unifying grievance.

Pakistan has supported the insurgency in Kashmir, which has been a chronic sore for a dozen years and has cost thousands of lives. India's actions in this conflict have often been harsh.

But as far as India is concerned, Kashmir is not negotiable and it certainly does not want outsiders interfering.

And the hard fact is that, even if India made a gift of Kashmir to Pakistan, Pakistan's huge insecurities would not be resolved. It would still have to shape an identity and purpose.

India piled massive military force on to the frontier after the terrorist attack on parliament in December. Since then about half a million men, tanks and artillery have kept up the pressure on Pakistan's forces.

Commanders move their troops constantly to keep them battle-ready.

India's belligerent bristling, and its artillery bombardment of Pakistani positions, is intended to pressure Pakistan's ruler General Pervez Musharraf into stopping the militants based in camps in Pakistan crossing into Kashmir. But it is probably difficult for him to do so.

Having squared up, the leaders of India and Pakistan will not want to lose face. But another terrorist attack would place a heavy public pressure on the Indian military to strike. The generals, however, know that even a limited letting off of steam could run out of control.

The problem is made worse because, in neither India nor Pakistan, is there a leader of any stature. Certainly there is no statesman.

India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, leads the BJP Hindu nationalist party that came to power exploiting anti-Muslim bigotry. The present border crisis has deflected much of the criticism of his government that followed the recent anti-Muslim pogrom in the state of Gujarat.

Pakistan's General Musharraf, meanwhile, presides over an economic crisis while Islamic extremists challenge him with terrorism. He cannot control the groups linked to al Qaeda.

The threat of another India-Pakistan war is a nightmare for the United States. Washington must now take the diplomatic lead. The Americans have several thousand troops based in Pakistan and need Pakistan's help in fighting the war against terrorism. No one forgets that both India and Pakistan have the nuclear capability to devastate each other.

Curiously enough, the weather may provide a breathing space. In a few weeks the monsoon will arrive over the embattled frontier. Before the rains come, everyone is uncomfortably hot and irritable. But the arrival of the towering clouds is a wonderful time.

The monsoon is a benediction. It takes command of Heaven and Earth, sends drenching cooling rains, swells the rivers and creates great muddy marshes. These are good for rice and bad for tanks and infantry.

Monsoon rains and the reality of confrontation could yet persuade the armies to step back from the abyss.