NOT a week passes without General Pervez Musharraf, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, or Sheikh Rashid Ahmad (media minister) offering India a hand of friendship, and calling for a dialogue to resolve the Kashmir dispute (the “core” issue) and other problems between our two countries. We are willing to talk about educational and cultural exchanges, trade and tourism, and we believe mutually advantageous arrangements can be worked out in these areas, once the Kashmir dispute is settled.

It is not known what our side will say about Kashmir that it has not already said, and which India has not rejected, in case the issue once again finds its way to the conference table. India has told us countless times that it will not let go of its part of Kashmir, and if that is what we intend to propose, it does not want a dialogue.

General Musharraf, Prime Minister Jamali, and other Pakistani officials have been telling foreign dignitaries that we want to negotiate a durable peace with India. “Good idea,” they say. We ask them if they will mediate our dispute with India, and their answer usually is, yes, if India will also invite them to play such a role, which of course India has no intention of doing.

Some of them, notably President Putin of Russia, have told us that we must first create conditions conducive to a useful dialogue, meaning that we must stop letting “freedom fighters” cross the line of control in Kashmir. We say we are not doing it, but nobody believes us. Note also that even if India does agree to resume discussions with Pakistan — for appearances’ sake — there is no assurance that they will come to fruition.

When we know that our calls for a dialogue on Kashmir are not well received, and when we know also that no outside power can force India to negotiate the matter under our terms of reference, it is not clear why we keep issuing them. Where is the audience? Are these calls intended to give the world powers the impression that while we are the nice guys, anxious to resolve our differences with other parties by peaceful means, India is the one that is intransigent, arrogant, and militant? There is no reason to believe that even if our foreign listeners accept our interpretation of India’s posture (which is to be doubted), they will do anything about it.

Could it be that they are intended primarily for domestic consumption; to cause the impression that our government has not abandoned the issue; to create the appearance of activity when in fact there is none? That is a distinct possibility. All governments engage in this kind of rhetoric from time to time. The problem with this approach in our case is that it is at once irrelevant and dysfunctional.

As I may have said once before, it is wrong to assume that the great majority of our people do not want to ease relations with India unless it settles the Kashmir dispute to our satisfaction. On the other hand, those who feel passionately about Kashmir, who are ready to kill and get killed for the sake of its liberation, are convinced that our government has practically abandoned the freedom-fighters in Kashmir under western pressure.

There is still another explanation, astonishing though it may be. One of the more eminent Pakistani commentators said to me the other day that, in issuing these calls for a dialogue, we are only talking to ourselves! Many of us talk to ourselves; some of my fellow-professors do — or so their wives allege. But how does a government talk to itself?

I suppose it means that certain policy positions, having been repeated for decades, become a habit of the mind, and one keeps repeating them even if there is no occasion for their reassertion. This inclination is especially characteristic of bureaucrats, but generals and politicians will adopt it readily enough. It is so much easier and safer to say what has been said routinely before; innovation is both taxing and hazardous.

It is a part of our traditional discourse that if India made acceptable concessions on the Kashmir issue, peace would reign between the two countries, and all kinds of blessings would result on both sides: with peace will come amity and friendship, mutually beneficial trade, lower military expenditures, and more money for development and poverty alleviation. On closer examination all of this may be seen as a gross exaggeration.

Let us first take this matter of peace. It should be understood that everybody wants peace if it can be had on one’s own terms. Second, if peace means absence of war, then note that, excluding the Kargil affair and skirmishes along the Line of Control in Kashmir, the two countries have had peace for more than thirty years. War has loomed on the horizon a couple of times during recent years as an Indian response to our material aid to the insurrection in the Valley. But now that our government has stopped, or intends to stop, the passage of fighting men and materials from our side to the Indian side of the Line of Control, the threat of war should recede.

If we keep the Kashmir issue on the back burner, so to speak, there is no reason for either side to make war on the other. Even if some persons on the “lunatic fringe” hope to mount the Pakistan flag on top of the Red Fort in Delhi, no intelligent Pakistani contemplates our invasion and conquest of Indian territory. Most Pakistani observers believe also that in case Pakistan remains peaceable, India will not attack.

It is argued that even if there is no actual war, tension will afflict relations between the two countries as long as the Kashmir dispute festers. That may be true, but it seems the Indians are able to cope with this tension reasonably well. The pace of their educational, economic, and technological development is considerably faster than ours. Their nationhood and internal cohesion are firmer today than they were fifty years ago.

Their political system is reasonably stable, and in international relations they are more influential even with our “allies” than we ourselves are. Everything considered, tension in their relations with us is not hurting them to any significant degree. If it is hurting us, it is our problem, not theirs, and we are the ones to find ways of overcoming it.

It is said also that if relations between the two countries improve, trade between them will flourish, and that will be great. I have no expertise in that area, but even a layman can see reasons for not sharing this optimism. First, it is clear that, being industrially much more advanced, India will have many more things to sell to us than we can to them. Second, neither side will want to increase trade with the other to the neglect of its trade relations with other countries, especially the major economic powers. Third, if trade between them and us becomes free and open, it will ruin the relatively inefficient and non-competitive Pakistani industry.

Lastly, it is fashionable to assert that if Kashmir is settled, and peace and amity follow, then both India and Pakistan can reduce their defence expenditures substantially, and direct the resources thus released to economic development. This reasoning is not necessarily valid even if it sounds good. One might have expected that with the demise of the Soviet Union, and with the resulting end of the cold war, American defence spending would decrease significantly, but no such thing has happened.

New enemies and new threats to American security, “world order,” and democracy have been discovered, new doctrines (pre-emption) formulated, and new obligations perceived. The United States government has been waging a war that may cost a great deal in blood and treasure, ostensibly to secure to the Iraqi people the “inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The argument that a resolution of its disputes with India will help Pakistan reduce its defence expenditures may have a measure of validity. It has no other “enemies” in the neighbourhood, and its possession of nuclear weapons should suffice to deter unprovoked aggression. If it does not develop the ambition to dominate places across its western border, it would make sense for it to downsize its military apparatus.

But India’s circumstances and calculations are radically different from those of Pakistan. It is not maintaining a huge military establishment only to intimidate Pakistan. It has larger concerns and ambitions. Other world powers regard India as a counterpoise to China, and the Indian policy-makers contemplate the future in the same terms. Of all the littoral states it has the largest navy in the Indian Ocean. There can be little doubt that it wants to be the dominant power in the region, which in its own reckoning includes Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Gulf emirates. We may then conclude that the state of its relations with Pakistan has, at best, only peripheral relevance to the size of its defence budget.

If amity with Pakistan is not one of India’s more important needs, what do we hope to gain by inviting its leaders to a dialogue in a framework that is unacceptable to them? It is high time for us to devise a course of action different from the one we have pursued for fifty years and which has been shown to be barren. If we, on our own part, feel that improved relations with India will work to our advantage, then let us first address issues that are more amenable to resolution, and defer Kashmir to a more propitious time. When that time arrives, we can re-energize the issue. We don’t have much of a choice in the matter.

E-mail: syedanwar@attbi.com

ANY hopes that after elections to the Senate, the government will get down to work are fading away. Politics for survival and bargaining for offices remains the chief preoccupation as it has been for the past six months. The Senate has sharpened the appetite for it.

Thrown into the crucible of reform and reconstruction for more than three years, the institutions of the state, whether judicial, legislative or administrative, all have lost their bearing and trust. Opinions may differ on which institution (and the people running it) has melted the most in the process, but the biggest worry is about the independence of the judiciary, for the people look up to it not for adjudication in disputes alone but to be saved from the oppression of the other organs of the state and a variety of private militias and mafias that are growing fast and menacingly.

In determining the legality and fairness of the dismissal of every parliament and prime minister (perhaps there have been six in all) by the head of state or the army, the Supreme Court on its every decision lost some public esteem. However, the criticism levelled against it in the latest round finds no parallel. The damage done to the reputation of the court and the confidence of the people, it appears, is more serious and will be longer-lasting than the infamous Nawaz Sharif-Sajjad Ali Shah row.

It is saddening to note that in the face of an allegation by some representative and statutory bodies of the lawyers that by accepting an extension in their retirement age under the Legal Framework Order, the Supreme Court judges would seem to have lost the moral credentials to rule on the legal validity of the Order, none from among the 17 judges have chosen to resign. The inference drawn thus could be that they reject the viewpoint of the protesting lawyers.

Whether it is the lack of faith in the judges or the selfish interests of the politicians who denounce the LFO, the fact remains that despite the controversy raging around it and the threat it poses to the nascent system, none of them seems inclined to go to the Supreme Court to seek its verdict — which was the obvious thing to do. Instead, all of them are seeking to negotiate a give-and-take settlement with the president.

The saddest part of the tussle over the LFO, thus, is not its constitutionality but how much it helps or harms a person or a group. The principle and morality of it is subject to personal or party stakes. Perhaps, no politician, technocrat, lawyer or cleric, who is already in the National Assembly or in the Senate, would wish the LFO to be struck down as a whole for that would threaten his own seat. By the same token, perhaps, the judges would not hold it invalid in toto for it would shorten their tenures.

The country, thus, is faced with a dilemma where the validity or usefulness of the 56 assorted amendments made to the Constitution through the LFO will be determined either by a fresh court verdict or by political bargaining or street power or through an unscheduled election or yet another extra-constitutional intervention which is but a comforting alias for a military coup. The country may not be able to withstand either of these eventualities. Its own internal stresses and emerging external threats demand a stable government howsoever cobbled together or lacking in competence or cohesion.

It is undesirable and hazardous anywhere to call upon the judiciary to arbitrate in matters which are essentially political. Our judiciary has been called upon to perform this task a bit too often. The politicians in power acting unjustly or the army acting out of ambition or pique have been burdening the courts with their own failures or responsibilities.

Even the US Supreme Court failed this test when it came to the ballot count in the Bush-Al Gore election and the Senate too failed it when Bill Clinton was impeached. On both occasions the judges and the Senators voted on party lines. The judges in Pakistan are exposed to a much harsher political environment of threats and inducements alike. Judicial careers are often made and unmade by politics.

At one time the strength of our judiciary lay in its aloofness. It was a British tradition. Some maverick British judges were known not to read even newspapers lest it impaired their detached thinking. Our own justice M.R. Kiyani did not keep even a telephone at his home or, at least none knew he had one. Justice Cornelius spent his lifetime in a hotel room. Justice Masood Ahmad cycled his way to court every morning.

Over the years all that has been lost. In its prevailing painfully uncomfortable moment, it fell on the Chief Justice to try to retrieve the Supreme Court’s prestige and its image of independence. Sadly, he has chosen to act to the contrary by attending a highly publicized dinner with the president and the prime minister hosted by a turncoat minister only to demonstrate the strength of the ruling coalition. The Chief Justice’s presence, perhaps, has had the effect of demonstrating another dimension of the ruling coalition’s strength but the neutrality of the judiciary has taken yet another nosedive.

And imagine, only a generation ago even a subordinate civil judge would not go to a political dinner or to a social gathering where his presence could be construed to compromise his judicial position. Need the Chief Justice of Pakistan be reminded that the first holder of his office, Sir Abdul Rashid, declined a dinner invitation from Liaquat Ali Khan who was not just a prime minister but a founder of the country, second only to Jinnah.

Some swift and summary action is needed to put the judiciary once again on its old high pedestal of dignity and impartiality. Pervez Musharraf and Zafarullah Jamali might need such a judiciary one day just as much as their adversaries do now, and Bhutto rued in his death cell having trifled with it, just as Benazir and Nawaz Sharif do now in their exile.

It has to be a delicate surgical procedure carried out with skill and deftness like saving a patient in the throes of death. To save the Constitution and superior judiciary together from subversion and to restore the sanctity of both, the president and prime minister need the advice of a commission whose members may have their biases (for no one is free from these) but still keep hold on to a commitment to law, justice and fair play.

Some names come to mind: Javed Iqbal, Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, Shafi ur Rehman, Mamun Kazi, K.M.A. Samdani, Amirulmulk Mengal (all former judges), lawyers S.M. Zafar, Ch. Aitzaz Ahsan, Makhdoom Ali Khan, Syed Iqbal Haider, Khalid Anwar, Hafeez Pirzada and then from among the youth who may have not even biases, the Oxford BCLs, Salman Cheema and Omar Bandial.

The charter of the commission should be to recommend how in a short period of time, and not in a generation, the trust of the people can be restored in the ability and independence of the legal community — the judges and lawyers alike — to dispense justice speedily and to protect the weak from tyranny. At present it does neither, so the wiser people prefer to strike a deal with their adversaries to save years of futile wandering, and expense, in courts.

“THE enemy we are fighting is a bit different [from] the one we war-gamed against”. Lieutenant General William Wallace, the commander of US armed forces in the Gulf told reporters. “Iraqi men in trucks took on American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles with nothing more than light arms mounted in the beds of pickup trucks”.

He termed such behaviour bizarre. This turn of events is raising questions about Defence Secretary Rumsfeld’s influence on military planning. His critics say that he was micro-managing the war from Washington, wanted to do it on the cheap and had turned down requests from his commanders in the Gulf to send more troops. He is being criticized for keeping his force too small, too weak in armour, and too dependent on political decision-making in Washington.

The planners, the critics say, depended too much on the cakewalk theory, putting too much emphasis on an unexpected Iraqi uprising against President Saddam Hussein and were not ready for the fierce resistance that the US forces are now facing. Some of the initial hopes, even assumptions, that Iraqi resistance would crumble are not panning out. The air campaign that the Pentagon promised would “shock and awe” the Iraqi regime has done neither.

Saddam has not lost his grip on power and Iraq’s military command and control system is still intact. Things are going badly for America. Some critics have asserted that the United States lacked a coherent military strategy in Iraq and if it had one, its assumptions were deeply flawed. Who is running this war, people are asking — the political leadership or the military — Rumsfeld or General Tommy Franks?

The issue of civil-military relations is one of the oldest subjects of political science. Plato’s ‘Republic’ discusses the difficulties inherent in creating a guardian class who would at once be “gentle to their own and cruel to enemies”, men who like “noble dogs” would serve the ideal city’s guardians. To understand how statesmen manage their generals in war time, we should turn back to the year 168 BC.

The place is the Senate of the Roman Republic, the subject — the proposed resumption of war against Macedonia, and the speaker is Consul Lucius Aemilius: “generals should receive advice, in the first place, from the experts who are both specially skilled in military matters and have learned from experience; secondly, from those who are on the scene of action, who see the terrain, the enemy, the fitness of the occasion, who are sharers in the danger, as it were, aboard the same vessel.

“Thus, if there is anyone who is confident that he can advise me as to the best advantage of the state in this campaign which I am about to conduct, let him not refuse his services to the state, but come with me into Macedonia. I will furnish him with his sea-passage, with a horse, a tent, and even travel funds. If anyone is reluctant to do this and prefers the leisure of the city to the hardships of campaigning, let him not steer the ship from on shore. The city itself provides enough subjects for conversation; let him confine his garrulity to these; and let him be aware that I shall be satisfied with the advice originating in camp.” The Consul’s cry for a free hand echoes that of generals throughout history.

“Generals are professionals, much like highly trained surgeons: the statesman is in the position of a patient requiring urgent care. He may freely decide whether or not to have an operation — he may choose one doctor over another, and he may even make a decision among different surgical options but he may not select the doctor’s scalpel, or rearrange the operating room to his liking. Even the patient who has medical training is well advised not to attempt to do so, and indeed his doctor will almost surely resent a colleague — patient’s efforts along such lines.

“The result should be a limited degree of civilian control over military matters. To ask too many questions (let alone to give orders) about tactics, strategy, particular pieces of hardware, advance or retreat is meddling and interference, which is inappropriate and downright dangerous. When political leadership assumes the military role of how the armed forces will perform their duty, the nation has a problem. For a politician to dictate military action is folly. On the other hand, when politicians abdicate their role in making policy decisions and blindly follow military advice, the nation has a serious problem. The civil hand must never relax, and it must hold the control that has always belonged to it by right.”

As Clausewitz wrote, “no one starts the war — or rather no one in his senses ought to do so — without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it”. Every war is begun, terminated, and ended by political considerations. War and politics, campaign and statecraft, are Siamese twins, inseparable and interdependent; and to talk of military operations without the direction and interference of political leadership is as absurd as to plan a campaign without tactics, pay or rations. “War”, Clausewitz said, “is merely the continuation of politics by other means”.

That is why great statesmen like Lincoln, Clemenceau and Churchill did not delegate war fighting to the generals. They always queried, prodded, probed and, on rare occasions, ordered their professional subordinates. But a great statesman is a rarity and an average politician like Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld who poses as a Lincoln or a Churchill or a Clemenceau may come to grief and inflict incalculable damage on his country.

The Vietnam war tore President Johnson apart and damaged his entire presidency. One reason why the United States failed to achieve victory in Vietnam is that civilian leaders “made the military fight with a hand tied behind its back”. At the end of the last Gulf war, President George Bush Sr declared when he received the Association of the US Army’s George Catlett Marshall Medal: “ I vowed that I would never send an American soldier into combat with one hand tied behind the soldier’s back. We did the politics and you superbly did the fighting”.

The standard indictment of civilian leadership during the Vietnam war also includes a criticism of its preference for incremental uses of force — rather than the sudden, massive application of power that the military would have preferred.

In the 1941 Gulf war, George Bush Sr wrote: Colin Powell, “ever the professional, wisely wanted to be sure that if we had to fight, we would do it right and not take half measures. He sought to ensure that there were sufficient troops for whatever option I wanted, and then the freedom of action to do the job once the political decision had been made. I was determined that our military would have both. I did not want to repeat the problems of the Vietnam war where the political leadership meddled with military operations. I would avoid micromanaging the military”.

Rumsfeld rejected the doctrine of using overwhelming force which was promulgated by Colin Powell. Instead, he favoured the use of air power, more joint operations among army and marine units and the use of special operations. The result is that today the United States does not have a large enough force in Iraq to take over the country. Is America sinking into quicksand? Is Bush’s luck about to turn in the winds and sands of Iraq?

Americans do not seem to understand why Iraqi forces are putting up such a fierce fight? They do not understand that Iraqis, even those who detest Saddam, love their homeland and hate the idea of a US occupation and are ready to resist a foreign occupier, even one that claims to be a liberator. There is no question in my mind that creating an American colony in Iraq will do more to stoke radicalism than to contain it. Press comments in the past week or so have been full of reminders about previous failures to remake the Middle East, going back as far as the Versailles Treaty of 1919 when the maps of the current-day Middle East were drawn.

In her book, ‘Paris 1919: Six months that changed the world’, Margaret MacMillan recalled the optimistic prediction of the British governor-general of Mesopotamia, who declared that “the average Arab sees the future as one of fair dealing and material and moral progress under the aegis of Great Britain”. A misconception of similar scale afflicts US ambitions for Iraq today.

Winston Churchill once said, “Never, never, never believe that war will be smooth and easy, or anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.

The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events”. Words of wisdom which Bush should have heeded before unleashing the war against Iraq. The fact that Bush had embarked on a disastrous course carrying the nation into a major war — the first illegal war of the 21st century — does not appear to have seeped into the American consciousness yet.

However, the picture of the world’s sole superpower in killing or maiming innocent men, women and children, while trying to pound a small Muslim country into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed by the international community, is not a pretty one. It is revolting. Americans do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in their own image. Today they are on their own — Lone Rangers riding toward the sunset.