Projecting an image of peace

ISLAMABAD: The government’s sudden decision to go public with its desire to establish links with Israel has understandably caused surprise, even some misgivings. This is not only a highly controversial but an explosive political issue both domestically and internationally.

Palestinians and the Muslim world generally regard the state of Israel, set up after the Second World War, as an “illegitimate child” of Europe and America which has grown unrecognizably in size since its birth in 1948.

Comments and critical statements have appeared in the media on the subject. The move has been almost roundly condemned from the platform of the orthodox Islamic parties and groups. The government and its spokesmen have been at pains to emphasize that the September 1 meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel, with the Turkish government playing host and intermediary, has not changed Pakistan’s long-standing position not to extend recognition to Israel or establish diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv. But the official pronouncements have done little to lessen the resentment caused in a large segment of Muslims, who regard the non-recognition of Israel as a principle of ideology.

It is perhaps too early to predict how things will move in the effort to strike out on an entirely new and bold foreign policy approach in regard to Islamabad-Israel links. But it is valid to ask why (in contrast to the back-channel diplomacy that had been going on for some time) it has become necessary for Pakistan to go public on the ministerial-level contact with Israel at this point of time when the government is already involved in more than half a dozen critical, vital and controversial issues — including the constitutional validity of President Musharraf holding the two top military and civil offices simultaneously.

Islamabad is also currently engaged in the war on terrorism, in mending fences with India, in coping with the fallout from the US invasion of Iraq, and a law and order situation throughout the country, particularly in parts of the north-west to crush armed tribesmen accused of harbouring foreign enemy terrorists and spies.

The government is apparently reluctant to discuss the issue of links with Israel at least for the present, and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri admitted on a private television network recently his inability to share any further details pertaining to the issue beyond what had been officially stated. One might guess, though, that one important reason for opening an official channel could be Pakistan’s serious security concerns over the growing India-Israel military strategic ties, with exchanges at the defence level, and over the massive supply of sophisticated and state-of-art Israeli military equipment to New Delhi.

The other possible reason could be Gen Musharraf’s concern about the proposed 2007 general elections and the survival of his diarchic rule. He has retained a tight grip over both his offices with the support of the army, the bureaucracy, pliable political groups and influential interests from the feudal and industrial classes and tribal chieftains.

Gen Musharraf recognizes that for the sake of creating international acceptability as an elected democratic leader post-2007, he must look far ahead. He also plans to address later this month in New York the American Jewish Congress, whose avowed object is to bring about peace and harmony among different faiths.

It has been a common practice with Gen Musharraf during his foreign sojourns to address as many different audiences as possible, and in such encounters he is able to quite often charm his listeners with his bold ideas and formulations. He alone can be his own best salesman. No wonder, President George W. Bush is fond of him and keeps in regular telephonic touch with him, particularly when the international situation becomes hot anywhere — Baghdad, the Middle East, Afghanistan or South Asia.

Even with regard to the Indo-Pakistan composite dialogue, the energetic general and the mild-mannered, scholarly Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, have been able to keep alive the interest of both their governments in “discovering” peaceful ways of living with the seemingly insoluble Kashmir dispute.

In this context, Gen Musharraf might think that the opening to Israel - that should please the powerful Jewish lobby in the US — will reinforce his image internationally as a man interested in resolving crises.

Musharraf’s Israeli overture

PRESIDENT Gen Pervez Musharraf’s dramatic peace overture to Israel should ensure his place internationally as a man of peace. His surprise move, a thinking tactician’s principal asset, also places him above his forbears who failed both in ensuring a durable peace and winning a war mainly of their own choosing.

In Pakistan only the man who can make war is the one who can make peace. Amongst Musharraf’s predecessors, ‘Field Marshal’ Ayub Khan waged a winnable war (1965) which he did not win. General Yahya Khan invited a war that he could have easily avoided with just a hit of strategic vision, which he woefully lacked.

General Zia-ul-Haq virtually folded up the endemic eastern front to engage himself in a proxy war along his western front and got himself hopelessly involved in that. Like Iran, he could have waded through the course of the Soviet Afghan war without saddling the country with the patently risky and eventually unrewarding role of a front-line state.

It was one thing to yield the Afghan mujahideen and their arms the right of rapid transit through Pakistan; quite another to meddle in their highly fractious and bitter in-fighting. Iran was wiser and more pragmatic in that it played host both to the Afghan mujahideen and the refugees without getting itself embroiled in their messy ethno- sectarian disputations or their largely personality-driven ‘jihad.’

Gen Zia basked in the high noon of the Soviet-Afghan war until the Geneva Accords concluded in April 1988 and underwritten by the US and the USSR as international guarantors. Pakistan rubber-stamped the accords much against the wishes of Zia-ul-Haq. Barely a week before Geneva, the Ojhri Camp disaster took place to destroy tons of ammunition dumped there mainly for use by the mujahideen. Then onward, Gen Zia tumbled through one political crisis to another until his death in a mysterious air crash in August of the same year.

Gen Musharraf appears to have learnt his lesson from the fate of his predecessors and their fall from absolute power to its irretrievable loss. His journey from Kargil’s grim finale to the seizure of power and since then has been one of trial-and error, challenge and response — from his ‘lay off’ challenge to India to his warm handshake with a reluctant Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Kathmandu in January 2003 followed by the great leap forward to the Islamabad Declaration of January 4, 2004. The initiation of the composite dialogue process marked a decisive turning point in this odyssey of peace.

His latest initiative vis-a-vis Israel — a pariah in national vocabulary and idiom — though still embryonic, conceptual rather than conceived, may still be seen as a quantum leap in international relations. Perhaps the imprint on the Pakistan passport ‘Valid for all countries of the world except Israel’ may well become redundant in the future if not any time soon.

Pakistan will be better placed and qualified now to play a more positive role to help resolve the Arab-Israeli imbroglio as a party recognized by both. Since the Istanbul encounter between the two foreign ministers — Silvan Sahlom of Israel and Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri of Pakistan — was facilitated by Turkey, the development would also mean still friendlier and maturer relations with Turkey.

By his Israeli overture, Gen Musharraf has also set a course for the OIC to follow and consider the desirability of ‘engaging’ Israel instead of leaving it alone as a pariah in the Arab Middle East. Three Arab States, Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, and Turkey have already established normal diplomatic relations with Israel. Why not be there if only to ‘engage’ it for a start? Pakistan, the general says means to play a positive role for the resolution of the Palestinian dispute “based on justice and equality”. He has stressed that there is ‘no change’ in Pakistan’s position towards recognition of Israel.

Even as he took over as chief executive, Gen Musharraf had said he was no Ayub, Yahya or Zia. Depending on the progress and success of his peace initiative, history should vindicate his statement.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.