| 07 August 2004 | Saturday | 20 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
Berlusconi runs out of time
Confrontation just won't do
Fallout of the Wana operation
It will be most unfortunate if we allow history to repeat itself and wreck the incipient India-Pakistan peace process even before it has taken off. The recent turn of events threatens to do just that.
Things seemed to be progressing smoothly and the success of the foreign secretaries' June meeting in New Delhi had even raised expectations of an early movement. The first signs of trouble in the on-going peace process appeared last month at the end of External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh's visit to Pakistan.
He described the attitude of Pakistani leadership as "constructive and positive" and his discussions with them as "warm, frank and realistic". But surprisingly, the statements, issued by the two sides after Mr Singh's meeting with President Musharraf, told a different story. They reflected not only differences of interpretation but also a sharply different tone.
As against the optimism expressed by Mr Singh, the Pakistani statement highlighted the need for the final settlement of the Kashmir issue "in a reasonable time-frame".
New Delhi promptly questioned the interpretation of the talks put out by Islamabad and expressed its "disappointment" over the tone and substance of Islamabad's press release.
For the first time in many months, New Delhi and Islamabad got involved in public argument and abandoned the normal practice of giving an identical version of talks by their respective spokesmen.
Fortunately, the rhetoric on both sides has so far been restrained. But it can get out of hand in the coming days if each side decides to put its own interpretation on bilateral talks which will be held as part of the composite dialogue.
It is heartening that President Musharraf has said that he had a "wonderful interaction" with Mr Singh and that his mentioning of a "year and a half" as a reasonable time-frame to settle the Kashmir issue was in response to a question on the attitude of India that it could not be rushed into a final settlement".
Mr Singh, it may be recalled, had said that India wanted to take the peace process further, but it was not a 100-metre race and it could not be artificially rushed.
The Pakistan foreign office spokesman, explaining some of the questions arising out of an official statement issued after Musharraf-Singh meeting, said the process of the composite dialogue, since it was agreed to by the leadership of India and Pakistan in January this year, had so far maintained a satisfactory pace and the foreign ministers of the two countries would meet in Delhi in early September after having held meetings at the levels of foreign secretaries and senior officials.
He, however, argued that "we have to have time management on the Kashmir dispute to resolve it within a time-frame". But if Pakistan is satisfied with the "pace" of the composite dialogue, then why this sudden emphasis on a time-frame to settle the Kashmir issue? We should have at least waited till the "substantial" meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries on September 5-6 to see whether India was serious and sincere in discussing and resolving the conflict.
Also, we are dealing with a newly-installed government in New Delhi which is not even three-month old. It is still in the process of consolidating its position and most of its time is being consumed in keeping its coalition partners happy and attending to urgent domestic issues.
It is unfair and unrealistic on our part to expect a democratically elected government to move boldly on a highly sensitive issue like Kashmir without first creating a consensus and political climate for this.
In an auspicious development, President Musharraf has further clarified the statement, attributed to him, about a time-frame for a Kashmir solution. In a panel interview with Dawn on August 4, he said he had not asked for any time-frame for a solution of the Kashmir dispute but had only called for a fast pace..
"But what I would like to say is that we should move as fast as possible because if we don't then we cannot have confidence-building measures(CBMs)," the president said. "We need to move CBMs and the dialogue process in tandem with each other. This is what it is."
The need of the hour is that the tricky question of relationship between Kashmir and confidence-building measures should be resolved to the satisfaction of both the parties.
Pakistan desires that progress on CBMs should not be at the expense of putting Kashmir on the backburner. India wants that normalization of bilateral relations should not be held hostage to the Kashmir question.
President Musharraf's formulation that CBMs and dialogue on conflict resolution should proceed in tandem offers a sensible via media between the two positions and India should have no problem with that.
Every effort should be made to make a success of the wide-ranging talks in which Islamabad and New Delhi are engaged at the moment. The last time they embarked on such a bold exercise was in 1998-99 but the Kargil conflict put a speedy end to that effort.
Let us hope the "composite dialogue" now underway proceeds uninterruptedly. It is a multi-track, multi-speed process. At its preliminary stage, it entails a number of parallel discussions between senior officials from India and Pakistan, with the most contentious subjects (security and Kashmir issues) reserved for the foreign secretaries. Later the two foreign ministers will review progress, this time on September 5-6 in New Delhi.
The composite dialogue is expected to deal with all the differences between the two countries so that all their bilateral disputes are resolved. We in Pakistan should understand clearly that there cannot be equal, simultaneous progress on all the agenda items because some of them are less complicated than others.
But the Indian interlocutors must also understand that some progress or forward movement on each item of the composite dialogue is necessary if the dialogue process is not to come to a sudden halt.
It is this danger to which President Musharraf referred to in his Dawn interview when he suggested: "we need to move CBMs and the dialogue process in tandem with each other."
The important thing is to keep the dialogue process going because as it progresses it will provide both governments with many positive options. The desired results can only be achieved if the dialogue process lives long enough to open up options and possibilities that cannot be foreseen at this stage.
Both Islamabad and New Delhi need to create an environment in which a lasting solution of the Kashmir issue will be desired by the majority of the people in both countries.
But if every dialogue with India is going to be judged by how Islamabad has scored over New Delhi or vice versa, then the composite dialogue between the two countries cannot move forward in substantial terms.
On the other hand, every positive step from one side could invite a reciprocal one from the other and convert the milieu of mistrust into one of mutual confidence.
Pakistan has kept its promise of fully cooperating in checking cross-border infiltration. India should now respond by undertaking a series of actions on its part designed to improve the security environment and human rights conditions in Kashmir.
Such measures will go a long way in not only improving the political environment in Kashmir but also making the on-going peace process more productive and result oriented.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Berlusconi runs out of time
Silvio Berlusconi is safe for the summer. Everybody in Italy has gone away for the holidays, politics is on hold, and he can luxuriate for a few weeks in the fact that he leads the longest-lasting government in Italy since the fall of Mussolini.
Three years in power would not be a record in most other places, but Italy has had fifty-nine governments in the past fifty-eight years. It's quite amazing, really, because this is truly a man that you would not buy a used car from.
Berlusconi still has a few foreign friends. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, his best pal in Europe, will be spending part of August with Berlusconi at his palatial villa in Sardinia (modelled on the emperor Hadrian's summer retreat near Rome).
Even US President George W. Bush probably remembers to call once in a while. (Berlusconi keeps Italian troops in Iraq even though 80 per cent of Italians opposed the war.) But this is probably Berlusconi's last summer in power.
All his biggest problems are legal. Last year his close friend and personal lawyer, Cesare Previti, was sentenced to five years in jail for bribing judges to award ownership of two business conglomerates to Berlusconi's holding company, Fininvest. Berlusconi himself only escaped because he faced a lesser charge that was cancelled due to the statute of limitations.
In early July Berlusconi's brother Paolo, editor of the Milan daily 'Il Giornale,' was sentenced to an additional four months in jail for shady business practices, making a total of two years for various crimes committed in the 1990s when he was making a fortune from a contract to dispose of Milan's garbage.
Berlusconi's son Piersilvio, vice-president of his television company Mediaset, and his daughter Marina, a senior officer of Fininvest, are under criminal investigation for money-laundering and receiving stolen goods.
Marcello Dell'Utri, the former head of Berlusconi's advertising agency, Publitalia, and a senator for his Forza Italia party, was in even deeper trouble. A Sicilian, he was facing charges of aiding and abetting the mafia. (All 61 of Sicily's parliamentary seats went to Forza Italia in the last election, an unprecedented result.)
Dell'Utri's imprisonment would have been a grave blow to the prime minister, for together with the now-jailed lawyer Cesare Previti he was one of the 'Three Musketeers' who were with Berlusconi from his earliest days as a property developer in Milan. (They even shared his first mansion).
But last month, only a few weeks before the verdict that could have sent Dell'Utri to jail for eleven years, Berlusconi appointed him to the Council of Europe. That automatically gives him immunity from all legal cases, including his appeals on two earlier prison sentences.
Needless to say, Berlusconi faced many charges of his own, but new laws passed by his government that decriminalise accounting fraud and impede the exchange of financial information between Italian and foreign courts have extinguished all the cases but one.
He will still be tried for bribing judges, since another law he passed last year to give himself immunity from prosecution was overturned by Italy's highest court, but parliament may pass yet another law to protect him before there is a verdict. After all, that's what he came into politics for.
Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's richest man, the owner of all three of the country's commercial television channels, its biggest publishing house, its biggest ad agency, Milan's football team, and much more.
He got them in the good old-fashioned Italian way, by making an alliance with a political boss who protected him and changed the laws for him when necessary (in Berlusconi's case, Socialist party leader Bettino Craxi), and by an unwavering policy of bribery. He says he never meant to go into politics, and it's probably true - but he had to.
In 1992 the old way of doing politics and business in Italy was overthrown by the 'clean hands' magistrates of Milan. The big Italian parties were discredited and destroyed in the great scandal called Tangentopoli ('bribesville').
Craxi, Berlusconi's patron, fled to exile in Tunisia pursued by convictions for corruption, and the financial investigators were closing in on Berlusconi's business empire - so he founded his own party and went into politics. Within a year, thanks to his media empire, he was prime minister.
Berlusconi's 1994 coalition government only lasted nine months, but it won him time to create complex legal defences for Fininvest and its various holdings - and he was in politics for good.
It was Berlusconi, more than anyone else, who aborted the hope that Italian politics would take on a more 'normal' pattern after Tangentopoli. But now he is running out of time. - Copyright
Confrontation just won't do
It is official. The RSS is now guiding the BJP in formulating its political moves. The uncompromising line that the BJP has been adopting in parliament cannot but be the thinking of a fanatic group which is reckless in its approach and destructive in action.
Otherwise, it is beyond the realm of conjecture that a political party should be bent on destroying the parliamentary democracy of which it is an integral part. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a gathering of editors in Delhi recently that the harm the stalling of parliament was doing to the polity was "serious" and could harm the institution.
The RSS is not, however, worried over the criticism. It has no faith in parliamentary democracy and considers it a western concept. D.P. Thengadi, one of RSS's leading lights, has said: "The constituent assembly imposed British-type institutions on the people." He criticised also the foreign inspiration of parliamentary democracy.
The BJP's behaviour after the polls has been all the more disappointing. Some had begun to believe that the party had changed a bit because of its compulsions in a pluralistic society.
Despite being a member of the Sangh parivar, the party looked less rigid and more open to talks and interaction. The leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee gave the BJP an image which was at times mistaken for liberalism. The manner in which he led the 24-party coalition created the impression as if the party had come to appreciate the value of consensus.
That the tainted ministers should have quit the Manmohan Singh government goes without saying. Probably left to him, he would have seen their back long ago. But the Congress party he heads in parliament would not stay in power if the Rashtriya Janata Dal of railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and his tainted colleagues were to withdraw the support. Its strength of 23 members is crucial.
Manmohan Sing was frank enough before editors to admit that the choice before him was either to have the tainted ministers in his cabinet to save the coalition or to hand over power to the BJP. He said he even rang up Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh to request them to allow the parliament to function. They did not agree.
In fact, the BJP seems to have declared a war against not only the Congress-led government but parliamentary democracy itself. Otherwise, how do you explain that the two sessions of the parliament held so far after the election were practically disturbed on all days. The party's spokesmen have indulged in polemics, accusing the government of "negative and confrontationist approach towards the opposition."
I wish the BJP had spelt out what it meant by "negative and confrontationist attitude." Its own role in the last parliament - I was a witness to it in the Rajya Sabha - was worse. So far, the party has given vent to its frustration, making it obvious that it cannot remain without power.
The BJP has no face to speak about the tainted ministers. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi from the BJP and George Fernandes, convener of the National Democratic Alliance, are no less tainted. They never resigned from the Vajpayee government.
The first two were responsible for the killing of hundreds of people following the demolition of the Babri masjid. Against Fernandes, there is a regular inquiry commission sitting and examining his deals at the defence ministry.
To say that the charges against Advani and Joshi are of a different nature is to challenge the jurisprudence that makes no distinction between crimes.
I cannot understand why the BJP continues to behave like an aggrieved party when it comes to the dismissal of governors. The party acted in the same way as the Congress did and dismissed the governors appointed by the governments headed by Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral.
In fact, both the Congress and the BJP have reduced the institution to a pinjrapole where the aged and discarded animals are kept till their death. What is required is a serious debate on the utility of the institution which the ruling parties are misusing.
The display of Vajpayee's photograph on the highways, built during the BJP-led government, was a wrong thing to do to begin with. The allocation was from the public exchequer, not the party's coffers.
Why should the BJP leader be given credit for the money spent by the government? In fact, the party did something unforgivable: it removed Mahatma Gandhi's portraits from government offices and airports. Gandhi is the father of the nation. How does one interpret the BJP's bias against Gandhi?
Everything else can probably be pardoned, but not the saffronization of the system. Congress was bad enough in appointing its favourites here and there - and it has not learnt any lesson from the past - but the BJP eat all the records by handing over to the RSS nominees such institutions as were connected with education, information, social welfare and the like.
Yet, one of the BJP spokesmen had the temerity to say: "Unless we fought back this onslaught (ideological intolerance) from the very start, the pseudo-secularists will only intensify their campaign against."
The nation has not yet recovered from the BJP's role of "intolerance" in Gujarat. The Supreme Court is still trying to retrieve justice from the debris of death and destruction. How can a few secularists match the din of fundamentalism that the BJP, the Bajrang Dal, the Hindu Vishwa Parishad and the likes have raised?
After having injected communalism into the system, the BJP is now after parliament which still represents pluralism and democracy. The Congress did its best to destroy its ethos during the emergency (1975-77). People asserted themselves to save democracy and the parliamentary system was restored.
The BJP is trying to hit at the very roots of parliament. Its NDA has declared that it will not join the parliament's standing committees that scrutinize budget proposals and legislative business at length. This is an obligation which the electorate put on the members they return.
The boycott is a betrayal of their trust. In the committees, I can say from my experience, members do rise above the party line and make substantial contribution to improve the draft bills placed before them.
The debate in the committees is bound to suffer because it will be a one-sided affair. The real loss will be that of the polity which is enriched by the different points of view. Since most of the opposition leaders chair the standing committees, the absence of the BJP and its allies may reduce the exercise to a farce.
It is apparent that the ruling United Progressive Alliance and the NDA in the opposition have still to come to terms with each other. The ideological differences are known to everyone and elections showed that. But their resolve to rise above party considerations for the country's good is yet to be proved.
The real problem is not about the views of political parties but how they are held. In a democratic system, there can be no room for imposition. The prime minister rightly said at the farewell of the retired Rajya Sabha members that the country needed "a cooperative democracy." Both the Congress and the BJP, particularly the latter, have a long way to go in imbibing that spirit.
The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.
Fallout of the Wana operation
To assess the implications of the Wana operation, the situation in the north has to be viewed through the spectrum of international and regional developments, and in the perspective of religious and ethnic factors.
Pakistani forces began to enter the tribal areas over the last one-year. The justification for the move was to secure effective control up to the Durand Line. The objective was to deny a safe haven to Al Qaeda and Taliban elements. If any were found, they were to be arrested or their capacity to resist destroyed.
The need for this action was the result of persuasion by the US. It was alleged that after running away from the US forces in Afghanistan, many of the combatants had sought refuge in Pakistan's tribal areas, and that unless they were eradicated, peace and security could not be ensured either in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Initially, slow compliance with US requests created suspicion that we were faltering in our anti-terrorist commitments. Our past associations with the Taliban became a major embarrassment.
The level of violence in the Pakhtun belt of Afghanistan and Fata has increased during the last five months. US electoral compulsions demand that Osama bin Laden be captured or killed before the November elections. As a result, US forces have begun "robust" operations on the other side of the Durand Line.
After the army's move into tribal areas, intelligence showed that amongst those taking refuge in Wana, Birmal and Shawal, were many foreigners of Central Asian descent. They had fought in Afghanistan and some had settled permanently. They had also begun to raise families by marrying into the tribes, which had given them shelter.
According to tribal tradition, those who marry within a tribe become functional members of that tribe; a social factor further aggravating an already delicate situation.
The following recent occurrences are relevant for forming an idea of the happenings in tribal areas. There are relatively higher casualties of the armed forces in Waziristan and sabotage activity has registered an increase after the start of operations in the Wana-Wazir and Mahsud area. Matters have escalated with the use of aircraft against the Wazirs.
The number of ambushes in Waziristan have increased. There has also been an escalation of the number of attacks on army personnel in other agencies. The urban areas of the NWFP are being targeted by rockets and missiles, and reports of increasing discontent amongst the operating forces continue to circulate. It is believed that some officers have been detained and are under investigation.
Border sharing intelligence with the US forces has increased. Outlying airfields elsewhere in the NWFP have temporarily come under the command of US forces, while they carry out operations. The Shakai Peace agreement has broken down. A drone missile has killed Nek Mohammad, the flamboyant leader of the Shakai Wazirs.
Large pockets of discontented elements are organizing themselves under different guises. One such example is the Amir Bin Maruf movement in the Khyber Agency. In other agencies, the availability of abundant funds in the hands of anti-administration elements is on the increase. One may well ask from where these funds are coming.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, the Saudis are bogged down by extremists in a violent confrontation. The Israelis have assassinated the crippled founder of Hamas, Sheikh Yaseen, and other Palestinian resistance leaders; about 200 Spaniards died in a commuter train bombing in Madrid. Ethnic troubles have resurfaced in Kosovo. Large-scale killing in Iraq and in lesser numbers in Afghanistan is daily news.
Muslims are bearing the brunt of prejudice against them in the US. Pakistanis have been specially targeted as a BBC documentary recently showed. Only one conclusion can be drawn.
Muslims the world over are in the throes of a concerted campaign against them. They are being targeted because of their beliefs. The US, which has been a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world, is now being termed as a repressive society.
Given the predominantly pro-Muslim sympathies of the majority of Pakistanis, their feelings of support for fellow Muslims is understandable. This point has to be factored in before any strategy is implemented in response to events.
If this is not done, then state policies would reflect only the will of a small elite. As it is, our foreign policy is out of sync with national feelings.
The situation in Afghanistan is descending into a frightening ethnic nightmare. The Northern Alliance and the US forces are active in the Pakhtun belt, which have become the killing fields. These areas are adjacent to the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Both the belts were radicalized during the war against the Russians. Subsequently, when the Taliban came to power, they exterminated the opposition, which was mostly composed of the non-Pakhtuns: the Hazaras, Tajiks and Turkomen. The Taliban were a pro-Pakhtun movement and excluded other non-Afghan tribes.
Because of the association of the Taliban with ethnic Pakhtuns, the bonds of a larger Pakhtun identity encompassing all the Pathans living in Afghanistan and Pakistan has emerged; an aspect which is now assuming concrete shape and one that demands careful handling by Pakistan.
Many NWFP Pakhtuns, who had gone to assist their brethren in Afghanistan, have yet to bury those who lost their lives during the disintegration of Taliban rule at the start of US-led invasion.
A large number are still languishing in Northern Alliance jails. Why the Pakistan government has permitted the continuing incarceration of its citizens even if they were misled, is a question that begs an answer.
The Afghan Pakhtun area is largely outside the central government's control. The rural areas of much of Afghanistan's Pathan provinces remain under the de-facto control of the Taliban who continue to collect duties and taxes. These are the areas accused of supporting Osama bin Laden, and that consequently must bear the brunt of retaliation by US forces.
An indication of the Pakhtun hatred for the Afghan government may be gauged from the fact that many of the Pakhtun representatives to the Loya Jirga have either been killed or refuse to return to their province because of fear.
Tactically, one of the considerations that rule any military imagination, is the belief in the superiority of weapons. It is thought that superior weaponry will achieve the defined objectives.
There is little realization that such considerations fail in the face of a determined opposition led by the Pakhtun tradition of uniting against "outsiders" and a mastery over the terrain.
Given the nature of the terrain in Fata, it is only a matter of time before the calculus shifts from the dominance of weapons to the terrain. Coupled with local support and fighting capabilities, the tribal action in Wana, is creating a formidable foe.
It is very possible that the affected tribesmen, imbued with superior terrain knowledge and religious fervour, will retaliate. Their target will include down-country urban areas, government functionaries and installations. They will also swell Osama bin Laden's army.
Another question of great importance concerns the role of leadership. The point is whether any responsible leadership in Pakistan could have opted not to join the alliance against "terrorism".
Given the role that Pakistan has played in Afghanistan, regime survival lay in cooperation with the US. An emotional response would have been catastrophic. The argument that is held against the government is that we sold ourselves cheap, although it should not be concluded that Pakistanis do not want to be rid of the obscurantism of the mullahs. They want to be a modern and a progressive nation.
But the million-dollar question is: how does one define a strategic course under such constraints? Yet it goes without saying that we must regain the initiative with the right mix of political handling and economic development. If the low intensity operation in Fata continues much longer, it will radicalize all those involved, including many in the populous hinterland.
The following has begun to happen. Anti-Pakistan forces in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan are now in some sort of an organized collaboration. Both are now organized for extensive operations. Casualties are likely to increase in tribal area operations and the fire will spread to our cities.
Easing the operational movement, except by air, will become increasingly difficult in Fata. In Afghanistan, the Afghan/US forces will face stiffer resistance in the days to come.
It is feared that tribal administrative controls will weaken further. Our experimentation with tribal administration, like the extinction of various administrative tiers, has done more harm than good. It requires an immediate reversal. This is a period for consolidation and not experimentation.
Based on the above analysis, it is recommended that the use of arms in this area be reduced and replaced with political handling. If the funds spent on military operations were instead used for political handling, more would have been achieved at less cost.
The strength of the army should be reduced in the tribal areas, gradually. Strong brigade level groups should be retained in tactical positions but their services should be restricted to assisting the scouts.
This is a reversion of the 1923 Waziristan Policy. Evidently, there is a need to brush up the watch and ward policy, based on the use of good tribal intelligence. The capabilities of the Frontier Corps should be enhanced. They should have the right of first call. Only when they face heavy odds should they ask for army support.
It is evident that since the Political Agent will be dealing with an armed opposition, he must operate through an elaborate intelligence network based on his tribes. The best informants are the locals. He must use the levers of tribal controls effectively. Though the institution of the jirga alone may not solve all the problems, yet reliance on it must not be ignored.
The writer is a former chief secretary, NWFP.
Email: azizk@brain.net.pk.