EUROPEAN Union governments’ decision to send two of the bloc’s top foreign policy officials to India and Kashmir by the end of May is a first-ever sign of EU interest in trying to ease Pakistan-India tensions over Kashmir.

EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg earlier this week said they would be sending security chief Javier Solana and Chris Patten, European Commissioner for external relations, in separate missions to Islamabad and Delhi before June to avert renewed Pakistan-India fighting as melting snows in the Himalayan region herald another ‘fighting season’ between the two countries.

The EU decision is the result of strong lobbying by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who warned his EU counterparts that the 15-nation group could no longer afford to ignore tensions in South Asia. “There is a danger given our current understandable focus and preoccupation with the Middle East, that our eye turns away from the intrinsic problems of Kashmir,” Straw told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg. “And so we have to remain engaged there. It is a very, very tense situation.”

It’s no surprise that Britain, with its large South Asian population and historical links with both India and Pakistan, is spearheading calls for EU engagement with Delhi and Islamabad. But what is intriguing is the readiness of Britain’s EU partners’ eagerness to follow up on Straw’s appeals with immediate action.

Many motives are spurring unprecedented EU interest in the region. EU nations are clearly anxious to spread their wings and start translating their long-held ambition of becoming a global power — not just a regional one — into concrete action. There is growing EU frustration at being once again pushed to the sidelines by the United States in the Middle East. And after having cautiously steered clear of South Asia and East Asian disputes for years, the EU finally feels confident enough to demand that its voice be heard in both regions.

But Europe’s sudden focus on Pakistan-India tensions is not just a question of EU pride and ambition. London — and specially Jack Straw — is under strong pressure from Britain’s increasingly assertive South Asian citizens to try and resolve the longstanding Kashmir feud. After Sept 11 Europeans are anxious to stem conflicts, stop human rights violations and extinguish the fires of religious extremism wherever they occur.

Significantly, the EU with its focus on regional integration and its own experience in guaranteeing peace between former enemies is convinced that it has an important lesson in forging friendship to give to Pakistan and India. If Germany, France and Britain can live in harmony, argue EU policymakers, there is no reason that Islamabad and Delhi cannot stop feuding and start cooperating.

But even more importantly, EU policymakers are convinced that rapid international diplomatic action is urgently needed to stop escalating Pakistan-India tensions from turning into another war. “The military capability concentrated on the Line of Control in Kashmir and further on the India-Pakistan border is of great concern for Europe, not least because of the nuclear capabilities of both sides,” an EU diplomat told Dawn.

With weather conditions in spring and summer becoming more favourable for military action, the risk of escalation is mounting, the diplomat argued. Also, continued confrontation on the borders increases the risks of attacks by ‘misjudgment,’ he said, adding: “It is vital to stop any deterioration of relations between Islamabad and Delhi before the snows melt” in Kashmir.

“The EU is adamant that it is not seeking a mediation role in Kashmir. But there must be EU engagement in the region,” said a British diplomat. “Our appraisal of the situation is that it is the international community’s responsibility to focus on a very sensitive situation,” he said.

The EU formula is simple: the European Commission and member-states will step up their political and economic links with both Islamabad and Delhi. Contacts between Pakistan and India will be encouraged at all levels in different fora. “It is important to send the right message to both parties,” Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said in Luxembourg. “We have to ensure that Pakistan and India get out of their current impasse.”

Solana and Patten will be taking key messages to both Pakistan and India. Both men will urge Pakistan to step up cooperation with India on security issues and proceed with the arrest of militants accused of terrorism in Kashmir and India.

EU diplomats say it is clear that Pakistan has not fully implemented its pledges to prosecute or hand over all perpetrators linked with terrorist activities in India.

The fear in EU capitals is that banned terrorist organizations are reintegrating into the mainstream of political life in Pakistan. As such, the EU envoys will reinforce their message that Pakistan must fulfil promises made to India and start a de-escalation of the present confrontation.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf will also be urged to work harder for the return of democracy “because it is the only way in the longer term to defuse the mounting Islamic radicalization of society,” said an EU diplomat, warning: “Military rule has not and cannot solve the structural problems in Pakistan.”

A similarly strong message will be sent to India on respecting human rights in Kashmir. Diplomats said India would be told that military means cannot solve the Kashmir dispute. There is also agreement in the EU that recent religious violence boosted by Hindu nationalism is a worrying symptom of instabilities in Indian political life. Indian leadership should, therefore, avoid further increasing tensions in society with hardline policies in Kashmir.

Europe’s interest in the region should be encouraged by both Pakistan and India. There is no denying that both countries have a great deal to learn from the EU. Europe is a major trading partner and aid donor for both. Most crucially, however, Europe,s success in ending war and forging permanent peace should be an inspiration for feuding nations all over the world.

DESPITE one’s best efforts it is impossible to understand why at all teachers of government schools, colleges and other seats of learning are engaged to conduct general elections, as and when they are held in the country. Having said that, one is also unable to understand why at all these teachers are roped in to conduct, or help hold an exercise, like the referendum that is coming up on 30th April.

Now having said that let me remind for the context that it is imperative to keep one’s focus on the fact, that generally speaking, teachers are amongst the poorly paid sections of Pakistani society. Yet for strategic exercises and targets such as the initiation of democracy in Pakistan, these teachers, men and women, young and old, of good quality or not, are made to be a part of the democratization process. Strange, this emphasis on them.

Why I have chosen to say all this is because the examinations of 150,000 students, who were to appear for the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi, have been merrily and indifferently postponed due to the proposed referendum, as the staff and the teachers would be busy in holding this national exercise. I do not know what the brighter amongst the boys and girls would be saying about this yet another delay. But the cynical amongst us are likely to believe that the ordinary students, the average boys and girls, who take education as seriously as they take life, generally, are rather pleased. The presumption being that they have not really studied or worked hard, and have therefore found this time valuable for their last-minute study now.

Speaking somewhat cynically, the fact is that in a society given to delays of all sorts (repeat of all sorts and in all walks of life) this delay is good training ground for our students. As someone says, as soon as students get through with their school.

Examinations, and begin to appear for their Board of Secondary Education, or Intermediate examinations, or university exams, they begin to get a stinging feel of what life around is like. It is like a training ground for them, getting to understand what lies ahead. Delays, fair and unfair delays, humiliating and demeaning. Biting all the time.

Before one proceeds further on the subject of a repeated postponement of Intermediate examinations of the Karachi Board to the 3rd of May now, (details of which Dawn has been carrying in the past few days) one is distracted to take notice of the announcement that appeared in Dawn yesterday (April 20) saying that the SSC practicals had been postponed. One doesn’t care which department or sub-department or section is responsible, but we are surely giving to the young people of this society rough treatment. Little wonder they appear so unconnected to the mainstream, and defiant and disobedient each time they get a chance.

Read this postponement which said that “due to the engagements of teachers for training to conduct the April 30 referendum, the ongoing practical examinations of the Board would remain suspended from April 20 to May 4. (A good fortnight, please note. As if Time doesn’t matter at all).

The Board further said that the “practicals would recommence on May 6 as per programme announced earlier, while the programme of the suspended practicals would be notified shortly. (Someone is not doing his homework and we keep blaming the poor kids alone). Therefore, when we have this tradition and tendency of students relying on tuitions and extra classes it doesn’t at all surprise. It may disappoint in a rather idealistic sense, but where is idealism in real terms.

For the record and to further establish the point that students’ examinations are amongst the scandalous areas of educational activity (in a society where educational coverage is pathetically low) it may be recalled that the annual examinations of the Board of Secondary Education were postponed earlier for 23 days, as the Board had been unable to prepare the admit cards of the thousands of students on time. There was a time, one may recall, when only the results of the matric exams were delayed and that in itself was a cause of anger and disappointment. Now we have reached a stage (moved forward?) where even admits cards are reasons to delay examinations.

One wonders whether we are reaching a stage where the education sector is becoming unwieldy as it grows and expands. The fact is that it needs to grow and expand, because education is far away from the doorstep of the majority. So it is crucial that the quality of administration and governance improve a thousand per cent.

As one regrets the two postponements in the examinations of the Intermediate students, thought goes out to some related themes in the education sector. Themes that should really be non-issues. Every year there surfaces the disturbing situation where students find it hard to get textbooks for schools on time. Or there are worrying accounts of how school managements in the private sector are fleecing parents and students on various counts. Or there are stories of how frustrating it is to get admissions to good schools and colleges or how there are violations of rules and procedures.

This reminds me of the news that appeared this week which said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had upheld its judgment that “no quota will be allowed to the armed forces and doctors’ children in the medical colleges’ admission; and that however the students who have already been admitted will not be affected.”

Apparently there is no quota system in other provinces of Pakistan, as there is in Sindh today, and the bright hardworking students in Sindh have been at a disadvantage because of the quota system, which has perhaps outlived its utility now.

I am also compelled to take notice of the story which says that the students of Karachi College for Women on Chand Bibi Road are being harassed by drug addicts, who operate right next to the College. At least colleges and schools that have girls as students should be free of this problem of drug addicts, which apparently is rising, for reasons we all know.

As far as the Intermediate examinations for 3 May go, one hopes that they will no more be delayed and that at least the time lost will be made up in the announcement of their results.

‘FRONTIERS’, said Lord Curzon, “are indeed the razor’s edge on which hangs suspended the modern issues of war and peace.” Applying Curzon’s description of the Durand Line as the ‘razor’s frontier’, Dr Azmat Hayat Khan in his doctoral thesis The Durand Line: Its Geostrategic Importance observes that the future peace of South Asia hangs on the Durand Line.

The Durand Line has catapulted into limelight of the world ever since the operational engagement in Afghanistan of the US- led coalition forces under operations Enduring Freedom and Anaconda.

In addition to the US-led coalition is the UN-Mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), responsible mainly for the security of Kabul and its environs.

The presence of the coalition forces has called into question the inviolability of the Durand Line as a recognized international border. Bagram-based Maj-Gen Franklin L. Hagenbeck, commander of the 10th (US) Mountain Division, has time and again suggested the possibility of crossing the Durand Line in hot pursuit of the Al Qaeda and Taliban strugglers “as a last resort”. Reportedly, the coalition forces have established their camps two to three miles across the Durand Line to widen their intelligence net to seek out and trap Usama bin Laden and his associates.

In addition, land-air operations of the coalition forces continue almost unabated all over, particularly in the east within 20-25 miles of the Pakistan border. Technically the Pak- Afghan frontier (Durand Line) has been extended deep inside Pakistan in search of the Al Qaeda escapees to places as far as Faisalabad. This is not to exclude all such other places as suspected to have been harbouring the wanted terrorists.

The Durand Line has remained a geopolitical threat and no less a diplomatic headache to Pakistan ever since its inception. Is history repeating itself along of the Line? The question needs looking into in its historical and contemporary context. That the foreign forces (UN/US-led) are here to stay according to their own strategic compulsions is more or less a truism Pakistan will have to live with while it lasts. Almost equally self-evident is the emerging reality that the Americans have now taken over the so-called Great Game where the British and Russia left off.

The Durand Line stayed as a major strand in the intricate web of moves and countermoves in the Anglo-Russian Great Game through the second half of the 19th century. More than a buffer state or a terminus between British India, (subsequently Pakistan) and Czarist Russia (Subsequently the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation), Afghanistan was first exposed to creeping communist infiltration after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973, followed by naked military aggression in December 1979. The resulting nine-year-long war and military occupation led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the entrapment of Afghanistan in the bitter civil war.

The British containment strategy towards Afghanistan had been shaped largely by two considerations: first, the effective control of the sprawling tribal areas bordering the settled districts and, secondly, the defence of India’s northwestern frontier against an aggressively advancing Russia beyond the east of the Urals.

Unlike Russia, depending overly on the use of brute military force for conquest and occupation, the British relied more on realpolitik. In the context of the Afghan tribal culture — mutual rivalries and attachments — realpolitik meant switching friends and enemies depending on the demands of a given situation. The British strategy had been deliberately opportunistic and stable all along.

The case of Amir Dost Mohammad may well be cited as its one classical example among a host of similar others. A great friend and ally of the British, Dost Mohammad was branded a hostile. Once he misbehaved and was replaced by Shah Shuja under a tripartite treaty signed by British, Ranjit Singh, the ruler of Punjab, and Shah Shuja in 1839. Dost Mohammad would return to Kabul in 1855 to be proclaimed the king of Afghanistan. In return he ‘bound’ himself to an alliance with the British proclaiming himself as the ‘enemy of the enemies’ of the East India Company.

The landmark treaty of Gandamak between the British and Amir Yakub Khan in 1879, after second Afghan war, was triumph of the dual British strategy of war and peace to keep the Afghans on their right side. Gandamak was actually the forerunner of the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1893 under which the Durand Line was demarcated. The Line was the first of its kind between a colonial power and an independent country. It would, in the time to come, serve as a kind of a permanent settlement of the boundary problems and sporadic frontier wars between British India and Afghanistan.

The Durand Agreement of 1893 was ‘reaffirmed by the Anglo- Afghan treaties of August 1919, November 22, 1927 and of 1930. Dr Hayat quotes Sir Olaf Caroe to the effect that these two documents only recognized the legitimate Afghan interest in British dealings with the tribes on the common frontier, and did not say a word about the Afghans’ rights on the British side of the Durand Line. (Sir Olaf Caroe in his article ‘North West Frontier: A Bone of Contention’ — The London Times, Feb 1, 1968).

The Government of India Act, 1935, formally defined India as including the area known as Tribal Territory, in accordance with its delineation on official maps. With the transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Pakistan the restransit cum suo oneri treaties of the extinct state concerning boundary lines ... remain valid and all rights and duties arising from such treaties of the extinct state devolve on the absorbing state.

On June 13, 1948, Shah Wali Khan, the Afghan envoy to Pakistan, at a party in his honour by the Aligarh Old Boys’ Association, Karachi, categorically declared: “Our King has already stated, and I, as the representative of Afghanistan, declare that Afghanistan has no claims on frontier territory, and even if there were any, they have been given up in favour of Pakistan. Anything contrary to this which may have appeared in the press in the past or may appear in the future should not be given credence at all and should be considered just a canard.’

About the same time, the official Farsi daily, Anis, supported by Kabul Radio, demanded that the territory between the Durand Line and the River Indus should be amalgamated with Afghanistan. In July 1949, Afghan parliament declared that “it does not recognize the imaginary Durand or any similar line”. Kabul Radio and the Afghan press intensified their propaganda, inciting the tribesmen living on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line to revolt in the name of ‘Pakhtoonistan’.

What makes the razor’s edge sharper is Afghanistan’s two-fold internal strife and conflict — the coalition and the UN forces, on the one hand, and the local / national mutually — warring groups, on the other. The spillover into Pakistan from either source, and its impact on national security and integrity would be significant. While the prolonged, open-ended presence of the foreign military forces, in one form or another, must impact Pakistan’s sovereign status, the Afghan in-feuding could, over time, inter-mesh with our own complex tribal milieu to threaten the delicate quasinational mode evolved painstakingly through the past over half a century.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army.