Will the thaw endure?

INTERNATIONAL diplomacy may after all be having an impact as evident from a slight thaw in the prevailing war-like situation between India and Pakistan. This may or may not be indicative of a trend towards de-escalation leading to an end to the six-month old military stand-off between the two countries. But a degree of cooling of tempers on both sides is discernible, making the diplomats seem less pessimistic about the prospects ahead than before. On Friday, the Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman said there was “a slight reduction” in the Indo-Pakistan tension. This coincided with Mr Armitage’s statement in New Delhi that both India and Pakistan were keen to avoid a war and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh’s assertion that there was no alternative to peace. More important, the US state department noted on Friday that it had “growing indications” that the alleged infiltration across the Line of Control was “down significantly.” There has also been a lot of talk about monitoring the LoC, and even though nothing definite is in sight yet, all sides appear to agree on devising a mechanism for checking movement across the LoC.

Both Islamabad and New Delhi should be thankful to world capitals for making concerted efforts to defuse the tension in the subcontinent. Pakistan and India themselves have done little except acting and reacting to each other’s moves, thus escalating the crisis to a boiling point. However, the point to note is till the middle of December there was no evidence of a military confrontation in South Asia being in the making. Pakistan then was playing its role in the context of the US-led coalition’s military operations in Afghanistan. The scenario changed when New Delhi, using the pretext of the December 13 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament building, threatened military action against Pakistan. It blamed Pakistan for the attack, even though Islamabad condemned the outrage and offered a joint inquiry. India also rejected the FBI’s offer of assistance in the conduct of the investigation. Instead, New Delhi began massing its troops along Pakistan’s border and threatening war. World capitals, since then, have played a crucial role in trying to cool tempers and attempt a de-escalation.

All along this crisis, Pakistan’s stand has been consistent: all issues between the two countries, including the Kashmir dispute, must be solved through negotiations. India, however, has continued to oppose the very idea of a dialogue. Instead, it has been persisting in a belligerent posture and speaking of “a decisive fight.” Mercifully, the two countries’ friends are playing an active role in defusing a situation where a war by accident could lead to disastrous consequences for the region and beyond. One hopes New Delhi will give world diplomacy a chance, and do nothing to aggravate matters.

The whole world has appreciated President Musharraf’s crackdown on extremist parties and his promise not to allow anyone to use Pakistani territory for terrorism against any country. India should, however, realize that a crackdown on extremists within Pakistan has nothing to do with the Kashmiri people’s struggle for their rights. This will continue in spite of what Islamabad does to fight terrorism at home. The only solution, thus, is for India to recognize the reality of the Kashmir dispute and agree to talk to Pakistan and the true representatives of the Kashmiris for a just and durable solution.

Attack on Frontier Post

THE ransacking of The Frontier Post offices by a rowdy group of the People’s Students Federation (Sherpao Group) in Peshawar on Thursday was another ugly reminder of the problem of intolerance and extremism entrenched in the country’s socio-political milieu. The attack is all the more reprehensible because it was mounted by a group which claims to be the champion of democracy and fair play in political and public life. Yet more deplorable is the stance taken by the leader of the PSF, who not only justified the goon-like action of his colleagues and followers, but threatened the newspaper with even worse forms of retribution if it wrote or printed anything against Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao’s wrongdoings. The Frontier Post, in its editorial on Thursday, had questioned the ex-NWFP chief minister’s release on bail in an accountability case.

The All-Pakistan Newspapers Society and civil rights groups have condemned the attack, demanding that the government take action against the culprits and provide security and protection to the print media against such acts of vandalism. In the final analysis, the attack on The Frontier Post offices goes to expose the so-called democratic credentials of the said group’s parent party as well, which has chosen to keep mum on the outrage. If there were any grievances over the opinion expressed by the paper, the party could have issued an official rebuttal, which it would have the legal and moral responsibility of the paper to publish. Alternatively, it could have sued the paper on grounds of defamation. But the choice obviously was to “teach the paper a lesson” rather than seek rectification. Unfortunately, such violence against the press is not unknown in our chequered history of journalism. But that is no excuse to let the culprits in the present case go unpunished.

Rumpus at QAU

LAX implementation of a rule by any agency or administration impinging on standards and merit does not justify making laxity the norm. Thus, the protest demonstration on Friday by a group of students from Quaid-i-Azam University’s history department demanding that a rule regarding minimum class attendance as a qualifying factor at exams be waived for them because it was not being strictly implemented in other departments is patently unjustified. The rule requires an 80 per cent class attendance by any student to be allowed to sit for the final examinations, due this year on June 10. The demand for a waiver is all the more strange because the students were already warned, well in the beginning, of the consequences of not meeting the university’s criterion of 80 per cent class attendance. However, one mitigating factor in favour of the protesting students is the university authorities’ failure to uniformly enforce the rule in all the departments and without any exception on any ground whatsoever. This may at best be a plausible ground for a waiver this year as a one-time exception - and not the norm henceforth. In any event, the root cause of the problem lies in the fact that this rule is not being implemented and enforced strictly in all the departments in the university. In future, the requirement of 80 per cent class attendance must be enforced strictly and uniformly in order to avoid the kind of problem that Quaid-i-Azam University is facing at the moment.