Falling into the Yahya syndrome?

TO lose a war before you have actually lost it sums up the Yahya syndrome. Yahya pitted Pakistan against world opinion in 1971. Having declared Mujib a traitor, he refused to negotiate with him and unleashed the Pakistan army on a civilian population, Pakistan acquired the worst possible world image.

We lost half of Pakistan thinking that we were saving it. Even Nixon, Pakistan’s greatest friend ever in the White House, found it impossible to pull us out of the morass. The contours of the tragic end were visible by March 25, 1971.

Is Musharraf falling into the Yahya syndrome? Some similarities are discernible. Yahya — the square-jawed military dictator — for a short while earned accolades by arranging Henry Kissinger’s visit to China in the summer of 1971. Likewise, Musharraf’s stature rose from nadir to zenith between September last year to March this year by declaring war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban and by promising on January 12 to stop what India (and the world) terms “cross-border terrorism”.

Yahya reneged on his promise to hand over power to the victors of the 1970 election. India alleges that Musharraf has not honoured his commitment of January 12. What is our evidence for this indictment? Western press reports, based on western intelligence sources, which normally prove to be more reliable than our own. Besides, as far as I am aware, Pakistan has not contradicted the allegation excepting a belated half-hearted retraction at Almaty.

If some Mujahideen have been sent to Indian-held Kashmir with official blessings after January 12, it is a severe indictment of President Musharraf. But, if sent without his knowledge or consent, then all is not well in the State of Denmark. Whatever the reason be or not be, a commitment must be honoured. Rarely does a leader on the international stage get a second chance to re-establish credibility. However, there is also the possibility that Pakistan is more sinned against than sinning.

Pakistan occupied the moral high ground, thanks to “world realities” after 9/11, but this was viewed as a calamitous betrayal by our local fanatics. We appear to be losing this elevated place in neutral eyes. There was little or no sympathy for Pakistan at Almaty. We asked for ‘unconditional’ talks with India, which in diplomatic parlance means no talk on Kashmir, but the Indian agenda of “cross-border terrorism” remained unchanged. Most nations represented at Almaty impressed on Pakistan to forget talks and concentrate first on “ground realities”. Even President Bush, our ally of the moment and in our need to stop the rapid regrouping of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and our local terrorists now taking place in the Pak-Afghan borderlands, used unusually pointed language to chastize Pakistan.

“He must stop the incursions across the Line of Control” in Kashmir, Mr. Bush said at the White House on Thursday [May 30] morning, using unusually pointed language to scold a crucial ally in the war against terrorism. “He must do so. He said he would do so. We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word.” (The New York Times, May 31).

This is how Pakistan gets psyched out by friends, reviled by enemies, confused at home. Such is the free fall into the Yahya syndrome. What should we do to restore our credibility?

First, we need to openly debate in the national media the validity of some of the assumptions held in the inner sanctum of power with regard to our Kashmir policy. There is a civil and military lobby which thinks that terror is cost-effective. It certainly is. A few hundred terrorists have pinned down a million-strong Indian army in Kashmir. But then the APHC is the authentic voice of Kashmir. None of the APHC members support terrorism.

If in the very unlikely event Kashmir is “won” by the militants’ action, it will surely descend into the chaos of Afghanistan, past and present. And militants are a loose cannon. Only a political debate at the national level can isolate and expose to reason the ‘inner sanctum’ of a civil and military power that favours militancy.

Second, Pakistan has summarily rejected joint patrols proposed last Wednesday by Mr. Vajpayee. Wrong. It should have called for talks with India and the UN observer group with a view to working out practical modalities. Provided joint patrols have equal access to both sides of the LoC, the suggestion merits scrutiny.

Next, the militants belonging to various Mujahideen camps should be inducted into the country’s para-military or armed forces (after adequate screening) and the camps disbanded. It is seldom realized that a substantial number of the Mujahideen regard it as an employment opportunity for lack of any better.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s idea of a helicopter force to check infiltration across the LoC deserves further consideration. The present UN observer group of 35 persons is minuscule. The UN can be approached “unilaterally” to substantially raise the strength. Their safety should be ensured by our armed forces. Electronic means of surveillance can be used at night to monitor. Let India reject all reasonable proposals for LoC monitoring. Each rejection will further Pakistan’s reasonableness.

Access should be provided to the UN observers to visit the so-called infiltration camps located in Azad Kashmir or Pakistan.

The all but forgotten Chattisingpura case in which about seventy Sikhs were murdered in Kashmir on the day President Clinton arrived in New Delhi in 2000 needs to be recalled. Pakistan as usual was accused. Investigations made by Indian human rights organizations discovered serious discrepancies in the official investigation. A number of so-called ‘terrorists’ were killed by the Indian army as a proof of infiltration; the Indian human rights investigation provided conclusive proof that they were innocent villagers butchered by the Indian army. The investigation was derailed or muffled by the Indian government.

Let memories stretch further back. Both the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were initially pinned on the ISI. India’s own investigations never turned up any evidence to this effect.

It is Pakistan’s case that last month’s Jammu outrages were in all probability the work of the same terrorist outfit that claims responsibility for the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Islamabad church bombing and the killing in Karachi of the twelve Frenchmen and four Pakistanis involved in the construction of the Agosta submarine project. By any stretch of imagination can such a terror outfit be supported by an official agency of the government?

If so, our secret agencies have to be working not for Pakistan, but for India — which alone would benefit by a delay in the construction of a vital defence project. Is it not more probable that the terrorist remnants of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and our own have regrouped with an objective that targets both countries and with an aim to trigger a nuclear confrontation?

Terrorists are like glow-worms (Jugnu) which know they will die after their day of notorious illumination. Being anti-life, the thought that they are the agent provocateurs of a nuclear conflagration is heady tonic for them. The spectre of a nuclear winter does not bother them in the least.

Pakistan must own up to the errors of its past. Let it come clean. The past is neither the present nor the future.

These very thoughts were expressed recently in Dubai by Abdul Ghani Lone — since assassinated for his views.

United Pakistan was lost not once but several times because we confronted people’s wishes with the military means of suppression. We paid no heed to world opinion. The Kashmiris want neither Pakistani terrorists nor Indian hegemony. If we stop exporting militancy, the Kashmiris’ wrath will then fall on India which will then face a sullen and rebellious population. Let them enter the Yahya syndrome for a change.

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan National Assembly.

Intelligence on intelligence

THAT September 11 represented an intelligence failure is a truism. The job of the congressional commission that began its hearings last week is to explain the nature of the errors.

FBI Director Robert Mueller declared in the wake of the attacks that the government had developed no information with which it could have frustrated them. These assurances have proven premature, as information has trickled out about the evidence the intelligence agencies actually possessed. No one now should doubt the need for an outside party to document rigorously and systematically what went wrong and how this country can do better in the future.

A great deal rides on the specific character of the intelligence failures. Were they primarily individual shortcomings and errors, failures of competence within government intelligence? Recent revelations concerning FBI failures to draw connections — not to mention the intelligence agencies’ failure to act upon knowledge that two of the future hijackers, already under scrutiny, had entered the country - suggest that human blunders have played a part.

—The Washington Post

What can trigger war

OF late, the threat of a fourth Indo-Pakistan war has been intensifying. India is threatening to initiate it; Pakistan says it wants negotiations, not war, but is ready to fight if war is thrust upon it. India’s military capability in conventional forces is about three times as large as that of Pakistan. Why isn’t our government scared?

Apart from considerations of domestic politics and exigencies within the army, a common explanation of Pakistan’s firmness in dealing with India is that it possesses nuclear weapons. According to one estimate, it may have fifty or so small warheads and twenty-five nuclear-capable missiles, whereas India is believed to have about twice as many. Even if some of them turn out to be duds, and some miss the intended targets, each country will have enough warheads to inflict huge devastation upon the other.

The strategic theory seems to be that since each side can visit massive destruction on the other, neither will push the other to the breaking point where its survival as a state becomes precarious and it is, therefore, willing to resort to nuclear war even while knowing that both sides will perish as a result. This reasoning bears scrutiny.

During the protracted cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union never engaged each other in a direct military confrontation. Each had several thousand warheads, some of them carrying the destructive capacity of a million tons of TNT. They operated under a regime of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD), meaning that each possessed a “second strike” capability, which is to say that even after sustaining a massive surprise attack it would be able to launch a retaliatory attack upon enemy territory and destroy it.

It is unlikely that either India or Pakistan has this capability, which raises the issue of first use. Many observers assume that Pakistan would be the first to strike since it is likely to be the loser in a conventional war with India. What will restrain India? Agonizing contemplation of the horrendous destruction that its nuclear attack on Pakistan will cause? Fear of adverse world opinion? If these concerns will not deter Pakistan, why should they be deemed capable of restraining India? Its moral sensibilities are surely no finer than those of Pakistan. Now consider another scenario.

During the war in 1965 our ammunition supplies were sufficient only for three weeks of fighting. With China’s help in the form of an ultimatum to India, we were able to secure a cease-fire agreement on the seventeenth day of that war. Government spokesmen claim that we now have much larger stockpiles. That’s good to know.

But suppose the war goes on for six months or even longer and, either because our supplies are dwindling, or because the Indian forces are gradually gaining ground, we begin to show signs of desperation. Who can say that seeing these signs, and concluding that we are about to launch a nuclear attack, India will not undertake a “pre-emptive” attack and rain nuclear warheads on our cities?

Another aspect of this issue deserves a quick look. One wonders if our strategists have developed a doctrine of the “breaking point.” One should like to know when, in the course of a war with India, would resort to nuclear weapons be considered essential? I posed this question to an old friend (a physician by profession and ethnically a Pakhtoon) the other day. He thought it would be entirely justified if, for instance, the Indians were to capture Lahore, the “heart” of Pakistan. Let me hasten to add that the same might be said of our other large cities.

But what shall we do if the Indians leave our larger cities alone, and instead take villages and small towns or, occupying sparsely populated territory, move to disrupt our vital road and rail links? Will that be provocation enough for us to plunge the subcontinent into a nuclear war? I doubt it. Nor will the Indians want to initiate a nuclear war if the Pakistan army occupies Atari, Khem Karan or some small town in Rajasthan. That is to say, if the decision-makers on both sides act from a reasonable sense of proportion.

An armed conflict between the two countries will not necessarily become an all-out war. India may be content with disrupting Pakistan and, for this purpose, a war that is intense but limited would do. Some of our commentators seem to think that India would be the loser in such a war. It is not clear why that must be the case. In the first war between the two countries (1947-48) the Indians captured a lot more territory in Jammu and Kashmir than we did.

In 1965 we took more, but most of what we took was located in the empty desert of Rajasthan. Of the populated territory India took slightly more in Pakistan than Pakistan did in India. In 197l India took a little more territory both in Kashmir and in Pakistan proper than we did on the Indian side. Unless we are militarily much better situated, vis-a-vis India, than we were previously, there is no apparent reason to expect that our gains in a fourth war will be significantly greater than those in the three previous ones.

War is a terrible business; we don’t know how terrible it is because, excepting those who live right along the border, the people in either India or Pakistan have ever seen war on their city streets. We must then ask if we can avoid it altogether. What does India want? Setting aside any long-term objectives that it may have, and speaking of here and now, it has been asking Pakistan to stop militants, based in Azad Kashmir or on its own territory, from crossing into the Indian-held Kashmir to fight the Indian military forces and any local elements of whom they do not approve.

In several of his pronouncements following September 11, General Musharraf gave all concerned the assurance that his government would not allow terrorists to use any territory under Pakistani control for launching their operations anywhere in the world (which was understood to include Indian-controlled Kashmir). What is then the problem?

The government of Pakistan claims that Musharraf’s promise to the world has been fulfilled, that militants do not have training centres or sanctuaries in Pakistan or Azad Kashmir, and that they are not infiltrating into held Kashmir from places under Pakistani control. Many observers within Pakistan, and virtually all governments and media people abroad, regard this claim as false. According to reports in American newspapers, the present level of infiltration from Pakistan into Kashmir is higher than what it was about this time last year.

A recent report in The Washington Post quotes American intelligence agencies as saying that Musharraf has allowed some fifty to sixty guerilla camps in Azad Kashmir, harbouring about 3,000 fighters, to resurface after two months of quiet. There is no need to multiply assertions challenging our government’s claim. It should suffice to cite President Bush’s rather strong expression of dissatisfaction with General Musharraf’s performance.

In this connection, it may be recalled that until recently Bush was referring to Musharraf as his “friend.” In a press conference on May 29, he said of the general: “He must stop the incursions across the Line of Control. He must do so. He said he would do so. We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word.” Why did Bush speak so sternly about his “friend”?

Needless to say, he believes that the “friend” has not kept his covenant. What have Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state and a host of other foreign dignitaries said to General Musharraf during their recent visits to Islamabad, and what will Donald Rumsfeld (American defence secretary) tell him during his forthcoming visits? I think Straw said, and the American envoys will say, the same thing that Bush said in the statement cited above. Why hasn’t the general implemented his promise? The managers of our intelligence agencies may have thought they could set up a smokescreen that the foreign observers’ vision would not be able to penetrate. If so, that was childish scheming. It is possible also that Musharraf simply cannot control the militants, and he may have privately said so to Bush and others. But apparently they think he has not tried hard enough, which may be true. He may not have tried hard enough because he does not want to antagonize the Islamic forces in the country to a point where they would combine to mount a revolt against his rule. This may be a misunderstanding of their design.

Writing in this space (May 30), Mr. M.P. Bhandara reported that elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda had reassembled as “Hezbullah Alami,” and that they had claimed responsibility for the murder of Daniel Pearl, the grenade attack in an Islamabad church, and the suicide bombing of the bus carrying French and Pakistani engineers. He went on to observe that their top priority now was to topple the Musharraf regime.

These militants believe that if Pakistan does not do their will, it is as deserving of punitive strikes as India. Pakistan is not worth keeping if they cannot control it. If Mr. Bhandara’s interpretations are correct, and I think they are, General Musharraf has no real option other than that of disbanding and incapacitating these forces. That they make trouble for India is no compensation for the infinitely greater mischief they make in Pakistan. We will have to leave it to the Kashmiris themselves to wage the struggle for their self-determination as they deem fit.

Taking the offensive

President Bush has been steadily expanding his vision of America’s role in the world since Sept. 11. Over the weekend he offered a rhetorical outline that, if realized in practice, would make him one of the most aggressive of internationalists among presidents.

His address at West Point spelled out three fundamental missions, each of them extremely ambitious: that the United States would act preemptively against its terrorist enemies and the regimes that back them; that it would end the threat of war among the world’s great powers, in part by maintaining its own military supremacy, and build coalitions with those powers to solve regional conflicts; and that it would actively “promote moderation and tolerance and human rights” in the Islamic world and in other places where freedom is lacking.

The presidential candidate who once suggested that America approach the world with greater humility now argues that “moral truth is the same in every culture,” and so “America will call evil by its name . . . and we will lead the world in opposing it.” Given the threat the country faces, such presidential determination is essential, and welcome. The challenge is preserving the clarity and focus Mr. Bush speaks of.

Many observers interpreted Mr. Bush’s talk of taking “the battle to the enemy” as stage-setting for a possible military campaign against Iraq, which clearly fits in his category of “evil and lawless regimes” for which “containment is not possible.”

Most U.S. allies have yet to accept the president’s position that the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction is such that traditional deterrence no longer applies.

—The Washington Post

Bureaucracy in army rule

WHENEVER the army takes over the country its instinctive twin-urge is to weaken the bureaucracy and strengthen the local government. Whatever might happen to either in course of time, ultimately the whole exercise results in the emergence of a stronger central authority.

It has come to a climax during the current, the fourth, army rule in that the law, rules and procedures for the administration of even a village council are being thought of and enacted at the centre. And, amazingly, it is being done not by the federal government but by its ad hoc adjunct — the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB). The past experience has shown that such organizations last not a day longer than the regime that creates them.

The action against permanent public servants is made easier and plausible by calling them bureaucrats which conjures up an image of men of hubris who are concerned more with their own procedures and powers than with the well-being of the people.

Promoting the elected local councils and punishing the nominated bureaucrats imposed on them thus gives a military set-up the lustre of a democracy and paves the path to populist politics without the rigours of election with its attending expense and corruption.

Ayub Khan was the first to contemplate his rise to political power through multi-tiered local councils rather than contend with the hereditary and moneyed interests entrenched in the provincial and central assemblies. Before unfolding his plan of Basic Democracies, he summarily dismissed a score of senior civil servants without reference to their usefulness or integrity.

The effect of dismissals was stunning for, under their covenant, even the viceroy couldn’t have removed them. Their junior colleagues and lesser services got the message that henceforth not any covenant or law but the whim of an individual would determine their career. In the Basic Democracy scheme the public servants and elected councillors worked in tandem - the former occupying a superior position. With his rural background, Ayub knew that the councillors could be associated with development, education, sanitation, etc. but not with the law and order and regulatory aspects of the functioning of the government.

It was in this background that an administrative reorganization report, painstakingly prepared by Justice Cornelius, was consigned to the archives (the place suggested by Ayub was the fire place) because it recommended radical changes in the executive and judicial structures, including the abolition of the office of the deputy commissioner.

The Ayub years are remembered for economic development and, to a lesser extent, for peace and discipline. His system would have lasted longer but for a sentimental and aggressive challenge to his rule that came from the sister of the Father of the Nation; some unsavoury stories that surrounded his family; and, finally and fatally, the ambition of glory that lured him into war with India. Then for the first time the country was put on a downhill course.

The service that Jinnah called the “backbone of the state” has since then become a whipping boy for the generals and politicians alike. Yahya’s 303 and Bhutto’s 1,400 gave rise to grief and amusing anecdotes. Some long retired and dead were among those dismissed as were many honest and hardworking. Two Iqbal Rizvis, both police superintendents, were in contention as to who between the two was the target of dismissal. The government couldn’t help resolve their dilemma for even it didn’t know.

Thus exposed to ridicule, the worst blow to the public services came in the second year of Bhutto’s government when all service cadres were abolished, legal protection for security of tenure was withdrawn and, most damaging of them all, a public servant who had done 25 years of service could be instantly sent home without giving any reason or providing any remedy. By this device all secretaries, heads of departments and corporations who were expected to act according to law and in public interest and also so to advise the ministers became either stooges or pariahs: regrettably, most chose to be the former.

Busy in saving their own neck all the time, they could hardly be expected to stick it out for the people working under them. Most among them, in turn, shifted their allegiance to the politicians: only a few were left to fend for themselves. The service spirit and discipline both, thus, broke down.

General Musharraf’s NRB is now seeking to create a neutral but democratically controlled public service out of what it describes as “colonial governance rooted in a feudal-imperial system”. The Bureau and its World Bank backroom boys conveniently ignore how the neutrality and merit of the system, even if it was colonial, has been destroyed by successive regimes since independence. The advice the government is now getting may devastate the public service to the point of extinction.

A system or a service becomes an absurdity if the men running it are appointed ignoring their competence and integrity. How can the failure of Wapda or the law and order service be blamed when almost every engineer and police inspector or magistrate had entered through the backdoor of a legislator’s or a minister’s or a friend’s quota?

The public service commissions now describe the standards of the candidates coming to them as appalling. The federal commission found only three out of 4,545 who appeared before it this year as really meritorious. The commission’s latest competitive list has but four candidates from Karachi out of a total of 899 — the first one appearing at 319 on the list.

That is a verdict of condemnation passed by the educated youth on the changes made and on those contemplated by the government based on the research and advice of the Bureau and the Bank. The pay in public service was always paltry. Young aspirants joined it for security and, secondly, for prestige and power to do good or harm. All three were on the decline. A death blow now has been delivered.

It is foolish to expect, as the Bureau and the Bank do, that the standards of performance and integrity in public service can be raised through “market wages” and “contract employment”.

The government would never be able to pay its two million or more employees as much as industry or commerce does. The contracts would only cause a scramble. The public service in a backward country like Pakistan where few employment opportunities exist can be sustained only by austerity, integrity and security.

The lesson that we need to learn in the fifty-fourth year of our independence is that we cannot invent a new system or rules of governance. In fact, no one can. It is a process of evolution. Whatever is working wherever should not be disturbed. The second lesson we need to learn is that we cannot constantly confront and fight a country seven times our size and ten times our income and yet look after the welfare of our people whatever the “paradigm shift” (whatever it means) the World Bank boffins may bring about. General Musharraf was admired for being so ordinary, unlike his pious or bombastic predecessors.

He could be almost the guy living next door. He should not lose the charm of that ordinariness by being burlesque.