For ten months between late December 2001 and October 2002, India and Pakistan kept approximately one million soldiers in a high state of readiness along their international border and the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir, raising the specter of conflict. The immediate trigger for the deployment was a brazen attack by militants on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi on December 13, 2001. The attack set in motion an extended crisis with two distinct peaks when tensions were extremely high and when war appeared imminent to many observers. The first peak, immediately after the attack on Parliament, occurred in the December 2001-January 2002 timeframe. The second peak, in May-June 2002, followed another high-profile attack by militants, this time near the town of Kaluchak in Jammu. During both peaks of the crisis, high-level U.S. officials were deeply involved in crisis management, seeking to avoid war and to secure the return of Indian and Pakistani forces to their cantonments. This is the story of the Bush Administration’s crisis management effort, as told by over two dozen individuals who helped shape or who led the U.S. diplomatic response during the extended crisis.

The Twin Peaks Crisis grew in part out of tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Since their partition at the time of independence in 1947, Pakistan has contended that Muslim-majority Kashmir should have been joined to Pakistan, which its leaders created to be a homeland for Muslims on the Subcontinent. Pakistan maintains that the old princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is illegally occupied by Indian troops. The Government of India asserts that the entirety of the old princely state is rightfully part of its territory because the leader of that state signed an accession agreement with India following partition.

Prior to the Twin Peaks Crisis, India and Pakistan had fought in 1947, 1965, and 1999 over this territory. The first of these wars led to a division of the old princely state, which has remained to this day. Beginning in 1989, the Muslim majority areas of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir became inflamed, primarily as a result of longstanding local grievances. The resultant insurgency attracted support from Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, which contributed Pakistan-based militants and Afghan Arab veterans of the “jihad” against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. The Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir became the locus of friction between India and Pakistan—marked by routine exchanges of artillery, mortar and small arms fire and the infiltration of militants across the divide with Pakistani support. The testing of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan in 1998 had the contradictory effects of exacerbating tensions over Kashmir and generating initiatives to normalize relations. As the Twin Peaks crisis unfolded, the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the Pakistani government, led by President and Army Chief Pervez Musharraf, were still pondering the lessons of a short, limited, and high-altitude war in 1999 near Kargil in Kashmir. Some observers saw the Kargil conflict as alarming evidence that India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons status would complicate but not necessarily deter future conflicts, with the risk of escalation to nuclear use. In late 2000, under pressure from Washington and its allies, India and Pakistan entered into a shaky de facto cease fire in Kashmir that was to last about ten months.

Even after twelve years of anti-Indian violence linked to the Kashmir cause, the two attacks that precipitated the Twin Peaks Crisis—in December 2001 and in May 2002—evoked special outrage from the Indian public. On December 13, 2001, five terrorists—armed with assault rifles, plastic explosives, and grenades—used a fake pass to drive a nondescript, stolen white Ambassador sedan onto the grounds of India’s Parliament, where they attempted to enter the circular building. Their apparent plan was to attack the legislators during a morning session that was to be attended by senior government leaders, including the prime minister. The plan failed by sheer luck, according to one account. The attackers’ vehicle crashed into an official car, forcing them to proceed on foot. In addition, a power outage in the capital knocked out television broadcasts of the parliamentary session; the militant who was to alert the attackers by cell phone when key ministers arrived was therefore unaware that the 400-plus legislators had instead adjourned and that many senior ministers therefore would not be present. One of the militants blew himself up outside the Parliament door that was to be used by the ministers. The four others died during the ensuing gun battle with the small but determined Indian security detail, which took several casualties. Indian officials immediately linked the attackers to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad militant organizations and blamed Pakistani intelligence for sponsoring terrorism to pressure India to relinquish Kashmir.

Although the casualties from the October attack were higher, the events of December 13—a dramatic and direct assault on India’s leaders in their seat of democracy—galvanized New Delhi’s response to terrorism, much as the attacks on September 11, 2001 mobilized Washington. Home Minister L.K. Advani described the December 13 attack as “the most audacious and most alarming act of terrorism in the history of two decades of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India.” “Nothing will harm India more than inaction at this moment,” defense analyst Brahma Chellaney declared. Five days after the attack, India launched Operation Parakram with a general mobilization of troops.

As India mobilized forces, Pakistan responded in kind. Despite U.S. pleas and protests, Pakistan in late December began redeploying to its borders with India most of the 11th and 12th Army Corps sent to the border with Afghanistan only a month earlier, at Washington’s urging. Pakistan left in place two brigades, or about 6,000 of these regular troops, plus the 40,000 Frontier Corps troops who also had been sent to help seal the Afghan border. Most U.S. policymakers believe that the redeployment of the better equipped, more capable Pakistan Army regulars undercut whatever possibility existed of halting the passage of fleeing al Qaeda and Taliban operatives.

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“What we need in this country today is more courage and more belief in the things that we have.”- Thomas J. Watson