| 18 January 2004 | Sunday | 25 Ziqa'ad 1424 |
Looking back and ahead
At their recent meetings in Islamabad (January 5-6) Indian and Pakistani leaders would appear to have revived the agreements that Mr Vajpayee and Mr Nawaz Sharif had reached in New York and Lahore in September 1998 and February 1999. Now, as then, it has been recognized that disputes between them, including the one concerning Kashmir, must be settled before peace can be assured and made durable.
Now, as then, the two governments have agreed to begin a "composite dialogue," meaning that talks on various issues, including Kashmir, are to be undertaken and carried on concurrently - subject presumably to the mechanics of scheduling. Progress in the launching of CBMs (confidence building measures), and the resulting amity, have been deemed essential to progress on other fronts.
It is understood also that in its search for solutions each side has to contend with domestic political constraints and exigencies. There is thus only so far, and no farther, that negotiators can go at any given time in accommodating each other's point of view. Proposed solutions must be such as can be accepted by both parties. This is essentially the position General Musharraf had been advancing for several months.
Knowing that the option of a plebiscite in Kashmir in accord with the UN resolutions on the subject is entirely unacceptable to India, he has agreed to set aside these resolutions. Knowing that the government of Pakistan cannot accept the present line of control in Kashmir as the international border between the two countries, Mr Vajpayee is willing to explore other options.
General elections are to be held in India sometime this year, possibly within the next six months. In addition to their existing vote bank, Mr Vajpayee and some of his colleagues hope to gather additional support by showing that their linkages with Hindu militants do not stop them from pursuing peace with Pakistan. One may assume that, at the same time, they do not wish to be accused of seeking peace at the cost of vital national interests.
Given this exigency, it is easy to understand that they do not wish to rush into the "composite" dialogue and would rather begin the process with talks on trade and other mundane issues. Some reports have it that the more difficult or volatile issues (such as Kashmir) may not be taken up until after the elections. Needless to say, if Mr Vajpayee and his team are not returned to power, the road to peace travelled so far may have to be treaded all over again. The parties may then have a different "ball game" on their hands.
How do we explain India's willingness to discuss the future of Kashmir with Pakistan? There were no substantive discussions on the subject from the middle of 1954 (when Nehru said Pakistan's military connection with the United States had radically changed the balance of forces in the subcontinent) until after India's defeat in its war with China in October 1962.
There were none at Tashkent (1966) or at Simla (1972) or anytime after that except the secret talks said to have taken place between Pakistan's high commissioner in Delhi and a confidante of Mr Vajpayee (March-May, 1999) following the latter's meeting with Mr Sharif in Lahore.
During the last year or so Mr Vajpayee had insisted that his government would not agree to talks on Kashmir until Pakistan's sponsorship of "cross border terrorism" had ceased. General Musharraf has now assured him that he will not allow any territory under Pakistani control to be used for supporting terrorism in any manner. Apparently the Indians have found this assurance to be satisfactory.
Pakistani spokesmen have been saying that the talks can be successful only if in pursuing them the Indians are "sincere"; if, in other words, they intend something more than merely stringing Pakistan along in intermittent meetings that go on for years, if somewhere along the line they will make substantive departures from their traditional position. Pakistan, on its part, has already made one such departure in offering to set aside the UN resolutions on the subject.
India will have to move beyond its oft-repeated assertion that Kashmir is an integral part of the country, and that its status must be the same as that of other states in the Union. Pakistanis will have to think of the outcomes different from the one that Kashmir will somehow become a part of their country. Time will tell what concessions, or departures from known positions, each side is eventually willing to make.
There can be little doubt that any move to depart from known positions will encounter opposition in each country. This is already happening in Pakistan, and it may be useful to review the arguments being advanced. It should first be noted that the opposition in any democracy is in the business of criticizing the government of the day. Even when a chosen policy or a contemplated move is intrinsically beyond reproach, the opposition is likely to say that the government will mess it up because of its incompetence.
The controversy over the LFO having subsided, the more strident opponents of General Musharraf's government have to look for other policies and actions to denounce. Deficiencies in economic policy and planning are difficult to communicate to the ordinary people. Growing poverty, rising prices, persistent unemployment, poor infrastructure, and a hundred other issues should merit the opposition's attention. But they are not explosive, or even dramatic, enough. The opposition forces may figure that the government's emerging posture regarding Kashmir offers them a more promising opportunity for arousing popular passions.
The criticism being voiced by the PML (N) will be seen as opportunistic when one considers the fact that the agreement and understandings reached at Islamabad are similar to those which Mr Nawaz Sharif and Mr Vajpayee had reached five years ago in New York and Lahore. General Musharraf is merely picking up the thread where Mr Sharif had left it.
MMA spokesmen, among others, maintain that Pakistan abandons the legal and moral foundations of its stand on Kashmir when it agrees to set aside the UN resolutions. This is not a viable argument. India has been refusing to heed them for fifty years. None of the major powers in the world wants to insist on their implementation. The United Nations itself is not willing even to reiterate them.
Like the old UN resolutions on Palestine, the ones on Kashmir have been eaten away by the termites of time. Pakistan's insistence on making them the basis of negotiations with India would mean only that it does not want to have negotiations at all. But if overt and covert resorts to force have been unavailing, what option other than negotiations do we have?
The MMA contends also that General Musharraf's government has made concessions to India prematurely (that is, before any substantive talks have even begun), and further that issues relating to trade, cultural exchanges, and other such matters should be taken up after, not before, the major political issues have been resolved.
The Jamaat-i-Islami "shura" recently labelled the general's initiatives as a "shameful and cowardly" reversal of policy, and it saw his "haste" in improving relations with India as humiliating for the nation. His acceptance of the Indian demands and the Saarc protocol concerning terrorism, without obtaining any clear statement of its meaning, did not serve the national interest. The "shura" believed that the proposals for an economic union, common currency, and open borders were calculated to sweep the Kashmir issue under the carpet.
These objections are not entirely sound. As I have said above, the setting aside of UN resolutions is not a concession but merely recognition of a ground reality that has been glaring at us for a long time. The resolve to oppose extremists and their violence has both domestic and external dimensions. The extremists have been spreading terror within Pakistan, murdering masses of persons on the basis of sectarian prejudice, and it seems that they have also been attempting to kill General Musharraf. The survival, stability, and good order of Pakistan find no place in their reckoning.
Pakistan's assistance to militants ("jihadis"), who went into Kashmir, has not been well received anywhere in the outside world. Not only the United States but other world powers have been reluctant to press India to discuss disputes with us without at the same time asking us to stop our aid to the "jihadis." Thus, in agreeing to oppose terrorism, General Musharraf has made no concession to India; he has merely decided to heed the nearly universal disapproval of our earlier sponsorship of the "jihad" in Kashmir.
The decision not to defer talks on trade, travel, and other CBMs until after the Kashmir dispute has been settled is also not a concession. During the last several years India had been taking the position that Kashmir talks, if held at all, should await the adoption and implementation of the CBMs. Pakistan, on the other hand, had been demanding a "composite dialogue," meaning that the agenda of talks should include Kashmir along with other issues. India has agreed to this position, and it may be said that in doing so it has made a concession to the Pakistani stand.
Is the JI correct in saying that the CBMs are a way of eventually writing off the Kashmir question? That could conceivably turn out to be the case. It will depend not only on how Pakistani thinking and feeling on the subject develop over the next few years but, more importantly, on which way the Kashmiris themselves want to go.
The context of relations within the sub-continent will change radically if the proposals for an economic union, common currency, and open borders materialize. In that context the matter of Kashmir's future status will probably change its hue and contours and possibly become much more amenable to resolution.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.
E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net
Looking back and ahead
Having won a vote of confidence from the parliament and provincial assemblies through a procedure and a manner of count managed jointly by the coalition government and its religious opponents-turned-'collaborators' (MMA), President Musharraf has assured the people that the promises he had made four years ago were all fulfilled.
His task done, it was now for the people to be on the vigil to make their representatives and bureaucrats faithfully run the systems he had established. Here may be recalled the promises he made in a broadcast just five days after assuming power, on October 17, 1999, at what he described as a critical juncture, or a delicate moment, in the history of the nation. His programme was to:
- Reconstruct the national trust and morale.
- Strengthen the federation, promote harmony among the provinces and foster national unanimity.
- Mend the economy to restore investor confidence.
- Ensure the rule of law and quick dispensation of justice.
- Transfer power to the grassroots to enable the masses to participate in national affairs.
- Rid the national institutions of politics.
- Conduct expeditious and impartial accountability.
The first of the seven points defines the goal to be achieved by acting on the other six. That, according to Musharraf, having been done, the question that needs to be answered is whether the morale of the people and their trust in its leaders and institutions is stronger today than it was before the October 12, 1999. On that unanimity can hardly be expected as the judgments will be influenced by personal, party and professional affiliations and the favours received or agonies suffered in pursuit of the programme.
On one point however there can be no two opinions: Musharraf remains at the centre of power despite the elections, dust kicked up on LFO, the existence of horrendously large cabinets and a clamorous opposition.
Yet each point of the programme must be subjected to as objective a scrutiny as the circumstances, prejudices and knowledge permit - the freedom of expression being no bar. What needs to be said at the outset is that by appointing himself as chief executive instead of chief martial law administrator, Musharraf impaired his own ability to keep the extraneous pressures at bay, and yet he could not convince either the people at home or the governments and organizations abroad (Commonwealth, for instance) that it was not a military regime and he was not a dictator. His very first decision, whether born of instinct or cunning, thus proved a double whammy. He lost his neutrality and the country became a pariah.
Musharraf as chief executive needed a political base to neutralize and punish Nawaz Sharif whom he had ousted and Benazir Bhutto whom he loathed. The disgruntled and the opportunists from their parties lost no time in jumping on to his bandwagon. Thus they saved themselves from accountability and, in course of time, steered a plain-speaking, liberal Musharraf into the shibboleth of the reactionaries.
Impartial accountability and rule of law - the two fundamental points of the programme - thus became early victims to politics. The people at large suspect and the insiders allege that those who had the most to account for found shelter in the government and reaped more rewards instead of disgorging the ill-gotten wealth. For the common man the law has remained discriminatory and dispensation of justice slow and perverse as ever.
Musharraf's pledge to strengthen the federation has resulted only in a stronger than ever centre which has made the federation weaker. The leadership of the provinces is chosen by the centre, laws for them are made by the centre, the money to them comes from the centre. Paradoxically, the transfer of power and money to the grassroots - districts, cities and villages - has enhanced the control of the centre and not he autonomy of the provinces.
The confusion and friction the devolution plan has caused in the administration of the provinces has taken a toll of national unity. The unity can be forged only by assigning more subjects and resources to the provinces through a constitutional amendment. That has been an anathema to this government as it has been even to elected governments before it. A parliamentary commission needs to be constituted to suggest a solution to this long-outstanding but inescapable question.
Musharraf's contrivance has not worked. Instead of taking politics out of administration as he had promised, his actions have made one undistinguishable from the other.
The economy indeed is less indebted and is now also growing, albeit slowly, but poverty and discontent are growing faster. This paradox will continue till the politics also becomes stable and the investors return. Governor Ishrat Husain may feel compelled to say (as he did at a seminar the other day) that poverty will wither away once the government's financial devolution plan takes hold. That is a vain hope.
The authority and money in the hands of the local councils may reduce illiteracy and disease but not poverty. Only the jobs created by large-scale investment in industry, infrastructure and services will make a dent in poverty. That can be planned and implemented only at the national and provincial levels and not in the villages.
The economic indicators as they stand now may attract big investors but political indicators drive them away. The assemblies are not representative enough and the cabinets they have thrown up are costly and incompetent and the political alliances underlying both are without a common programme or purpose. The whole show looks fragile and artificial. The fanatics, terrorists and now the nuclear scientists' involvement in "greed and ambition" impart to it a dangerous dimension.
President Musharraf is on a campaign of conciliation with India, Afghanistan and rest of the world leaving the taliban and Kargil behind. A similar conciliatory approach is needed at home. The elective institutions of the country will not be representative nor its administration stable so long as the defectors and clerics constitute the bedrock of the political system.
A national conciliation commission should be formed to bring all the indifferent and alienated elements of public life into the national mainstream to face the challenges ahead, foremost among them being the growing poverty and impending peace talks with India. The two are in fact intertwined.
Nelson Mandela is the most loved statesman of the present times because he followed that course forgetting the injustice of apartheid and personal anguish of 25 years in prison. Musharraf's conciliatory effort may bring him the credit which his performance hasn't. The wrongs and prejudices he has to overcome bear no relation to Mandela's.
One betrayal after another has made Pakistan into a land of zealots, pessimists and carpers. The present interlude of festive optimism caused by the prospects of peace with India can transform it into a resurgent nation given a broad-based popular leadership and a public service free of politics.