Book
Review:
War at the Top of the World: The Struggle
for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet
by Eric S. Margolis, Routledge, New York
"A new Great Game is afoot at the top of the world..." says Canadian
author Eric Margolis, a journalist for the Toronto Sun in his new book
on the geopolitics of the Himalayan region.
"The chain of mountain ranges, plateaus, and valleys that
begin in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and then sweeps 2,500 miles across the
Indian subcontinent to Burma, is fast becoming one of the globe’s most
volatile and dangerous geopolitical fault zones...
...Along that line, four nuclear-armed powers - China, India, Pakistan
and Russia- are locked in a long-term rivalry that may erupt into the first
major international conflict of the twenty-first century.”
Blending his first hand observations as a war correspondent with a historical
and strategic overview, (albeit with Eurocentrist distortions), Mr. Margolis
creates an informative narrative of geopolitical complexities in South
Asia and its key players. But most importantly, he captures the essence
of the geopolitical game-plan today, and points towards where Asia may
be heading in the context of present world developments.
Starting from present day events, and citing information that has not
been made public so far, the author makes the case that a grave danger
is brewing in this part of the world. For example, writing about the 1999
face off between India and Pakistan near Kargil, he remarks on just how
close the two countries were to an all-out war:
“India suffered at least 1,000 casualties in the fighting.
During the battles in Ladakh, senior Indian commanders put intensive pressure
on the government in New Delhi to launch a major land offensive in south
against Pakistan – in other words, an all-out war involving 1.5 million
soldiers.
Ominously, in June (1999), U.S. satellites showed ‘two strike corps’,
armor-heavy, multi-division offensive formations designed to slice through
Pakistan’s narrowest waist, were preparing to launch a major invasion of
Pakistan from Rajastan and Punjab.
Powerful units of the Indian Navy took up station within striking
range of Karachi, through which 90 percent of Pakistan’s trade passes,
ready to impose a maritime blockade and attack the smaller Pakistani fleet.
Intelligence sources in Washington and Islamabad told this author
that in late May and June 1999, Pakistan and India were ‘within hours’
of a massive war. Both sides put their nuclear strike forces on the
highest alert and, reportedly, began inserting fissionable cores into their
nuclear weapons. This crisis, whose full gravity was largely concealed
from the international public, was the most dangerous direct confrontation
between nuclear armed powers since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.”
Margolis also dwells on different aspects of the four-dimensional collusion
and contention between India, Pakistan, China and Russia around the territories
of Afghanistan, Tibet and Kashmir.
A war between India and Pakistan could very well draw China
into the fray. Pakistan, which is constantly menaced by attack from India,
is China’s closest and most important ally. A full-scale war between Pakistan
and India would most likely result in a Pakistani defeat, unless China
intervened in the Himalayas and Karakorams to support Pakistan. In fact
China has made clear it will not easily allow Pakistan, its sole “window
on the West”, to be defeated and possibly, broken up or reabsorbed by India.
The festering problem of Tibet, and the growing rivalry between India
and China over Burma and the Indian Ocean, are likely sources of potential
conflict. The collapse of Soviet Union reminds us that China and India
are also susceptible to a similar process of political and regional dissolution.
Disintegration of either great nation-state seems almost unimaginable,
yet so did the Soviet Union’s stunningly sudden collapse. National instability
in China or India would produce a geopolitical earthquake of enormous magnitude
across Asia.
Even more ominous, India and China appear on a collision course,
as their regional interests and strategic ambitions come increasingly into
conflict. Each superpower sees itself as the rightful dominant political
and economic power in Asia. Both nations are developing intermediate-range
nuclear arsenals clearly designed to fight a tactical or sub-strategic
war.
China and India are modernizing their huge ground forces, respectively
the world’s largest and second largest, and making them more mobile, as
well as expanding their air and naval arms. Naval rivalry between India
and China is clearly under way in the eastern approaches of the Indian
Ocean. …China and India’s rivalry over Burma is also increasing. Burma’s
important strategic location and rich resources are coveted by both neighboring
powers. Delhi accuses India of forging a strategic encirclement of India
through Pakistan, Tibet, Burma, and by the eastern reaches of the Indian
Ocean. China, by contrast, sees itself encircled by an aggressive India,
a resurgent Russia, and a hostile Vietnam, possibly joined at some later
date by Japan or the United States”.
The author, even with all his Eurocentrist prejudices of Asians
as being steeped in centuries-old religious and ethnic animosity, dissects
the genesis of the annexation of Tibet, the Afghan war, and the division
of Kashmir and shows how those events have influenced present day geopolitics.
Drawing on his first-hand experiences in the Siachen glacier, the Afghan
mountains and the Kashmir valley, and with access to journalistic resources
in Washington, Toronto, Islamabad and Delhi, Mr. Margolis also gives a
fair account of the human dimension of the current crisis and the potential
disaster that may be waiting to happen.
One of the more revealing episodes he narrates, for example, concerns
the plane crash that killed Pakistan's General Zia ul-Huq in 1988:
“The last time I saw Zia, I asked him if he planned to retire.
“By 1990. I will have contributed enough.” He paused, and then produced
his trademark dazzling smile: “I will then concentrate on improving my
golf and tennis”. But he would not have the opportunity…
On August 17, 1988, a C-130 military transport carrying Zia ul-Huq,
A. A. Rahman, thirty of Pakistan’s most senior military officers, and U.
S. Ambassador Arnold Raphael took off from Bahawalpur, in central Pakistan.
Minutes later, the C-130 went out of control and crashed into the desert,
where it exploded and burned. All aboard were killed. Pakistan’s government
investigated the crash, aided by the U.S. Air Force accident investigators.
The inquiry concluded that Zia’s C-130 has been sabotaged by the
introduction of a poisonous, incapacitating gas into the cockpit. Just
as the FBI was about to open its own detailed investigation, the State
Department intervened and blocked the FBI investigation, leaking to the
media that the crash was caused by mechanical malfunction. This was to
become the official American version of events, even though U.S. Air Force
investigators flatly contradicted the claim.
The new Pakistani government of Benazir Bhutto swiftly moved to cover
up or destroy the evidence from the crash. The flight crew’s bodies were
never autopsied, but quickly buried. Key components from the aircraft completely
vanished. Records were “lost’. Senior officers appointed by Zia were purged
en masses.”
The book contains many such narratives that show the way that political,
military and economic life in South Asia is manipulated, and also the extent
of American involvement behind headline events.
The book is valuable for the sheer wealth of such anecdotes and information
that have simply never been seen in print before. But it was also
disturbing to see its conclusion:
“there are so many dangerous points of contention between them –
a nuclear weapon’s race, Pakistan, Kashmir, Tibet, India’s eastern hill
states, their disputed Himalayan border, Burma, and the Indian ocean –
that a major military clash between China and India within the next decade
thus appears highly likely. There can be only one master in Asia.
The problem with this prophecy is that it is based on the narrow assumption
that the present political-economic status quo in these countries, which
generates the conditions behind the regional geopolitical instability,
remain unchanged and unchallenged into the foreseable future.
The 20th century witnessed many events that unexpectedly and dramatically
altered the status quo and confounded the prophets of the time. If
the break-up of USSR is a reminder that India or China also could disintegrate,
the creation of the USSR out of war and revolution also remind us that
such changes can equally emerge in India, Pakistan or China to avert what
is considered inevitable. Neglecting this perspective is the
most serious shortcoming of the book. |
