Was it a coup bid?

WHAT was the ultimate objective of the terrorist outrage on December 13 in the Indian Lok Sabha which India pins on Pakistan? Was the terrorist action an end in itself or a means to an end? What did Pakistan have to gain if the Vice President of India and some other lawmakers were killed or held hostage in this nasty episode? Is it the aim of Pakistan to inherit the terrorist robes of Osama bin Laden? How does this senseless mayhem promote Pakistan’s cause in Kashmir?

The minutia of events of December 13 leads to the ardent speculation that it was an audacious coup d’etat staged by a lunatic fringe of Islamic extremism with possible help from former or serving elements in the ISI. Its aim might have been to reverse the U-turn of Pakistan’s current pro-US policy and remove President Musharraf by providing causus belli for an Indo-Pak war with perhaps a nuclear dimension. They may yet succeed.

Suicidal terrorism is a disease of the mind. This dementia prevails in all societies be they Islamic, Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, Aryan, Marxist, Libertarian, Tamil, Irish or Peruvian. Men, who become human bombs simply to kill other humans at random in pursuit of their aims, possibly worship the nuclear nightmare.

To initiate a train of events leading to a nuclear war in which hundreds of thousands would die in Delhi, Lahore, Bombay and Karachi within hours (for these would be the lucky ones) and to maim millions for the rest of their lives with horrible cancers and torturous illness, would be the ultimate victory, for those who give no second thoughts to losing their lives in sacrifice for some utopia. A nuclear winter which would squeeze the colour out of every blade of grass, incinerate every tree, poison the waters of our rivers, burn or demolish every human habitation within the epicentre of the nuclear explosion is paradise gained for the brain-washed terrorist.

The apparent aim of the December 13 terrorists was to provoke a war in the subcontinent. Had they succeeded in their grandiose aims, India most probably would have crossed the LoC to attack the alleged camps of the terrorists. Blow and counter-blow and within hours we would be at the brink of the unthinkable.

In this sequence of demented imagination the December 13 terrorism was even more audacious than the bombing of the WTC. This hypothesis is not wholly speculative. Consider: it was the assassination of the Archdule Ferdinand of Austria by the Serb terrorist, Princep in 1914 that triggered the chain of events leading to World War-I. History has the oddity of repeating itself.

In the context of the world situation after September 11, the season for terrorism as an enforcer of political aims is in deep disfavour. The American invasion of Afghanistan is the raison d’etre for Indian belligerence at the moment. But the Indians forget that they are not the US, and Pakistan is not Afghanistan, but a nuclear state and that there is no elusive Osama bin Laden in the woodworks or a Mullah Omar ruling the country as a theocracy.

In the one country where western colonialism exists today i.e. Palestine, the Palestinian leadership has asked Hamas and the Islamic jihad to stop its terror activities. Terrorism has drawn increasingly negative dividends in the Palestinian struggle as the political struggle becomes increasingly disoriented. We are not the only country to have used covert illegal means in pursuit of political objectives. According to Chomsky the US is the world’s leading terrorist state. India is no saint on a white charger either. The RAW has used terrorists to promote ethnic and sectarian strife in Pakistan.

Indian-held Kashmir erupted as a genuine national liberation struggle in the late 80s. Over a period of time, the genuine political struggle was overtaken by international terrorism in the name of Islam. It has ruined the economy of Kashmir and killed thousands. The response of the Indian army has been truly barbaric. We have stated time and again if the value of Kashmir is wrested by terrorism it will surely be another Afghanistan. We should remember Pakistan was not won by terrorism but by means fo a political struggle.

There are, however, instances in recent world history where terrorism has succeeded. For one, the Jewish terrorism against the British in Palestine. Who remembers today the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1947 by the Jewish terrorists, which was then regarded as an edifice as important as the WTC, now. Israel owes its foundation in part to successful terrorism. Having won freedom partly by terror, largely by fraud there will be no peace for the Israelis till they secure an honourable settlement with the Palestinians.

Be that as it may, terrorism is a double-edged single-track weapon. Once you try to rein in a terrorist organization it tends to jump on its sponsor, for what it regards as its betrayal. The Indians should know this better than most other people. Indira Gandhi created the Sikh Frankenstein, Bhindrinwalla, to use against the Akali Dal party. What happened subsequently is well known history. The same can also be said of our own ISI created monster, Mullah Omar.

What we witnessed on December 13 was the backlash of our terrorist organizations, which felt neglected after September 11. They saw the writing on the wall and a dwindling cash flow after the fall of the Taliban. The most amazing part fo the Taliban-US war was that the so-called Jihadis were not prepared to fight. All the talk of fighting to the finish proved to be empty boastful rhetoric.

For the terrorists, only the immediate one-dimensional objective matters. They are not concerned with the long-term political consequences of their actions for they expect to be dead before consequences arise. This is typical of totalitarian thinking.

What if they had succeeded on December 13 in sparking a war? History informs us that each Indo Pak war so far ended on terms unfavourable to Pakistan and the head of state or government fell soon thereafter. This fate befell Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Nawaz Sharif after wars with India. Such was the likely aim of the plotters of December 13 who now regard General Musharraf as the Enemy No. 1 and India as Enemy No. 2.

The upshot of this discussion is that the jihadi organizations have to be wound up and their vast properties taken over by the state. Let us advert to constitutional values; our Constitution prohibits tolerance of private armies.

We must pursue our aims and objectives in Kashmir by political means. Pakistan’s case on Kashmir has been spoilt from Operation Gibraltar in 1965 to Kargil in 1999. It figures no longer on the international agenda. It is time that we revive Kashmir as an issue of moral concern. We have to remind the world of broken Indian promises to ascertain the wishes of the people and rigged elections over the past four decades in the Indian-held Kashmir territory. The Simla Agreement has come to a dead end. In the present context of Indian actions, we might as well renounce it and take the Kashmir case back to the Security Council.

The vale of Kashmir will be liberated some day but in ways unimagined at the moment.

The writer is a former member of the National Assembly.

The view from Kathmandu

THE slogans raised during a short peace march by some 100 participants of a seminar of South Asian media in Kathmandu on January 2 were very heartening. The march took them barely a kilometer from their hotel in a prosperous part of the Nepali capital to the SAARC secretariat.

There it was halted in compliance with the wishes of the security forces who were there to enforce the emergency imposed in Nepal following the massacre inside the Royal Palace last November. The placards and banners proclaiming “we want peace, not war” by the marchers were also hurriedly abandoned.

A measure of hope for peace in South Asia was reposed in the SAARC summit which was then impending but this too was dispelled after the proceedings of the two-day summit and the most gracious and apparently impromptu gesture of Pakistan’s president in going up to the Indian prime minister after his speech in the plenary session and extending his hand of friendship to him.

However,the two-day seminar — second in a series sponsored by the Lahore-based South Asia Free (sic) Media Association (SAFMA) — ended with a Declaration of Intent evolved by consensus proclaiming hope for promotion of “better understanding, amity, realism, free flow of information, respect for human rights “etc, etc, for the peoples of South Asia. The unusually high point of the seminar was the address by the Nepal’s prime minister on the opening day and another by the leader of the Opposition on the following day.

It goes without saying that the Kathmandu media seminar was conducted throughout in a most businesslike manner with the participants paying full attention to its proceedings. It became even more business-like on the second day when the participants were distributed in nine different working groups, each assigned to make comments on and recommendations for various aspects fo national policy formulation in the South Asian countries. Matters like good governance, media organization, inter-state conflict, stabilization of the nuclear regime in the South Asian region, regional cooperation and the rights of the ethnic and religious minorities could thus be given detailed attention.

Surprisingly, the group dealing with inter-State conflict with an eminent scholar from Rawalpindi as its chairperson produced one of the shortest reports. This is an area which has been the cause of the greatest concern to the peoples of the region. Particularly, because of the frequency with which India and Pakistan deploy their forces, supported by the most sophisticated weaponry, on the borders surely deserved a much more indepth study. It was also somewhat naive for the group to suggest that the “media on either side of the border have conducted themselves with exemplary restraint.” The fact is that the media in both countries have reacted with near-hysterical comments and propagandist reports on every occasion when the two countries went to war or came to the brink of a conflict.

Even the groups dealing with ethnic and religious minorities, something which has been a source of enormous hardship and misery to the people in the South Asian countries, produced only a meagre report, making virtually no concrete recommendation to deal with the problem. This despite the fact that the group (comprising five persons) included two of the most eminent Indian scholars, Dr Maheep Singh, a Sikh, and Dr John Dayal, a Christian, while the two communities have been the target of a vastly unjust treatment both by sections of their own compatriots and by some of the state agencies.

By contrast, a paper by the president of SAFMA Nepal prepared by the group dealing with on the subject of good governance and the expected role of the media dealt with its subject in a business like manner, summarising the problems inherent to the matter and making certain clear recommendations for a more positive role by the media. The author stressed the case of the underdeveloped societies and the need for decentralization of authority including a free and fair system of elections and elimination from the elected bodies of people who were known to be morally corrupt and involved in crime and. It advocated strict adherence to the code of conduct for elections at all levels.

The Kathmandu seminar unequivocally emphasised the importance of democracy in the organization of societies in the third world countries. Almost all the reports by the various working groups pointed out the problem created by the absence of democracy in a civil society.

Perhaps, in many ways, the most candid and fair observations on the role of media in promoting were those of the eminent Indian columnist Ms Rita Manchanda who has been actively associated with several movements for peace in South Asia.

It is doubtful that so long as even some of the highly respected media persons remain willing purveyors of the official policy line, they can in any meaningful way become true purveyors of peace and amiability in South Asia. To break out of the cocoon of a indset which has been formed over a period of fifty years will not be easy. However, to realize the ideals spelt out Kathmandu Declaration of SAFMA, a beginning has to be made somewhere — and the sooner the better.

Reviving the old lady: OF MICE AND MEN

LET me state at the outset that by the old lady I mean the Pakistan Muslim League, both the asli te waddi, as they say in Punjabi, and the others which claim to be the Real McCoy (to use an American term) but are more like four of a much-married man’s five wives. He always has a favourite, not necessarily the youngest. Actually I shouldn’t be talking of the favourite one in the context of the Muslim League because then the question will arise: Whose favourite? The establishment’s?

Englishmen who learn any of the Indo-Pakistani languages are often frustrated by the problem that every noun in these languages — whether personal, common or substantive, and whether a chair or politics or parliament, or even an idea or sentiment — is either masculine or feminine. This is also the case with French, though I don’t know about other languages. so, if I am calling the PML the old lady I am not doing anything odd. The League is feminine in Urdu, as against the masculine ittehad, alliance, whose most recent example is the ARD which is best portrayed by that political male macho, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan.

O for the good old days when, in the enforced absence of Mian Nawaz Sharif, his wife Kulsoom had taken on the heavy responsibility of protecting the chaadar of the PML. She made a good job of it (some say better than Mian Sahib) and earned plaudits and much sympathy as a wife going all out to save another wife. In this case the coincidence was that both the wives had the same husband. Everyone in Pakistan acted at that time as if the old lady was a young helpless girl who had to be rescued from the fairy tale ogre. So, whether they were Muslim Leaguers or not, they all wished Ms Kulsoom well. After she left for Saudi Arabia the game lost much of its charm.

But it is a game even now, though more akin to buzkashi than anything else. You must have heard of Afghanistan’s national sport buzkashi in which a number of horsemen fight for the carcass of a sheep, the aim being to snatch it out of the grasp of the others and take it wherever they have to take it. It is very exciting and can be dangerous. The only question is, which one is more perilous: the original Afghan version or the one being played by the various claimants to the PML?

As we all know, these claimants are the Nawaz Sharif zealots, the so-called like-minded led by Mian Azhar, the constant rebels headed by Hamid Nasir Chattha, the lame duck presided over by Kabir Ali Wasti, and the chosen few who owe allegiance to the bizarre Pir Sahib of Pagara, who, like a good religious divine, keeps his dysfunctional version in purdah.

The common factor among them is that each is pulling the PML carcass towards himself, though I hate to call that once great party by that dead name. Another common feature is that each of them claims to be committed to a unified Muslim League and swears that the only aim behind his pulling is to unite the party into one whole. This, by the way, is a whopping lie. The only interest of the respective johnnies in a united League is to see themselves as president. If the party were really to become united where would the various heads go? Because, instead of four legs like the Afghan ‘buz’ this one has four heads and not a leg to stand on.

But seriously, imagine a political party that won a separate country for the Muslims of India against the heaviest of odds coming to this pass. A reading of its history after the attainment of independence is heartbreaking for old loyalists. A succession of heads of state and government getting into a forced marriage with it and nothing to show in the end except its eruption and disruption into a number of factions or altogether new parties with not even a bit of the original name for old times’ sake.

Whether it was President Ayub, who went through a nikah with the PML in an aquarium in Karachi (which made the whole thing rather fishy), or Prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who promised a mehr beyond the wildest dreams of the other contenders, the aim was to exploit the sentiment behind the name and acquire legitimacy from it for remaining in the seat of power. For the people of Pakistan the League had become an emotional habit. Even when it grew old and withered and lost its charm, they kept their passion intact in the hope that some day its old bloom would be revived and they could again look proudly at it.

The only old Muslim Leaguer who was able to infuse a semblance of unity into the party was Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo, but that self-serving president of his, General Zia-ul-Haq, could not bear to see him having his own way as both head of government and chief of the ruling party and brought about his dismissal. I have a theory. Had Mr Junejo suggested to Zia that he assume the presidentship of the Muslim League the man would and have been averse to accepting it. He desperately wanted a political role in the then Pakistan.

Here is a story. During his time has chief of the party Ayub Khan had appointed Malik Khuda Bakhsh Bucha general secretary for West Pakistan. Mr Bucha called a press conference n Lahore, to announce the boss’s plans to re-organize the party. Dawn correspondent Nisar Osmani (later famous as a fearless campaigner for the freedom of the press) asked: “Malik sahib, we have heard it said many times that the Muslim League is to be re-organized. The point is, why don’t you organize it first?” Despite the witticism it was no joke. Leaders had been in a hurry to get into the part’s presidential chair but there was no attempt to organize the Muslim League as a body reflecting the people’s aspirations. Instead of adherents looking for a sincere leader, the powerful man appropriating the top post waited for adherents to come flocking around him. The tragedy is that they did. As they say in Urdu, whoever had the stick got away with the buffalo.

In the meantime the buzkashi goes on.

Mr Blair’s second visit

THE human mind is ingenious. To achieve a goal various devices are adopted. The latest ingenuity is to use the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11 in the US for political ends.

The incidents of ‘terrorism’ must be looked into and scrutinized. It must be ensured that these are not orchestrated. As a first step, evidence must be provided to the state whose territory is alleged to have been used, directly or indirectly, for an incident. Otherwise, the fundamentals of the law would be flouted by allowing the accuser to be also the judge in his own cause.

In October, a day before the earlier visit of Prime Minister Tony Blair to Pakistan, there was an attack on the legislative building in Srinagar. By a remarkable coincidence, the attack took place an hour after the chief minister and other ministers of Occupied Kashmir had left the building. The ‘terrorists’ had chosen to ‘attack’ after they had left the premises. Even the building was not damaged. Thirty ordinary people died. As usual Pakistan was immediately blamed.

On December 13, comes another attack. This time on Indian parliament. Despite strict security, a car, allegedly with five people armed with automatic weapons and grenades, drove into the parliament building. Once in the compound, they did not know where to go. They were allegedly killed by security guards. The staged incident was over. Again, no damage was caused either to the building or its occupants. In public utterances that followed, certain Indian ministers tried to compare this sham incident with the tragedy of New York.

Last year, the day before President Clinton was to arrive in India, Sikhs were attacked in Kashmir, a community with whom Kashmiris have no problem. As usual, the finger was pointed at Pakistan. Look at the list of the twenty ‘terrorists‘ given last week by India to Pakistan. It includes the names of five Sikhs.

Is India really a victim of terrorism? History proves that on the contrary, India has committed repeated acts of state-terrorism on weaker nations or states. After forcible occupation of several states, India sent its forces on October 17,1947, to annex Kashmir by force. Pakistan resisted. The fighting continued until India approached the UN. The Security Council passed two resolutions in 1948 and 1949 for a plebiscite to enable the people of Kashmir to decide if they wished to join India or Pakistan.

Between 1948 and 1954 the Indian government, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, repeatedly promised that the Security Council resolutions would be honoured. The right of self-determination for the people of Kashmir was repeatedly acknowledged by India. The Security Council resolutions remain on the UN record. The UN observers remain in Kashmir.

Kashmir, therefore, is not really a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. It remains an internationally recognized dispute.

This age of unprecedented affluence, well-being and power that the developed countries enjoy, should enable them to be just and fair. It is for them to ensure that in the twenty-first century and beyond, the world should be a civilized place. The fundamentals of civilization are justness and fairness.

As a nation, the British can be proud of their sense of justice and fairness. Both India and Pakistan have historic and close relations with Britain. Let us hope that with the visit of Mr Blair, the British sense of justice will prevail, overriding any other consideration.

Making democracy stick

BACK in 1991, Zambia was hailed as a model of Africa’s turn toward democracy. Kenneth Kaunda, the aging strongman who had led the country since independence in 1964, was persuaded to allow the country’s first multi-party election.

Foreign observers arrived to oversee the vote, and a promising trade-union leader named Frederick Chiluba became Zambia’s new president. A decade later, however, Zambia’s democratic breakthrough appears less than complete. Now the inauguration of Chiluba’s chosen successor, Levy Mwanawasa, had to be protected from demonstrators claiming that the just-held election was rigged.

The blame for this anger must be shared among opposition leaders and the election authorities. Ten candidates took on Mwanawasa, winning a combined 70 percent of the popular vote; if a majority of Zambians feel cheated to see the ruling party hang on to power despite years of dismal economic performance, it is partly because the opposition failed to unite behind a single challenger.

The leading opposition candidate, Anderson Mazoka, came within a hair’s breadth of defeating the ruling party candidate. But he spoiled that achievement by recklessly claiming victory early in the counting process and threatening “chaos” if he was not named the winner.

Mazoka might have shown restraint if the election had been conducted more fairly. Goaded by election watchdogs both foreign and domestic, the authorities did make some worthy efforts to level the playing field. Chiluba respected the constitutional bar against running for a third term despite an early promise to seek reelection.

The state television station reduced its usual pro-government bias by airing a series of debates. And the one clear incident of fraud on voting day — involving an election official who opened a sealed ballot box — was quickly redressed by assigning a new team to check and count the contents.

But the campaign was still marred by the apparent use of government vehicles and patronage to win over voters. And the transparency of the vote was willfully compromised by the election commission, which did not tell election monitors in advance of its intent to tally the vote at its headquarters, and then granted only intermittent access to the process.

The lesson, both for Zambians and for democracy proponents abroad, is that political freedoms are harder to install than was hoped at the start of the 1990s.

The fall of dictatorships in Latin America, the Philippines and South Korea, and the collapse of communism around the world, kindled a heady optimism: People’s natural hunger for freedom would cause democracy to break out all over the world, and once democracy had arrived, the same hunger would sustain it.

But the truth is that most young democracies in the developing world function poorly. The hunger is real enough, but the practical transition is nonetheless difficult. New democracies need help from outsiders: Without observers from Africa, the European Union and the United States, Zambia’s election would have been even less successful. And they need honesty from their own leaders. —The Washington Post

It’s beyond Blair, but Kashmir isn’t insoluble: WORLD VIEW

IT IS just as well that tensions between India and Pakistan had receded somewhat before the gentleman described by The Wall Street Journal as “America’s newest and brightest ambassador” invited himself over to the subcontinent, else he may have been overwhelmed by the weight of expectations he was never likely to meet.

Although there has been little evidence thus far of his skills as a peacemaker, Tony Blair has lately lost no opportunity to indulge his penchant for international travel. His missionary zeal has been facilitated by the fact that the US president is disinclined to venture abroad — partly because he does not know a great deal about the world beyond American shores and isn’t particularly keen to redress that shortcoming — while the vice-president, post September 11, has spent much of his time in seclusion and probably wouldn’t be permitted to fly overseas even if he expressed a desire to do so. Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld may be fairly high-powered emissaries, but their publicity value doesn’t quite add up to that of Britain’s prime minister.

Or so Mr Blair would like to think. Yet whatever influence he may enjoy during forays into the Middle East or South Asia owes little to his stature at Westminster. Even in his dealings with former British colonies, he comes across not as a representative of Queen Elizabeth but as a satrap of King George. This has not been an entirely unusual role for British prime ministers over the last 50 years, but even Margaret Thatcher, notwithstanding her ideological intimacy with Ronald Reagan, would have found it slightly embarrassing to be designated the voice of America.

Mr Blair headed for the subcontinent — starting, for reasons that are not terribly clear in view of the context of his visit, with Dhaka — armed with a singularly unoriginal message of restraint. “There is no Blair peace plan that the prime minister could or should take out of his pocket to broker,” his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, warned on the eve of Mr Blair’s departure. “The Kashmir dispute goes back to partition in 1947. It is essentially a bilateral dispute. It can only be resolved bilaterally.” If he had wanted to make himself clearer, he could have said: We don’t really give a damn about Kashmir — the problem is that at this juncture a war between India and Pakistan would not fit in with the scenario that the United States has mapped out for the region. It would indeed have been wonderful if the Kashmir issue could have been resolved within an exclusively bilateral context. That is what Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto agreed to at Simla in 1972. It has even been suggested that they secretly concurred on the desirability of transforming the Line of Control into a permanent border whenever such a move could be contemplated without triggering too violent a reaction. (This remains arguably the simplest solution to the conundrum.)

The point, however, is that bilateralism has not thus far brought the two sides any closer to an agreement — a situation for which blame can be more or less equally shared between the two sides. The present crisis serves to underline the intractability of the quarrel. It also suggests that until the issue is resolved once and for all, the subcontinent will remain a potential tinderbox.

In the days after Mr Blair announced his mission, some interesting comments appeared in the British press. “As for India and Pakistan,” said an editorial in The Guardian, “the imminent visit to both of America’s favourite prime minister will boost already dangerously overheated egos. Whether Tony Blair’s pyjama sleep-overs, like his recent Middle East fly-bys, will help resolve differences and build sturdy bridges to peace is less certain. Something a bit more substantive should follow. A high-level, G8-backed, UN-supervised process to mediate the Kashmir dispute would be a start.”

A couple of days earlier, Peter Preston wrote in The Observer: “Benign diplomats, left to themselves, would have no difficulty. Set Kashmir in the context of a wider Indo-Pakistani settlement, open borders to trade and travel, even create a subcontinental common market. Offer Kashmir itself (but not lowland Jammu) a measure of independence like Andorra or the Channel Islands: neutral, semi-autonomous, free to grow rich on American Express cards. Hold your plebiscites and proclaim a victory for pragmatism. Everyone wins.”

Easier said than done, in both cases. India has thus far strongly resisted all suggestions of mediation. This is singularly unfortunate, because a dedicated honest broker can sometimes revitalize the most moribund negotiations — an opinion vindicated by the peace processes relating in Northern Ireland and Palestine. The latter, of course, is in the doldrums at present, largely because of the joint efforts of Ariel Sharon, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Had there been a Kashmiri peace process, parallel roles could have been ascribed to the Vajpayee administration, Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammed. Just as Mr Sharon revels in ruining chances of progress towards a settlement by making extravagant and unreasonable demands upon Yasser Arafat, Atal Behari Vajpayee has adopted the strategy of demanding the next-to-impossible from Pervez Musharraf. It is unreasonable, even absurd, to expect Pakistan to extradite anyone to India without reasonable evidence of their complicity in crimes or terrorist acts.

If anything, excessive pressure from New Delhi makes it that much harder for General Musharraf to proceed against extremist groups — although he has thus far demonstrated an approach that the US and even India have found hard to criticize, going as far as to disband the ISI section dedicated to stoking the fires in Kashmir, according to a report in The New York Times. But it hasn’t prevented them from demanding a great deal more. And Mr Vajpayee appears to have mastered the art of Bushspeak, telling the Indians they must “realize that the battle against terrorism will necessarily be a long one”.

His defence minister George Fernandes, meanwhile, has been quoted as saying: “Pakistan would be finished. We could take a strike, survive and then hit back.” That sounds ominously like a nuclear scenario. Such loose talk coupled with New Delhi’s steadfast refusal to engage in bilateral negotiations — in disregard of the time-honoured judgment that, as Winston Churchill put it, “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war” — suggests, at the very least, a failure on the part of the Indian leadership to recognize that its position vis-a-vis the government in Islamabad is rather different from the Bush administration’s position in relation to the erstwhile Taliban regime.

The danger now is that once the threat of war loses its immediacy, Mr Blair and his American masters will lose interest in subcontinental affairs — at least until the spectre of a confrontation rears its head once more a few years down the line. That would be a grave error. Never before has India been as eager as it is now to please Uncle Sam. That makes it unusually vulnerable to persuasion in respect of accepting mediation as a means of permanently resolving the Kashmir problem.

This is not to suggest that the mediation should be American — although ex-senator George Mitchell performed a commendable service in Northern Ireland, the context was rather different; besides, it would be unreasonable to expect the Bush administration to come up with an equally respectable candidate. Fortunately, there is no shortage of alternatives — although one prerequisite ought to be a smaller ego and a lest biased worldview than Mr Blair’s.

Of course, for negotiations to make headway, it will be incumbent upon India as well as Pakistan to make compromises — which will require more courage than belligerent bluster. And both sides would do well to heed the words of Professor Noam Chomsky, who said in an interview with Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy that was intended for PTV but never broadcast: “Each side’s propaganda is probably exaggerated, but essentially correct. The trouble is that each is only half the story. And what has to happen is for each side to recognize the legitimacy of the grievances of the other. It’s a very hard step to take ... But it has to be done. There has to be something other than an escalating cycle of violence, which, in fact, is dooming both of these societies — Pakistan in particular. Pakistan cannot survive a constant ongoing military confrontation with India. It is harmful enough to India, but it is devastating for Pakistan, just for reasons of scale.”

Argentina’s political crumble

THE abrupt resignation of Argentina’s president amid an economic collapse and violent street demonstrations 10 days ago confronted the country’s political elite with a fateful challenge: Pull together to rescue democracy.

The response so far has been disastrously irresponsible. Rather than reach consensus on a clear and constitutional plan to install a new president, leaders of the now-ruling Peronist party have instead bickered, angled for personal political advantage, and sought to avoid taking responsibility for implementing drastic but unavoidable economic remedies. — The Washington Post