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Default The 1990 Compound Crisis

The Compound Crisis began in February 1990 and lasted until June 1990. A series of events precipitated the crisis, including civil unrest in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir and serious unrest by the disaffected Sikhs in Indian Punjab—both fostered by Pakistan’s military and intelligence services—as wel as a major military exercise in Pakistan. Weak political leadership in India and Pakistan further exacerbated crisis dynamics. Stephen Cohen and other scholars have thus termed events in 1990 a “compound” crisis in recognition of the complex interplay of factors that contributed to its onset (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen., 80).

Discontent with Indian rule in the Kashmir Valley emerged in the 1980s as New Delhi refused to lend credence to Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which accorded a special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The state assembly elections of 1983 witnessed episodes of intercommunal violence between Muslims and Hindus. Relations deteriorated further when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ousted the region’s governor in 1983 for neglecting to take a tougher line against Farooq Abdullah, the head of the state government, who was supported by the Valley’s Muslim-majority population (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 85).

The next elections for the state assembly were held in 1987. This time, Farooq’s National Conference (NC) and the Congress Party were aligned. The NC-Congress coalition defeated the Muslim United Front, but evidence of widespread fraud, blatant vote rigging, and intimidation marred the results (Perkovich, 306). Strikes and clashes with security personnel became commonplace after the vote. Pakistan provided intelligence and military aid to some anti-Indian elements as security conditions deteriorated (Krepon and Cohn, eds., 36). A separatist movement emerged in May 1989. New Delhi orchestrated a crackdown in early 1990 that led to hundreds of deaths and economic hardship, which deepened the sense of grievance against Indian rule (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 87).

In Indian Punjab, meanwhile, Sikh separatists, backed by Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus, continued to agitate for independence (Krepon and Cohn, eds., 35). The Indian Army had carried out an assault against a major separatist complex in Amritsar in June 1984. This heavy-handed action, known as Operation Blue Star, caused hundreds of Sikh deaths and motivated Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards to assassinate the prime minister months later (Ibid). Thousands more were killed in the anti-Sikh riots that ensued. The Sikh community grew increasingly disillusioned in the intervening years as the Indian government failed to stop the bloodshed or carry out meaningful reforms that would benefit marginalized Sikhs (Kux, 401 and 414).

Zarb-e-Momin and Indian Countermeasures

It was against this unsettled backdrop that a confident Pakistani army chief, Gen. Aslam Beg, initiated in December 1989 a large military exercise, Zarb-e-Momin, involving 200,000 soldiers (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 86). Zarb-e-Momin was combined with an air exercise called Highmark, which included combat aircraft firing live munitions close to the international border (Ibid). At the exercise’s conclusion, Pakistani forces remained deployed near Indian Punjab (Krepon and Cohn, eds., 37).

In February 1990, the Indian Army initiated its annual exercise in the Mahajan training range in Rajasthan. Rawalpindi’s sources indicated that many as 100,000 Indian forces were involved in the exercise and decided to put its forces on alert (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 92). The Indian Army sought to reassure Pakistan by noting that only two tank units were at Mahajan (Ibid). These assurances aside, the army conspicuously kept its tanks and heavy artillery near the international border rather than sending them to reinforce operations in Kashmir (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 92-3). These indicators suggest India may have been hedging against a possible confrontation with Pakistan.

Domestic Politics

Political instability in India and Pakistan also contributed to the onset and severity of the crisis. Indian Prime Minister V.P. Singh headed a beleaguered coalition government, which was opposed by the two most dominant parties in Indian politics, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party (Krepon and Cohn, eds., 35). Without a robust political base, Singh could ill afford to be viewed as appeasing Pakistan (Ibid). The BJP exploited this reality for political gain and urged Singh, a political opponent, to authorize “hot pursuit” of Pakistan-sponsored militants across the Line of Control (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 91).

Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had won a no-confidence vote in November 1989, but the episode had damaged her political standing. This prompted her to adopt more hawkish, positions of the kind favored by Gen. Beg (Perkovich, 307). In a speech delivered during the crisis, Bhutto combatively pledged a “thousand-year war” in support of the Kashmiris’ fight against India (Ibid). Sing responded with bellicose language of his own in a speech before the Indian Parliament: “I warn them [that] those who talk about a thousand years of war should examine whether they will last a thousand hours of war” (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 91).

Crisis Management

India and Pakistan attempted bilateral crisis diplomacy at two points. The first effort occurred during a high-profile trip to New Delhi by Pakistani Foreign Minister Sahibzada Yaqub Khan in January 1990. Accounts of his meetings differ, but some have claimed the Pakistani diplomat threatened to “set on fire” the Subcontinent if India’s approach to Kashmir did not change (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 90). Singh then warned that New Delhi would “retaliate even if it meant war” (Ibid). The second diplomatic initiative took place in April 1990 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. At Bhutto and Singh’s behest, India and Pakistan’s foreign ministers pledged in New York to recommit themselves to bilateral confidence-building measures to reduce tensions and forestall the momentum toward war (Krepon and Cohn, eds., 39-40).



The United States became engaged by sending senior officials, led by Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gates, to the region in May 1990. In Islamabad, Gates chided Gen. Beg and Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Pakistan’s president, for supporting the Kashmiri insurgency and provoking a crisis with India (Kux, 306). He bluntly warned them that the United States had “war-gamed every conceivable scenario… [and] there isn’t a single way you win” (Perkovich, 309). Gates informed them that the Bush Administration might no longer be able to certify as required by the Pressler Amendment that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device (Kux, 306-7), which meant the suspension of U.S. economic and military aid was imminent. Gates cautioned restraint in his meetings with Indian leaders. He noted that American war games suggested India would incur long-term costs from a conflict with Pakistan even if it realized short-term gains (Krepon and Cohn, eds., 40).

Nuclear Developments

Most experts believed at the time that India and Pakistan possessed nuclear-weapon capabilities, including a small number of warheads ready for assembly and rudimentary means of delivery (Narang, 65). Whether nuclear weapons factored into India or Pakistan’s crisis calculus in any meaningful manner is a matter of dispute. Both Indian and Pakistani officials engaged in saber-rattling during the crisis and made statements that ominously alluded to nuclear use. The presence of new capabilities, combined with uncertain adversary intentions, meant consideration of a nuclear angle was unavoidable, though both countries discounted the likelihood of a nuclear exchange (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, 102-3).

There is some evidence, however, that Pakistan used nuclear weapons to catalyze American intervention in the crisis on its behalf. U.S. communication intercepts reportedly revealed that Pakistan had assembled nuclear devices (Narang, 67). Satellite imagery also spotted unusual movements associated with nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles (Ibid). Gen. Beg later acknowledged that these movements were intended to be seen (Khan, 230-1). This suggests that Washington was the primary audience, and that Pakistan’s strategy in preparing these assets was to draw the United States into a crisis-management role (Narang, 69).
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