IT HAS been my practice to provide in this space some impressions about Pakistan after every reasonably long visit to the country. I have recently returned to Washington after a two and a half week stay in Pakistan. During this time I visited three cities — Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad — and met dozens of people. What impressions do I bring back with me this time around?

There is a fairly simple and straightforward answer to this question. I am more hopeful today about Pakistan’s future than I have been for a fairly long time. I know that my optimism is not shared by many people. I met several pessimists during my stay and had long conversations with them to understand their reasons for losing hope in the country’s future.

I believe these people could be more optimistic if they took into consideration several subtle changes that have taken place in the recent past, both inside Pakistan and in the country’s external environment. These changes may begin to move Pakistan forward simultaneously on a number of parallel tracks — economic, political and social. But why do pessimists persist in maintaining a gloomy outlook?

A long period of poor performance in many fields has produced a mindset that is not prepared to notice when things begin to change for the better. A society battered by poor governance, by the wilful mismanagement of the economy, and by the utter disregard for the welfare of the common man (particularly the common woman) — which was the situation in Pakistan for more than a decade — finds it difficult to see the light at the end of a long tunnel. The tunnel for Pakistan has been long but we can see a light that indicates that we may be approaching its end.

Pakistan functions today in an extremely complicated environment in which international and domestic politics, international and domestic economics, international and domestic social change have all come together to form a bewildering and complicated mosaic. So much is occurring inside and outside Pakistan to make predicting the future an extremely hazardous exercise. In this discussion I will not speculate about the future but only reflect on some of the positive developments that have taken place recently in and around the country.

The most important of these perhaps is the sudden easing of tensions with India. The pace with which this is happening is truly remarkable. It was about a month ago when some of India’s senior leaders were describing Pakistan as a better target for a pre-emptive strike than Iraq. According to this line of thinking, Pakistan posed a greater danger to world peace than Iraq did. It possessed weapons of mass destruction and was supposedly harbouring terrorists. Within a few days of such bellicose statements, an entirely different line was taken unexpectedly on April 18 by Atal Behari Vajpayee, India’s prime minister. He called for the resumption of a serious dialogue between the two countries.

Pakistan’s response came quickly and comprehensively. President Pervez Musharraf suggested the denuclearization of South Asia. Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali proposed a series of “confidence-building measures.” India designated a veteran diplomat to be its new high commissioner in Islamabad. A group of Pakistani legislators crossed the border at Wagah and travelled to India. Pakistan announced additions of several items to the list of goods that could be imported from India. A week, they say, is a long time in politics. A month seems to have done wonders in reducing the tension between South Asia’s arch rivals.

This was not the only happy development on the international scene, from Pakistan’s perspective. On April 22-23, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan visited Islamabad and met Pakistan’s senior leaders, including President Musharraf and Prime Minister Jamali. The main purpose of that visit was to iron out the wrinkles that had appeared in the fabric of Afghan-Pakistan relations.

From Afghanistan’s perspective, the seeming resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the south-eastern parts of the country bordering on Pakistan was an extremely troubling development. During the weekend before President Karzai’s visit to Islamabad, two American soldiers were killed in Paktia province by a pro-Taliban group thought to number around 800 men who continued to enjoy the hospitality of the tribal leaders dominant in the area. How to flush out these people, secure the border with Pakistan and win the hearts and minds of the tribal people were some of the subjects Karzai’s team discussed with Pakistan’s leaders in Islamabad.

Pakistan also seemed to be making progress in dealing with the menacing problem posed by the presence in the country of some remnants of Al Qaeda. On April 29, the country’s security forces carried out an operation in Karachi and arrested half a dozen Al Qaeda operatives, including the man wanted by the US for masterminding the attack on USS Cole which had claimed the lives of 19 American servicemen. Also found in this hide-out was a large arsenal of weapons and explosives. It was said that the group was planning an aerial attack on the US consulate in Karachi.

Improvements in Pakistan’s relations with its neighbours and some successes in dealing with the threat posed by foreign terrorists in the country were not the only positive movements I noticed during my recent visit. There were some interesting developments in the field of domestic politics as well. The government coalition and the opposition assembled a group of legislators and entrusted it with the task of finding a solution to Pakistan’s latest constitutional crisis — the opposition’s unwillingness to accept the Legal Framework Order used by President Musharraf to amend the Constitution.

This question was discussed at length around the dinner tables, in the drawing rooms and in the columns of several influential newspapers while I was in the country. There were a number of people who were in the process of shedding their almost romantic attachment to the 1973 Constitution. Among them were two influential columnists writing, respectively, for Dawn and The Nation. Both Kunwar Idris and Humayun Gohar had reached the conclusion that a presidential form of government was more suitable to what President Ayub Khan had once described as “the genius of the Pakistani people.” Was the temperament of the Pakistani citizens so different from that of the people of India that they couldn’t work a parliamentary system to their advantage? Should they, instead, opt for a system that vests greater authority in one person, duly and periodically elected by the people?

Such systems have worked well in several countries of east and south-east Asia and in Latin America. Should Pakistan continue to follow slavishly its attachment to the Westminster system or should it, once again, indulge in some experimentation to come up with a structure that would work for its people and the environment in which they live?

These questions will linger and continue to be asked for as long as the various social groups represented in the parliament failed to work with one another. This confrontation between the forces that represent the current establishment in which the military has a heavy presence and the opposition could upset — even, possibly, topple — the constitutional applecart assembled by General Musharraf. If that were to happen, Pakistan will face once again the type of political uncertainty that took a heavy toll on the economy in the eleven-year period between 1988 and 1999.

The dialogue on General Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order was taking place while encouraging news about the state of the economy had begun to reach the people. On April 30, the head of the Asian Development Bank’s office in Islamabad called in the press to give his impression about the state of the Pakistani economy. He expected the rate of GDP growth during the 2003 fiscal year, ending in June, to be 4.5 per cent, perhaps even a bit better. This was the consequence of some return of confidence which was bringing back investment into several sectors, including large-scale manufacturing.

The output of the manufacturing in the first three quarters of the year had increased by over eight per cent compared to the same period in 2002. The value of exports had increased by over 20 per cent. For the first time in the country’s history, export earnings were set to cross the $10 billion mark. Remittances sent by Pakistani workers living abroad were estimated to set a record, at over four billion dollars.

The State Bank of Pakistan was continuing to accumulate reserves. Ishrat Hussain, the Bank’s governor, told the press that he had set the target of reserves at an amount equivalent to eleven months of imports. This target would help protect the country from the volatility it had experienced in the past, caused by precipitous plunges in the levels of reserves. Interest rates continued to decline, providing further impetus to those who wished to invest in the economy. The rate of inflation remained low.

Also encouraging were some stirrings in the capital markets. A group of Pakistani investors launched a new issue on the Karachi Stock Exchange in early May. This was the first initial public offering in thirty months. Its successful launching not only signalled investor confidence. It was of particular importance for two additional reasons. One, the sponsors belonged to the large Pakistani expatriate community in the United States. The fact that they were committing a significant amount of their own capital to a Pakistani enterprise was a reflection of the confidence they had in the economic future of their homeland. Two, they had entered an area in which Pakistan, because of its demographic situation, had considerable potential.

The company founded by these entrepreneurs was planning to buy call centres operating in the United States and bring them to Pakistan. A study by Forrester Research, a US consulting company, estimated that this type of migration generally referred to as out-sourcing could send out 3.3 million American jobs by 2015. India, with its large pool of English speakers and more than two million college graduates every year, is expected to get 70 per cent of these jobs. This is an area where Pakistan should be able to compete with India and add significantly to its exports.

In sum, the stage seems to be set for Pakistan to launch itself on a path of growth of some six to seven per cent a year which it could sustain for many years into the future. However, for that to happen, the country will need to set its political house in order. The burden for achieving that is on the shoulders of the politicians who seem reluctant to accept the basic premise on which the new political structure has been erected — that to obtain political stability people’s representatives will have to accept some constraints on their free-wheeling ways.

SECURITY and intelligence agencies believe Al Qaeda has managed to reorganise its network to become a more potent — although more dispersed — force. In the past week, and for the first time since September 11, Osama bin Laden’s network has used dozens of suicide bombers against soft targets of civilians in restaurants and residential areas.

Even the bombings in the tourist resort of Bali, although they killed more than 200, used only one or maybe two suicide bombers.

The extent of the planning and the recruitment that went into the Morocco and Saudi attacks, where a total of 23 people blew themselves up in coordinated attacks, as well as devastating explosions in Chechnya, indicate that Al Qaeda is again a force to be reckoned with.

While the Bush administration — and British ministers — trumpeted the collapse of Al Qaeda’s base in Afghanistan and the arrest of some of the organisation’s leaders, intelligence agencies have been far more sceptical.

Defensive measures taken by some countries, notably in western Europe, meant that Al Qaeda-inspired and funded groups and individuals were deterred from attacking prestige targets such as American military bases and official buildings of western or pro-western governments.

But that in turn encouraged a shift in tactics towards soft targets. Bali, Casablanca and Riyadh, the Saudi capital, are vivid examples of the tactic.

Jonathan Stevenson, author of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ (IISS) annual strategic survey published last week, described the Riyadh bombings as the first indication that the regime change in Iraq — in the short term — is going to cause a terrorist backlash and be an inspiration for terrorists. Although the audacity and sheer power of the American-led invasion could have a “suppressive effect” on terrorists, it was equally likely that the conflict had increased Al Qaeda’s recruiting power, he said.

A fresh warning by Germany’s BND, the equivalent of Britain’s MI5, emphasised the point. According to German newspaper reports over the weekend (MAY 17-18), the agency says the Al Qaeda network’s support and potential for recruitment remains intact in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. The network’s morale had been boosted by the suicide bombings in Riyadh and by America’s decision to withdraw most US troops from Saudi Arabia and send home non-essential embassy staff and dependents.

The theory of intensifying Al Qaeda activity is also reinforced by senior American counterterrorism officials who were reported last weekend as saying that leaders of the terror group had reorganised bases of operations in at least a half-dozen locations, including Kenya, Sudan, Pakistan and Chechnya.

The leaders had begun to recruit new members, train them and plan new attacks on western targets in earnest, the New York Times reported. It cited as evidence secret arrests in the US in the last two months of two Arab men suspected of having been sent by the Al Qaeda leadership to scout targets for terror attacks.

The newspaper said US officials would not identify the two men, who were described as conducting “presurveillance” activities. They were part of a larger group of about six Al Qaeda followers arrested in recent months whose presence in the US had led the authorities to conclude that the terrorist network remained determined to carry out attacks on US soil.

Reflecting this concern the Foreign Office warned last week of a clear terrorist threat not only in Kenya, but also Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.

The decision to suspend British Airways flights to Kenya was linked to intelligence that Fazul Abdulah Mohammed, suspected of being behind the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, had returned to Kenya.

The American counterterrorism officials also said Al Qaeda was trying to develop explosives which were harder to detect, to be placed in shoes or luggage, and would be used to blow up a passenger aircraft. It is unlikely, the officials said, that a terrorist team would follow the example of the September 11 hijackers, spending months in the US before a new attack. More probably, they would remain abroad until they chose the time to strike.

Meanwhile signals to Al Qaeda supporters seem to be appearing at a steady rate.

Messages may be sent to Al Qaeda networks or sympathisers in different ways. In a tape issued three months ago, at a time when the US was concentrating on Iraq, a voice widely agreed to be that of Osama bin Laden described Morocco and Saudi Arabia, as well as Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, and Yemen, as targets for “martyrdom operations”.

New threats: Last month, Mohammed al-Ablaj, who described himself as a commander of a “mojahedin training centre” for Al Qaeda, announced that it was preparing “an intensive strategic course to make America pay for its invasion of Iraq” and hit “other targets soon and often”.

It has been reported that al-Ablaj has sent an email to al-Majalla, a Saudi-owned London-based magazine, warning of “new and more severe strikes which will surprise the Americans and Israelis alike”. In another email, Thabet ibn Qais has described himself as a new spokesman for Al Qaeda and said the network had “carried out changes in its leadership”.

Whatever the significance of these developments, European security and intelligence sources say it would be a mistake to regard Al Qaeda as a centralised, disciplined organisation along the lines of groups such as the IRA. The sources describe, rather, a network of “local Islamist groups affiliated to the aims of Al Qaeda”.

Thus the Bali bombing was carried out by Jemaah Islamiya. In Morocco, extremist groups with links to Al Qaeda include Salafia Jihadia and Attakfir wal Hijra. There are hosts of other groups with links to what is seen as a burgeoning Al Qaeda movement, ranging from Morocco to Malaysia and the Philippines.

The IISS describes Al Qaeda as a “potent transnational terrorist organisation that could take a generation to dismantle”, adding that “thanks to technology and the multinational allure of jihadism, the Afghanistan camps were [now] unnecessary”. The only infrastructure Al Qaeda required was safe houses to assemble bombs and weapons caches.

“Otherwise, notebook computers, encryption, the internet, multiple passports and the ease of global transportation enabled Al Qaeda to function as a ‘virtual’ entity that leveraged local assets — hence local knowledge — to full advantage in coordinating attacks in many ‘fields of jihad’,” says the IISS.

Al-Qaeda has no state to defend, allowing it to maintain “a flat, transnational, and clandestine organisational scheme”. Its leadership — and the term itself may be a misnomer — thus leaves actual terrorist attacks to “local foot-soldiers”, as happened in the Bali bombings and others since, including those in Casablanca.

The “multinational allure of jihadism” meant that any bombers who were lost could easily be replaced.—Dawn/ Guardian Service

ON April 18, while addressing a large public rally in Srinagar, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee held out the “hand of friendship” to Pakistan. A fortnight later, Mr. Vajpayee reinforced his earlier statement stating that he wanted to start a “decisive and conclusive dialogue” aimed at ending the decades of hostility between India and Pakistan and proposed talks on bilateral issues, including Kashmir.

The Indian government’s stance remains that Kashmir is an integral part of India and its internal matter. It continues to accuse Pakistan of “cross-border terrorism” through armed infiltrators into Indian-controlled Kashmir from its side of the Line of Control that divides the state between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Like the conflicts in Palestine, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland, the Kashmir problem combines religious rivalry, territorial dispute and historical grievances — a poisonous mixture that tends to make would-be peacemakers’ task extremely difficult. In the case of India and Pakistan the bitterness of the dispute is particularly alarming. The two countries have fought three wars in the past 55 years and came close to a fourth one last year.

It is widely believed that Pakistan continues to support armed militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Under US insistence, President Pervez Musharraf’s promise last year to end this infiltration has led to a reduction in this support. The infiltration may not have fully ended for the simple reason that militant tendencies of a generation that has been fighting for freedom from India and of their sympathizers on the other side cannot be changed over a short period of time, especially in the face of India’s policy of brutal suppression. Neither the government nor the Pakistan army has complete control over these elements. As for India, past misrule in Kashmir has both weakened its case for running the place and stoked the discontent that allows Pakistan-backed extremism to thrive.

After 9/11, the US policy is clear: putting pressure on Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah, on the Saudis to stop exporting Wahabi extremism and on Pakistan to stop cross-border infiltration of militants into Kashmir. Of all the issues in Pakistan-US relations, none appears more important and urgent than Kashmir. The US is well aware that this conflict runs the risk of initiating another war between India and Pakistan. In the long run, the fear is that Pakistan’s cripplingly expensive arms race with India may push it back into economic failure.

The Americans may conclude that the solution to the menace of cross-border infiltration lies in US lending unconditional support to India. But they also realize the consequences to the US of such a partisan foreign policy in terms of radicalization of Pakistani society and the diminished authority of the Pakistan government. The United States needs Pakistan’s support in its war against terrorism and is willing to exert only so much pressure on President Musharraf that he can withstand. The Americans are cognizant of the General’s domestic constraints and appreciate his efforts to crackdown on militants and Al Qaeda operatives.

Among other factors, American persuasion appears to have prompted Mr. Vajpayee to make the April 18 statement. Washington has pushed Islamabad to rein in Kashmiri militants and New Delhi to offer talks to provide a political cover for President Musharraf to further crack down on the infiltrators. Eventually, India will have to talk to Pakistan about Kashmir. But a gap exists between what India demands and what Pakistan has been able to deliver. India wants cross-border infiltration to be completely stopped and the training camps for infiltrators in Azad Kashmir shut down for good. Pakistan, on its part, continues its connivance in cross-border infiltration to exert pressure on India for talks on Kashmir.

The US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, a familiar figure in Islamabad and New Delhi, has visited the two capitals before to dissuade the two sides from any nuclear misadventure and pullback troops from eyeball-to-eyeball proximity. Until now, the US has adopted a reactive policy to the South Asian confrontation. Will it be different this time? Critics point out that the US has not thought through the process. Although India may be willing to let it play a facilitating role, the US may not be sufficiently engaged to do so.

For long has India aspired to be a regional power, standing up to China, militarily and economically. India sees China as a serious threat to its security. It realizes that unless it is able to rid itself of the nuisance of bickering on its western border, it can never realize its ambition. In the absence of a superpower to counterbalance the US dominance, India sees itself as a friend of the US and as a counterweight to China’s growing influence. It realizes that American foreign policy is becoming “a mixture of neo-conservative ideas, the president’s instincts and the realities of power.” India believes it needs to position itself strategically in such a way that its interests are aligned with those of the United States.

This belief stems from the increasing influence of neo-conservatives in formulating US foreign policy. As a recent issue of The Economist remarked: “The neo-cons have waited more than ten years to reform Iraq. They will not lose interest in it, as happened in Afghanistan. But they could be distracted by, say a crisis in North Korea or on the Indian subcontinent.” The possibility of a conflict in South Asia and the hunt for Al Qaeda’s top-brass along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan is the reason why a stable Pakistan remains a key element of US interests.

Even if leaders of the two countries are interested in finding a middle ground on Kashmir, both have to contend with strong domestic pressure to be able to do so. Elections in India are due next year and with hawks like L. K. Advani strengthening his grip on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is questionable how much room Mr. Vajpayee has for negotiations. Mr. Advani has repeatedly opposed dialogue with Pakistan as long as militants continue to cross the border into Indian occupied Kashmir and was apparently responsible for sabotaging the final Agra Declaration in July 2001. The 79-year old Mr. Vajpayee is in a state of failing health and it is uncertain whether he will stay on in power for another term if the BJP wins the 2004 elections.

Then there is the problem facing the 130 million Muslims in India. In theory, they are fully accepted as part of the national mix. But tolerance can break down, as happened last year in the western state of Gujarat. By one count, 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed. The increasingly communalist and xenophobic policies and actions of the ruling BJP are a dangerous tendency and have serious implications for any prospects of peace and normalization between India and Pakistan.

For President Musharraf, the political turf is not too comfortable either. Seven months after the October general elections, the opposition refuses to recognize him as country’s legitimate president. The opposition parties want parliament to ratify the Legal Framework Order (LFO) under which he amended the Constitution. This appears to be an impossible task at this point in time given that the pro-Musharraf PML-Q enjoys only a slim majority in both houses of parliament. Given the difficult position President Musharraf currently finds himself in, coupled with the strong anti-American sentiment prevailing in the country, it appears a rather arduous task to imagine a softening of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy.

However, there is hope. At the Agra summit, India was apparently ready to acknowledge that Kashmir was a serious obstacle to normal relations with Pakistan and that without progress on it, there could not be much advance on other fronts. This would have constituted a big shift. India’s previous formulation, dating back to the Lahore summit of 1999, was to treat Kashmir as simply one of a long list of issues for the two countries to resolve. If Mr. Vajpayee was sincere when he told India’s parliament recently that he was “embarking on his final attempt to resolve the India-Pakistan dispute”, this shift in India’s policy can still be brought about. On its part, Pakistan must do more to curb infiltration of militants into Kashmir.

Both India and Pakistan have recently stated that full diplomatic ties will be restored and have named persons to be posted as high commissioners in both countries. Efforts should continue on both sides to de-escalate and restore the situation to the level prior to the military standoff of 2002 as more of such confidence-building measures are needed.

But the truth is that the liberation of Kashmir is a central national goal for Pakistan and no government can negotiate it away. For India, Kashmir remains its integral part. Will talks, if they start again, only serve to sharpen the divide and aggravate the mistrust of the past 55 years? Or can the two sides arrive at a compromise and make a new beginning?

A settlement on Kashmir can only be achieved if both sides realize that it will never be possible for either side to achieve its maximum position. Both India and Pakistan need to think realistically and flexibly to arrive at a solution that is peaceful, honourable and acceptable to both and also to the Kashmiri people. Without a US roadmap and Washington’s close involvement, it is unlikely that talks between India and Pakistan will progress far. Also, as the confidence-building process progresses, both sides have to be careful not to queer its pitch by indulging in acrimonious exchanges.

The writer is a banker in Toronto, Canada. The views expressed in the article are entirely his own.