Lessons to learn

MERCIFULLY, the indications are that the current military confrontation with India is at last beginning to ease. This eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation has not, of course, been unique in the 54-year old history of tense relations between the two South Asian states. But, probably, this time the potential consequences of the conflict, for the millions inhabiting the subcontinent, were the most dangerous ever.

The two rivals were openly flexing their nuclear muscles; and the missiles in their possession carried the doomsday message that hardly any place in South Asia would be safe in the event of hostilities. Quite naturally, the international community was alarmed and felt constrained to play an effective role in persuading the two neighbours to move back from the brink. One should hope that the world will remain engaged in this exercise since India and Pakistan themselves seem unable to find a way out of the impasse.

It is depressing to see that these two countries remain at each other’s throats even half a century after their independence. They have evidently not been able to look at matters in correct perspective. At the altar of national pride, they have allowed their differences to eclipse their real problems, which are stark poverty and underdevelopment. Resources have been diverted to arms and defence while the social sector has been grossly neglected. Hundreds of millions in the subcontinent live below the poverty line, lacking clean drinking water and the most basic amenities of life, while billions are spent on military hardware.

The ruling classes in the two countries need to read Gulliver’s Travels highlighting the petty squabbling of the Lilliputians. Are India and Pakistan any different from the Lilliputians? One would like to know the economic costs of just the current military confrontation. Surely, a great many development projects could have been financed in both countries from the money spent in the senseless military showdown of the last six months alone.

Perhaps some lessons could be learnt by both sides from their latest confrontation. Since December 2001, India has whipped up a war hysteria and massed its troops on the border, threatening to attack Pakistan or to teach it a “bloody lesson.” Rather belatedly, wisdom seems to have dawned on New Delhi that Pakistan has the capability to wreak horrible destruction on India also even if, in the process, Pakistan itself could be sent back to the Stone Age. It has been aptly said that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Hopefully, the jingoists in India, which include top leaders like Advani and Fernandes, and indeed so many others, would henceforth be more cautious in threatening to “obliterate” Pakistan.

Incidentally, in this context, the value of the nuclear deterrent has to be admitted. The Pakistani people owe a debt of gratitude to those (including the much maligned Ziaul Haq) who enabled this country to acquire nuclear capability about twenty years ago.

On the other side of the coin, there needs to be an awareness in Pakistan that the world seems to have accepted the Indian argument that there has been cross-border infiltration in Kashmir from the Pakistani side and this was a prime cause of the current crisis. For too long, have our official spokesmen been saying rhetorically that Pakistan has only been extending diplomatic and moral support to the Kashmir cause.

In reality, one has only to look at so many of our own newspaper reports about Pakistan-based Mujahideen groups conducting activities across the LoC. Incidentally, Pakistan has, on so many occasions since 1972, pledged to respect the sanctity of the LoC: the statement issued in Washington in August 1999 on the Clinton-Nawaz Sharif talks that ended the Kargil crisis also carried such a pledge.

The inability or unwillingness to respect this commitment has greatly damaged Pakistan’s credibility. There can be no doubt that the US and the West in general, Russia and many other countries have recently applied pressure on Pakistan to put a stop to the infiltration across the LoC. Irrespective of our protestations, it is a fact that at the end of the day, Pakistan has been obliged to do so. This is not surprising. In the present-day world, it is difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the sustained pressure of the international community. No country is an island in itself and that applies even more so to a country like Pakistan which is so heavily dependent on foreign aid.

No doubt, it is our Jihadist groups which have been seeking to step up the violence in Indian-held Kashmir. They had been unleashed during the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan during the 1980s and seem to have gathered momentum ever since. But Pakistan must not allow them to become a Frankenstein. Certainly, it would be a grave mistake to allow the Jihadists to hijack Pakistan’s foreign policy. Indeed, their activities have brought India and Pakistan almost to the brink of a horrible war, which shows how little these Jihadists care for the safety and security of Pakistan.

And what exactly have the Jihadists achieved after a decade of bloodshed in Kashmir? The genuine Kashmiri resistance to Indian occupation has been eclipsed and, in some instances, tarnished by the outsiders who have done grave disservice to the Kashmiri cause by giving it a terrorist image. Consequently, India seems to have been the beneficiary, particularly since September 11, after the global war against terrorism was launched.

As to the argument of the Jihadists and their patrons in Pakistan like the Jamaat-e-Islami that the Kashmiri resistance would lose steam if the activities of the Jihadists were stopped, let us not forget that the struggle of the Kashmiris goes back to more than fifty years. The Kashmiri resistance was certainly there before 1990 when, perhaps, these particular Jihadists got involved in the affair. There can also be little doubt that the Kashmiri struggle would continue even when there is no involvement from outside.

Of course, India too must get rid of the illusion that the trouble in Indian-occupied Kashmir is entirely due to “cross-border terrorism.” This is flying in the face of the realities in Kashmir. The heart of the problem is that the Muslim Kashmiris simply do not want to be ruled by India (even though they might not necessarily want to join Pakistan). Thus, India must understand that the Kashmir problem would not go away even if the infiltration from across the LoC stops.

It is also clear that India has been proceeding on erroneous if not false premises in regard to the current crisis. In the case of the attack on the Indian parliament on December 13, it announced in no time that the terrorists were Pakistanis, acting on the instructions of the Inter-services Inteligence ISI. Were the terrorists carrying documents on their person that established such an allegation?

If so, why did not India share this evidence with the rest of the world? The same happened four months later in the case of an attack by terrorists in Jammu in which many civilians died. Within hours, India claimed to have discovered their identity as Pakistani agents. On this premise, India massed its troops on the border and seemed prepared to unleash a conflict that could have jeopardized millions. Surely, the Indian reaction to the two incidents was out of all reasonable proportions to the alleged action. Is this the sense of responsibility of a nuclear power that even aspires to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council?

It seems that neither India nor Pakistan has come out with an untarnished image from the present confrontation. The world was alarmed by their jingoism and war threats. Thus, pressure was applied on India to avoid going to war, and on Pakistan to put a stop to the cross-LoC infiltrations. The economies of both countries have suffered heavy losses as a result of the crisis. Tourism in India has been badly hurt and investment greatly reduced. The cost of keeping nearly a million soldiers on the border, the navy on the high seas and the air force in the skies has cost India a fortune. Perhaps, Pakistan might have incurred lesser expenditure but its smaller and weaker economy could ill afford this burden.

In the case of Pakistan, another shock has been the deafening silence of the Islamic world and its main political body — the OIC. This is yet another reminder that ideology plays little part in the formulation of national policies. In case of the Islamic world also, it is each country’s national interest that overrides sentiments such as Islamic solidarity. In our moment of truth, we have found ourselves all alone. It is high time our policies were based on realistic premises rather than on illusions of support from the Islamic world or elsewhere. Our Jihadists also need to ponder — if they are at all capable of doing so — the real truth about Islamic solidarity, which makes their frequent calls of holding an emergency summit of the OIC seem rather ludicrous.

The lesson from all this is that in the face of these hard ground realities, we should think many times before jumping into the abyss. Clearly, Pakistan’s national interests should have primacy. The first law of nature is survival. Pakistan’s independence and territorial integrity and economic welfare come first. Everything else is secondary.

Facing the facts on Kashmir

WE delude ourselves if we believe that Kashmir has remained a bilateral problem or that we have been able to keep away the association of a third party. Our claim may be correct rhetorically but not factually.

Kashmir is all over the front page of newspapers in the world. TV networks report on developments every hour. Even ordinary remarks abroad shows deep concern over the confrontation between India and Pakistan. Not many understand the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir problem. But their fear is the two countries have reached a flashpoint where the first nuclear war in the world can start. We may not like it but the problem has been internationalized.

Again, we go on saying that we will not accept mediation or arbitration because it impinges on our sovereignty. This is true in principle. No independent country can be forced to accept what it does not want to. Yet if we do a reality check, we will see that we have opened the door to anyone who knocks in the name of assessing the tension between India and Pakistan. There has been a caravan of top officials and leaders from all parts of the world, stopping first at Islamabad and then at New Delhi. Washington and London are constantly in touch with both of us through the phone or otherwise.

No doubt, foreign countries are talking to us separately. But they are the ones who are trying to devise an ever new formula to get our or Islamabad’s assent. The formula is chiselled and chopped in the light of the reaction of the two countries and to see how far the two countries are willing to go.

None of us are visiting each other’s country. It is the third party that is going back and forth to find out a common ground. What else is mediation if not effecting an agreement or reconciliation? At least that is what the dictionary says.

Take the verification proposal for infiltration. It was Washington that initiated the move. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw gave content to it by suggesting that 150 helicopters, manned by British and American soldiers, oversee the Line of Control (LoC) to check if there is any infiltration. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was amenable to the suggestion and agreed to a joint patrolling by India and Pakistan. But he is still squeamish about associating any other country.

I do not find any harm in having some force under the aegis of the UN along with Indian and Pakistani troops to oversee the borders so that there is no infiltration. One advantage is the recognition of the LoC. If UN forces are part of the patrolling parties, the LoC, which has become a de facto border, might one day become de jure.

There is a point when we say we do not want any third country. Its association may complicate the Kashmir problem. It may assume ramifications which are not acceptable to us. At least Washington knows that we can never accept formulations which may harm our polity. I wonder whether certain proposals have been conveyed to us unofficially or whether we have ever sounded America on what the solution it has in view.

I am not saying that we have not been wronged. Nor am I suggesting a dialogue with Islamabad if it does not stop the cross-border terrorism. But we should not shut our eyes to the fact that Kashmir has not remained hidden in the closet of India and Pakistan. The international community knows that the problem has been hanging fire for a long time. It believes that there has to be an amicable settlement if the two countries are to live in peace.

Our response has been that of a self-righteous person, who has been sinned against. True, Islamabad has been up to one trick or another to irritate us and keep the problem alive.

For some years, it has trained and armed thousands of young men and sent them across the border to indulge in terrorism, not only in Kashmir but also in other parts of India. In a way, we have faced an undeclared war for more than a decade and have lost thousands of our men. Probably we have not explained to the world properly to make it realize how we have been at the receiving end all these years. But that is the failure of our diplomatic endeavour.

Whatever the objective reality, the international community wants India to sit across the table with Pakistan to sort out all our problems, including Kashmir. Already some signs of exasperation with New Delhi are beginning to appear in the American and British press.

Unfortunately, there has been practically no condemnation in Pakistan of cross-border terrorism. Even when there were elected governments in Islamabad, we found very few eyebrows were raised. The military junta has increased the level of infiltration knowing well that the intelligentsia would keep quiet in the interest of the country.

Surely, it is not anybody’s case that there is wide support for cross-border terrorism. Yet, there is hushed approval of what terrorists do as if they are freedom fighters or the ones who keep Kashmir on the front burner.

The Pakistan intelligentsia should feel embarrassed over President General Pervez Musharraf’s admission of infiltration. He has himself announced that he has issued orders to end it. That means there must have been infiltration which he has stopped. I thought the disclosure would evoke some critical articles in the Pakistan press. There is hardly any. On the other hand, I have seen many responsible people appreciating Musharraf’s compulsions and asking New Delhi not to ask for more than he has done. But has he done enough? That is the question. And that is what that India has been asking.

If terrorism was over, Vajpayee had said in his Kerala musings, he would settle the problem of Kashmir. His promise was to go beyond the “beaten track.” He should pick up that thread again when he is convinced that Pakistan has stopped exporting terrorism to India. What Vajpayee can offer to Musharraf is difficult to quantify because Vajpayee has lost the stature he had even six months ago. The hardliners in the BJP are the real rulers. But they too realize that the status quo cannot continue.

The continued detention of Yasin Malik is not understandable if the peace process has to begin. Nor does the arrest of Iftikhar Ali, the journalist son-in-law of Syed Ali Shah Gillani, makes sense.

His writings could be outspoken but freedom of expression is one of our fundamental rights. If there are other ‘charges’ against him, he should be tried in an open court.

This is not the way to proceed to retrieve the Kashmiris most of whom are alienated from India. There have to be talks. During the regime of Nawaz Sharif the two countries had almost reached a settlement. Vajpayee had told me at that time that they had nearly found the formula. Musharraf reportedly pushed out Sharif at that time because the formula was not acceptable to the military, the real rulers of Pakistan. How would it agree to a settlement on those lines now? There is, however, one difference from the old days.

Washington never had so much clout in New Delhi as it has today. If American Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage could make Pakistan stop infiltration and tell India to respond, it must be admitted that America has the leverage to nudge both the countries to a settlement. Its main ingredients may well be autonomy for the valley, something New Delhi promised when it included in the constitution Article 370, which gave a special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Bush kicks Mideast policy backward

ESCALATING violence in Israel forced the Bush administration to focus more attention on the Middle East several months ago, dispatching emissaries to the region and welcoming many Arab leaders to Washington.

That has produced a more nuanced understanding of the current conflict, along with a vigorous debate about the U.S. role inside the administration.

Bush’s meetings with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could have been another hopeful development. But Bush kicked U.S. policy backward, endorsing yet more Israeli military attacks on Palestinian targets and dismissing Mubarak’s suggestion of a timetable for Palestinian statehood.

Bush is correct that Israel has a right to self-defence. But the most recent raid on Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters and reimposition of house arrest is a military response to the suicide bombing of a bus in northern Israel last week that killed 17 bus passengers. A simultaneous political process is required. Israel needs to protect its people from terrorists, but at the same time negotiate with Palestinians on a state in the West Bank and Gaza territories occupied since the 1967 war.

An Israeli official said Bush and Sharon did not discuss the borders of a Palestinian state or the fate of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those issues are among the most divisive between Palestinians and Israelis, along with the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and the status of Jerusalem.

They are certain to come up at a U.S.-sponsored international peace conference on the Middle East that Washington says will be held this year, perhaps in Turkey. Bush hinted that the conference could be delayed because “no one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government.” It is true that the conference will be doomed without detailed preparation and a firm agenda, but Palestinians may see delays in the talks as a stall.—Los Angeles Times

A police state in the making?

THE Notebook published a couple of weeks ago was supposed to be the last one before one packed up and left Washington on one’s way home. But a few things have come up in the meantime that need some attention lest they become stale.

One is, of course, the Bush administration’s creation of a huge new federal department of homeland defence with enormous police powers that is not without its implications for the immigrant community, particularly if seen in context with the earlier decision to track and finger-print visa holders from five Middle Eastern countries in the first phase, to be followed by similar steps with regard to countries like Pakistan.

The new behemoth, worked out in secret and sprung at the last moment on Congress and the American public, consolidates 22 agencies including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Agency. It is the first department of its kind created since the ministry of defence was established half a century ago.

Critics of the new plan have been few, but those who have spoken out in public against it have characterized the setting up of the department as another step towards concentrating powers in the hands of the White House, a process that has been going on since the September 11 attacks. The timing of the announcement of the department is described as a patently transparent move to distract attention from the revelations of advance warnings of the attacks that are now the subject of a Congressional investigation.

The Washington Post has pointed out that the scope of the department appears to go well beyond policing the borders. The agencies gathered under one umbrella “reach deep into American life, doing everything from coordinating disaster relief to tracking down foreigners working illegally in restaurants”, and the measure “blurs the boundaries between gathering intelligence on foreigners and doing the same with American citizens”.

An independent website has said the most ominous aspect is the inclusion in the department of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was designated as the lead agency in plans developed 20 years ago under the Reagan administration to impose martial law in the event of a new and unpopular Vietnam-style war in Central America.

FEMA’s brief, says the World Socialist Website, included the establishment of prison camps at mothballed military bases for the detention of hundreds of thousands of US citizens and foreign immigrants. “Similar moves are now being considered against the Arab-American and Asian-American population, and all other potential opponents of a new US war against Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East — or in Colombia, the Philippines, Georgia, or some other target of US aggression. This has already been foreshadowed in the round-up of thousands of immigrants after September 11 and their ongoing mistreatment in jails and detention facilities.”

In short, the department is being compared to the scaffolding of a new police state or as another step in creating a system akin to a presidential dictatorship. Apart from its domestic consequences, the measure will enable the Bush administration to continue its backing for autocratic and unrepresentative regimes abroad as long as they fall in line with US policy with regard to the “war on terrorism”, which more and more is acquiring the form of a simple feint to increase American hold on the world’s oil resources in the Middle East and Central Asia. So, tough luck for the democrats of the developing world.

THE other thing one wanted to write about is that the Kashmir problem has been getting some hearing in Washington in the past few days. This has of course come about as a result of the latest and still continuing crisis between Pakistan and India, and it must be considered a matter of deep regret that it should require brinkmanship of the most frightening and chauvinistic kind in South Asia to stimulate any interest at all in the question of Kashmir.

It would have been idle for any Pakistani to believe till only a couple of days ago that, despite references to the issue by Secretary Colin Powell and other spokesmen, Kashmir had in any substantive way entered into America’s official calculations, which continue to rest on an end to Pakistan’s backing of militants and, in return, for India to initiate some de-escalatory steps. But Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s remarks in New Delhi have leant what talking heads will refer to as a new paradigm to the issue.

Mr Rumsfeld said there were indications, though these fell short of evidence, that Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could be operating along the Line of Control. And, presto!, this has now become an American problem, and India, eager to somehow join the US-led coalition, might, just might, agree to some kind of a US-British monitoring of the LoC. Both India and Pakistan will save face, and Pakistan will at least be assured that not every militant action that takes place in Kashmir is blamed on it and becomes a new casus belli. If this line of reasoning is anywhere near the truth, then it will mark, for a change, some nimble diplomatic quick-footing by the Americans.

But even before this latest turn of events, at one level of the discourse on South Asia, in the media and in think-tanks, it was being stressed that the international community, the US, and India and Pakistan themselves ought to realize that there should be a negotiated settlement in Kashmir. Where Pakistan is concerned, the key question is whether the military is also ready to accept, after the abandonment of its Afghan policy, a virtual folding up of the forward policy on Kashmir and agree to work for a compromise.

Much depends on the attitude of India, which never in the past half a century or more has done anything to strengthen the peace and democracy lobby in Pakistan and instead repeatedly undertaken actions that have only encouraged the forces of fanaticism and revivalism.

The chairman of the Kashmir Committee set up by the Musharraf regime, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, was in Washington last week, and he blew hot and cold in the same breath. He talked of Kashmiris being ready to die for their cause and of a decisive battle being fought in Kashmir. But during a press conference for Pakistani journalists, he also reaffirmed his suggestion for an intra-Kashmir dialogue as a means of resolving the issue and his long-standing belief that Kashmir could serve as a bridge of peace between Pakistan and India. He was also forthright and convincing in saying that Pakistan-based militancy had harmed the cause of both Pakistan and Kashmir.

But Sardar Qayyum appeared to take umbrage at a reference by this reporter to a perception among at least some Pakistanis that the country’s existence was time and again threatened by our over-involvement with Kashmir. He described the perception as naive, and said it was Kashmir that was the guarantor of Pakistan’s security and sovereignty.

The question apparently rankled because the Kashmiri leader brought it up again at a dinner engagement later in the day, when he almost seemed to imply that raising issues like this somehow questioned the very existence of Pakistan. He reportedly said Muslims should be grateful for Pakistan, otherwise they would have been cleaning pots and pans in Hindu kitchens. This was said with Mr P.K. Shahani, another member of the Kashmir Committee and a Hindu, sitting next to him on the dais. This was the same mentality at work that contemptuously refers to all Hindus as “banias” or which, in India, describes Muslims as “muslahs” and Pakistani agents. There is need for a civilized and a rational discourse on both sides of the border if we are ever going to come to an accommodation over Kashmir and on living together in amity.

The Kashmir Committee made some headway in conversations with editors at The Washington Post and The Washington Times, both of which came out with comments supporting the necessity of dealing with the Kashmir question. There was a similar strain running through speeches at the annual Congressional outreach event of the Pakistan American Congress, an umbrella organization of several associations of Pakistani Americans, which lobbies legislators and actually manages to get several of them to talk to its members.

Many members of the Senate and the House of Representatives have Pakistani American voters in their constituencies, who contribute to their legislators’ election coffers, and the connection should be obvious.

All told, Pakistan got quite a drubbing on the infiltration issue, the first time that the military regime was in the dock after 9/11, but in the end, because of the attention paid to the Kashmir tangle and because India had to take more visible steps at de-escalation than Pakistan’s ephemeral decision to stop something which it had never admitted, the Pakistan-India score came out looking like one-all.