ARE we being pushed into making a U-turn in our Kashmir policy? Of late, concern on this score is being articulated even in quarters other than those at loggerheads with Gen. Musharraf’s government. Some critics are of the view that it is not Indian war-mongering but Pakistan’s partnership with the US-led coalition that has driven us into this situation. And as Islamabad endeavours to go the extra mile in a bid to extricate itself from the so-called ‘jihadi culture’ the evolving scheme of things calls for a strategic shift in our approach to the cause of Kashmir’s freedom.

The rationale for the crackdown on religious extremism had at one stage seemed to be sectarian violence which was singled out as the bane of our society. With the banning of Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammad the scope of the government’s action has been enlarged to target militant outfits which prima facie did not pose a threat to public peace or internal security.

Let us not arrogate to ourselves the divine mission of waging jihads all over the world, Gen. Musharraf said, as he warned against assuming the role of ‘Allah’s warriors’. We must be guided by good sense and refrain from undertaking ventures which are beyond our capability or reach was, needless to say, the intended message. Nevertheless, the two outlawed jihadi groups were associated with the freedom struggle in Kashmir, and on the hit list of the Indians demanding an end to what they call ‘cross-border terrorism’. No matter how the government tries to present its offensive against religious extremism as part of its own agenda and not in response to either India’s browbeating or the American pressure, the action against jihadi groups has been largely seen as a logical corollary to Islamabad’s decision to join the US-led war against international terrorism. If breaking away from the Taliban was deemed as making a virtue of necessity, the same could be said about Islamabad’s new disposition vis-a-vis the adherents of jihadi culture in Pakistan.

If the Americans have been obsessed with eliminating Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, they have been rather ambivalent in their response to New Delhi’s relentless campaign against ‘Pakistani-sponsored terrorism’ in Kashmir. No wonder, opinion leaders in India have all along been arguing that the US will turn its attention to Kashmir once it is free of its preoccupation with Afghanistan. The Indians have since been pursuing a two-fold strategy: an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Pakistan, and putting across the message to the Americans that it was time for them to pressure Pakistan into abdicating its support and assistance to the militant struggle in Kashmir. They have obviously been not satisfied with the measures taken by Gen. Musharraf to indicate his commitment to fight out ‘terrorism in all its forms and manifestations’. The general has not gone far enough is the message driven home by New Delhi’s refusal to de-escalate tension.

The ‘jihadi culture’ did not come out of the blue. The Afghan Jihad against Soviet occupation was instrumental in cultivating and promoting its conceptual basis with official patronage under Ziaul Haq. Gen. Musharraf wants to revert to the ideals of the country’s founding father and transform Pakistan into a modern, liberal and tolerant welfare state. On the face of it, the Americans seem quite willing to buy Musharraf’s reform package as a substantive evidence of his ‘honourable intentions’. But they may in due course be a little more demanding in asking for safeguards against ‘Talibanization’ of the Kashmir struggle.

Several Kashmiri militant groups, in particular the ones operating from Pakistan, share the Taliban worldview and are committed to a similar agenda. Hoisting the Pakistani flag on Delhi’s Red Fort is just one illustration of the jihadi groups’ mindset. Little wonder, the Indians have been constantly hammering in the jihadi groups’ nexus with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

The Indian refrain of ‘cross-border terrorism’ is premised on the formulation that there has been a steady flow of infiltrators from across the LoC, largely Pakistani warriors raised by the jihadi groups, but also of other nationalities, Afghans in particular, inducted from the Al Qaeda recruitment and training facility in Afghanistan. Ironically, some Indian observers say that the destruction of Osama bin Laden’s apparatus in Afghanistan will not stop the process of recruitment of Islamic warriors for jihad in Kashmir. According to them, the contrary is likely to happen, as the remnants of hard-core Taliban and Al Qaeda loyalists will find it convenient to converge on Kashmir.

While the Indians have grudgingly acknowledged that there is an ‘indigenous component’ of the militant groups in Kashmir (L. K. Advani found it expedient to admit that Hizbul Mujahideen was made up of 90 per cent locals and only ten per cent outsiders as his alibi for agreeing to talk to an agency officially called by his government a terrorist outfit), their accent has been on projecting the Kashmiri militants as surrogates being manipulated by Pakistan-based jihadi organizations in collaboration with the ISI.

Whether or not the ISI has fallen in line with the government’s policy shift vis-a-vis the jihadi forces, New Delhi refuses to find a whipping boy other than the ISI which was, with the usual indecent haste, accused of having a hand in the terrorist attack on the American Centre in Kolkata. If the purpose is to discredit Pakistan’s bonafides and drive a wedge in its alliance with the US, the underlying idea of the continuing campaign is to put across the message that Gen. Musharraf has not gone far enough to rein in the ISI and its covert operations in collusion with Islamic extremists.

Whether as a free choice or in response to compulsion of circumstances, if the drive against religious extremism ends up in the dismantling of the jihadi groups, it will obviously be seen as a setback for the Kashmir freedom struggle. Some crucial questions are likely to be raised. For instance, is material support and assistance from outside necessary to sustain a particular level of resistance in Indian-held Kashmir? Are the outsiders involved in fighting for a fraternal cause an asset, or a liability for the freedom struggle — more so in the wake of the current global drive against terrorism. If militancy were to decline what other viable options would be available for the Kashmiris to resist Indian occupation. Needless to say, the evolving global scenario and its ramifications in the region call for the formulation of a new Kashmir strategy by Islamabad.

Whether or not the newly set-up president’s National Kashmir Committee has the capability to rise to the occasion, the move nevertheless recognizes the need for a policy review and a new initiative to chart a viable course of action. President Musharraf has been trying to reassure the people that there would be no sell-out on Kashmir. No compromise is possible on our solidarity with the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination, he said as he declared “Kashmir runs in our blood”. Nonetheless, he is required to perform a delicate balancing act as he proceeds to unfold his agenda for neutralizing the ‘Islamic warriors’ and to establish the writ of the state all across the land.

He has repeatedly made it clear that in Pakistan’s view the Kashmiris are freedom fighters and not terrorists, and this is precisely what he wishes to convey to the whole world. However, as he pleads for a differentiation between a freedom struggle and terrorism, he himself has to draw a line between an endeavour to outgrow the ‘jihadi culture’ and an action likely to undermine the Kashmir struggle.

As we endeavour to make a break with jihadi culture, reorientation of the struggle in Kashmir is all the more necessary. ‘Azadi’ is a universally acclaimed right of the people. No one can grudge the Kashmiris if they are fighting for freedom from a regime which they do not acknowledge as just and legitimate. The struggle for freedom may not necessarily be prone to using violence as a political instrument. And it could also be a combination of political agitation and militant action depending on which form of struggle is more appropriate in a given situation.

THE general criticism of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is that it is too rigid and does not allow much room for a flexible response to new circumstances. Therefore, the critics demand, Pakistan needs to change its Kashmir policy and make it more adaptable to the needs of new times.

However, the reality is exactly the opposite. The problem of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is not rigidity, or continuity, but rather too much change. It is strange but true that for all the slogans of “not budging an inch from our position on Kashmir”, which successive governments in Pakistan have mouthed for public consumption, Pakistan’s Kashmir stance has always been changing easily. Too easily for the good of our very strong case on the issue.

Take the example of the twin matters of keeping a ‘singular focus on Kashmir while talking to India’ and ‘Kashmir is not a bilateral problem’. Even in the formative years of the conflict Pakistan was keen to bracket the issue with all other outstanding problems with India and desired a simultaneous focus on everything that bedevilled relations between the two countries.

From the occupation of Junagarh, Manavadar and other states in Kathiawar that had acceded to Pakistan to the refusal of the Indian government to implement agreements on the payment of finances and equitable division of military assets.

Pakistans policy makers wanted every item in the catalogue of Indian chicanery to be taken up by the United Nations. In fact, the letter of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to his Indian counterpart as early as December 30, 1947, made a strong plea for referring not just Kashmir but all issues to the United Nations.

“I trust you will agree that the intervention of the United Nations, whatever form it is to take, should be invited in respect of all these matters so that all pending differences may be speedily resolved”, wrote Liaquat Ali Khan. Perhaps justifiable under the peculiar nature of circumstances of that time, when the country was grappling with multifaceted challenges of nation- and state- building, this approach was not suited to establishing the centrality of the Kashmir issue in Pakistan’s relations with India.

It also diluted the singular-policy-focus-on-Kashmir claim that all governments later repeatedly made in public. Indeed it led many in India to subsequently argue that Pakistan did not even want Kashmir to be raised at the United Nations and was quite happy to settle it bilaterally.

The policy zigzagging on both these scores continue even after the United Nations Security Council had passed its resolutions on Kashmir, turning the matter into an international dispute. The Liaquat-Nehru correspondence on the much-talked about No War Pact idea in 1950 reflected a flexible approach towards the Kashmir issue, including the possibility of taking up the issue bilaterally.

Pakistan proposed referring all outstanding disputes between India and Pakistan to international arbitration only after “negotiations” had failed. Throughout the sixties, the government stance that Kashmir was a central issue to be resolved in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions continued along with occasional bilateral initiatives for a settlement. Bilateral commitments were made to “renew efforts to resolve all outstanding issues” between the two countries.

The talks between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then Pakistans foreign minister and his Indian counterpart, Sardar Swaran Singh, on Kashmir was bilateral in nature. President Ayub Khan’s speech on the occasion of the signing of the Tashkent Declaration did not even mention Kashmir; the Declaration itself only talked about discussions on Kashmir; there was no reference to Kashmir being an international dispute.

Then came the Simla agreement of 1972. Negotiated in the aftermath of the East Pakistan debacle and the defeat in the 1971 war, Simla agreement went a step further in practically altering the Pakistan’s earlier stance that Kashmir was an international dispute as defined in the United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Instead, it specifically said that “the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them”.

This armed the Indians with the argument that Pakistan itself had agreed to bilaterally settle the Kashmir dispute. The disclaimers from Pakistan that the wording of the Simla agreement “...through bilateral negotiations or by any other means...” protected Pakistans position have been effective only as a counter-argument.

The subsequent rounds of talks at the foreign secretaries’ level, including discussions (fruitless as these turned out to be) on Kashmir throughout the nineties also indicated an inclination towards bilateralism. Indeed, the Lahore Declaration did not even refer to Kashmir as a “dispute”. Instead, it preferred the term “issue”. There was no mention of the United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Instead, it spoke of a resolve to “intensify their composite and integrated dialogue process for any early and positive outcome of the agreed bilateral agenda.”

Similar confusion has persisted in our characterization of the Kashmir dispute. Sometimes it has been called “an unfinished agenda of partition”, sometimes an extension of the two nation theory, sometimes it has been termed the “sole question of the right of the Kashmiris to live freely”, or it has called a territorial dispute. At other times, it has been described as a flashpoint of nuclear conflict, a human rights concern, and a question of the survival of Pakistan.

Our governments have also been quite flexible in trying various possible solutions for the Kashmir problem. From freezing and neglecting it (as in the late ’70s and the ’80s) to fighting wars over it (1947-48, 1965, 1999), to actively backing militant campaigns against the territorial division of the Kashmir state (in the ’90s) to talking about its virtual division (the Chenab solution taken up seriously by the Nawaz Sharif government in 1999), our stance has lacked a well-defined bottom-line.

From demanding everything to agreeing to anything, we have been flitting from one extreme position to another.

The result is that our Kashmir policy has been a rolling stone of change that has gathered no moss of steady international support. This has undermined our position on Kashmir, whose substance has been marred by thoughtless military adventures and crass diplomatic opportunism of shortsighted politicians.

Against this background, the need is not to change Pakistans Kashmir policy, but to give it a stable character and make it consistent — both in terms of the goal and the strategies applied to achieve the goal.

WHEN account is finally taken of the brutalities to which the people of Afghanistan were subjected by those who claimed to rule in the name of a religion that places compassion and tolerance among the highest virtues, one wonders what their apologists in Pakistan would have to say. A Zionist conspiracy? A CIA plot? An American disinformation smear? An Indian concoction? Or perhaps all four?

The Taliban movement was an aberration and in the name of restoring Islam to its early purity, it performed the greatest imaginable disservice to it. Decades will pass before Islam and those who follow it are able to restore their image in the eyes of the world.

The Taliban took away the dignity of the people of Afghanistan. Their vandalism, exhibited at its most shocking in the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, one of the world’s most enduring cultural and religious legacies, will be remembered long after their other misdeeds are forgotten.

If the Taliban were following the ways of God, as they and their apologists kept claiming, why were they so cruel? They showed no mercy to anyone, least of all to their women whom they relegated to the status of animals. The Taliban are gone but they have destroyed much that was of value. It is hard to forgive them.

In the next weeks and months, more and more stories of what the Taliban did to their people will come out and one hopes those who saw in them the best hope of Islam’s revival will come to recognize the scourge that this throwback to medievalism was. One of the most shocking stories that I can remember having read in a long time is that of Sayed Abdullah, a 26-year old Afghan who is living evidence of the curse that the Taliban period was. It is to the credit of Kevin Sullivan, a ‘Washington Post’ reporter, who recently brought it to light.

It all began one afternoon as 1999 was coming to a close. Abdullah says before the Taliban disappear down some dark alley of history, he wants the world to know what they did to him for no other sin except that they thought he was a Christian. About fifteen Taliban soldiers carrying their trademark AK-47 assault rifles surrounded his home that day where he lived with his wife, two girls aged three and one and his mother. The leader of the group said to him, “We are suspicious of you. We want to ask you some questions.”

He couldn’t understand what they wanted from him. He had a steady job with the International Committee of the Red Cross. He was a popular and friendly man.

He had learnt English at school and he had collected a library of five hundred books that he loved to read. He was particularly fond of European history and he had pictures and short biographies of all US presidents. He loved to travel, but was too poor to do so. His books were his escape into the world he could not otherwise see.

The Taliban threw him into one of their hallmark Toyota pickups, took him to a dreaded building that housed the regime’s Intelligence Division No.1, and pu