At first glance, it looks unlikely. The two countries have more or less managed to hold to a ceasefire agreed at the end of 2003 on both the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir and on Siachen, and they have a slow-moving peace process which at least has India and Pakistan talking rather than fighting each other. India is far too interested in winning itself superpower status to let itself be distracted by some embarrassing fighting on its border. And Pakistan has enough problems dealing with al Qaeda and the Taliban on its western  border with Afghanistan, without having to cope with trouble on its eastern border with India as well.

But there have been signs of a new strain in relations this week. The two armies exchanged fire across the LoC  in a violation of the ceasefire. That in itself might not be too troubling, were it not for the fact that long-simmering resentment in Kashmir against Indian rule has burst into the open again. A decision, subsequently reversed, by the state government to transfer land to the Hindu Amarnath Shrine Board sparked some of the biggest protests since the Kashmir separatist revolt erupted in 1989 and has now brought down the state government.

At the same time, the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul has exposed the rivalry between India and Pakistan over Afghanistan. Afghan authorities hinted that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was behind the attack — prompting Indian analysts to say that the ISI was sending India a message to get out of Afghanistan. Before the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Pakistan regarded Afghanistan as its own preserve — a place that would offer it “strategic depth” against India.  Since 2001, it has been forced to watch in frustration as India builds economic and political ties  with the government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

So will Kashmir and/or Kabul become the slow burning fuse threatening relations between India and Pakistan? Or is the peace process well enough entrenched to douse the flames?

(Update: Thanks to readers for pointing out the obvious error in the original post which wrongly said that Afghanistan was on Pakistan’s eastern border and India on its western border. I have now corrected above).

“The efforts for peace once again prove that dialogue is the sole path to resolving differences between countries,” it says. “India and Pakistan’s steps on this road are not big yet; but they are moving, in a positive direction.”

Is this an example of China taking on a U.S.-style role of regional policeman? Would India and Pakistan feel uncomfortable about such a role?

Maybe not. India and China decided years ago to put the bitterness of their 1962 border war behind them in order to concentrate on winning a place at the top table in the global economy. India’s nuclear deal — the centrepiece of its rapprochement with the United States — appears to be running into trouble at home – leaving it all the more in need of friendly neighbours on its own doorstep.

Pakistan has always seen China as a more reliable friend than the United States, as underlined in this Yale Global Online backgrounder. With relations between the United States and Pakistan getting tetchier by the day, you would expect Islamabad to turn to China for help.  Plus China seems to be pumping investment into Pakistan, of which this story in the Daily Times about it offering Chinese skilled labour to build a dam is just one example.

So is the United States losing its place in South Asia? And is China stepping in to fill the gap? It’s worth remembering that China, India and Pakistan all have a stake in Kashmir since all of them control parts of what was once the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.  And the Siachen war is the only conflict in the world to have been fought in a place where three nuclear-armed powers meet.  If these three countries are now trying to pull together, what kind of role does the United States have left in the region?

Several years later, while researching a book on the Siachen war, I had occasion to travel with the Pakistan army and assess the Islamist question up close.  My impression was that the Pakistan army was not driven by religious fanaticism. Yes, it exhorted its soldiers to embrace “shaheed”,  or martyrdom,  in the name of Allah.  But it was otherwise remarkably similar to the Indian army. Both relied on a blend of nationalism and loyalty to their fellow men in the same unit; both found recruits in the mountains and rural villages who could be inculcated with a spirit of “ours not to reason why”; both counted on officers to lead from the front. Men did not go into battle dreaming of death. An officer who thinks only of killing himself is of little use to a professional army, which needs men who are above all sane, who can remain focused and objective, who know the difference between suicide and getting killed.

My Pakistan army minder on my trip to the Siachen war zone was clearly religious, respected prayer times, and did his best to explain to me the teachings of the Koran. But he probably expended more energy telling me off for smoking –  particularly on the world’s highest battlefield where the air is so thin that it can be difficult to walk — much as my minder during a tour of Siachen on the Indian side had done.

So I thought I had settled the Islamist question — at least in my own mind — until August 2007, when more than 200 Pakistani soldiers in South Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal areas were taken captive by Islamist militants without firing a single shot.  During a visit to Delhi shortly afterwards, I discovered that people from the Indian army were as surprised as me — accustomed as they were to seeing their rivals on the Pakistan side at least make a show of fighting. Had the Islamists so permeated the Pakistan army that its soldiers had gone soft? 

Pakistan army expert Brian Cloughley addresses this question in his book ”War, Coups and Terror”, a review of Pakistan since 1971 and due to be published next month.  His conclusions make interesting reading.

While he recognises that the Pakistan army includes “some religious extremists among its officers and soldiers”, he says the promotions system overseen by President Pervez Musharraf made sure that officers were promoted on the basis of professional competence rather than religious devotion.

The rub came in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) next to the Afghanistan border, where religious ideologues had affected the morale and efficiency of the military. ”There is evidence that some soldiers have been so influenced by religiosity as to have doubts about their being regarded as Shaheed in the event of being killed in conflict with fellow Muslims who are held (by extremist clerics) to be engaged in fighting against infidels,” he writes. “This has resulted in incidents of refusal to take part in operations in the tribal areas, which indicate a serious malaise.”

Cloughley quotes the following from a source that he is unwilling to identify, but I think is worth reproducing here:

“Statements [by terrorists captured during an army operation] and [other sources] leads to one inevitable conclusion, that deep in their hearts . . . [some of the] troops have sympathies for AQ/Taliban who, in their perception are fighting a holy war against non-Muslims now occupying  Afghanistan.  This feeling has got further impetus and strength because of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and a partisan approach towards  the Palestinian issue.  Print and electronic media, anti-US sentiments among the general public, bitter criticism by opposition leaders of our government’s policy regarding Afghanistan [and] support to the Coalition (US) forces in combating terrorism . . .  and the anti-Islam propaganda by the west, have further reinforced the perception of the common man that Muslims all over the world are being victimised.  These feelings have obviously . . . penetrated the rank and file of the Army despite our best efforts that whatever we are doing is in the overall best interests of the country.  Having identified this weakness, we now need to apply all our command and leadership skills to educate our troops on the logic and necessity of what we are doing.”

Cloughley tries to take a positive view of this by saying that at least the problem was recognised by those in command and that  action was being taken to address it. But he adds that Pashtuns — the ethnic group who live on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and who make up about a fifth of the regular army – had sometimes shown reluctance to engage militants both out of a disinclination to kill fellow tribesmen and antipathy against fighting fellow Muslims. ”Another factor is the widely-held belief that the counter-insurgency war in FATA … is not being conducted on behalf of Pakistan but is waged at the behest of the United States.”

Cloughley also says that missile attacks blamed on U.S. Predator drones targeting al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas had further angered the army, since they also killed civilians. Yet at the same time, the army had found itself caught in the middle, facing itself a steep rise in suicide attacks directed against military targets, in retaliation for its operations on the border. Though I have seen only one advance chapter of Cloughley’s book, it makes an interesting read, highlighting as it does one aspect of the phenomenally complex challenges faced by Pakistan in battling Islamist militants.