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In so far as the state of Jammu & Kashmir is concerned, it is evident that the situation has gone back to where it was in 1997. After the United Front assumed power at the centre in 1996, it took certain steps to assuage the embittered feelings of the Kashmiri people and create confidence among them that their days of woe, which they had been suffering since early 1990, were over. While the Lok Sabha elections could not be held in the state in 1991 along with the rest of the country, the Assembly elections held there in 1997 saw a big response from the people when more than 50 per cent of the electorate participated in the process.

The J&K populace thus came to believe that they would soon be able to enjoy a normal life, free from terrorist attacks, extortions and depredations. But the government's failure to take up developmental work in the state, generate some measure of employment for the jobless youth and provide a minimum of educational, health and other social services to the people, belied their hopes, hampering the process of overcoming their deep sense of alienation from the national mainstream. The central and the state governments as well as the major political forces operating in the state, will have to share the responsibility for this dismal failure.

This provided a god-sent opportunity to the ruling clique of Pakistan who intensified their attempts to create chaos in the Kashmir Valley and the adjoining areas like Jammu and Kargil. Now it is evident that the infiltration of armed Pakistan-trained militants in the Kargil sector was in fact meant to internationalise the Kashmir issue. This was part of a well-coordinated plan to engage the Indian Army in the Kargil sector and use this opportunity to infiltrate the mercenaries into the Valley. According to the J&K deputy director general of police himself, some 2,000 mercenaries, armed with sophisticated weapons and other materials, infiltrated into the Valley in this period. Their obvious aim was to create all-round chaos in the state and also arouse the people against India, in order to get secession of the state from the Indian Union. These mercenaries were trained by the Pakistan Army and the ISI on the same lines as they had trained the Taliban. How far these mercenaries can go to achieve their nefarious aim was evident from the recent attack in the Badami Bagh area of Srinagar.

COUP IN PAKISTAN

However, the mercenary attacks in the Kargil and other sectors were repulsed by the Indian Army jawans, though at a very heavy but avoidable cost. The whole story of Kargil, including the Vajpayee government's bungling and incompetence in detecting the infiltration in time and taking counter-measures, is now well known to our people and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that, just at the time the mercenaries present in the Valley were waiting for the green signal to go on the rampage, India's victory in Kargil derailed the Pakistani plan and forced the Nawaz Sharif government to withdraw his forces from the Line of Control. It was this Indian success that created discontent among the Pakistan Army as well as the mercenaries belonging to the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other fundamentalist outfits. And also eventually led to an army coup in which General Parwez Musharraf rounded up Nawaz Sharif and other key figures of his government and annointed himself the chief executive authority of Pakistan. Only the President, Rafiq Tarar, was allowed to continue in his job.

The overthrow of Nawaz Sharif, however, did not evoke any substantial opposition in Pakistan. The reasons are obvious. In the last National Assembly elections in Pakistan, the voter turn-out was as low as 25 per cent. But, having secured a big majority of seats, Nawaz Sharif thought he had a mandate to rule in an autocratic manner. He Farooq Leghari replaced by Rafiq Tarar; several Supreme Court judges dropped or replaced; and filled up the top Army posts with his confidants. At the same time, the condition of the recession-hit economy went from bad to worse; the debt trap went on tightening, and the people's living conditions became more and more excruciating. On the other hand, the Army and ISI budgets, already about one third of the country's annual budget, went on increasing, more so after the nuclear detonations following India's Pokharan II misadventure. It was no accident that immediately after the Pak nuclear detonations, Nawaz had had to impose an emergency in order to tide over the discontent.

It was because of such a situation that when Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by General Musharraf, there was virtually nobody among the embittered mass of people to shed a tear on his predicament. Most of the political parties of Pakistan welcomed his removal, though laced with the demand that democracy must be restored at the earliest. Even Jamaat-e-Islami, not a big force in electoral terms, began opposing the Musharraf regime only when the General praised Kamal Ata Turk of Turkey, which the Jamaat construed as Musharraf being bent on starting a secularisation drive in the country.

On his part, Musharraf began a drive to discredit the politicians by opening several corruption cases. He also tried to win over the common people by giving them some relief and supplying them essential commodities at slightly lower prices. This relief was of course not enough, but it did influence the thinking of the people whose conditions had been incessantly worsening under Benazir and Nawaz, no less because of the Fund-Bank-dictated policies of liberalisation and globalisation.

On the other hand, fundamentalist outfits also began to sing paeans to General Parvez Musharraf, thinking that they would now get all help from him in their bid to make Kashmir independent. The Badami Bagh attack shows that their optimism is not groundless. Their and the Musharraf regime's aim is still the same -- to create such a situation where the Kashmir issue can be internationalised -- though they may adopt slightly different tactics for the purpose.

US IMPERIALIST GAMEPLAN

However, while dealing with Pakistan, we can ignore the role of US imperialism vis-a-vis Kashmir only at our own cost. Right from 1953, the US has been taking a keen interest in Kashmir's independence and has been advocating the need of a plebiscite in the state in order to unsettle the settled fact of Kashmir's accession to India. All the US ambassadors to India have openly talked of this from time to time.

There is nothing surprising in this. An independent but pliant Kashmir, dependent on the US, eminently suits the latter's geo-political interests in the region. In case the US gets a foothold here, it can well try to dominate India, China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, though, to date, Pakistan has been pro-US and no cause of worry for the US. It is another matter that the Pakistani rulers have been oblivious of the real US game; while they want to merge Kashmir with Pakistan in the name of religion, the US wants to see Kashmir independent. Only a couple of months ago, the US Home Departmen submitted a report to the Clinton Administration in which it advocated the following in relation to Kashmir --

a) opening of borders between the state of Jammu & Kashmir and Pak-occupied Kashmir;

b) withdrawal of their armed forces from the Line of Control by both India and Pakistan;

c) holding of a plebiscite in both parts of the original Kashmir after five years; and

d) complete "freedom" to all groups to express their views in this duration. This, in effect, means giving the powerful imperialist media a free hand to influence opinion in favour of secession.

It will be noted that about two years back, the same formula was advocated by the former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, though in different language. It is this fact that encouraged her to try to curry favour with the US imperialists.

HEGEMONISTIC DRIVE

In such a world situation, India should have been doubly wary of US intentions though, unfortunately, the Vajpayee government has been acting to the contrary right since March 1998 when it first assumed power. Everybody knows that in this unipolar world today, the US is trying to impose it political and military hegemony over the entire comity of nations, and has been utilising all means and methods for the purpose.

There is enough evidence of this US drive. Even though there is no countervailing force in form of the Warsaw Pact, the US has expanded the NATO and has been using it to subjugate other nations. Yugoslavia has been the latest victim of the mad US drive at hegemonism. Here the US-led NATO forces bombed Yugoslav targets for 78 days, even though Russia and China, two of the permanent members of UN Security Council, openly opposed and condemned the aggression. Earlier, the US tried to subjugate Somalia and directly intervened there, though later it had to pull out its forces.

The US also tried to crush Iraq through war and is now trying to achieve the same goal through sanctions in the name of the UN. That the US-led war and then the sanctions have killed millions of the Iraqis, particularly children and the aged, is of no concern for the US imperialists. Even today, not only are the US and British aircraft bombing civilian targets in the so-called no-fly zones in north and south Iraq; they are also trying to block the contracts in the UN Sanctions Committee which Iraq has signed with other countries in order to procure food, medicines, industrial equipment, etc., under the UN-approved "Oil for Food" programme. This shows what scant respect the imperialists have for a world body like the UN and the world public opinion.

The US is also not ready to lift its criminal 37 years-old embargo against Cuba though on this issue it has suffered several defeats in the UN General Assembly. The role of the US in dismantling Czechoslovakia needs no mention. Even today the US is trying to secede Kosovo from Yugoslavia and has started showing "concern" for Chechnya. (The covert US support to secessionist forces in our own country too are well known.)

In the Far East, the US is egging on Japan to assume an aggressive role. And all this is apart from the wars against and interventions in other countries which the US has tried ever since the end of the second world war.

And now, according to a PTI report (The Pioneer, November 10) the US President has unfolded an ambitious plan covering the whole world. Speaking at Georgetown University, Clinton said his plan is to secure peace in the Balkans and the Middle East, "ease tension between India and Pakistan," resolve the Chechnya conflict, etc. He also said the US should play an "activist role" on a host of other issues including "non-proliferation, religious freedom, human rights, terrorism, debt relief for poor countries, and trade liberalisation." In short, they have drawn a whole list of the areas where the US will act as a self-appointed custodian of global affairs!

ABJECT DEPENDENCE

But all this appears to be of no concern to the Vajpayee government which is hell-bent on pleasing the US and keeping it on its side. This is totally contrary to the earlier, decades-old foreign policy of India which eminently suited the needs not only of India but of all newly independent, developing countries. Whatever little of the secret parleys between Jaswant Singh and Strauss Talbot has come to be known, is enough to show that in these one and a half years, India's abject dependence on the US has greatly increased, not only in economic matters but even in foreign and military policy spheres. Singh has spent most of his time in rushing to Washington or any other place where he may meet the US diplomats, and the same can be said of Brajesh Mishra who boasts of being closest to the prime minister. And now the military chief has left for the US to explore the possibilty of military cooperation between the two countries.

But all this is for what? In the vain hope that the US will favour India in her stand-off with Pakistan! This is the height of naivety. True, in its hegemonistic drive the US would like to have India on its side, but can it really write off Pakistan which has a great influence over the Islamic countries? Even the man on the street would not agree with what the Indian policy-makers are thinking. But it is this shrewd US game which the Vajpayee's men are underplaying.

In fact, by its foreign policy postures the Vajpayee government is only facilitating the US drive. India has been one of the founders of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which played a significant role in the liberation of several subjugated countries and enabled the developing countries to play a big role in the international arena. But the same NAM today stands paralysed and, despite the call from several quarters, the Vajpayee regime refuses to take steps to revitalise it so that it can regain its relevance. It is not for nothing that India's prestige in the world has greatly suffered.

Then, as late as in this very week the government took a patently wrong step by asking the SAARC Secretariat to postpone the SAARC summit. In an age when regional organisations are playing an important role (see the ASEAN where both Malaysia and Indonesia are members despite their mutual quarrels, and both have gained; in fact this importance of such organisations was what prompted the South Asian nations to form the SAARC), India's stand cannot be appreciated. In fact, SAARC was one of the fora through which the South Asian nations could intensify their efforts at mutual integration, mutually beneficial trade and people-to-people contacts. But, ignorant of the importance of regional organisations, the Vajpayee government has failed to discharge its duty of forging a congenial atmosphere in the subcontinent, though as the biggest country of this region India also has the biggest responsibility in this regard.