Lighting the nuclear fire

A NUCLEAR war is said to have no winners, but Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee seems to think otherwise. His exhortations to Indian troops in Kashmir to prepare for sacrifices and “decisive victory” have set off widespread alarm. It seems plausible that India is preparing for a “limited war” to flush out Islamic militant camps in Pakistan administered Kashmir.

But with swift reaction and counter-reaction, it is far from clear whether the combat can remain confined. Meanwhile, as cross-border artillery shelling intensifies, five Indian naval vessels are rapidly moving towards the Arabian Sea. On Thursday, Pakistan’s stock market suspended trading for the day and, as fighter aircraft circle the skies over Islamabad, foreign diplomats start their exodus from the capital.

Events shall take their course in the days and weeks ahead, but there is much to reflect upon as we cross the fourth anniversary of the Pokharan and Chaghai nuclear tests. With free debate on sensitive issues largely proscribed in both countries, particularly on national television, the only voices to be heard are those of militarists and establishment strategic analysts. Not surprisingly, nuclear affairs are now being guided by wishful, delusional, thinking.

The most frightening delusion is India’s trivialization of Pakistan’s nuclear capability. This relatively new phenomenon has gained wide currency in Indian ruling circles. Although Pakistan’s nuclear tests had dispelled earlier scepticism, senior Indian military and political leaders continue to express doubts about the operational capability and usability of the Pakistani arsenal. Still more seriously, many Indians believe that, as a client state of the US, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are under the control of Washington. The assumption is that, in case of extreme crisis, the US would either restrain their use by Pakistan or, if need be, destroy them. At a recent meeting, I heard senior Indian analysts say that they are “bored” by Pakistan’s nuclear threats and no longer believe them. Should one laugh or cry?

Wishes are being confused here with facts, and expediency with truth. Four years ago, to their chagrin, Indian militarists realized that they had shot themselves in the foot by forcing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons out of the closet. This had been subsequently rationalized by claiming that a stable peace based on a “balance of mutual terror” was now imminent. But after the upsurge of Kashmir militancy, denying the potency of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons has become more convenient because it clears the road to a limited war.

One notes another sea change in the attitude of Indian militarists. For years they had insisted that all matters, including nuclear issues, be settled only bilaterally. Suggestions that nuclear weapons in the possession of India and Pakistan were more dangerous than those possessed by the West, Russia, and China had been angrily rejected. How dare anyone suggest that India and Pakistan are in any way less responsible, reasonable and rational?

Bilateralism has now bit the dust. Having cut off direct communications with each other, both adversaries have thrust disaster prevention into the hands of diplomats and third-tier leaders of western countries. A continuous stream of officials from America and Britain has passed, or is due to pass, through Islamabad and Delhi. These include Christina Rocca, Chris Patten, Jack Straw, and Richard Armitage The subcontinent’s fate now hangs in their hands.

Pakistani nuclear misperceptions and miscalculations have been no less severe than India’s.

Pushed into the nuclear arena first by India’s tests in 1974, and then again in 1998, Pakistan soon became addicted to nuclear weapons. Countering India’s nukes became secondary. Instead, Pakistani nukes became tools for achieving foreign policy objectives. They created euphoric hyper-confidence and a spirit of machoism that led to breathtaking adventurism in Kashmir. The subsequent Kargil war of 1999 will be recorded by historians as the first actually caused by nuclear weapons. Believing that a nuclear shield made Indian retaliation impossible, Pakistan coyly disclaimed any connection with the attackers who were extracting heavy Indian casualties from their high mountain posts in Kargil.

These illusions were soon to be dispelled. As India counter-attacked, a deeply worried Nawaz Sharif flew to Washington on July 4, 1999, where he was bluntly told to withdraw Pakistani forces or be prepared for full-scale war with India. In an article published last month, Bruce Reidel, Special Assistant to President Clinton, writes that he was present in person when Clinton informed Nawaz Sharif that the Pakistan army had mobilized its nuclear-tipped missile fleet. Unnerved by this revelation and the closeness to disaster, Nawaz Sharif agreed to immediate withdrawal, shedding all earlier pretensions that Pakistan had no control over the attackers.

Other pretensions continued. Today, in spite of General Musharraf’s soothing statements, there is little doubt that militant camps shelter under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella. Having operated openly for over a decade in full public view, and with obvious state backing, only magic — or massive military action — can eliminate them. Whatever Pakistanis might choose to think, the rest of the world remains incredulous of the continuing official Pakistani position that it provides “only diplomatic and moral support” to the people of Kashmir. Earlier denials of military involvement in Kargil, or of providing military support to the Taliban regime, have hugely diminished Pakistan’s international credibility.

It is now a matter of survival for Pakistan to visibly demonstrate that it has severed all links with the militant groups it had formerly supported, to be firm about providing “only diplomatic and moral support”, and to implement what General Musharraf promised in his Jan 12 speech. To run with the hares and hunt with the hounds — and imagine that the world will not know — has become impossible.

Difficult though this course of action is, it is also essential if the people of Kashmir are to be spared the brutal rapaciousness of Indian occupying forces. Although our generals have yet to swallow this bitter pill, the fact is that Kashmir cannot be liberated by force. The “bleed India” policy, an apparently cheap option for Pakistan, was vociferously advocated for over a decade. This has totally collapsed — Pakistan has bled no less than India.

Even more important than the fate of a few million Kashmiris is that of India’s huge Muslim minority, which equals or exceeds the population of Pakistan. Without Pakistan’s decisive action on cross-border insurgency, the Muslims of India will become the target of state-sponsored pogroms and ethnic cleansing. The massacres in Gujarat provide a chilling preview of what may lie ahead at the hands of a fundamentalist Hindu government.

Terrible dangers lie ahead. Lacking any desire for political settlement or accommodation, or even a strategy for achieving victory, jihadists in Kashmir now operate as a third force independent of the Pakistani state. Their goal is to provoke full-scale war between India and Pakistan, destabilize the Musharraf government, and settle scores with America. Hence the possibility that they will soon commit some huge atrocity — such as a mass murder of Indian civilians — which would turn India into a mad bull dashing blindly into a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Many observers have noted that the Srinagar, Delhi, and Jammu attacks on Indian civilians coincided with the visits of high officials from western countries. Could the forthcoming visit by Richard Armitage provide a trigger for the next atrocity and a nuclear war?

The writer is professor of physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Signposts to follow

I HAVE a big worry about the direction Pakistan might take after the elections of October 2002. Will the envisaged transfer of power — admittedly not all power — by the military government to the politicians to be elected by the people result in a weak state? Do the politicians and the political parties they command have the strength to provide the leadership Pakistan needs in such a troubled period in its history?

Unless some corrective actions are taken quickly between now and the promised sharing of power with people’s representatives, Pakistan could end up in a state of confusion. There may be considerable uncertainty about the real focus of power — would it be with the president, the prime minister, the military? President Pervez Musharraf has promised that the political system he proposes to usher in October will provide checks and balances among the various centres of power. In what way will these checks and balances operate? What will be the institutional mechanisms to ensure that no one in this balanced structure gets out of step and marches ahead of the other?

There is a great deal at stake in Pakistan’s political evolution not only for the country’s citizens but also for the world at large. A situation may well arise in which the West, led by the United States, will find it extremely difficult to conduct its war against global terrorism. If appropriate actions are not taken by the regime currently in power, a good deal of what has been achieved over the last two to three years may well be lost. Pakistan may not be able to build upon the foundations laid down with considerable care over the last three years and erect on them a durable economic structure. Pakistan may well be moving once again towards a situation which will not permit policy-makers in Islamabad to play the strong hand they need to restore health to what still remains a sick economy.

In the article published in this space two weeks ago, I argued that a politically weak Pakistan in the 1990s produced the weakest economy in South Asia. Such a situation must not be allowed to develop once again. If it does, Pakistan’s GDP growth will remain at the anaemic level of the last 15 years. Poverty will continue to increase at the rate of 10 per cent a year, adding five million people to the already large pool of the impoverished. Social services will continue to deteriorate and the people, in both anger and frustration, will turn to the forces of extremism for succour and support. Is there something General Pervez Musharraf could do between now and October 2002 to save the country from plunging once again into chaos and confusion?

This question was given an answer by The Washington Post in a recent editorial that appeared under the title: “The general’s broken promise.” According to the newspaper, “the Bush administration embraced Mr. Musharraf last year after he pledged his support for the military campaign in Afghanistan. It showered him with economic aid and overlooked his bogus referendum. But it cannot continue to cling to him if he is to lead his regime over a cliff. Once again, as it did after Sept. 11, the administration must present the Pakistani president with a stark choice: either he must act decisively against the extremists of Al Qaeda and Kashmir, and implement the domestic reforms he promised, or lose the support of the United States.”

There are three problems with the approach suggested by The Washington Post. Since these problems are common to much of the recent — unfortunately mostly negative — commentary on Pakistan in the western press, it is useful to discuss them in some detail.

The first assumption is that Pakistan can be resolute in partnering with the United States in the latter’s battle against terrorism without being concerned about the domestic consequences of making such an effort. The domestic reaction to the American enterprise depends, in turn, on the way Washington is perceived by the people in Pakistan. That perception is not helped by the way the Americans have conducted themselves in international affairs. Thomas L. Friedman, the Pulitzer prize winning American journalist, in a recent contribution to The New York Times describes very well the dilemma posed for those who wish to support America. “A war on terrorism that is fought only by sending troops to Afghanistan or by tightening our borders will ultimately be unsatisfying. Such a war is important, but it can never be definitely won. Someone will always slip through. But a war on terrorism that, with some imagination, is broadly defined as making America safer by also making it better is a war that could be won,” he writes.

What would make America better is its stance on a number of global issues. “There is no way we can be successful in this war without partners, and there is no way American will have lasting partners, especially in Europe, unless it is perceived as being the best global citizen it can be,” continues Friedman. America is not seen by millions of people, including those in Pakistan, as a good global citizen. Its reputation in Pakistan was tarnished by the way it conducted itself after the conclusion of the first war in Afghanistan in 1989. By threatening to walk out once again, as recommended by editorial cited above, America would once again sow the seeds of doubt in vulnerable Pakistani minds.

The second problem with The Washington Post approach is a reflection of the broader problem with the Bush doctrine as enunciated on September 20 last year. “Either you are with us or you are against us” made good rhetoric especially at a time when America was still dazed by the terrorist attacks on the two most important symbols of that country’s global power — capitalism and military might. But good rhetoric, especially of the kind favoured by America’s current president, does not make sound policy. By labelling all violent campaigns against state power as terrorism,” America has allowed Israel and India to treat as terrorism the legitimate efforts of the people of Palestine and Kashmir.

The third problem with The Washington Post approach is to insist on something called “domestic reform” as a condition for continuing American support. What do the advocates of palpable changes in Pakistan mean by “domestic reform”? What do they want General Musharraf to do before he and the country he leads continue to qualify for assistance by the West? By saying that his “present course risks the ruin of promise of reform” exactly what kind of criticism is being levelled against President Musharraf?

In various public pronouncements made since he assumed office in October 1999, General Pervez Musharraf has indicated his strong desire to lead Pakistan towards modernity. I would like to call this Musharraf’s Pakistan project. It has several components. These include economic revival, repairing and improving the rapidly deteriorating physical infrastructure, return of durable democracy, introduction of a three-tier system of governance, controlling corruption by holding all public officials accountable, improving the quality of education by reforming the curriculum taught at religious madrassahs, giving women a political voice and, most important of all, checking the country’s plunge into religious extremism.

This is a long and impressive list. All the objectives the general has set before himself are laudable. To achieve them will take a great deal of political resolve, considerable amount of patient planning, and careful institution-building. None of this was done by the political leadership that preceded Musharraf’s intervention. Why should we assume that the leaders who gain power in October 2002 will be any different in their approach and in the objectives they will pursue from those who came before them?

If we cannot make such an assumption then General Musharraf’s Pakistan project should begin not with putting out a list of worthy objectives to be achieved but by setting in stone a policy framework from which no departure will be allowed. The main purpose of this framework should be to provide the country with a functioning state.

Today Pakistan does not have the kind of functioning state I have in mind. The military’s three-year rule has brought some discipline to the working of the government. It has stabilized the economy. It has re-oriented the foreign policy in the direction that has provided both short and (hopefully) long-term economic benefits. But all this does not mean a functioning state built upon a durable institutional foundation. Over a thirty-year period, the political establishment systematically succeeded in destroying the few functioning institutions the country had inherited from the British. There is little hope that the representatives of the same establishment will return to power with a different purpose in mind. What is then the way out?

The Musharraf government should lay down clearly and in some detail the type of institutions it would want the political administration to develop after the transfer of power. Since not much time is left between now and the elections promised for October 2002, General Musharraf and his colleagues will have to be selective in choosing the areas where firm signposts should be left for the political administration to follow. I would recommend that such signposts be erected in three areas — devolution of political power, development of a legal system, and creating a partnership between the public and private sectors in the sphere of education. I will say a word about each of these three areas.

When the history of the Musharraf period gets to be written, the devolution of power to the local level will be identified as one of the more positive achievements. But a great deal still remains to be done, especially defining fiscal relations between the different levels of government. What should be these relations and who will watch their proper observances are the types of issues that need to be signposted.

Pakistan needs to build a legal structure that is not a hodgepodge of four systems that have been fused together. Today we have the common law system inherited from the British on which the Islamic, the military and the tribal systems have been allowed to encroach. This has bred confusion. There is enough evidence available from the experience of countries following different legal systems to suggest that those that have opted for a common-law structure out-performed the rest. The country should be returned to that system.

There is an urgent need to develop a strong public and private sector partnership in promoting education. The weak Pakistani state can play only a limited role. It should focus its attention on regulating the private sector, producing textbooks for students at various levels of the educational system, and training teachers. Much of the delivery system should be left in the hands of the private sector. Some of this work is being done by the task force appointed by the government a few months ago.

If Musharraf’s Pakistan project succeeds, the country will finally begin to move towards modernity and sustained development. If it fails, the consequences are just too horrible to contemplate.

Seeds of hatred: ALL OVER THE PLACE

LAST week, I wrote about All Quiet on the Western Front, the greatest war novel ever written, I did so in order to de-glamourize war. That book was about World War I, a nasty, dirty war fought in the trenches in Europe, Ypres, Somme, Flanders, the killing fields. But it was not a war that involved civilian populations (except as cannon fodder, dressed in khaki) and cities were not reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment.

That was left to World War II and subsequent undeclared wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan and for good measure, Panama and Grenada. And I return to the subject of war once again as Pakistan and India stand perilously close, eyeball to eyeball on the verge of what will be a catastrophe for both countries. Let no one fool himself, gung-ho warriors on both sides, particularly in New Delhi, that thee will be any winner in such a war, that beyond causing death and destruction on a scale that is mind-boggling, that there are gains to be had. It is a lose-lose situation for both.

It is equally certain that Pakistan does not want such a war. The hawks in India who are clamouring for a lesson to be taught to Pakistan, will not themselves be on the front lines, they will be safely in their homes and offices, sending young men to their death, extolling them to do their duty and make sacrifices that they are unwilling to make themselves. They will call this patriotism. What sort of love of one’s country is this that brings so much suffering on one’s own people?

I don’t know if Vajpayee, Advani, Jaswant Singh or George Fernandes — the gang of four — have sons or grandsons who are of the age that they can be conscripted in the army. If they do, let them be the first to lead the assault. The American general, Patton, used to be called the “blood and guts” general. And in reference to that, a G.I. once quipped: “Sure, his guts and our blood.”

There is a human side to war that is swept away in the initial torrents of patriotism. And that human side is that men, women and children get killed. So long as they are other people’s men, women and children, we see them only as casualties, as numbers. They have no faces. One does not relate to them in any personal sort of way. But what, if they were our own flesh and blood?

Three of my brothers were in London during World War II and they lived through the blitz. Their lodgings in Earl’s Court took a direct hit. Loath to go to air raid shelters, miraculously, they did, that night. Whenever my father received an aerogramme from one of them, he seemed immensely relieved. It was the telegram that he dreaded.

My brother Sattoo was in the Royal Air Force and was more than an onlooker as the Battle of Britain was fought over the skies. When he was posted to India, he was the leader of a three-man team that operated behind enemy lines in Burma, repairing and salvaging aircraft. It was extremely dangerous work and he was awarded the MBE (Military). We did not see Sattoo as a glamorous war hero but our hearts were in our mouths whenever he went on a mission and he was the first to be remembered in my mother’s prayers.

As far as our family was concerned, there was a human side to World War II. And this must have applied to hundreds of thousand other families for whom these lines of Siegfried Sasson must have been a personal message: “You are too young to fall asleep for ever/And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.”

I do not want bombs to fall on Karachi or Lahore or any Pakistani city. I am sure that there are Indians who too do not want bombs to fall on New Delhi or Mumbai or any Indian city. Yet we learn that there is a great deal of public pressure on the BJP government to take strong action against Pakistan. Do the individuals behind this ‘public pressure’ realize the consequences of what they are agitating for? Both countries are members of the nuclear club. The idea that nuclear bombs may be used in the event of war between the two countries is too horrible to contemplate. Even without that prospect, even a conventional war is too horrible to contemplate.

The Indians are refusing to have any kind of dialogue with Pakistan, they are refusing any third party mediation. The Indians are marching in a parade where everybody is out of step but them.

We have all along maintained that Kashmir is the core issue. But the ethnic cleansing being carried out in Gujarat would suggest that there is some other agenda. It is true that the present brinkmanship has diverted international opinion away from the blood-letting and savagery in Gujarat. Are other Gujarats in the offing?

It is worth quoting from an article written by the Indian columnist Kuldip Nayar. He sums it up neatly: “What was once a hidden policy to destroy secularism has now become an open creed of the rulers. The nation is now being sold the concept of theocracy which it had rejected.

“Anti-secular elements were lying low because their whispering campaign against the minorities did not find enough ears. Now they believe the seeds of hatred which they have been sowing over the years are beginning to sprout. The RSS believes that minorities are lesser people because they do not belong to the religion which the majority professes.”

Sprouting seeds of hatred which also poison souls. Who is leading who? Ariel Sharon leading Vajpayee or Vajpayee leading Ariel Sharon?

Nuclear war: an insane option

MAY 28 is the fourth anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests at Chaghai. On Yom-i-takbir, which the government celebrated in a big way in 1999, it informed the people through boastful newspaper ads: “We are the seventh nuclear power of the world”.

Today, as war clouds gather on the horizon, this nuclear status gives us no joy or confidence. Those in power might reassure us that nuclear weapons will not be used. But who will believe them? Can states, which possess nuclear arsenals, keep their confrontation limited to warfare with conventional weapons?

The fact is that the nuclear capability we created for ourselves four years ago hangs like an albatross tied round our neck. When Islamabad decided to test its nuclear device, we were told that the tests were essential for Pakistan to restore the strategic balance with India. That country, under a militant right-wing Hindu fundamentalist government, had foolishly tested its nuclear bomb a fortnight earlier in a show of jingoism. But now it is plain that this balance will not save the two countries from self-destruction.

Initially, the governments on both sides of the border proceeded on the assumption that MAD (the nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction) will pre-empt a nuclear conflict between them. The general belief — though questionable — is that the US and the USSR didn’t start a shooting war with each other in the cold war years because their nuclear weapons acted as a deterrent.

What has happened in our case is that we have come to wrongly believe that nuclear weapons can be made to serve rational ends. But this is a misconception. They are basically weapons of mass destruction and their use would amount to mass suicide, for the contiguity of the two neighbours ensures that the attacker is equally vulnerable.

The nuclear fallout would show no respect for international boundaries. Experts tell us that those close enough to “ground zero” (a six square-mile area for a one megaton blast) will be killed instantly by the gamma rays emitted from the blast. Others — that is nine out of ten people — will die in a ten-mile radius from the radiation, the pressure wave, the high-velocity winds and the firestorms which will follow. Hundreds of thousands will die immediately and many more will be doomed to die within a few weeks a painful and slow death caused by radioactivity.

One wonders if our policymakers understand the horrible implications of a nuclear attack. It is plain that they will never be able to resist the temptation to press the nuclear button when a conventional war breaks out in which Pakistan finds itself at a disadvantage, being the weaker side in conventional warfare. Moreover, in the climate of hatred and tension which is building up in the region, neither of the two governments can truly give an undertaking that the nuclear option will not be used.

Moreover, Pakistan with its smaller size and lack of territorial depth will be the one to suffer greater devastation even if it resorts to a first strike — which it might be tempted to do as a pre-emptive move.

It is strange that there is no general concern among the people at the mounting tension and the hazards of a nuclear war. That is probably due to the low level of knowledge and awareness of the dangers of radiation. In fact, the political parties and the media, which should know better, are whipping up a war psychosis and militant nationalism which will only encourage the government to throw all restraint to the wind.

Chaghai instilled a sense of false confidence in defence planners in Islamabad. From the revelations made by Bruce Riedel, the special assistant to President Clinton for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs at the US National Security Council, it appears that Pakistan was actually preparing to use its nuclear missiles in the Kargil war in 1999 when India threatened, out of sheer desperation, to broaden the theatre of the conflict.

The most negative impact of Chaghai has been that it has robbed Islamabad of the incentive to try hard enough for a politically negotiated settlement of its disputes with India. We have attempted to bargain as though we hold the high ground — when we don’t militarily, politically or economically. We have a strong moral case in Kashmir no doubt, but by now we should know that morality without tangible strength on the ground takes one nowhere.

Paradoxically, the nuclear explosions only weakened us in the areas where we needed to consolidate ourselves. They started off an arms race, which has forced us to divert more and more of our measly economic resources towards defence. The defence budget has shot up from Rs 131.3 billion in 1997-98 to Rs 152.7 billion in 1999-2000 to plateau at Rs 131.6 billion in 2001-02 (budgeted — actual figures are disclosed three years later).

And how has this impacted on the national economy? Pakistan was subject to sanctions for more than three years until 9/11 came to our rescue and the government’s willingness to cooperate with the Americans in their war against terrorism rehabilitated Islamabad’s status in Washington. But three years were enough to undermine the economy. As Shaukat Aziz, the federal finance minister, has now admitted, poverty has increased because of the declining growth rates — 4.2 per cent in 1998-99, 3.9 per cent in 1999-2000 and 2.4 per cent in 2000-2001.

Since we cannot boast of a strong tradition of research in the health sciences and sustainable environment, no effort has been made to evaluate the effects of the Chaghai tests on the ecology, climate, natural resources and the health of the people. Press reports and random surveys give the impression that the incidence of cancer is on the rise.

Widespread drought has affected food production. In the absence of scientific research and surveys there is no way of confirming if this could be related to the Chaghai blasts. One just knows that the ‘silent winter’, a byproduct of nuclear explosions, is known to produce similar effects, and at Chaghai the mountain died, to use Eqbal Ahmed’s anguished words.

Being a smaller state and having weakened ourselves with our own follies, we want to deal with India on equal terms. We proceeded to create a nuclear capability, which we planned to use in times of crisis without as much as drawing up the rules of the nuclear game with our adversary.

True, it was India which set the ball rolling by detonating its nuclear devices, but was Pakistan obliged to follow suit against all sane considerations and sensible advice?

Chaghai only made us bolder and more reckless. A number of opportunities came for a peaceful resolution of the crisis in the region. There was Mr Vajpayee’s famous bus journey to Lahore in February, 1999. There was the ceasefire in the Kashmir valley in 2000 and the summit at Agra. But at no stage did the government attempt to address the root cause of the immediate crisis, namely, the militants who reportedly infiltrate into the valley to cause violence there. Their action has all along had the potential of becoming a casus belli and yet we did not try to hold them back.

India says that these militants will be the target of “surgical” strikes. President Bush has set the precedent when he attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan. If Islamabad is expecting Washington to intervene and act as a restraining force, it might be disappointed this time. We have forgotten the lesson of Kargil, when Pakistan was forced to withdraw its forces under American pressure.

On this occasion too Mr Vajpayee may be allowed to proceed with his unholy plans. After all, the Americans have no love for the Islamic militants either and it would be expedient to allow New Delhi to do the dirty work of cleaning them up without incurring the odium the US did when it attacked Afghanistan.

President Musharraf insists that the militants in Kashmir are not operating from our side of the border. If that is so and he is sincere about avoiding a war, the president should heed the sensible suggestion a newly-launched daily from Lahore gave last week.

Pakistan should offer to unilaterally pull back its forces from the LoC, create a demilitarized zone on Pakistan’s side of the Line and ask the UN for international monitors to be stationed there. This will rob India of the pretext to attack.

US intelligence failure

IN those raw early days when public fear smouldered along with the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W Bush rightly refused to point a finger at intelligence agency failures. But nine months is more than enough time to wait for a fair and sober investigation of what went wrong and how it can be fixed.

Bush and Republican lawmakers should be supporting, not fighting, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s (D-South Dakota) call for an independent commission to probe why, in retrospect, the United States looked like such a fat, easy target.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, among others, has declared that it will be a boon to Osama bin Laden if the United States publicly scrutinizes its intelligence weaknesses. But no one’s talking about inviting Al Qaeda to update blueprints of America’s nuclear reactors.

FBI and CIA uncooperativeness is a big part of the problem. Then there’s the matter of the House and Senate’s own failures to exercise their oversight responsibilities more carefully before Sept. 11.

That’s why it’s imperative for Congress to appoint an independent and bipartisan panel, headed by leaders with the clout to reach authoritative conclusions. We nominate Warren B. Rudman and Gary Hart, former senatorst. The panel could look at the record of the CIA under the Clinton administration’s R. James Woolsey and current Director George J. Tenet. And it would help explain why Bush wasn’t given more solid and precise information before 9/11.

—The Washington Post