"Buried inside it is the idea saying: Pakistan fears India" :::::: Declassified 1993 CIA study on war between India and Pakistan

It was like an astrological prediction. In 1993, the CIA declassified a secret assessment. Buried inside it is the idea that Pakistan fears India. 

The document, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), studied the India-Pakistan dynamic and offered one conclusion: if war erupts, it will likely start with something like Kashmir, and Pakistan will be on the back foot from the beginning.  

"Oct 1, 1993

..... the U.S. intelligence community conducted a major estimate of the India-Pakistan situation and prospects for conflict which considered developments since 1989. 

Against the backdrop of the 1990 crisis, significant violence by Hindu nationalists against Muslims in late 1992 and early 1993, growing nuclear capabilities on both sides, and a new U.S. president, William J. Clinton, who was greatly interested in India, the U.S. intelligence community prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on “India-Pakistan: Prospects for War in the 1990s.” 

According to the title page, the NIE was “prepared under the auspices” of Bruce Riedel, National Intelligence Officer for Near East/South Asia. 

A former CIA intelligence analyst, Riedel worked on the NSC staff during the George H.W. Bush administration and the first months of the Clinton administration and during 1993 rejoined the CIA to become the NIO." 

"In Pakistan, it would take the form of an “Islamist” government and in India, an election that brought the Hindu-led right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) [Indian People’s Party] to power. A “radical” BJP regime could “blunder into conflict with Pakistan” but also “polarize” Indian society by causing “more communal violence that would damage relations with Pakistan.” The NIE includes a photograph, with an excised caption, of the mob led by activists from the BJP and related groups that destroyed the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992." - the report said. 

At the core of the CIA report was an uncomfortable truth for Islamabad. The balance of power had already tilted in India's favour. Economically, militarily, and diplomatically, 

New Delhi was rising, and Pakistan couldn't catch up. 

The gap wasn't just in firepower; it was also in stability.

India, for all its internal challenges, had stable governments and a growing economy. India was, at the time, led by Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.

Pakistan oscillated between military rule, political crises, and economic breakdowns. Fear, not confidence, drove its Kashmir policy.

The CIA assessment explicitly said that a shift in military balance could push Pakistan to open nuclear deployment or seek asymmetric warfare.  

Some predictions - as stated in the NIE report - just came true.

Sample this. 

While the NIE gave a low probability of a conventional war taking place between the two countries in that period of time, it rates the possibility of war between India and Pakistan as about 1 in 5. 

It also pointed out that war could still happen due to a variety of factors, one of which could be a “spectacular terror outrage that one side believed the other directed or abetted”.

“Indian security personnel are fighting an insurgency (in Jammu and Kashmir) that appears to have no end. Firing incidents along the Line of Control are common, particularly in the spring when militants begin their seasonal infiltrations across the Line of Control. 

In our judgment, Indian security forces can prevent Kashmir’s secession or its acquisition by Pakistan, but these forces will not be able to defeat the insurgency in this decade,” the NIE says.

'Lahore' in 1999 brought Nawaz Sharif's downfall and also Kargil 

It mentions that Pakistan uses the Kashmir issue as a foreign policy bludgeon against India. 

Whenever discontent in Jammu and Kashmir erupts, Islamabad highlights the problem and demands international action favourable to Pakistan’s interests in the dispute, the report says.  

The 1993 document predicted that Pakistan might embrace Islamism not out of belief but as a tool. If an economic collapse came, or if a military dictator took charge, Pakistan could "join with militants" to distract the public and provoke India.

It also warned that India's domestic politics - if dominated by religious polarisation - could fuel more communal unrest, making Pakistan's meddling easier to justify at home.

The NIE wasn't just for internal CIA use. It was meant to brief the White House and State Department. Bill Clinton had taken office, and South Asia was gaining attention. The former US President would visit India seven years later in 2000, right on the day of the Chittisinghpura Massacre, where Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) killed 35 Sikh villagers.

The CIA warned to be careful. Confidence-building measures like hotlines and nuclear pacts were useful, but in a real crisis, they "might prove irrelevant." 

“New Delhi will continue efforts begun last spring (1992) to establish a dialogue with Kashmiris with the goal of ultimately holding state elections. New Delhi hopes that divisions among the militants and war weariness among Kashmiris will work in its favor. 

These efforts to restart the political process in the war-torn state probably will falter because Kashmiri moderates have been weakened by New Delhi’s tough security policies and because Kashmiri hardliners are intransigent,” the report says.

"Pakistan wants the secession of Kashmir and has a receptive audience there. India has supported ethnic separatists in Pakistan, but the effort has been comparatively small. India has no desire to annex Pakistani territory. Both sides will be wary that extremist attacks could invite military retaliation or US sanctions,” says the report.

Military leaders will exercise caution because they know they cannot achieve victory at an acceptable cost. Both militaries will remain ill-equipped for war. Budget constraints, supply disruptions, and the burden of internal security duties will continue to undermine readiness.

India outnumbers Pakistan in almost every category of military capability – a disparity not likely to change in this decade. 

India, however, has no overriding strategic interest in initiating a war with Pakistan.

Pakistani military leaders probably believe that another conflict with India could well destroy the Pakistan military, if not the state.

By the analogy of this report one can refer to an article in 2022; it says ---  Pakistan continues to hurtle toward an uncertain future, led by an utterly unserious elite unable to grasp the enormity of the challenges facing the country.

ends