“RECENTLY, a few individuals involved in serious incidents have been highlighted in the news. Some would have these incidents reflect on the army as a whole. They are, however, the actions of a pitiful few. Certainly the army cannot and will not condone improper conduct or criminal acts — I personally assure you that I will not.”

Knowing that this statement was made by a general in the US army, it doesn’t exactly require a leap of the imagination to associate with the prison abuse scandal that erupted about a year ago, and has by now been to a large extent purged from the public consciousness. That doesn’t necessarily mean, of course, that torture and humiliation are no longer deployed as interrogation techniques. All that it means is that individuals are no longer permitted to use digital cameras to document their inhumane antics.

Knowing, too, that it was cited in an article by Seymour Hersh prompts the same line of thought. It was, after all, this indefatigable investigative journalist who played such a key role in exposing the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

Hersh is anything but a novice, however. He first made a name for himself 35 years ago by doggedly pursuing, and then revealing, the truth about My Lai 4. Even today, reading his meticulously fair account (anthologized last year in John Pilger’s Tell Me No Lies) of how Charlie Company literally wiped out a South Vietnamese hamlet, killing almost everyone the nervous soldiers could find — hundreds of women, old men, girls, boys, even infants — is a confronting experience. It’s a prime example of what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”.

The general quoted at the outset is William C. Westmoreland, who was the commander of US forces in Vietnam, the Tommy Franks of his day. His vow that “the army cannot and will not condone improper conduct or criminal acts” was, as one would expect, honoured in the breach. Lieutenant William Calley — undoubtedly guilty of the unprovoked mass murder of unarmed civilians, although hardly solely responsible for what happened at My Lai 4 — was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Not long afterwards, his sentence was reduced to 20 years. Then to 10. He was eventually paroled after three-and-a-half years. In that period he spent about three days in prison; the rest of the time he was “confined”, along with his girlfriend, at his house inside a military base. His superior officer Captain Ernest Medina, who was present as a participant at the scene of the crime, was acquitted by a jury that took all of 60 minutes to reach a verdict. No one higher up in the chain of command ever faced trial.

The pattern persists. It was reported last week that a US army investigation had exonerated Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez and three of his deputies in connection with the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Punishment has been recommended for Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib, for dereliction of duty, but she isn’t expected to face anything more painful than a reprimand — and that too as payback for publicly complaining that she was often left out of the loop when it came to interrogation methods.

It has been suggested — and not just by Hersh — that the trail of responsibility leads to Donald Rumsfeld’s office in the Pentagon. It may go even higher. But one obviously can’t expect any official corroboration. Several low-ranking soldiers have been convicted, but what are the chances they’ll get the Calley treatment? Or be paroled for “good behaviour”? Pretty good, I should think.

My Lai wasn’t an isolated incident: it owes its historical prominence not so much to the wanton cruelty it encapsulated but to the fact that it was reported, nearly two years after it had occurred, in such gruesome detail, accompanied by a military photographer’s harrowing images. It made it impossible for all decent Americans to defend the war. It is significant that the My Lai and Abu Ghraib exposes were both facilitated by whistleblowers within the military establishment.

It is also important to acknowledge that other armies and militias have also been guilty of the most appalling crimes against humanity over the past 60 years. To cite a few random examples, think Bangladesh in 1971, Rwanda in 1994, Srebrenica in 1995. There is, however, a crucial difference: neither the Pakistan army under Yahya Khan nor the rampaging Hutu militias, let alone Radovan Karadzic’s Bosnian Serb forces, claimed to be beacons of the free world, bringing their superior brand of freedom and democracy to dark corners of the world.

Next Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the liberation of South Vietnam. By then the struggle of the Vietnamese people had for more than 20 years inspired freedom movements right across the globe, from Angola and Algeria to Latin America. First they had seen off the French colonialists (whose Waterloo came at Dien Bien Phu), only to find them replaced by American imperialists — “military advisers” and “trainers” initially, followed by combat troops, by carpet bombing, by chemical warfare, by Richard Nixon’s contemplation of a nuclear strike. And by massacres of the My Lai variety.

At the height of the American involvement, there were more than half a million US troops on Vietnamese territory — four times the number now present in Iraq. Most of them came back alive: the reliance on bombing raids and helicopter gunships, plus broader technological superiority, meant that between 1959 and 1975, no more than 54,000 Americans lost their lives — compared with an estimated four million Vietnamese.

But many of the American combatants returned home with deep psychological scars, with memories that could not be exorcised. Large numbers continued to vaguely believe in this manifestation of their government’s crusade against communism. A not insignificant proportion, however, lost faith. And there can be little doubt that the sight of uniformed veterans demonstrating in support of the National Liberation Front (NLF) had as profound an effect on the national consciousness as the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre.

By the time North Vietnamese and NLF troops arrived in Saigon early on April 30, 1975, the last Americans were gone, and The Observer’s correspondent Colin Smith spotted soldiers of the South Vietnamese army, who had lately been deserting at the rate of 1,000 a day, “tearing off their uniforms like actors doing a fast costume change. Once they had surrendered their weapons, their captors told them they were free to go.”

Thirty years earlier, another army in the same region had been even more gracious to the enemy. Indochina had been overrun by the Japanese army during the Second World War. In August 1945 the occupying force surrendered to a division of the British Indian army. The latter’s commanding office was, however, uncertain whether his troop strength was sufficient to prevent the indigenous resistance forces, known as the Viet Minh, from assuming power. He was, after all, under instructions to keep the coast clear for the return of the old order — that is, French colonialism.

In a remarkable feat of imperialist collaboration, the British general allowed the Japanese to keep their weapons so that they could help him stave off the nationalist guerillas. The general’s identity is worth noting: Douglas Gracey. Two years later, he became the first commander-in-chief of Pakistan’s army.

If the Viet Minh had not been prevented from taking over in 1945, it is just possible that the French, freshly liberated from the Nazi occupation of their own country, may have stayed away — and Indochina could have been spared a great deal of agony. The Americans may, of course, have intervened anyway, as they did in Korea.

Why they could never have won (short of subjecting the whole of Vietnam to the My Lai experience or risking a few Hiroshimas, neither of which would have counted as much of a victory) is neatly encapsulated in an episode related by Jane Fonda in her recent autobiography, My Life So Far. The American actress was dubbed “Hanoi Jane” by her detractors for travelling to North Vietnam in 1972, in what was perceived as a propaganda coup for the “enemy”. She recalls that, on her way back to Hanoi one day from a trip into the countryside, the driver suddenly stopped the car, and her interpreter told her that an air raid was imminent. A passerby — “a young Vietnamese girl with some books wrapped in a rubber belt slung over her shoulder” — pulled her into one of the roadside holes that served as individual air raid shelters throughout the North.

They heard the thud of bombs falling in the distance, felt the ground shake. Given the all-clear by her interpreter, a distraught and blubbering Fonda emerged from the hole and, channelling her nation’s guilt, began “saying over and over to the girl, ‘I’m sorry, oh, I am so sorry, I’m so sorry’.” The girl stopped her and calmly delivered a response in Vietnamese. Her interpreter translated: “You shouldn’t cry for us. We know why we are fighting. The sadness should be for your country, your soldiers. They don’t know why they are fighting us.”

Three decades on, that simple yet powerful truth has retained — or perhaps regained — much of its validity.

Email: mahirali1@gmail.com

LEADERS of 106 Asian and African countries met in Jakarta last week to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Bandung Conference held 50 years ago and which gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement. The leaders then made a ceremonial trip to Bandung, where the original conference was held after signing a strategic partnership accord which was hailed as a milestone in the history of the people of Asia and Africa by President Yudhoyono of Indonesia. They then planted trees to mark the historic event.

The presidents, prime ministers and kings who attended the conference reflected the varying extent of democracy in Asia and Africa. If Africa still has tribal leaders ruling in many parts, Pakistan has a dominant feudal order. Democracy is in an infant stage in many countries and at other places it is a guided democracy. The Middle East has monarchies trying to share some power with the people now.

The leaders at the conference represented threefourths of the people of the world who exceed six billions. They have increased three-fold since the Bandung Conference. And that population burden is a major problem for the leaders and societies of these countries. Meeting their basic needs is a tough task and nearly a billion of the poor people of these countries live below the poverty line of a dollar a day. The steady increase in population complicates the problem further.

The bipolar world with the US on one side along with the west and the Soviet Union on the other side has given way to a unipolar world with the US as its centre. The substantial economic and military assistance to the non-aligned countries from the Soviet Union is no longest on tap. And while the US tries to dominate the world politically and militarily its economic assistance to the developing countries has dwindled to 0.2 per cent of its GDP. It has moved up to this figure from 0.1 per cent under pressure from other donors who though being smaller make a far larger contribution.

The US is not ready to accept the target of 0.7 per cent of the GDP set by the western donors earlier for giving aid while the Scandinavian countries lead by paying up

to one per cent of their GDP. President Bush prefers to spend far more on its military presence abroad and taking on its perceived or real adversaries in developing countries.

The billion Muslims in the world are a part of the Afro-Asia bloc. Of that half a billion are in South Asia, principally in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Some of the Muslim countries are very rich because of their oil wealth. Some of them are very poor among the total number of 45 states.

The rich Muslim countries with large surplus capital could have helped alleviate absolute poverty in the Muslim countries by making significant investment there, and enabled them to develop fast. The Islamic Development Bank could have played a far larger and more dynamic role, as done by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. But for long IDB was lending modest amounts to promote trade between Muslim countries and it is now moving towards making small investments. It needs far larger funds than it has, and play a bigger role in assisting the development of the Muslim World.

The capital needed could be available from the oil states with large funds. The affluent private sector in these oil states could lend to the IDB profitably as well when their investment in the West carry political and other risks. Large investors from the oil states are however now moving into Muslim countries. They find them safer and commercially rewarding, as their increasing investment in Pakistan demonstrates. The West where they used to make major investments is a different kind of area for them after 9/11 because of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias there.

They should move in to such areas faster, and their own governments and the governments of the countries where they invest should guarantee the safety of the capital they invest if it exceeds a billion dollars.

President Musharraf has called for a bigger role for the private sector in Afro-Asian states and active government assistance. And he expects the private sector to follow the rules of good governance. Poverty, he told a business summit in Jakarta, which met concurrently with the Jubilee session, “breeds despair, helplessness and extremism.” So he wants the private sector to play its part in effectively reducing poverty. He also made an appeal for an easy visa regime in Afro-Asian countries so that the businessmen could travel freely and establish contacts with their counterparts.

The Indian prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh also made a fervent appeal for a liberal visa system so that the best talents of these countries could move easily and be available to the Asian and African states. The Jakarta summit took place at a time when the World Bank says that the developing countries’ growth is the fastest in the year 2004 in three decades. The South Asian region including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh recorded a growth of 6.6 per cent in 2004. At the same time global economic growth was only 3.8 per cent last year. All developing regions grew faster in 2004 than their average rate in the last decade.

Pakistan has to sustain this happy process with an eight per cent growth indicated for fiscal year 2005 and accelerate that during the next five years so that its higher growth level is consolidated by 2010. That would need political stability as well.

Appreciable though the growth rate in the developing countries as a whole is, they have now to hold down population growth wherever it occurs. Bangladesh in the region is a good model to follow as it has reduced its population growth to 1.6 per cent per year without compulsion and with providing employment opportunities to women. The gulf between total production and the basic needs of the people is large in many developing countries. And the added population pressure can only make it far worse and increase the number of people living below the poverty line.

The oil producing states of Asia and Africa have also to help resolve the problems of the developing countries when they raise oil prices. They may think they are hurting the rich West led by the US when they raise oil prices very high. Instead they hurt the developing countries far more. The latter have to find the foreign exchange to buy oil at enhanced prices and when they convert that into the highly devalued local currency and add a tax too to that, that becomes too expensive. Developing countries then suffer from both imported inflation and indigenous inflation which makes life unbearable for the poor.

The Indian premier told the conference that while Asia and Africa were major producers of energy and consumers, the framework within which the two continents produced and consumed energy was determined elsewhere. He meant the US and the West. “We must address this anomaly,” he said and added that new and renewable sources of energy could provide a more secure energy environment. Dr. Singh regretted that South-South linkages had weakened when they were most required. “India sees South-South cooperation as an effective cooperative approach to meet the challenge of development. We are committed to that objective.

The Jakarta conference asked its participants to accelerate mutual trade and investment. When there is the European Union in the West and the North American Free Trade Area in the other hemisphere, there is nothing corresponding to that in Asia and Africa, except the Asean of ten states. Of course, the 106 states of Asia and Africa cannot form one trade bloc. It has to be split into regions. The question is: do these countries have the will to make the mutual and regional economic cooperation a success? If it has not been there, will they generate that spirit and sustain it despite initial setbacks?

The leaders accept that they have to settle disputes between their countries peacefully unlike in 1962 when they allowed the Sino-Indian war disrupt the Bandung spirit and undermine the Asian unity.

Unlike the leaders who attended the original Bandung conference with their high ideals and lofty principles eloquently expressed, those who attended the present Jakarta summit are realists and concede that principles alone cannot achieve great results. Hence they have declared that the collective development has to come through collective action. Will such concentrated and sustained efforts come forth now to achieve the lofty Jakarta goals?

The Jakarta Declaration says that history will judge them by their performance and not by their words. Globalisation presents a major and immediate challenge to them. Will they radicalise their means and methods of production, beginning with a new and realistic look at their economies and the scope for working together with their neighbours and other countries in the region?

The leaders will have the opportunity to review the extent of their cooperation every two years at the foreign secretaries meeting. The top leaders will meet every four years. The next summit will be held in South Africa in 2009.

A new strategic partnership is something far more than what has been happening in the areas of economic cooperation among Asian and African states. In what some of them referred to as the new global village, will they rise to the challenges of the present times? In an economy marked for the survival of the fittest will they reduce their cost of production in all sectors of the economy and increase the productivity of the workers? Will they get better return for the money invested and achieve real export-efficiency? Will the governments make the best use of their private sector and enable it realise its full potential?

Will the governments reduce their cost of administration and ensure good governance which is essential to get the best out of the economy? Will they avoid needless political tensions and armed conflicts?

The Indian premier says “we are moving away from dependence to inter-dependence and we have to make a success of that. Conscious and sustained efforts will have to be made as otherwise the gulf between the East and West will widen and relative poverty in Asia and Africa will increase.

THE people fighting the new wind farm in Cumbria have cheated and exaggerated. They appear to possess little understanding of the dangers of global warming. They are supported by an unsavoury coalition of nuclear-power lobbyists and climate-change deniers. But it would still be wrong to dismiss them.

The Whinash project on the edge of the Lake District national park in Britain will, if it goes ahead, be Europe’s biggest onshore wind farm, producing, according to the developers, enough electricity for 47,000 homes. Without schemes like this, there is no chance of meeting the government’s target of a 20 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2010.

Onshore wind turbines are currently the cheapest means of producing new power without fossil fuels, but at the moment they account for just 0.32 per cent of our electricity. Faced with the global emergency of climate change, it would be criminally irresponsible not to build more. The public inquiry that will decide if the Whinash farm should go ahead, and help to determine the future of energy policy, began last week.

Last year the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the No Whinash Wind Farm campaign had exaggerated the size and number of the turbines, and the impact they would have on tourism and house prices. Among those supporting the exaggerators are the organisation Country Guardians and the former environmentalist David Bellamy.

Country Guardians was co-founded by Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary and a consultant to the nuclear industry. Bellamy is the country’s foremost climate-change denier. (He was at it again last week, claiming in a letter to New Scientist that the World Glacier Monitoring Service says 89% of the world’s glaciers are growing. Its most recent report shows that 82 of the 88 surveyed in 2003 are shrinking.)

But we should try not to judge a cause by its supporters. There are several things that make me uncomfortable about wind energy and the way in which it is being promoted.

Wind farms, while necessary, are a classic example of what environmentalists call an “end-of-the-pipe solution”. Instead of tackling the problem - our massive demand for energy - at source, they provide less damaging means of accommodating it. Or part of it. The Whinash project, by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emission by 178,000 tonnes a year.

This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate-change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. One daily connection between Britain and Florida costs three giant wind farms.

Alternative technology permits us to imagine that we can build our way out of trouble. By responding to one form of overdevelopment with another, we can, we believe, continue to expand our total energy demands without destroying the planetary systems required to sustain human life. This might, for a while, be true. But it would soon require the use of the entire land surface of the UK.

Consider, for example, the claims for hydrogen fuel cells. Their proponents believe that this country’s vehicles could all one day be run on hydrogen produced by electricity from wind power. I am not sure if they have any idea what this involves. I haven’t been able to find figures for the UK, but a rough estimate for the US suggests that the same transformation would require a doubling of the capacity of the national grid.

If the ratio were the same here, that would mean a 600-fold increase in wind generation, just to keep our wheels turning. If we were to seek to compensate for the emissions produced elsewhere, there is no end to it. The government envisages a rise in British aircraft passengers from 180 million to 476 million over the next 25 years. That means a contribution to global warming that is equivalent to the carbon savings of 1,094 Whinash farms.

In other words, there is no sustainable way of meeting current projections for energy demand. The only strategy in any way compatible with environmentalism is one led by a vast reduction in total use. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, who support the new wind farm, make this point repeatedly, but it falls on deaf ears.

What is acceptable to the market, and therefore to the government, is an enhanced set of opportunities for capital, in the form of new kinds of energy generation. What is not acceptable is a reduced set of opportunities for capital, in the form of massively curtailed total energy production. It is not their fault, but however clearly the green groups articulate their priorities, what the government hears is “more wind farms”, rather than “fewer flights”.

I would like to see the green NGOs publish a statement about where this kind of development should stop. At what point will they say that too many wind farms are being built, and ask the government to call a halt? At what point does the switch to the decentralised, micro-generation projects they envisage take place?

I would also feel happier if environmentalists dropped the pretence that wind farms are beautiful. They are merely less ugly and less destructive than most alternatives. They are a lot less ugly than climate change, which threatens to wreck the habitats anti-wind farm campaigners are so keen to preserve. We have to build them, but it would be more honest to recognise that they are a necessary evil.

But these are not the only ways in which environmentalists’ support for wind farms makes me squirm. The joint statement about the Whinash project published by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth complains that “opponents of the scheme, which would be sited beside the M6 motorway, have claimed that the wind turbines will spoil the views, failing to acknowledge that the presence of a motorway has degraded the landscape”.

It quotes Friends of the Earth’s energy campaigner Jill Perry, who says: “I’m amazed that people are claiming that the area should be designated a national park. What kind of national park has a motorway running through it?” Well the New Forest and South Downs national parks, for a start. Their creation was supported by Friends of the Earth.

Elsewhere, these groups oppose the “infill” around new roads. Elsewhere, they argue that landscapes and ecosystems should be viewed holistically: that they do not stop, in other words, at an arbitrary line on the map, like the boundary of a national park. I understand that green campaigners are placed in an uncomfortable position when arguing for development rather than against it. But I do not understand why they have to sound like Wal-Mart as soon as the boot is on the other foot.

I believe the Whinash wind farm should be built. But I also believe that those who defend it should be a good deal more sensitive towards local objectors. Why? Because in any other circumstances they would find themselves fighting on the same side.—Dawn/Guardian Service

DEAD being monarchs are servants to history. During their lifetime their wishes may become commands, but once they are dead, their personal preferences are interred with them.

Pope John Paul II, who died recently, had expressed the wish it seems to be buried in his homeland — Poland — but left the final decision to his cardinals. They decreed otherwise, and had him buried instead within the vault of St Peter’s Basilica, to become part of the foundation — like St Peter himself — upon which the Roman Catholic Church stands.

Cannily, though, Pope John Paul II indicated no preference as to who should succeed him, leaving it to the College of Cardinals to elect the next pope. And the man they have selected is the person instrumental in their own appointments — their long-serving Dean, the German Cardinal Ratzinger, a man close to the late Pope for so many years that the faithful would have understood had he adopted as his papal name John Paul III, instead of his declared choice of Benedict XVI.

Television coverage of the death of the 264th pope and the subsequent election a week later of his successor enabled millions of Catholics across the globe, from South America to Polynesia — and non-Catholics alike to watch the majestic rituals that one would have thought should have been perfected by now.

Yet the very mechanism of election — a secret conclave, conducted within the sealed Sistine Chapel — seemed in its operation while quaint and archaic, yet oddly disturbing. It was as if the crimson-robed princes of the church could be trusted to elect their leader but that trust fell short of maintaining secrecy about their final decision.

Similarly, the announcement of that decision — by burning the ballot papers and letting the smoke spew through the antiquated chimney above the Sistine Chapel — seemed to cause more confusion than it resolved. Three voided ballots produced definitive black smoke, but the fourth began with a limp grey that implied collegiate indecision. The smoke continued to alternate between dull grey and off-white until the massive bells of St Peter’s tolled to presage the formal announcement: Habemus Papem (We have a Pope).

During these same days, an event, modest by comparison yet equally portentous in itself, occurred in the subcontinent. A small puff of smoke, emitted by a bus on April 7 as it left Srinagar on its historic journey to Muzaffarabad, signalled a message to waiting millions of Indians, Pakistanis, Kashmiris and to viewers throughout the world: Habemus Pacem / We have peace. Or at least the prospect of it.

Political pundits will undoubtedly contrast the level of the send-off on the Indian side — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress party head Mrs Sonia Gandhi — with the absence of representation on the Pakistan side. Neither President Musharraf nor Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, for example, was present to receive the bus. But then, they should look at history. General Musharraf had precedent on his side — as COAS, he had not gone to Wagah border in 1999 to receive the bus containing Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

This, though, would be to give superficial form more importance than the substantive part of it. In the eyes of many, these two historic journeys — Vajpayee’s bus yatra and the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service — are enormously significant for, like the election of the pope, they herald a new era. They assert in their boldness a revival of faith — faith in reason, in humanism and in the ultimate sterility of nuclear weapons.

It is ironical that it required both India and Pakistan to go nuclear before they were prepared to admit peace as the final solution. And it is a telling insight into the mindset of these two nations that they felt more comfortable using the British colonial residue of public buses and village green cricket as catalysts of change.

Some journeys are measured by the distance they cover, others by the impact they have on history; for example, the journey that began in 1955 in Montgomery (Alabama) when Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat to a white passenger, and has today, fifty years later, reached Washington, and the Office of the Secretary of State.

By local standards, the most significant of such journeys must be the one travelled by President General Musharraf in his dealings with India. It has taken him from GHQ in Islamabad to New Delhi via Lahore, Kargil, and Agra. No Pakistani leader has ever taken such a circuitous route before, but then none has had to. Their approach towards India has always been linear; they either advanced or retreated.

More so than any of his predecessors, President General Musharraf has followed the contours of the varying terrain of Indo-Pak relations. He took the high road at Agra and now, after his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on April 17, he has opted to follow the lower one of enlightened pragmatism. His critics would like to believe that he has other choices. His supporters know that he has none, for pragmatism, however enlightened, is never a policy. It is a genuflection to the realities of a situation. With its new-found clout, India can and will continue to call the shots, and it would be an unwise president of Pakistan — even though he may also be its army chief — to respond in kind. It is perhaps pertinent to recall that before leaving for Agra and immediately after his empty-handed return, General Musharraf was shown consulting his conclave of corps commanders. Since then, many have been retried and their replacements chosen personally by him. Like the former Cardinal Ratzinger, he is no longer primus inter pares amongst them but their unquestioned Pope, enjoying all the infallibility such pre-eminence commands.

Like the Pope who is temporal head of the state of the Holy See and Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Pervez Musharraf also has two roles, as president and army chief. The significant difference is that General Musharraf has more divisions than the Pope, and for the Indians that constitutes the material difference between him and any other Pakistani leader.

The Indian government is negotiating with Musharraf on the assumption that only he can deliver on Jammu and Kashmir and other matters, for only he has the stature (albeit self-elevated) to dare doing what elected politicians like the Bhuttos and Nawaz Sharif attempted to consummate had Musharraf’s other constituency allowed it.

Those committed to the improvement of relations between India and Pakistan have watched the recent contacts between the peoples of both countries, anointed now at the highest level, with relief. They welcome these as auguries of change, especially when these overdue changes are described by him as ‘irreversible’.

Power may have come to Musharraf through the barrel of a gun, but the puff of white smoke that emanates from the exhaust of a public transport bus is infinitely more welcome than the darker smoke of a spent cartridge. Habemus pacem, spero.