Will there be a War Between India and Pakistan

In one word: No. Both countries cannot afford to go to a declared war. However, the proxy war will continue and even may be upgraded to a higher level. There is, however, more chance of an American/NATO involvement than India.

India is talking tough on Pakistan indirectly threatening to launch precision air-strikes at alleged terrorist camps inside Pakistani territory. On the other hand Pakistan has asked for evidence from India of Pakistan's involvement. Last week Pakistan Air Force scrambled its jets in the air over Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi after it received intelligence India may violate Pakistani territory.

Clearly, Indian government is under pressure from its public to avenge the Mumbai terrorist attack or it stands to lose out in the upcoming elections. At the same time India must show restraint to prove its pacifist credentials it has build-up to qualify for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.

Also, the Mumbai terrorist attacks which certainly involved insiders has undermined its foreign direct investment status and many corporate giants are winding up operations or have cut down on their presence in India. A full-fledged war would definitely harm Pakistan as an investment destination, but it would hurt India more. It has a larger investment portfolio.

Pakistan is at the receiving end in this sabre-rattling and would do better if the war was not imposed on it. Struggling with a weak economy it has to show to the United States its seriousness about eliminating Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Although if India's jets did launch surgical strikes in the Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the Pakistani public is not likely to put pressure on the government to retaliate: as long as it is in Kashmir, people don't care! In fact, an Indian attack would be greeted by many as something that would add to the burdens of an unpopular government. People are more worried about their own financial survival and they, right or wrong, blame it on the government. The US drone attacks is a case in point.

So, it seems if India did launch surgical attacks in Kashmir, the Pakistani government will not allow the Pakistani services to retaliate. This will allow the Manmoham Singh government in New Delhi to acquiesce its voters and raise Pakistan's stature at the international level as a responsible and mature nation.

What will continue between the two old rivals is the war of proxy. Destabilizing each other through acts of terrorism. India has a ready crop of suicide bombers in Afghanistan where it has influence and a strategic presence and Pakistan has the tribal area taliban and foreign elements linked to Al Qaeda. And this would provide an opportunity to the United States and NATO forces to launch a ground attack on Pakistan...

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One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

By Masror Hausen

Since December 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected some 120 people either by repeated close contact with fowl or after eating half-cooked chicken products. In not a single case has human-to-human transfer been confirmed. So long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human population yet the Western media is spinning a scare as horrible as the flu pandemic of 1918 that claimed millions of lives.

The 1918 influenza in Europe spread in two waves: one in the month of March, and it was only marginally more dangerous than the flu outbreaks of the previous years. But in the trenches of war-torn Europe, it mutated into a virus that swept back across the world killing millions. The differences between the 1918 scenario and any new flu pandemic development takes the air out of the scare spread by the vested interest.

1918 was a year when World War I was fought largely in trenches, and they were the most unhygienic of human habitats. When the units were not fighting, they were living in military barracks which were no better than the trenches. Since they were not in the best of their health they were constantly exposed to airborne diseases and susceptible to dying of flu. Half of American troops who died in the World War I did not fell at the front, but were culled by the flu. Frequent movement of military units from one front to the other and from one country to the other, the flu in 1918 broke into the civilian populations the world over. In 2005, there is war in Iraq and Afghanistan and pockets of unrest elsewhere, but nowhere are trenches to be seen.

The health and nutrition levels have radically changed in the past 80 years. Simply, the healthier a person is going into a sickness, the better his or her chances are of emerging from it. Indeed, a huge consideration in any modern-day pandemic is availability of and access to medical care. Poorer people tend to live in closer quarters and are more likely to have occupations (military, services, construction, etc.) in which they regularly encounter large numbers of people. According to a 1931 study of the 1918 flu pandemic, the poor were about 20 to 30 percent more likely to contract the flu, and overall mortality rates of the "well-to-do" were less than half that of the "poor" and "very poor."

The 1918 pandemic virus was similar to the more standard influenza virus in that the majority of those who perished died not from the primary attack of the flu but from secondary infections that triggered pneumonia. While antibiotics are useless against viruses, they raise the simple possibility of stemming bacterial or fungal infections. Penicillin was the first commercialized antibiotic and it was discovered in 1929, 11years after the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

Comparison of Bird Flu “pandemic” with the Spanish flu of 1918 which claimed millions of lives evokes images of mayhem in the cities and indeed end of time as some claim this pandemic to be part of. The right comparison would be the “Y2K” that sacred computer users including multinationals to spend billions of dollars into finding a solution to the bug which never happened. If one understands the principle of seeking funds which is: convince potential donors how bad things could get and scare them into finding a solution, the picture becomes clear that fund-seekers are using fear only to evoke interest and action!

There’s no backing away from the fact that more research is needed into finding a cure for highly mutable viral infections. The best the world has is Tamiflu. But will the end of time come through Bird Flu? Certainly not. There is no reason to fear a worldwide flu pandemic this winter as there is no way to predict when a bird virus will break into the human population. There is no scientifically plausible reason to expect such a crossover to be imminent.

A total of 120 people catching the flu over a period of three years does not really qualify the trumpeted Bird Flu to qualify for a human pandemic. The first-ever human case of H5N1, by the way, was not in 2003 but in 1997. There is nothing new in this year's bird flu. So, as long as the virus stays in birds and does not leap into humans, its chance of bringing about a pandemic is as bright as the chance of a meteor striking the earth.

(The author is a freelance journalist and media strategist in Pakistan.)

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