| 31 July 2004 | Saturday | 13 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
Kashmir: India's basic position
Accountability without exception
As the US gets more deeply mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, with little sign of improvement in the security situation, there has been increasing talk of efforts to bridge the gulf between the sole superpower and the world of Islam.
In the US, many moderates ascribe the problem to the excessive reliance on force by the US, on the basis of doctrines founded on its undoubted military superiority.
Within the Islamic world also, there is rising concern over the tendency in the West to equate Islam with terrorism. The OIC summit last year adopted a resolution, presented by Pakistan, calling for efforts to promote and project "enlightened moderation" as the guiding principle of Islam.
The starting point of the debate is the terrorist attack of 9/11, which is compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 that brought the US into the Second World War.
Having been attacked on its mainland, the event shattered the complacency the American people and government had developed about the security of the country. With terrorists, who are seen mostly as Islamic fundamentalists committed to jihad against the West, the war against terror is elevated beyond the destruction of terrorist groups to the elimination of Islamic extremism.
The neocons around President Bush believe that America has a right to eliminate Islamic extremism of the type that can threaten the security of the US and its close allies, notably Israel.
The concept of Greater Middle East put forward by Bush envisages transforming the region from Morocco to Pakistan by securing client regimes committed to adopting western concepts of democracy and human rights.
The difficulties encountered after the occupation of Iraq in 2003 raised some doubts about the efficacy of pre-emption, but the surrender of weapons of mass destruction by Colonel Qadhafi in December 2003 was seen as evidence of success of the pre-emptive policy.
The persistence of insecurity and chaos in Palestine still raises questions about whether the US can win the hearts and minds of the Islamic world, if it persists in backing a hard-liner like Ariel Sharon in Israel.
The notion is gaining growing acceptance that one can overcome terrorism on an enduring basis only by addressing the roots of terrorism, that lie in political and economic injustice.
The awareness that the West, headed by the US, and the Islamic world appear to be again involved in a clash of cultures gives rise to the view that somehow both are at fault.
Certainly, a the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001, did take place. But the US response has been not only to intensify the use of force against Islamic countries, but also to legitimize resort to state terrorism by Israel in dealing with the Palestinians, by characterizing their movement for rights guaranteed in UN resolutions as "terrorist."
President Bush, who had started his term by adopting a unilateralist approach to international affairs, has taken advantage of the terrorist attack to launch the doctrine of pre-emption, to the detriment of the principles contained in the UN charter and international law.
US exponents of the tough approach to "militant Islam" see it as a serious threat to western interests. Speaking at the seminar organized in Beijing to mark the 50th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, in June, former secretary of state, George Schultz, justified resort to war against Islamic extremism by accusing it of having launched a worldwide movement against the West.
He alleged that the Muslim extremists wanted to expel the West from the Middle East, and establish a unified Islamic theocratic rule. In his view, the very existence of the international state system was under attack and the US had no choice but to engage in a bitter war against this menace.
There is increasing opposition to this approach not only in Europe but in the US itself, where the need to pursue a dialogue with the Islamic world is being recognized.
The Muslim world itself has recognized the need for concerted efforts to reassure the dominant West that Islam stands for peace and justice. Even within the US, Muslims have taken many initiatives, to present the real message of Islam, whose very name means "religion of peace."
Though President Bush also acknowledged Islam as one of the great world religions that had brought many benefits to humanity, his main stress, in this election year, is on his vigorous pursuit of the "war on terror." He claims that the war on Iraq was not only justified, but had also achieved a breakthrough in persuading Col. Qadhafi to renounce his militancy.
The beginnings of interaction between the West and the Islamic world have started, through seminars and symposia, some of them organized by the US state agencies. There have been interesting exchanges between the two sides in Pakistan as well.
In addition, the Pakistan government has followed up the president's initiative to project Islam as a force for "enlightened moderation", and to revitalize the OIC so that it can be more effective in projecting Islam properly, and in promoting unity and cooperation among the Muslim countries. Islamabad has plans to play host to a special summit of OIC, early next year, to monitor progress on this issue.
A recent seminar on the subject of building bridges between the US and Islam heard some very candid views from Pakistani intellectuals on the way the dialogue has to proceed.
If the neocon assumption is followed, that Islam is militant and needs to be reformed, and that ruling regimes have to conform to western concepts of democracy and human rights, we are going to get a strong backlash.
The problem of terrorism is not a manifestation of Islamic extremism. In the 1940s, the Jews in Palestine had formed the most aggressive terrorist groups. Some of the leaders of these groups became state leaders, such as Menachem Begin.
Terrorism and extremism have risen in several parts of the Islamic world because the Muslims happen to have been the main sufferers in the denial of fundamental rights, whether in Palestine or Kashmir.
The Palestinian Arabs have experienced injustice and deprivation, and even the UN has not succeeded in enforcing implementation of its resolutions, because of the strong support of the US to the Zionist cause.
Similarly, UN resolutions on Kashmir have been violated, driving the Kashmiris to militancy. The solution lies not in perpetuating injustice through force, but in addressing the political and economic injustices, and implementing the principles of democracy the West advocates.
If the menace of terrorism is to be addressed effectively, its underlying causes need to be removed. There is a tendency in the US to treat the Islamic world as a monolithic entity, whereas it is perhaps the most diverse religious community, with enormous differences between distant parts.
The one feature shared by the 1.3 billion followers of the faith is poverty and backwardness, and here they form an integral part of the developing world. A majority of political regimes in the Islamic world are not democratic in the western sense, but progress in the political field is linked to economic progress, and specially to education.
The process of building bridges of understanding is certainly the need of the times, but such a process must not be based on the assumptions that Islam preaches extremism, or that western concepts of democracy need to be enforced in order to eliminate the threat from terrorism.
The US has enjoyed world wide esteem for the role it played after the Second World War in creating the UN, and in facilitating the rise of colonized peoples in Asia and Africa to independence.
The disappearance of the Soviet Union as a restraining force in 1989 has left it in the position of absolute military superiority. Since then, a small number of neo-conservatives have advocated US hegemony of a type that constitutes a negation of principles of international law. Even the economic system in the age of globalization is marginalizing the developing countries.
President Bush has unfortunately identified himself with the doctrine of pre-emption which caters to the interests and perceptions of a minority in the US. While pursuing the path of building bridges between civilizations we must respect the right of each civilization to follow its value systems, consistent with the five principles, that include those of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs and peaceful coexistence.
The US has to return to its moral leadership by abandoning excessive use of force in a world whose resources should be used to improve the life of all its citizens. The dialogue with the Muslim world should be based on concern for each other's sensitivities and legitimate rights, rather than on imposing western value systems as a panacea for the whole world.
Kashmir: India's basic position
Nations, like individuals, look ugly when they break rules. This was the nth time that Pakistan raised Kashmir at the Saarc foreign ministers' conference in Islamabad. The rule is that no bilateral issue will be raised at such meetings. The violation not only exasperated India but also other members of the Saarc.
Pakistan's obvious purpose was to focus attention on Kashmir, something which it has been trying for quite some time. In reality it wants India to accept Kashmir as a disputed territory.
I have not been able to make out Islamabad's obsession. This is the status which New Delhi cannot accept for many reasons. It primarily means an amendment to the Indian constitution which lists Jammu and Kashmir as part of the Union.
Any alteration in the state's status needs a constitutional bill that requires for approval by a two-thirds majority in each of the two houses of parliament. How is it possible for any government in India to take such a course?
Without using the word 'dispute', India has, indeed, conceded the point. When it discusses Kashmir it comes to that, although not in so many words. After all, New Delhi does not hold talks with Islamabad on Tamil Nadu, West Bengal or even Pakistan's neighbouring states of Punjab, Gujarat or Rajasthan. Why only Jammu and Kashmir? This should have satisfied Pakistan.
When the Shimla Agreement between Mrs Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the then prime ministers, singled out "Jammu and Kashmir" for "a final settlement," New Delhi said in no uncertain terms that the status of the state was still to be determined. More recently, former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President General Pervez Musharraf underlined the same point in their joint statement.
They specifically mentioned Kashmir as a topic for talks. Had Kashmir not been a matter pending settlement, the question of discussing it again and again would not have arisen.
My impression is that Pakistan has no policy on Kashmir. It kicks up dust all the time to confuse the issue. Except the contention that the state should become part of Pakistan because of its Muslim majority, what claim does it have over Kashmir? On the one hand, it says that the independent status of the state is not acceptable.
On the other, it knows fully well that the demand of the preponderant majority of Kashmiris is for 'azadi' (independence). Even Pakistan's most loyal exponent, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, says if it is the 'azadi' the Kashmiris want and they would have it.
The only policy of Pakistan seems to be to get Kashmir. From day one after partition, it has been trying to occupy Kashmir forcibly. First, it was the adventure by regular and irregular forces of Pakistan.
Then it was the Bhutto's war of infiltration and finally it was the exercise by General Musharraf at Kargil. All failed because Pakistan was not militarily superior to India.
Ultimately, it was former prime minister Nawaz Sharif who admitted at Male before the then prime minister Inder Gujral that Pakistan was not in a position to take Kashmir forcibly from India. It goes to Sharif's credit that he said India was not in a position to give Kashmir to Pakistan on a platter.
India too has no policy on Kashmir. It tries to keep Farooq Abdullah and Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on its side and, at the same time, begins a dialogue with the Hurriyat leaders who hate the two.
New Delhi has already downgraded the talks with Pakistan, taking it away from the prime minister's office led by Atal Behari Vajpayee to the ministry of external affairs headed by K. Natwar Singh, who says he does not have to "consult" anybody.
The talks between him and Pakistan's Foreign Minister Kasuri in Islamabad have made the confusion more confounded. Both are saying different things while maintaining that they are making progress.
New Delhi has, however, travelled far from its original position over the years. There was a time when it would refuse even to talk on Kashmir. Manzur Qadir, the then Pakistan foreign minister, told me how General Ayub Khan, then Pakistan's martial law administrator, was furious when Jawaharlal Nehru refused to entertain any discussion on Kashmir during his visit to Pakistan to sign the Indus Water Treaty, more than 40 years ago.
Ayub's version as recorded by Qadir is: "Nehru was insulting. I tried to talk to him on Kashmir thrice, each time with the observation that since both countries had solved a big problem like the Indus Waters, they should tackle Kashmir to settle things once and for all.
Every time, Nehru either started looking at the ceiling or outside the window. Once I felt that he had gone to sleep. He simply did not want to talk on the subject. He was an accepted leader of India and people in Pakistan listened to me; we should not have lost that opportunity."
Opportunities have, indeed, arisen even after the Nehru-Ayub meeting. The biggest was at Shimla in 1972 when Bhutto reportedly agreed to accept the Line of Control as the international border. But he dare not even broach the subject after return from Shimla because Pakistan had not yet got over the humiliation of losing the Bangladesh war.
Still it is stuck in the minds of Pakistan's rulers that the valley should be part of Pakistan because it has Muslims in a majority. The facts as they are, this is not going to be possible.
No amount of Pakistan-sponsored infiltration has changed the situation. All that it has done is to communalize the Kashmir movement which was once indigenous in content and national in character.
Islamabad fails to realize that Kashmir is not a religious issue. One way out is people-to-people contact, not only through easy visas but also through free trade. Both countries should become a single economic unit (with Bangladesh added) so that the ties of trade and commerce develop into the ties of inter-dependence and friendship. Once the people of the two countries come to have an equation of that level, Kashmir will be automatically solved.
The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.
Accountability without exception
Almost daily, electronic and print media advertisements for the NAB's National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) urge Pakistanis to join the fight against corruption. The NACS, we are told, is about to rescue Pakistan from the dark shadows of corruption. Hence, its catchy slogan: Shafaf (transparent) Pakistan. What is the NACS, really?
Backed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the NACS aims to "eliminate corruption by engaging all stakeholders in the fight against corruption, through a programme which is holistic, inclusive and progressive."
These donor-driven cliches aside, its mainstay is a National Integrity System - a concept supplied by Transparency International (TI) - comprising eight pillars: the executive, the legislature, public accountability bodies, anti-corruption agencies, the judiciary, private sector, the media and civil society.
Exploring the applicability of TI's integrity system in the Pakistani context, or dissecting the voluminous strategy document, are tasks best undertaken elsewhere.
But the most intriguing, and politically most relevant, aspect of the NACS lies in its unabashed "anti-politics." While it makes contingent references to military rule (especially that of General Ayub Khan) and its impact on public accountability, the NACS comes across as a thinly disguised case for the supremacy of General Musharraf's authoritarian rule over popular, democratic politics.
For starters, it claims that "mega" corruption has gone down significantly since 1999 because of the "men (and women) of integrity," the sense of discipline "instilled" by military rule and the "deterrent" effect of the NAB during the first year of its inception.
Yet, the NACS provides no evidence to substantiate either. Fewer mega scandals might have been reported in the 1999-2002 period but the causal link from the "integrity" of the military regime to reduced corruption is at best tenuous.
What if the perceived decline in the incidence of corruption in high public office is attributable to self-censorship in the media? If Pakistan were a military state, it would have been much easier to accept the decisive role of "discipline" in reducing corruption. But it is not. The NAB fear factor too is of questionable validity.
As the NACS harps on the reforms initiated by military rule, it is quick to put political governments in the dock. For instance, it blames the 1985-1999 civilian interlude for the "steepest rise" in corruption because of "the non-party elections of 1985" when the "absence of party allegiance meant that a majority of a new breed of politicians had to be kept together by giving incentives like allocation of development funds."
Yet it maintains a convenient silence on the simple fact that then, as now, it was another military regime which created this "new breed of politicians" through local government elections, distributed state funds for creating networks of political patronage and organized non-party elections to depoliticize governance.
Its next big claim is that, during the same civilian period, "five governments were dismissed on charges of corruption." There is no question that a culture of rampant political corruption, bequeathed by General Zia, continued to haunt the elected governments of both the PPP and the PML-N.
But it might be useful to remember that their dismissals at the hands of military-backed presidents had very little to do with corruption per se. In fact, these elected governments were sent packing mainly after they violated their power-sharing pacts drafted in the GHQ. And even if we do assume that corruption was the principal factor, what about the termination of the Junejo government?
At one stage, the NACS goes on to brand the political party system as "dictatorial and undemocratic" and the voting system as "abused or manipulated." Again, whodunit? While the failings of the political class are many, it is an open secret that the military has been instrumental in distorting and corrupting the party and the electoral systems to prevent their consolidation, which it sees as the ultimate threat to its authoritarian control over state and society in Pakistan.
To be fair, the NACS does get one thing partly right on the political corruption front. It blames the failure of the 'Ehtesab' campaign of the 1990s on its misuse for political victimization.
Yet, a bit of introspection would have helped the drafters of this document go easy on the self-righteous claim that the NAB is different. The special link to "BB's assets" on the NAB website is just one example that precious little has changed since 1999. In other words, the compulsions of political vendetta still outweigh the need for real anti-corruption reforms.
But herein lies the real crunch: while the NACS urges judges to "consider the extension of the NAB ordinance to the judiciary as a public manifestation of their commitment to remove corruption from the legal system," it defends the military's omission from the ordinance primarily on the basis of "a stringent system of discipline that punishes defaulters under the Army Act."
The NACS then argues that those tried under the NAB (and other) laws can file writ petitions and access two tiers of appeal whereas military personnel do not even enjoy the fundamental rights under the Constitution in discharge of their duties.
Despite all these legal safeguards, Asif Zardari and many others have been on the wrong end of the anti-corruption stick mainly because of their political affiliations. On the contrary, politicians who have either sided with the military or succumbed to its pressures have been given a clean bill of health. Some standard of accountability!
Even more damning, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the supposedly "stringent" military mechanisms of internal accountability are just not working. Consider the following.
First, serving military personnel at the highest levels have been reportedly involved in corrupt arms deals in recent years. Second, the Auditor-General of Pakistan annually reports massive leaks in the country's bloated military outlays which remain a single line item in the national budget. Third, the 'rags to riches' trajectory of military careers in Pakistan is now the stuff of legends.
Creating and defending the myth of military exclusivity might be necessary to justify the existence and persistence of authoritarian militarism. But such political chicanery is hardly sufficient to gain public confidence for a supposedly "comprehensive" anti-corruption strategy.
The point simply is this: the NACS - or any of the NAB's initiatives - will ring hollow as long as the military which has set itself up as the sole arbiter of accountability refuses to submit to even a modicum of public scrutiny.
Accountability, if it is to mean anything beyond partisan vendetta schemes and punitive actions against administrative corruption, must be applied to the military as an institution.
They say charity begins at home. Instead of urging others to act in good faith, the generals would do well to extend the NAB ordinance to the armed forces as a "public manifestation" of their own commitment to corruption control in Pakistan. This step would also help assuage the widespread public perception that the military considers itself to be above the law. How is that for a start?