The more they seem to change...

HISTORY has no option but to repeat itself, because it finds every generation of leaders does no better than imitate the mistakes of its predecessors. This is no truer than in the subcontinent where yet another generation of leadership — successors to Ayub Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru/Lal Bahadur Shastri, and to Indira Gandhi and Yahya Khan — has chosen to revive previous confrontations and to bring their countries again to the crumbling brink of war.

History is not being re-lived so much as re-enacted by another set of actors, using the same costumes. In 1965 as in 1971, an elected Hindu politician wearing a dhoti is again pitted against a Muslim self-appointed president in military uniform. The 1965 war, the war that was not necessary, ended with the Tashkent declaration of January 10, 1966, in which both parties, with more optimism than sincerity, undertook not to have recourse to force and to adhere to the principles of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

The 1971 war — the war that was inevitable — began when India had decided to dismember Pakistan.

Today, thirty years later, many of the key players of that earlier time — Mrs Gandhi, Yahya Khan, Mujibur Rahman, Richard Nixon, Zhou Enlai and Kosygin — whose decisions affected the lives of so many millions of citizens in India, Pakistan, and the prospective Bangladesh are no longer alive, with the possible exception of Dr Henry Kissinger, then special assistant to President Richard Nixon for national security affairs. Although his involvement with the subsequent disintegration of relations between India and Pakistan since 1971 has been negligible, he would undoubtedly recall the elements of what Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — the Iago to Yahya’s Othello — described as ‘The Great Tragedy’.

Kissinger would undoubtedly remember how the Indians had trained and supported Mukti Bahini as ‘freedom-fighting’ infiltrators to undermine the East Pakistan administration. He would recall Nixon’s now famous directive of April 28, 1971 — “To All Hands: Don’t Squeeze Yahya at this time” — issued soon after Yahya had begun repressive military action in East Pakistan. He would certainly not need to be reminded of Mrs Gandhi’s determination, with the Soviet encouragement, to use the excuse of the refugees who had fled to India from East Pakistan as a reason to break Pakistan into two more manageable halves.

He might recognize, when he saw it again, a memo sent by William Rogers, his predecessor as secretary of state, to President Nixon on October 28, 1971, part of which read: “We are unclear what India’s real objectives are in the present situation. It appears to be pursuing policies short of war which will maximize pressures on Pakistan to bring about a settlement acceptable to India.

“India has not closed out the option that such a settlement could preserve some form of Pakistani unity, but it undoubtedly recognizes that the inevitable result would be a fundamental weakening of its traditional enemy Pakistan.”

Rogers’ memo continues with an almost prescient relevance to the situation nowadays: “India’s desire to maintain a high level of pressure on Pakistan may account for some Indian policies which seem to belie its stated desire for a peaceful settlement:

1) India wants help with the UN refugees but has rejected a UN presence on its side of the border to facilitate refugee return, and a proposal for a more accurate enumeration of refugees;

(2) It trains guerillas in some 30 camps and supports border crossings, but denies this by pointing to the fact that the liberation movement has a momentum of its own;

(3) It has in effect rejected our proposal for defusing the situation by troop withdrawals unless Pakistan begins the withdrawal process;

(4) It has cautioned the Bangladesh leaders about our role in promoting a dialogue with Yahya and has been unresponsive to our efforts to get India to cause such a dialogue to begin;

(5) It has not prevented the Mukti Bahini from attacking the transport system in East Pakistan thereby increasing the risk of famine and a further refugee exodus to India; and

(6) It has been negative to U Thant’s offer of good offices.’

Mrs Indira Gandhi’s determination to exclude the United Nations or to allow a reference to the Security Council evoked a wry response from Kissinger. Commenting on a letter she wrote to Nixon on November 18, 1971 (and delivered deliberately five days later) opposing a Security Council meeting, he wrote:

“It was an interesting doctrine of international law that recourse to the United Nations might obstruct a solution to a military conflict.”

To many, a military conflict between Indian and Pakistani forces is as unavoidable today as it was inevitable thirty years ago. What has prevented an overt outbreak of hostilities so far is what delayed it in 1971. It was India’s apprehension of Pakistan’s armoury in reserve. In 1971, that armoury included a Republican president, Richard Nixon, and a communist Premier Zhou Enlai.

As they both admitted afterwards, they misinterpreted the signals each exuded over Pakistan. Unfortunately for Pakistan, Zhou Enlai’s assertion that in the event of a subcontinental conflict, the Chinese ‘cannot stand idly by’ never materialized into the armed intervention Nixon and Kissinger expected.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, Nixon’s readiness to escalate a local conflict to a global level also did not materialize. Sharing notes with Zhou Enlai afterwards on June 20, 1972, Kissinger told him that when he received a message from the Chinese during the war, between the December 11 and 12, 1971: “I thought your message to us was that you were taking military measures.

“If your message was you were taking military measures, our instructions were that if the Soviet Union moved against you, we would move against the Soviet Union.”

The deterrent in Pakistan’s armoury now is not a Republican US president at odds with his administration (George W. Bush is not a beleaguered Richard Nixon) nor a Chinese premier at odds with his ideology (Prime Minister Rong-ji does not carry Mao’s little Red Book in his hip pocket.)

The deterrent — the nuclear option — is visible, palpable and frighteningly real, and it is in both Pakistani and Indian hands. The buttons are at the fingertips of a Hindu politician and a Muslim general.

For millions of potential victims on both sides of the inflammable border, the consequences of a nuclear holocaust are at worst terminal, and at best irreversible. Kashmir, like every other cause, may well be worth fighting for; it is not worth millions of Pakistanis and Indians dying for.

In 1972, after the Indo-Pakistan war over Bangladesh, Secretary Rogers summarized for a chastened Nixon what the US role in the subcontinent should be: “It is clear, given the major change in the South Asian equation after the December war, that we could not and should not seek to build up Pakistan as any kind of strategic counterweight to India.

As we see it, our basic policy objective in South Asia should now be to encourage movement toward a broad political settlement which would replace the sharp political-military confrontation that has plagued the subcontinent for more than twenty years.

In Pakistan this would require, in addition to our continued support for its territorial integrity and economic growth, that we encourage Bhutto in every way open to us to move in a direction of a basic settlement with India and that we avoid any action in the military field that would encourage Pakistan to again postpone the difficult decisions it must take if it is to reach a basic accommodation with its stronger neighbour. We would encourage India to recognize that a magnanimous policy toward Pakistan will serve India’s long-term interest by contributing to stability in the region.”

India may find it hard in its already hardened heart to allow Pakistan — a smaller, younger and more immature regional power — any further latitude. After Kashmir, Kargil and Agra, that is perhaps understandable. What is less explicable is how a nation that is acknowledged by the international community as a potential global power, that aspires to a seat in the UN Security Council whose mandate is to foster world peace, that in the 1950s adopted peaceful coexistence as a credo, that in the 1970s exploded a nuclear device ‘for peaceful purposes only’, should itself be an aggressor again in an unequal contest, this time between two nuclear equals.

“It is a good thing India is pacifist,” Kissinger once told Deng Xiaoping during their meeting on November 27, 1974. “I hate to think [of what they would do] if they weren’t.”

I for one do not want to find out. My wife and I were married in December 1971. I can still recall seeing the Indian plane fly past our block of flats in Bath Island, Karachi, on its way to bomb the POL storage dumps at Keamari.

I spent what should have been a honeymoon in a bunker. I would rather not spend our 31st wedding anniversary in a crematorium.

It’s a no-win situation

AT times certain situations between countries develop in a way which they know will have pernicious results. Yet they seem to be helpless to avoid them. Both India and Pakistan know the consequence of hostilities. Still, as in a Greek tragedy, they are relentlessly moving towards disaster.

The rulers on both sides should step back and think what they will gain from the war, which is likely to go nuclear. Rhetoric is all right for the purpose of playing to the gallery. Even the military build-up is understandable because of pressure. What is not understandable is why there is no serious effort by both New Delhi and Islamabad to find an honourable way out.

One foreign journalist phoned me from Pakistan a few days ago to suggest that India should have a dialogue with Pakistan to defuse the situation. I wish it could be as simple as that. New Delhi has reached the point of no-talks because there has been no end of cross-border terrorism which Islamabad has promised to stop many a time. India says that it will not respond to any proposal for talks until Pakistan’s proxy war in terms of terrorism stops.

Islamabad’s inference is that terrorism is the only way to keep the Kashmir issue alive; in its absence, New Delhi puts it on the back burner. This is not entirely correct because from the Tashkent agreement in 1966 to the Lahore Declaration three years ago, India discussed Kashmir several times. It has repeatedly given an undertaking for “a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Why the meetings between the two countries have ended in a deadlock is because the priorities of the two have been different. India has been wanting some outstanding problems between the two countries to be sorted out first so as to create an atmosphere of amity in which the knotty problems of Kashmir could be taken up. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been saying that “other problems” are peripheral and the core problem between the two is Kashmir.

The priorities have not changed over the years. Even today when the world’s attention is focused on the region, India wants cross-border terrorism to stop before it sits with Pakistan across the table. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has said: “We will respond if there are results on the ground.” In other words, if cross-border terrorism stops, India would be willing to resume talks. But Pakistan wants to hold a dialogue on Kashmir straightaway. It has come to believe that the only pressure which works on New Delhi is the killing and destruction which the terrorists effect. Were they to stop, India would be let off the hook.

This is a no-win situation. The loss of confidence between the two is understandable because they have had no contacts except the one at Agra. But countries like America can play a role. This should not be that of a mediator or an arbitrator but of a communicator. Washington can convey New Delhi’s assurance to Islamabad that the talks will be held when there is concrete evidence on the ground that Pakistan is no longer sending terrorists across the border.

America, with all its intelligence agencies and satellites functioning in the region, can easily assess the veracity of General Pervez Musharraf’s claim that cross-border terrorism has already stopped.

New Delhi believes that while Musharraf is cooperating with America in action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he is conniving at the activities of the jihadis waging an undeclared war against India. New Delhi has very little confidence in him. Can America disabuse India’s mind?

Probably, Musharraf is under pressure within his own country. A person who had a hand in building up the Taliban and Al Qaeda had to disown and fight them. He may be playing the Indian card to placate them and other religious leaders.

What about Kashmir? I believe there is a change in the perception of people in India. Increasingly they realize that they have to get out of the mess New Delhi has made. It has denied the state free and fair elections and has from time to time imposed a chief minister on Kashmir at will. The people’s mood is that the real representatives should emerge from the coming state elections.

Even the supervision of polling by human rights activists and eminent people from India may be acceptable. People in India do not want any rigging which forced many youths after the 1987 elections to prefer bullet to ballot. They went to Pakistan for training and weapons. Pakistan had tried to woo them earlier but had failed. The disappointment by youths over “rigged” elections became grist to the mill of terrorism.

The problem is with the Hurriyat, which does not favour election. It would once again threaten or force voters not to participate in the polls. More and more Kashmiris are disappointed with the Hurriyat. A recent independent survey confirms this. Still the Hurriyat, through violence or threat — Islamabad may be a party to it — will try to bring the proposed new political process to naught. The more people participate in elections, the more irrelevant the Hurriyat becomes.

As for a dialogue, if the integration of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley with Pakistan is its objective, New Delhi may have little to talk about. Over the last five decades, Jammu and Kashmir, however wanting in good administration and clean politics, has come to be considered part and parcel of the country. The trouble in the valley is attributed to Pakistan’s “machinations and interferences.” The Indian people may be prepared for more autonomy for the state but they will not brook any part seceding from the country. How to reconcile the two irreconcilables is the problem.

And the question that still remains unanswered is how far New Delhi is willing to go and whether that ‘far’ would satisfy the Pakistani establishment. It is not that the West does not understand the problem. It has come to realize that the assumption that the passage of time will solve the problem is like waiting for the cows to come home.

The West is worried that any small skirmish between India and Pakistan may lead to a bigger conflagration and divert attention from Al Qaeda. The type of rhetoric in which leaders of India and Pakistan indulge were not used even by the US and the then Soviet Union throughout the cold war.

As for nuclear war, America and the Soviet Union had a long physical distance between them. Information is now available showing how America rectified its mistake within a few months of sending nuclear weapons to the then Soviet Union. But then situated as they are, they had time to retrace.

In the case of India and Pakistan, there is no time available. New Delhi is only one and a half minutes away in terms of Islamabad’s missile range and Mumbai two and a half minutes. The West considers this a real threat. That is why the western countries have asked all their nationals and non-diplomatic staff to leave India and Pakistan.

Still the priority of America is to eliminate Al Qaeda and the Taliban who have slipped into Pakistan. Focused on their extermination, America does not want to annoy or turn away from Musharraf who has helped it in Afghanistan and who, Washington believes, is its best bet in finishing the remnants of Al Qaeda. It cannot go beyond a point in putting pressure on Musharraf since the road to Al Qaeda goes through Islamabad.

No time to get killed

CLAIMS are being made that the explosive confrontation between India and Pakistan has begun to ease. These claims are being made by the same pundits who had earlier been condemning millions of people in the subcontinent to sleepless nights. Their present tidings are as unverifiable as their earlier warnings, for the ordinary mortals have been deprived of their right to utter the word ‘why’. In any case, if the air has cleared a little bit it is time to begin persuading the people of Pakistan and India to get out of their death-wish.

The Indian people’s death-wish can be seen in the following message from Tapan Bose, one of the most outstanding campaigners for peace and human rights in South Asia: “This is a time to be killed. Delhiites say they are willing to face a nuclear attack on the city to save India from Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. The Hindu on June 2 reported the findings of an opinion survey conducted in Delhi by MARC, a private company. According to the survey 80 per cent of the respondents believe that it is a matter of time before Indian forces cross the LoC.

“About 98 per cent felt that Pakistan has been exposed as the breeding ground for terrorism while 93 per cent agreed that terrorism in India is supported by Pakistan. About 70 per cent of the respondents from Delhi recommended military action by India against Pakistan. According to the survey an overwhelming number of respondents also conceded that a military action by India would lead to a full-scale war.

“It is interesting to note that while nearly 70 per cent of the respondents recommended military action, one out of every three respondents also believed that the war might turn into a nuclear conflict. This commitment to military action is despite the fact that about 90 per cent of all respondents believed that Delhi will be the primary target of Pakistan’s nuclear bombs.

“I knew that the Greeks had come to the subcontinent. I always suspected that there was some Greek blood in our veins. But I was not aware that it has left such a strong attraction for tragedy. I hope old Homer has got a whiff of this in his grave — time to compose a new version of ‘tragedy foretold’, a one act play for fools and imbeciles. ‘Hamein kya bura tha marna agar aik baar hota’ — perhaps the time has come.”

In Pakistan, mercifully, the majority appears to be against war. But the death-wish is reflected in the calls for war some self-styled defenders of the national cause are making and who are urging Gen. Musharraf to wear nuclear weapons on his cuff. Large sections of the population have been seized by a feeling of resignation to extermination as a fate they cannot avert. It is reflected in the attitude of Abid (and others in his village) whose parents came from Karnal (Haryana) in 1947 and settled in a village close to the Wagah border post. Every time the Indian and Pakistan troops have faced each other his family has been told to move to safety elsewhere. They have done so thrice during the past six months but have now returned to the border village and are resigned to face death in their home. They are also convinced that in the event of a nuclear clash it will be immaterial if they stay put or find shelter 30 kilometres away.

The sources of this subcontinental death-wish lie in monumental errors of judgment committed by the leaderships of Pakistan and India and the tendency of the intellectual community in the two countries to look at trees and miss the wood. Both Islamabad and New Delhi can be faulted for misreading the objective reality and the intellectuals are guilty of calculating the loss of life and property in a war (limited, full-scale conventional or nuclear) whereas they should have concentrated on the absolute folly of contemplating an armed conflict between the two countries. How can one miss the fact that if war between the two neighbours does break out it will be an indulgence in utter stupidity because both sides will lose heavily and nothing will be solved.

One suspects that Islamabad in particular and the country’s articulate elite in general have not correctly assessed the international coalition’s current obsession with war against terrorism. Two conclusions were drawn from the events of Sept. 11, 2001. First, that it was possible for a small group to acquire financial resources and the technical know-how to deal a grievous blow to any state in the world. Therefore, all the rich states considered themselves vulnerable and decided to throw up the idea of what may be called an international state (that is, a global coalition). Secondly, the international capitalist system was severely jolted. The relief in the capitalist circles at overcoming the dislocation caused by Sept 11 events is a measure of the threat the system had faced. Therefore, even the remotest possibility of something like Sept 11 recurring has to be rooted out. On this point the international coalition is not open to argument.

What the international coalition did in Afghanistan was its response to the immediate challenge. Its long-term worry is the possibility of the take-over of the Pakistan state by militant radicals. Thus, the coalition has made Gen. Musharraf a partner not merely to fight terrorists in Afghanistan but to ensure the survival of the Pakistan state in its present form or under a liberal, democratic Constitution. The objective of the demand to crack down on religious militants is not merely to allow India relief from what it describes as cross-border terrorism but to secure guarantees that Pakistan will not become the launching pad for any threat to the present global order.

Whatever one may think of the so-called global order, and there is much to be said against it, the fact is that all Pakistanis have a stake in safeguarding their state, because the militants pose a graver threat to Pakistan than to India or the rest of the world. The people of Pakistan have to fight the canker planted in their body primarily in their own interest and not in anybody else’s.

The overlap of Pakistan’s interest with that of the international coalition does create problems not only for Pakistan but also for many other parties because nobody is prepared at the moment to look at the grievances that give rise to militancy, radicalism and terrorism. Anti-terrorism has created thicker blinkers than we had seen in the period of the anti-communist crusade. There will be a time to question this creed but that time is not now.

New Delhi’s present tactics are derived from the international coalition’s preoccupation with security against terrorism. It assumed that the global climate gave it an opportunity to threaten Pakistan with the use of force, that its military offensive or pressure against Pakistan for stopping cross-border terrorism will be considered legitimate or as much in the interest of the global order as US bombing of Afghanistan or Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians. Having over-committed itself to the military option it finds itself unable to climb down without offering its people some proof of success. Hence, the search for a course of action that does not trigger a nuclear conflict. The exercise is futile because it is premised on non-recognition of the fact that Islamabad should be as keen to save its face as New Delhi.

The principal flaw in New Delhi’s strategy is that by viewing its problem in Kashmir as a matter limited to cross-border terrorism it is doing a grave harm to the long-term interests of India as a state and its place in the region. That militants from Pakistan have aggravated the Kashmir situation cannot be denied, and no one in Pakistan should ever condone the killing of innocent Kashmiris under any pretext. However, the problem in Kashmir, at its present stage, is not wholly the doing of militants or Pakistan. The indigenous roots of the uprising in the valley cannot be denied.

Pakistan did not dismiss Sheikh Abdullah, the Plebiscite Front of Afzal Beg was not set up by Islamabad, the rigging of elections was not done by militants, and Pakistan cannot be blamed for threatening the Kashmiris with the end of their special status under the Indian constitution. Neither history nor the Kashmiri people’s current concerns can be wished away. What India has to do to satisfy the Kashmiris is its responsibility and not Pakistan’s.

Now, pleas of peace and restraint are being made by telling people of the havoc that a full-scale war between Pakistan and India will cause. The account, however, is generally incomplete. True, one should take into consideration the danger that a large number of people will be killed, many of them non-combatants, and that many settlements will be wiped out. In the event of nuclear weapons being used the area of devastation could extend beyond the subcontinent. No sane person in Pakistan and India can afford to look at this scenario with equanimity. However, there will be other and no less significant losses.

The conflict will not bring Pakistan and India closer to each other, as demanded by mutual interest. Instead, it will deepen the animosity between them. Today a large body of citizens on either side is shouting for peace. This precious human capital will be wiped out. In both countries quasi-religious militancy will grow and secularism and democracy will be at a greater discount. Above all, no problem will be solved, and certainly not Kashmir, simply because issues involving a people’s rights and aspirations can never be settled by force.

The long-term interests of the people of India and Pakistan demand that these two imperfect states stop thinking of making political capital by downing each other and try to develop a vision of South Asia in which the two countries can cooperate with each other in their respective interest and for their common good. That and not the present disagreements should be the starting point for laying the foundations of the future. The people in both countries appear to be prepared to begin a journey in that direction and they must not be let down by the temporary custodians of their affairs.

But how can the switch be brought about? One great cause of tension is the unwarranted severance of relations between the civil societies of the two countries. Only public effort can liberate the people of their death-wish. It is a pity that the governments of Pakistan and India have ousted civil society from their counsel at a time when its contribution is needed the most. Resumption of traffic between the two countries appears to be one of the surest ways to avert war.

Bush warms to reality

DURING the 2000 presidential campaign, it seemed Al Gore couldn’t stop discussing global warming and George W. Bush couldn’t bear to talk about it. Bush has now begun to treat the issue seriously, though he is still far from proposing comprehensive solutions.

On Monday, the administration issued a quiet policy shift. The Environmental Protection Agency posted a report on its Web site acknowledging that man-made greenhouse gas emissions will increase global temperatures up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit this century and wreak environmental havoc.

The heat, the report said, will melt Sierra snowpacks, drown coral reefs and barrier islands, spread diseases transmitted by water and rodents and cause drought nearly everywhere. These conclusions are old news to most of the scientific world but still controversial in political circles.

The candour of the Bush report is welcome, especially given that fossil fuel companies lobbied the administration to omit projections of environmental damage and play up possible beneficial side effects of warming, like a growth in the productivity of some crops.

Environmentalists promptly lobbed complaints about the report. The first — that Bush focused on adapting to, rather than preventing, global warming - is unfair. Even the global warming bills that environmentalists favour would only slow warming, and government has to grapple with ways to save crops and coastal towns and prevent other havoc.

Still, the report should have included tougher controls on greenhouse gases. The text does not go beyond a general policy called Clear Skies that the administration issued in February. That proposal is based on an emissions-trading programme that has successfully curbed acid rain since the first President Bush signed it into law in 1990. But it lacks the specific emissions reductions required in the Clean Air Act that Bush’s father also signed.

Bush officials insist that specific emissions-reduction requirements would only discourage innovative, energy-efficient trading in a free market in which polluters “buy” credits from cleaner companies.

— Los Angeles Times