DAWN - Opinion; June 23, 2002

Published June 23, 2002

Where do we go from here?

By Anwar Syed


THE other day the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MML), a loose alliance of the Islamic, and a couple of other, parties issued a stern warning to General Musharraf’s government against changing our traditional stance regarding Kashmir. Qazi Hussain Ahmad (JI) and Maulana Fazlur Rahman (JUI) demanded the expulsion of the American military, CIA, and FBI personnel from the country, and Allama Sajid Naqvi and others insisted that the “jihad” in Kashmir must continue, for it was an Islamic obligation. Similar demands were made at a Kashmiri solidarity rally organized by the PML (N) activists.

These dignitaries are men of affairs, having seen a good deal of the world and practised the craft of politics for quite some time. They must know that our government is in no position to defy the United States and its allies. Since September 11, and more especially since December 13, India has been saying that it will not tolerate the “jihadis” moving across the Line of Control. It threatens to make war on us if we don’t stop them, and it may be a war that we can neither deter nor win.

The United States and other major powers may be disapproving of India’s oppression of the Kashmiris, and they may even be sympathetic to the latter’s drive for self-determination, but they are strongly opposed to another Indo-Pakistan war (because it may escalate into a nuclear holocaust), and if stopping the “jihadis” is necessary to avert such a war, they are unreservedly in favour of that course of action. They have conveyed their position to General Musharraf in no uncertain terms, and he has, once again, promised to do all he can to implement their demand.

The gentlemen at the MMA meeting must be aware of the pressures on Pakistan and its inability to resist them, aside from the fact that many of our own observers believe that sending the “jihadis” across the Line of Control was a poor idea to begin with. The MMA should have recalled another relevant fact. Having been chosen as the messenger of God, our Prophet (pbuh) lived and preached in Makkah for twelve years. During this time of relative material weakness, he and his companions undertook no physical fights against their opponents.

Indeed, they were rather cautious and circumspect even in their mission of preaching. Jihad came after they had begun to gain strength both in numbers and material resources following their migration to Madina.

The MMA folks know all of this. Why are they then threatening to launch movements to overthrow the government even as they know that their demands cannot be met? Do they speak as they do because their faith in Islam is so intense as to leave them no other option? Are they the likes of Imam Husain, ready to embrace martyrdom in the cause of righteousness? I don’t think so.

In this connection, one may wonder why none of them has gone to fight the Indian forces in Kashmir. They may be good believers, each in his own way, but they are politicians just as much. A sense of Islamic obligation may have entered their thinking, but the desire to disrupt the country’s present political order is equally, if not more, a part of their design.

Which way is the Kashmir dispute going now? It has had three dimensions. First, Pakistan expected to have all or much of the state following a plebiscite that, it hoped, would go in its favour. India did initially agree to this procedure, mandated at the time by the United Nations, but repudiated it in 1954, and the world powers have done nothing to change its mind. This version of the dispute has, thus, been dead a long time despite Pakistan’s efforts, including war with India, to enliven it.

Second, by all objective accounts-some of them provided by Indian observers — the Muslim population in held Kashmir is greatly dissatisfied with Indian rule and has carried on a revolt against it for nearly thirteen years. Third, Pakistan has been encouraging or allowing Islamic militants and/or mercenaries to go into held Kashmir to aid the local insurgents. General Musharraf’s government has officially closed this third version of the dispute under international pressure and in view of India’s war like moves. What is then left of the dispute?

Pakistan says that while it will not go to war with India over the future of Kashmir, and while it will not help the local insurgents with fighting men, money, or weapons, it will continue to give them moral, diplomatic, and political support. This is an intriguing position in that its meaning has been left to speculation. What kind of action does “moral” support entail? We approve of the recipient’s cause. We applaud when he makes gains, and we send condolences when he suffers reverses. In the latter case, we may also denounce his oppressor, but not so virulently as to provoke him to start hurting us as well. It is hard to think of much else as a manifestation of moral support.

Even if we exclude war, which is also a form of politics, political support can include a whole array of actions. During the 1970s we gave Sikh separatists in the Indian Punjab money, weapons, training and sanctuaries. That was surely “political” support and essentially the same kind as we have been providing to the “jihadis” going into held Kashmir. But since we have now reaffirmed our earlier commitment to discontinue this aid, our talk of political support to the freedom struggle in Kashmir may be dismissed as high-sounding but insubstantial speech.

How about diplomatic support? At the United Nations and other international forums we have regularly called attention to India’s oppressive colonial rule in Kashmir as a cause of tension and as a threat to peace. Statesmen across the world urge India and Pakistan to resolve the issue by discussion. India is reluctant to do so and, in any case, it is not willing to discuss it within the Pakistani terms of reference. The outsiders are not prepared to pressure India in this regard.

In recent memory Pakistan has not called upon the United Nations to get its resolutions on Kashmir implemented, presumably because it expects little international support for such a move. It appears then that our offer of diplomatic support to the Kashmiris is just as inconsequential as that of our moral amd political support.

Basically, then, we are talking of a dispute between the Kashmiri Muslims and the government of India to which Pakistan wants to remain a party as a supporter of the former’s aspirations. These aspirations are not firmly determined: they could go from union with Pakistan to independence to some sort of an autonomous status within India. The Indian government does not want Pakistan to have a say in the process whereby it reaches a settlement with the Kashmiris. The latter, or many of them, welcomed Pakistan’s material assistance while it lasted. But it is not clear how they will feel about its continued involvement in their dealings with India if its assistance is reduced to verbal advocacy alone.

Pakistan has been demanding a “dialogue” with India on all issues, including Kashmir. World leaders, fearful of war between these two countries, have been urging them to have one. If and when a dialogue does begin, the Indian side will probably want to avoid, or postpone to a more “propitious” time, the “core” issue and instead, talk about “confidence-building measures” and other things. But if the Indians do agree to discuss Kashmir, have we thought of anything new to say that they have not already heard and rejected?

India and Pakistan held substantive talks on the subject of Kashmir at the behest of the United States and Britain in the spring of 1963 in the aftermath of India’s humiliating defeat in its border war with China. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was then our foreign minister, and Sardar Swaran Singh, the Indian spokesman, went through several months of essentially futile discussions. It is my understanding that even at that very difficult time for his country, Swaran Singh offered nothing more than a few minor territorial adjustments along the cease-fire line. Now that India is much stronger in all respects than it was forty years ago even minor concessions may not be forthcoming.

It seems that Pakistan can gain nothing for itself in held Kashmir. Its ability to make trouble for India in Kashmir as a way of securing territorial concessions is gone for the foreseeable future. But it may still be able to help the Kashmiris improve their bargaining position vis-a-vis India for the purpose of obtaining concessions for themselves. India views Pakistan’s continuance as a party to the Kashmir dispute as a “nuisance.”

This may well be the only leverage Pakistan has and it might want to use it by offering to withdraw itself as a party to the issue if India would offer the Kashmiri Muslims a measure of autonomy that is acceptable to them. If and when that has been done, doors to good neighbourly relations between the two countries can begin to open gradually and progressively (but not to be kicked open).

In the end, I should like to submit, as others have done in this space, that our own domestic cohesion, stability, and vitality are essential to forging an honourable and mutually advantageous relationship with India. If these prerequisites are not met, we may have to endure India’s hegemony. Telling the people the truth about what is, and what is not, within our reach on Kashmir may be an essential part of the process of building our internal strength.

Kalam, Salam and A.Q. Khan

By Kunwar Idris


THE danger of an armed conflict between India and Pakistan may have lessened but their propaganda war has heightened. Mobilizing troops may have cost India more but it is a small price to pay to win on the propaganda front, which indeed it has.

New Delhi has succeeded in making the world believe that the cause of discontent and bloodletting in Kashmir is not the repression by India but the terrorists coming from Pakistan. The long-standing issue of the people’s right to self-determination has thus been reduced to terrorism.

What turn of opinion and events could be sadder for a people who have struggled for their right of free choice for 54 years and lost 50,000 or more lives in the past 13 years. Yet Gen Musharraf is content that Kashmir has come into world focus as it did never before. So also was Nawaz Sharif after the retreat from Kargil. Disillusionment followed. Could it be any different this time round remains a troubling question. Perhaps it wouldn’t be.

The murder of a thousand Muslims in Gujarat while the law enforcers looked the other way and the chief minister remaining unchanged and unrepentant had called into question India’s claims of just and equal treatment of its minorities. Yet the world concern was muted because the riots were triggered by the death of 58 radical Hindus in a train fire set by a Muslim mob.

All the sordid happenings in Gujrat, still in progress, and on a lesser scale elsewhere in India, have gone out of the world view and India’s secularism stands refurbished by the nomination of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the country’s next president by a Hindu nationalist party with all the rest, but the maverick Marxists, concurring. The world is impressed that a Muslim is succeeding a Dalit, an untouchable, as the constitutional head of the world’s largest democracy. The damage done to India’s image by Chief Minister Narindra Modi of Gujarat is more than repaired by his party boss Atal Behari Vajpayee’s decision in favour of Kalam as the president of India.

Presenting a contrast to that is much smaller Pakistan where, even when it is not ruled by the military, no non-Muslim can become the head of state or of government because of a constitutional bar, nor hold any other important public office because of prejudice or suspicion.

Even when it is governed by a coalition led by a militantly Hindu BJP, India has tried to show to the world that whether it is the making of destructive missiles or safeguarding its constitution in a crisis, the religion of a person is irrelevant. In that scenario, the periodic massacres of Muslims and their continuing deprivation recede into the background. The unverified figure reported is that the share of the Indian Muslims in the national economy and services is just about one-fourth of what it should be in proportion to their numbers.

When it comes to the place of scientists in national life and their influence in government, two of our own, Dr Abdus Salam and Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, inevitably come to mind. A.Q. Khan dominated Pakistan’s missile and nuclear programme for almost quarter of a century. So has Abdul Kalam India’s. But no two persons could be more different.

Abdul Kalam is said to lead a reclusive life in a two-room apartment in Chennai (Madras) which he doesn’t own. He alternately looks like a hermit and a bohemian. Books and musical instruments are his companions. When he is not engaged in scientific research he writes poetry in his mother tongue, Tamil. He is respected for his extreme simplicity and easy access.

Our A.Q. Khan is the very opposite. The gossip could never agree on the number of houses he owns, but undisputed is his villa on the eastern edge of Islamabad’s Margalla lake in the capital’s green belt. A colony of houses grew around it. The CDA’s demolition squad that went into action had to spare all the homes because Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif intervened to save AQK’s. He was a toast of Islamabad’s social circles and an icon in the countryside. At one stage his deputy, Dr Mubarik Mand, called him a hoax, a metallurgist masquerading as a nuclear expert. Removed from the Kahuta laboratories named after him, he has sunk unsung into near-oblivion, though he remains an adviser to the government.

Dr Abdul Kalam is called “a 200 per cent Indian” who has made India proud in myriad ways. Dr Abdus Salam, a Pakistani by a larger percentage, made the world proud but not his own country. A professor at London’s Imperial College at the age of 31 and at 33 the youngest member of that exclusive club of eminence, the Royal Society, he expounded his theory of unification of forces of nature in a mathematical equation which, on confirmation several years later in CERN experiments won him a Nobel Prize in 1979.

On his death the world’s best known newspaper, The Times of London, wrote the world of science had lost “one of its most distinguished and respected members and a man of outstanding creative ability... In addition to his brilliant intellectual gifts, Salam was a man of remarkable vision and energy who played a major role in developing science throughout the world.”

But in his own country, Salam could not persuade Ziaul Haq to create a fund for the teaching of science to which he wished to donate all his Nobel Prize money; nor could he persuade the earlier governments to have in Pakistan a centre for theoretical physics which he then established in Trieste. That centre has, since 1964, trained 60,000 scientists and now named after Salam, is graded as a centre of excellence by the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Yet despite the indifference of successive governments, Pakistan could not escape what The Time called Salam’s charismatic touch compelling Dr Ashfaq Ahmad, Chairman of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission, to affirm that Salam was the “chief architect of whatever modern science exists in Pakistan today.” Imagine the level of science and technology in Pakistan had Salam’s centre been established in Pakistan. Now India is a generation ahead.

India has called upon its leading scientist to be the president of the republic. Pakistan’s scientists are ostracized as Abdus Salam was or fall victim to controversy as A.Q. Khan has been for reasons wholly extraneous to their professional pursuits.

India’s dubious behaviour

By Khalid Mahmud Arif


WEAPONS, conventional and non-conventional, do not disturb peace. Their stockpiles for legitimate security purposes promote stability and create sobering impact on the spoilers of peace and on their arrogance of power.

Peace is invariably disrupted by weapon-users. It frequently becomes a victim when one country is too strong and behaves aggressively and the other is too weak to check the expanding hegemonic appetite of the former. The strong tries to dominate the weak with its muscle power. The weak relies on reason, logic and morality — the qualities out of fashion in the world dominated by realpolitik — to safeguard its security. An impasse ensues. South Asia presently suffers from such lop-sided power equilibrium.

The tragic events of 9/11 provided US an opportunity to humble Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda organization, allegedly the brainchild of Osama bin Laden. Tel Aviv quickly adopted Washington’s operational model and went on a spree to decimate the Palestinian authority. President Bush’s declaration that ‘Israel has the right to defend herself’ prompted India to assert its military superiority in South Asia. The so-called attack on Indian Parliament — real or self-engineered — was exploited for creating war hysteria against Pakistan. Since then India and Pakistan are on the brink of war. An uneasy peace prevails in the region.

India implements a premeditated plan to malign Pakistan and to take care of top APHC leaders. Their subjugation or exit will facilitate Indian ambition of absorbing disputed Kashmir. Thus runs the logic of ruling BJP hawks carrying out ethnic cleansing of a minority in Kashmir, Gujarat and elsewhere in India. The electoral process in Kashmir is a facade of democratic cover for gaining external support. As done by India in the past, state elections will be massively rigged to achieve ‘desired results.’

As a part of the plan, popular leader Mr Abdul Ghani lone was mysteriously assassinated in broad-day light and his hired killers were whisked away to safety by the law enforcing agencies of the state. Other important leaders — Syed Ali Gilani and Yasin Malik (both sick) and Sheikh Abdul Aziz have been jailed. APHC struggles for the right of self-determination and people have categorically rejected any settlement of the Kashmir dispute within the framework of Indian constitution. Kashmiris reject India’s jurisdiction of holding elections in Kashmir.

India uses the myth of cross-border terrorism to arouse international sympathy but declines to provide evidence to substantiate its allegations. She opposes the employment of UN monitors along the LoC. The struggle in Kashmir is entirely indigenous and Pakistan maintains that no infiltration is taking place from across the LoC. Pakistan itself is a victim of terrorism in which India is not an innocent spectator.

The LoC is a temporary phenomenon for which the consent of the people of Kashmir was never taken. The so-called sanctity attached to it is questionable. And, any measure of its inviolability is equally applicable to both India and Pakistan. India violates this sanctity with impunity by frequent machine gun, mortar and artillery fires across the LoC. Those who harp on the theme of sanctity (one-sided?) of the LoC condone India’s violation and show their partiality in this 54-year old dispute.

Disputes of political nature, like Kashmir, need permanent settlement by political means. The world opinion is distasteful of war between India and Pakistan, both equipped with nuclear weapons. This simmering region may explode by design or through miscalculation so long as the basic cause of Kashmir dispute remains unsettled. India’s brutal repression in the Valley — shameful to its democratic claim — has failed to extinguish the torch of freedom set ablaze with the blood of 80,000 martyrs. India and Pakistan face global pressure to avoid war and to negotiate a settlement of Kashmir dispute. Pakistan agrees. India, having different intentions, refuses to start time-framed and result-oriented negotiations.

India’s military red alert is to blackmail Pakistan with coercive diplomacy. It wishes to convert its South Asian contiguous states into Sikkims and Tibets and fusses and fumes when Pakistan demands sovereign equality in bilateral relationship. India’s on-going honeymoon with US adds to its arrogance. In its assessment an internally weak and externally ‘cornered’ Pakistan can be browbeaten into submission. This is not the first time when India has misread Pakistan’s unity in diversity and its immense resilience in crises. It is a sad indicator that the foreign policy of India, aspiring for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, is so heavily based on a single factor — Pakistan.

China, Japan, European Union, G-8 countries and US have expressed serious concerns on war-like situation that prevails in South Asia. The visits of the US Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to South Asia aimed at reducing regional tension. India showed Pakistan-phobia on the occasion. After meeting Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi Rumsfeld said, ‘I have seen evidence — let me rephrase it — I have seen indications that there are, in fact, Al Qaeda operating near the Line of Control... I have no precise information where or how many.’ These harsh implanted words were soft music for the ears of Indian hawks.

Twenty-four hours later the falsehood fed to Rumsfeld by his India hosts stood exposed. Addressing a Press conference in Islamabad Rumsfeld said, ‘I do not have evidence and the US does not have evidence of Al Qaeda in Kashmir. We have scraps of intelligence from “people saying they believe Al Qaeda are in Kashmir or in various locations” ‘It tends to be speculative. It is not actionable. It is not verifiable.’ To the discomfort of the spin masters in New Delhi, the rabbit was out of the hat. This incident exposes India’s deceit in international diplomacy.

External pressure and internal compulsions obliged India to respond positively to world pressure. But true to its trait of double speak it indulged in a number game conceding on the peripheral issues and rejecting the vital twins — negotiated settlement of the Kashmir dispute and withdrawal of military forces to their peace locations. The steps announced by India are cosmetic and self-serving.

India’s decision to post a High Commissioner to Pakistan, to withdraw naval vessels from international waters and to permit over-flights are largely expedient in nature. For example, ban of over-flights resulted in rerouting or cancellation of 12 Pakistani and 126 Indian flights. The financial loss to India was at least ten times than that to Pakistan.

This region needs peace, stability and progress. In their mutual interest India and Pakistan should remove the artificially created clouds of war. They must behave as mature, peaceful and responsible countries wedded to the principle of live and let live. They should jointly fight their common enemy — poverty, want and hunger. This noble goal can best be achieved if the underlying cause of conflict in the region is fairly removed. The LoC will then melt away along with the problems, real and imaginary, it is claimed to create. Injustice cannot endure. Nor can the peoples rights be suppressed indefinitely, even in this imperfect world.

Advani’s fuming outbursts and India’s decision to keep its military forces in the field till October cannot be dismissed as political rhetoric. The so-called impending elections in Kashmir may well be a cover plan to lull the world. The possibility of India gaining time in the turbulent months of July-August when seas are rough and ground and air environments are not ideal for combat cannot be ignored.

This calls for unity and vigilance in Pakistan. The on-going crisis brings under a sharp focus the urgent need of strengthening the capability of conventional forces in Pakistan. This country loves peace. It loves its dignity and honour no less. The world should know that Pakistan seeks peace but not at any price.

The writer is a retired general of the Pakistan Army.

No more killing the retarded

THIRTEEN years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that it was permissible for states to execute retarded people. Thursday it changed its mind and held that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” precludes state killing of people with diminished mental capacities.

The court’s 6 to 3 opinion is cause for cheer among those repulsed by the practice of executing members of any of society’s most vulnerable populations. The cheer is justified even though the majority came to the right answer in the wrong way. Unwilling to acknowledge that it erred the first time the justices considered this question, it produced an opinion based on weak arguments vulnerable to the barbs of the dissenting justices.

Executing retarded people is a barbaric practice that offends the Constitution. But it is no more barbaric today than it was in 1989, when then-Justice William Brennan wrote that “the impairment of a mentally retarded offender’s reasoning abilities” renders “the ultimate penalty of death . . . always and necessarily disproportionate to his or her blameworthiness.” Justice Brennan, alas, was writing in dissent.

And the majority opinion, written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, contended instead that “it cannot be said . . . that all mentally retarded people, by definition, can never act with the level of culpability associated with the death penalty.” — The Washington Post

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