Benazir at fifty: little to celebrate

BENAZIR BHUTTO’S 50th birthday last week was seized by her party as an opportunity to trumpet her achievements and bemoan the fact that a military president is ruling Pakistan instead of her. Benazir herself marked the occasion with a poem describing her turbulent life and political career. The poem’s lack of literary merit is painfully obvious from the very first lines, but what of its message? Does Benazir at fifty have reason to be proud of her half-century, or should she be reflecting on a life of squandered talent and opportunities?

Benazir Bhutto started her political career with numerous advantages. Her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had established the PPP as a household name among Pakistanis and — despite failing to deliver ‘roti, kapra, aur makaan’ — had built up a strong and loyal following. On his death the mantle of PPP leader, and its associated loyal following, was transferred to Benazir. But she also had qualities of her own: education (Harvard and Oxford), political exposure, motivation and drive, good looks and charisma. Given all these advantages, it was not unreasonable to expect great things of her.

Benazir has certainly succeeded in establishing herself as a political leader in her own right. She has twice been prime minister of Pakistan — no mean feat for a woman operating in a notoriously male-dominated environment. And after four years in exile, her grip on the PPP remains secure. In the fickle arena of Pakistani politics, that too is quite a unique achievement. She is known all over the world. Imran Khan is probably the only Pakistani who can rival her in the level and durability of international recognition that she has attained.

These facts about Benazir Bhutto are beyond dispute. So too is her father’s execution, the murder of her two brothers, her husband’s imprisonment and her own current status of exile. It is when one tries to fit these undisputed facts into a wider context that the controversy starts.

According to the PPP and Benazir herself, all these facts fit into a context of fighting for democracy. They and she never tire of portraying her as a popular politician, struggling like her father before her to establish democracy in a country dominated by ‘wicked’ military dictators. In this ‘pro-democracy’ context, her father’s execution becomes murder at the hands of General Zia, her brothers are shaheeds, her husband the innocent victim of a campaign meant to silence her political voice, and her own exile part of the same persecution.

It is a reflection of Benazir Bhutto’s quite incredible PR skills that many people, especially in the western media, still lap up this ‘pro-democracy’ version of her life story. The truth, as even a perfunctory reading of history would reveal, is less flattering.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, champion of ‘roti, kapra aur makaan’ for the poor, was an immensely charismatic, talented and able man. Sadly, he was also an immensely power-hungry man. His drive for power was a factor (though not the only one) in the 1971 dismemberment of Pakistan. Once prime minister, he forgot his pledges to the poor and shamelessly abused his position. The brutal tactics he employed against political rivals easily matched those of a military despot. While one could question the motive behind his trial and execution, and even the evidence on which he was convicted, one cannot question the fact that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto left Pakistan much worse than he found it. This is the supposedly ‘democratic’ legacy that Benazir is so proud of.

Benazir Bhutto shares her father’s drive for power, as also his disregard for democracy. She has actually gone a step further than him, for, while he disguised his ambitions behind a socialist ideology, she seeks power for the sake of power. The PPP today has no ideology or agenda to speak of (unless one counts ‘Bhuttoism’). Its programme, to the extent that it exists, is virtually indistinguishable from that of the various PML factions. The party has become nothing more than a vehicle for Benazir’s personal ambition. In this she has emulated her Indian counterpart, the late Indira Gandhi, and her personalization of the Congress party.

Internal opposition is not tolerated. Benazir Bhutto is Life Chairperson of the party, a position that fundamentally contradicts her much-vaunted claims to be a democrat. Her brother Murtaza was killed in very suspicious circumstances soon after he returned to Pakistan and made a bid for leadership of the PPP. At the time of his murder, Benazir was prime minister of Pakistan. (Her second brother Shah Nawaz was poisoned in France by his wife — so much for the ‘shaheeds’ myth.)

The PPP’s famous loyalty to Benazir stems in part from her own charisma and the enduring appeal of her father, especially among the poor. But it also stems from the fact that without her (or a Bhutto) at the helm, the party is nothing — such is the dependence on the Bhutto name that Benazir has instilled into it.

The PPP’s ‘Bhuttoism’ ideology was amply displayed during her two stints as prime minister. Benazir Bhutto had the mandate, the intelligence and the opportunity to make things better for the people of Pakistan. True foreign policy was out of her control, but on the domestic front there was much that she could have done. Instead of working for the people of Pakistan, though, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto used her position to further the interests of her husband, in-laws and other cronies. She was removed on corruption charges in 1990.

She returned to power three years later, having learnt nothing from her past mistakes. ‘Mr Ten Per cent’ advanced to ‘Mr Thirty Per cent’. In 1998, two years after again being dismissed for corruption, Benazir was convicted on the same charge. The excuse put forward by her supporters — that she did not know what her husband was doing — is as indefensible as it is unbelievable. Her own claim that she is the victim of ‘political persecution’ and was removed because of her attempts to rid Pakistan of fundamentalism, is even less convincing.

Benazir’s record since her self-imposed exile contains little of merit. Her imminent return to Pakistan has been announced so many times, one loses count. (Why doesn’t she come back and fight the corruption conviction?) She also single-mindedly pursues her personal political agenda in all manner of international forums (the BBC, American TV channels, conferences, etc), with scant regard for the damaging effect her anti-Musharraf tirades have on the country as a whole. Nothing can justify her Pakistan’s dirty laundry in India. Such actions betray either monumental foolishness on her part or a total lack of patriotism — neither is an endearing quality.

Her personal exploitation of the PPP continues. Despite being in exile, she has kept the reins of PPP leadership firmly in her own hands. The party had to form a separate faction, the PPPP, to contest in parliamentary elections because she refused to let anyone lead the PPP in her place. ‘Bhuttoism’ remains the party’s guiding ideology. Its ‘principled’ stance on the LFO, for example, is in fact a bargaining chip to secure Asif Zardari’s release from prison and get her own conviction dropped. Should Musharraf agree to those demands, the PPP’s objections to the LFO would disappear overnight.

What of the future? What can we expect from Benazir Bhutto as she embarks on her next half-century?

Given her appalling record, one would hope that she stays in exile and well away from frontline Pakistani politics. But given the topsy-turvy nature of Pakistani politics, and the inevitable fate of all military rulers (exit from power), a surer bet would be that she will eventually return to resume her political career in Pakistan.

A major flaw in the Pakistani electorate is its quickness to forgive and forget the faults of civilian rulers. The people forgot the abuses committed by Benazir’s father when they voted her into prime ministerships in 1988. They forgot ‘Mr Ten Per cent’ when they did the same in 1993. Years in exile (for Benazir) and imprisonment (in Zardari’s case) will induce them to again forget: they will give Benazir a rapturous welcome when she makes it back to Pakistan, and probably vote her back into office. Should that happen, we can expect the same old corruption and mismanagement saga to be repeated in her third prime ministerial stint.

Benazir Bhutto is indeed her father’s daughter. Like him she has squandered the talent and opportunities she had to make a positive difference in Pakistan. Like him, she appears incapable of remorse and reform.

Lip service, national service

PRESIDENT Bush speaks with passion and eloquence about the importance of volunteering. Especially since 9/11, the president has made creating “a new culture of service” a centrepiece of his domestic agenda.

He has called for expanding AmeriCorps, the centrepiece national service programme, from 50,000 to 75,000 volunteers. But that lofty rhetoric is colliding with a grim budgetary reality that could devastate AmeriCorps programmes this year. The Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, announced that one major part of the programme would be cut from about 16,000 volunteers to 3,000. At best, the agency may be able to enrol only 28,000 new members this year.—The Washington Post

Effective use of aid

FAILURE to use external aid timely and effectively has been an issue for long in the developing countries. And that became a larger issue between the donors and the aid recipients as the quantum of aid increased and there has been demand for larger assistance. In addition, the world’s focus on poverty reduction has increased as the number of the very poor, living below the poverty line of a dollar a day, rose to one-fifth of the world’s population.

As the pressure from the developing countries for larger aid and with fewer strings or conditionalities increased, the donors began pointing out that a substantial part of the aid committed remained unutilised instead of being used in the manner agreed and according to the time schedules.

In Pakistan, for example, at one point of time the total aid accumulated in the pipeline was 11 billion dollars — one fifth of the total aid — and Pakistan had to pay a commitment fee of half a per cent of that total, which was over 50 million dollars a year.

The accumulated aid went down after 1998 when external aid was stopped following Pakistan’s nuclear explosions and military rule the next year. The amount then came down to 3.5 billion dollars. How much of the committed and unused aid is in the pipeline now has not been made public. As a large part of the aid remained unutilised and a part of that got misused, the donors came up with rigid stipulations for additional aid and that produced resentment in Pakistan.

The donors suggested, and we agreed, that Pakistan needed more social sector spending. Funds were made available for that. But we made a hash of that in parts through the Social Action Programme I and II which produced a number of ghost schools and ghost teachers and similar developments in the health sector.

The reasons for such slow use of external aid could be many. They could be frequent political changes and the new regimes repudiating the commitments of their predecessors. They could be the outcome of changes in the priorities of a new regime. Some time ministers to the government and secretaries have their own priorities or preferences. Even the frequency with which secretaries of the agricultural department are changed at the Centre or in Sindh is bewildering. The Asian Development Bank has now notified Pakistan that it may cancel the 100 million dollar loan for the Second Flood Protection Sector Project. The project was approved in November, 1997, and agreement signed in February, 1999. But even after 70 per cent of the loan period has elapsed only 4 per cent of the work had been done. The ADB concludes the government is not interested in the project and hence the loan can be withdrawn.

We are all familiar with how the World Bank-aided mega project of the Ghazi Barotha has been delayed excessively for one reason or another, although it is a vital power and irrigation project and the country desperately needed its early completion.

We have no idea of the total of the aid cancelled or re-scheduled for want of timely implementation of the agreed projects.

Now the provincial government too can become offenders in this regard. After 100 million dollars had been committed for Sindh and the Punjab by the World Bank 100 million dollars more are committed now for Balochistan where projects cost far more that originally estimated for political reasons or outright corruption.

Now despite the 10.5 billion dollar foreign exchange reserve we have built up we are to go to the markets abroad with bonds for 500 million dollars. Such borrowed funds, though at low interest rates, have to be well used if we are to get the best out of that.

Not all the delay in the use of aid is for political reasons or bureaucratic bungling. Sometimes the delay is caused in an effort to avoid corruption, and at times to explore the earlier corruption before new money is committed to the aid project. Sometimes it is the outcome of excessive bureaucratic red tape.

The other problem is that at a time when governance and development are becoming more and more technical, the ministers are not well educated. Nor do they make enough efforts to study their subject. And they choose their secretaries too on the basis of loyalty or familiarity than competence or knowledge of their departments. The secretaries, too, pander to the ministers instead of studying their subjects. Many of them depend on their juniors to enlighten or guide them. The result may be a case of the blind leading the blind.

If the political parties had their own think tanks they could have helped the ministers. They do not have them.

As a result of such deterrents only 40 per cent of the Rs. 134 billion allocated for the Public Sector Development Programme in the current year could be utilised and 60 per cent remained unutilised, according to the director of the Asian Development Bank Marshouk Ali Shah. That this happened at a time when public sector development programmes are expected to provide employment to the millions of unemployed was too disappointing. So special steps are being taken to make a success of the new Public Sector Development Programme with an outlay of Rs. 160 billion. The National Economic Council headed by the prime minister is to meet midway through the year to assess the progress of the programme and its executive councils is to meet every quarter for the same purpose. Each official of the Planning Commission is to oversee the progress of two of the projects under the PSDP.

Who will oversee the implementation of the larger Poverty Reduction Programme with an outlay of Rs 185 billion? Some special steps should be taken to ensure its smooth progress.

It is not enough to rely on the officials alone. Small group of chartered accountants should report to the country each year on the progress of both the programmes and suggest remedies to speed up the laggard sectors. Otherwise the development programmes will become more like pantomimes with a large gap between the promise and performance, which we can’t any longer afford.

After analysing all the factors that stand in the way of effective use of aid and timely completion of projects, the World Bank and other donors have come to the conclusions that our capacity for using aid is small and greatly skewed. And that capacity has to be developed not only in Pakistan but also in most developing countries. And that may lie in eliminating a great many deterrents to aid-utilisation and completing projects in time.

We will hear plenty about capacity-building soon as the new World Bank chief for South Asia is Praful C. Patel, a Ugandan national, who is described by the Bank “as a primary driver of the Bank’s Africa Capacity Building Programme. After being with the Bank for 30 years he has succeeded Ms Nieko Nishimizu as vice-president of the Bank for South Asia. Of course, capacity building is more difficult in Africa than in Pakistan, but we have a way of rising and then slipping.

Ms Nishimizu, who has been vice-president of the World Bank for South Asia for six years, has been a real friend of Pakistan and did some blunt speaking to the top rulers in respect of economic managements. And she tried to help Pakistan through the Bank as much as she could.

Capacity-building can be a success only if the political leaders and the officials try to understand the problem and are really cooperative. They should be ready to remove obstacles in the way of projects instead of multiplying them for political reasons or because of bureaucratic chicanery.

Is giving extension to the officials at the top really helpful to the economy? If they can’t be given extension they become consultants or advisers and hold the same kind of influence in their ministries. The Senate last week came out strongly against giving extension to senior officials. The government did not welcome the motion.

In fact, what we have now is not only re-employment of senior officials but also re-hiring of retired military officers at top positions. And their approach to issues is not the same. In fact, they can be quite contradictory to each other. But the practice continues. The main drawback of giving such extensions is that senior officers do not train their juniors to take up their places. So when the seniors retire there is a vacuum. Instead if they knew they would not be given an extension they may train their juniors for succeeding them.

It is imperative that capacity-building should take place not only in the public sector but also in the private sector. And that has to begin with one-window or one-desk operation, and the obligation of all government departments, beginning with the utilities to readily meet the basic needs of the industries.

At a time when we are asking for more and more aid we should be able to make the best use of that, and in time. Seeking large aid assiduously and then surrendering that quietly or forfeiting that helplessly, is not proper.

So let us embark on real capacity-building earnestly in all the sectors of the economy. That is how we can face the challenges of globalization and other changes to come in the world in the 21st century.

P.S. The country director for Pakistan of the World Bank John Wall now says the government institutions need 140 million dollars this year for capacity-building and 130 million dollars for administrative reforms of the CBR; but for the CBR reforms the Bank is ready to give upto 220 million dollars.

If that kind of money is to be spent on reforming the government more of the 600 million dollars expected from the Bank this year will be spent on reforms and not on projects, which means reforms are considered far more important by the World Bank and other donors than development and stepping up economic growth immediately, or how rotten or archaic is the official machinery which is incapable of even using aid well.

Resistance in Iraq

WHEN US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, American military deaths in Vietnam had just passed fifty. At the current loss rate, US military deaths in Iraq since the war ‘ended’ two months ago will pass that total before the end of June. Is this the start of an anti-American guerilla war in Iraq?

Not yet, but it isn’t looking good. In the early days a lot of American soldiers’ deaths were due to vehicle accidents and the like, but recently most US casualties have been caused by Iraqi resistance fighters, and they aren’t just sniping at isolated check-points. They are ambushing US tank patrols with rocket-propelled grenades, making mortar attacks on American command posts — even shooting down an Apache attack helicopter.

American officials shy away from analogies between Iraq now and the Vietnam War almost 40 years ago, but it is getting hard to insist that the right analogy is with the post-1945 occupations of Germany and Japan. For one thing, the pretext for sending US troops into Iraq, the fabled ‘weapons of mass destruction’, begins to look as flimsy and fabricated as President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Gulf of Tonkin incident’ in 1964.

After two months of unhindered investigations and interrogations in post-Saddam Iraq, the only ‘evidence’ for Iraqi WMD that coalition forces have turned up are the trailers found in northern Iraq that were allegedly mobile germ warfare labs. An official British government investigation recently concluded, however, that the trailers really were mobile facilities for producing hydrogen gas to fill balloons that measure high-altitude winds, part of an artillery system originally sold to Iraq by the British company Marconi Command and Control — just as the Iraqis claimed.

So is Iraq the new Vietnam? Maybe, but one big difference is that so far US casualties are concentrated in the so-called ‘Sunni triangle’ extending north and west from Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party had the deepest roots. Sunni Arabs account for only about 20 per cent of Iraq’s population — around five million people. American deaths in this region have been running at five a week recently, which is bad but perhaps not unbearable.

Run that average forward for sixteen months, and Mr Bush would have a further 350 American combat deaths to account for when the US presidential election comes around in November 2004. That would be awkward, but he might get away with it if he could persuade Americans that it was all part of the ‘war on terrorism’. The bad news for Mr Bush is that that the fighting may well escalate in the ‘Sunni triangle’ — and that the Shia majority may start resisting the occupation too.

During the next three months Iraq is too hot even for the Iraqis, but in much of the American-occupied zone there is still not reliable water or other public services. The US viceroy, Paul Bremer, disbanded the entire Iraqi army last month with one month‘s severance pay, ensuring that many tens of thousands of experienced officers and NCOs, most of them Sunni Muslims, will have nothing to do this summer but nurse their resentment. As of last Saturday, the two-week gun amnesty ended and every Iraqi possessing a gun without a permit can be arrested — but ALL rural Iraqis own guns, and by now, thanks to the rampant insecurity, so do three-quarters of urban Iraqi households.

Add to the mix an occupation force that is still starved of troops by Pentagon policy, and nervous American soldiers who use massive firepower whenever they feel threatened, and it may be a very long, hot summer. By the end of it, Sunni Arabs and US troops could be in the sort of escalating confrontation that has no exit — and it is a delusion to imagine that the Shia majority are America‘s allies. They are waiting to see if they can win political power without fighting the US, but if they conclude that the Pentagon is determined to impose its pet Iraqi exiles on the country then they will fight too.

Iraq is not bound to become America‘s second Vietnam, but it is drifting rapidly that way. This was always possible, given the vast gulf between Washington‘s declared motives for the invasion and what most Iraqis think America‘s real motives are, but it has been made likelier by the monumental incompetence of the post-conquest administration of Iraq.

Two months after his catastrophic Gulf War defeat in 1991, Saddam Hussein had done more to restore public order and public services in Iraq than the US occupation regime has achieved so far. The Shia are still holding their fire, but it‘s hardly surprising that the Baathists, a Communist-style organisation ideally suited for guerilla warfare, are re-surfacing in the Sunni Arab parts of the country.

Which explains what‘s happening now in the Baghdad suburb of Mansoor, where American missiles struck a restaurant where US intelligence thought Saddam Hussein was eating on the next-to-last night of the war. >From that night until last week, long after the neighbourhood‘s families had retrieved the bodies of their dead, the site went unvisited and unguarded by US troops. Is Saddam dead? Who cares?

But now the site is sealed off and American forensic investigators are digging frantically in the rubble, hoping to find evidence that Saddam is really dead. As though that would change anything.— Copyright

Averting massacre in Africa

WITH unanimous approval in the Security Council the UN is authorizing a beefed up peacekeeping force into the Congo maelstrom. At least this time the UN, hitting trouble in the face of massacres and the deaths of its peacekeepers, is not going into reverse.

In Rwanda eight years ago it was said that the UN force appeared to have four gears, one for forward and three for reverse.

In Rwanda 800,000 million people were massacred. An independent investigation by Ingvar Carlsson, the former Swedish prime minister, laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. and British governments which, when the small contingent of Belgian peacekeepers were attacked and brutally castrated and killed, refused to allow the UN presence to be beefed up. The report also faulted Secretary-General Kofi Annan who was then head of peacekeeping and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then Secretary-General, for not keeping the Security Council well informed.

Today there can be no defence. The Security Council is better informed, the press is doing a more thorough job, the politicians in Western capitals are not in denial, but still the wheels are turning too slowly. The UN force will be beefed up too modestly — by 1,000 French troops plus another 400 from other countries.

A useful perspective is added by the larger picture: wars are diminishing. As I set out to show in my forthcoming book the number of wars has been falling for 150 years, albeit their intensity has been ratcheting up, mainly because of technological advances in the tools of killing and the growing anarchy in Africa. Since the Second World War this process has accelerated and wars between nations are now exceedingly rare. Even ethnic war which seemed to leap upward at the end of the cold war has been on a steady downward track for over a decade.

The rapid spread of democracy and the astonishing strides forward of the human rights movement have all contributed. So, too, has economic advance and growing prosperity. Most wars are now fought in the poorest countries and these are concentrated in Africa. If the UN could get on top of these African wars the world would be a very different place- almost war free, if President George Bush could be refrained from winding back the historical clock.

A new study by Paul Collier of the World Bank is, to use the current jargon, a “road map” of how we get from here to there. He destroys the shibboleths that these wars owe themselves to inequality (how come Brazil never has civil wars despite its atrocious inequalities?) or that it’s ancient hatreds (the history that matters is always recent history). What appears to matter most is if the economy is first poor and second that it is declining and is dependent on natural resource exports.

Once a civil war is started in such an environment they are not easy to stop. The war leaders tend to prosper in wartime even though society as a whole suffers. Central governments are weak and rebels, if they can get their hands on the source of these exports, especially if it is diamonds (as in Angola and Sierra Leone) or timber (as in Cambodia) can become rich and employ or intimidate under employed youngsters into joining their militias.

Collier concludes that while peacekeeping may be useful to dampen down a conflict the long term solution is in addressing these causes. Progress has been made. UN members, as the Angolan war dragged on, did eventually become seized with the diamond smuggling issue and an international accord led to increased policing and scrutiny, which in turn appears to have been a factor contributing to the demise of important rebel groups in Angola and Sierra Leone. It should be possible to replicate this policing with timber exports, as the Group of Eight discussion in Evian suggested.— Copyright Jonathan Power

Peace initiative and CBMs

IT is noteworthy that the plethora of comments in Pakistan on Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s change of direction, as reflected in his Srinagar speech of April 18 and in some of his subsequent utterances, have all focused on perceived Indian interest in having peace and normalization talks with Pakistan and on the possibility of US pressure as an underlying factor.

What has not received much public attention in Pakistan but has been reflected in the Indian media is a sense in that country of Pakistan’s vulnerability in the wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the enhanced US and western intolerance of Islamic militancy in any form and the public threats of pre-emptive strikes by the Indian foreign minister a few days prior to Vajpayee’s speech of April 18.

India may have concluded that the general helplessness of the regimes in the Islamic world in the face of the US offensive against Islamic targets world-wide may have also affected the strength of Pakistan’s commitment to the Kashmir liberation struggle. However, the thaw in Indo-Pakistan relations is welcome irrespective of the mix of factors accounting for it. In the words of a UN Human Development Report, South Asia has emerged as “the poorest, the most malnourished, most illiterate, least gender sensitive, in short the most deprived region in the world”.

Endowed with abundant human and natural resources, the region continues to suffer from self-inflicted wounds. Instead of treating history as a guide, the states of the subcontinent continue to carry it like a burden on their shoulders, severely restricting their manoeuvrability and freedom of action.

It is no use blaming the people for the continuing problems between the two principal South Asian countries. If only the leadership in the two countries would learn not merely to reflect prevailing trends but also to lead public opinion into more constructive channels, the ground would gradually be prepared for a reconciliation.

The consensus of opinion in Pakistan supports the concept of a composite negotiating mechanism, as envisaged in the Lahore agreements, on the understanding that progress in trade, cultural exchanges, travel or other fields would clearly be linked with progress on the issue of Kashmir. The idea floated in India that Kashmir may be put on hold pending improvement in the atmosphere through cooperation in other fields is a non-starter.

Without genuine progress towards the resolution of the Kashmir issue, confidence building measures in economic, cultural and other fields, would achieve only marginal results, their efficacy blocked by the intermittent repercussions of the core conflict. For the CBMs to get off the ground, a significant improvement in the ground situation in Kashmir would be required. If positive steps in other fields are neutralized by daily killings of dozens of freedom fighters in Kashmir, the desired improvement in the atmospherics would not be possible.

The CBMs in the human, cultural, trade, travel and other fields, some of which have recently been taken by the two countries, cannot be an end in themselves but can certainly help create a climate of trust and understanding, once the core issue is also taken in hand. It is inconceivable that a confidence-building scenario that leaves the heart of the problem out can prove durably useful and effective.

Pakistan faces a difficult dilemma in reconciling its need for peace, stability and economic development with its commitment to the rights of the Kashmiris. The predicament would be eased, if not resolved, provided the present peace efforts on both sides lead on to meaningful negotiations on all issues of difference, including Kashmir.

In the event of the proposed peace talks failing to materialize or failing to yield the desired results, Pakistan should continue its diplomatic and political support for the Kashmir cause without contributing to any military escalation with India and without abandoning the desired drive for economic and social development.

In a nutshell what is proposed is priority for peace and economic development but making normalization of relations with India in trade, cultural exchanges, travel or other fields dependent on simultaneous progress on the Kashmir issue. This is the only way that a state in Pakistan’s situation can reconcile the dictates of realism with the imperatives of national morale and the people’s will.

In the course of a disinformation exercise with western sources, hard-line Indian lobbies suggested that a settlement on Kashmir would not be conclusive since Pakistan was likely to continue a confrontational posture towards India even if the Kashmir issue was resolved. This is a heavily biased view. The interests of the people of both countries call for a sustained period of peace and stability and of concentration on economic and social development. No rational or patriotic Pakistani (or Indian) would wish it otherwise.

Putting ourselves in the place of our Indian friends, one can understand their apprehension that an accommodation of the Kashmiri aspirations would open up a pandora’s box for India. The analogy, however, is misplaced for none of the many dissident or separatist movements in that country are in any way comparable with the popular struggle in Kashmir or enjoy as much legitimacy in international law and morality.

The soundness of foreign policy lies in pursuing national interests at an acceptable level of cost and risk. India and Pakistan are fast reaching the threshold of this principle beyond which blind pursuit of state interests may prove to be counterproductive.

The writer is a former ambassador.