Use and abuse of history

IF time is a mighty river, then the past, present and future are vistas of the same inexorable flow of history. Nations have a collective memory that continues to shape their attitudes and ambitions. When they are as intertwined as Pakistan and Afghanistan, the element of historical determinism is even more pronounced.

History is a shared garden the fragrance of which permeates the soul of both the people; it is also a prison of unfulfilled desires and projects. Apart from conscious memory, there is a subliminal undercurrent that influences events. It has been the source of an almost inescapable ambivalence in Pak-Afghan relations during the last 58 years.

In recent contributions to this space, I have dwelt at some length on the implications of a certain tension that has crept into this vital relationship. One noted with regret that a minor crisis revived negative images of a bygone era. This was particularly noticeable on our state-controlled media where presenters suddenly remembered that Afghanistan was the only country in the world to vote against Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations.

An objective study of history would apportion blame equitably and thus rule out a self-righteous posture on either side. Mature nations do not run away from a candid encounter with history. A.R. Siddiqui’s thought-provoking appraisal of Pakistan-Afghanistan ties (April 7) was a welcome reminder of this need. My own long association with Afghanistan and the so-called “Afghan problem” makes me go one step further and suggest that it was never a simple story of “fraternal advances from Pakistan and a deliberate standoffishness, if not, exactly, hostility from the other side.”

The following four factors stand out in an honest retrospect of our bilateral history: Afghan irredentism, the colonial mindset of Pakistani decision-makers in dealing with Afghanistan during the early post-independence years, Pakistan’s membership of anti-Soviet military pacts that resulted in Moscow’s support for Afghan irredentism and, finally, Pakistan arrogating to itself the prerogative of determining Afghan destiny after the Soviet withdrawal. It is time to come to terms with this legacy so that it does not distort future relations.

The ebb and flow of Afghan irredentism depended upon a number of factors such as Afghanistan’s assessment of the internal situation in Pakistan, the state of relations of the two countries with other outside powers especially India, Russia and the United States, and the Afghan need to play the Pakistan card for domestic advantage. At a crucial point, the influence of Iran and the oil-rich Arab states also modulated strident demands from Kabul. The history of this complex interaction has become relevant again because of the growing disorder in the tribal areas of Pakistan and its Balochistan province. There is also the factor of a superpower reordering the politics of the region.

The first concrete resurrection of the irredentist dream took place in the 1940s when the Afghans started to make definite moves as India galloped towards independence. In November 1944, they made the first representation to London that in case India won freedom, they should receive an assurance that the people inhabiting the frontier areas, lost to the British in the 19th century, would either become independent or return to Afghanistan.

Significantly, another representation made more or less at the same time, also sought a corridor to the sea passing through Balochistan which would end the landlocked situation of Afghanistan. The partition plan of June 3, 1947, brought about intensification of Afghan diplomacy to secure the objectives set out in the representation of November 1944. On June 13 and again on July 10, 1947, Afghanistan formally demanded that the options of the people living between the Durand Line and the River Indus be enlarged so as to include their total independence or their return to Afghanistan.

Pakistan entered into a dialogue with Afghanistan as early as November 1947. In Karachi, Sardar Najibullah Khan demanded the establishment of a “free sovereign province in the tribal areas inhabited by Pathans and Afghans, free access to the sea either in the form of an Afghan corridor through west Balochistan or by the creation of a free Afghan zone in Karachi.”

In June/July 1949, the Afghan national assembly passed a resolution repudiating all treaties, conventions and agreements signed between Afghanistan and the British government. The same assembly also resolved not to accept the Durand line as the international frontier between the two countries. In August 1949, Kabul began open sponsorship of the so called Pakhtunistan assemblies on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line. The Afghan perception was that the geopolitical situation was fluid and liable to changes.

In the mid-1950s, Pakistan’s adversarial relations with the Soviet Union became an important factor in the Afghan attitude. Bulganin and Khrushchev visited Kabul in December 1955 and openly declared that the Soviet Union “sympathised with Afghanistan’s policy on the Pakhtunistan issue”. It was a fateful year in which Pakistan and Afghanistan withdrew their ambassadors from their respective posts after the attacks on Pakistani consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar and the flag incident in Kabul. Khrushchev reiterated public support for Afghanistan while visiting Kabul on March 2, 1960. It should be recalled that diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan were restored in May 1960 through the mediation of the Shah of Iran.

Daoud’s coup of July 1973 precipitated another adverse phase in Pak-Afghan relations. As Daoud contemplated Pakistan’s situation in 1972, it might well have occurred to him that it presented an opportunity to assert Afghan interest in the trans-Indus territories of Pakistan. Defeated squarely by India in the eastern wing and haunted in the west by the spectre of a domino effect, Pakistan must have looked fragile.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s successful diplomacy in the region made it difficult for Daoud to sustain his aggressive posture. He was in dire need of external assistance but quickly discovered that Iran and the Arab states expected a rapprochement with Pakistan. In October 1974, during Bhutto’s visit to Moscow, Kosygin publicly expressed the hope for the “speediest settlement of difference that still clouded relations between Pakistan and our friendly neighbour, Afghanistan.” This formulation indicated substantial moderation in Moscow’s stance. By the end of 1974, a clear possibility for a meaningful Pak-Afghan dialogue had emerged.

Bhutto’s diplomatic gains were partly negated by his political problems in the trans-Indus provinces. He had hoped that draconian measures against non-PPP governments there would be balanced by a proactive policy of opening up tribal lands. In fact, measures designed to generate economic and social development were expected to exert pressure on Afghanistan itself

India had not followed up its military triumph in East Pakistan with an assault on West Pakistan and the Simla agreement had restored a minimum normalcy to bilateral relations. India had not, however, resisted the temptation of taking advantage of Sardar Daoud’s renewed Pakhtunistan offensive and Bhutto’s troubles in the trans-Indus provinces.

By the end of 1973, a team of Indian military specialists was training saboteurs in Afghanistan to blow up bridges, culverts, buses and communication lines in Pakistan. I remember discussing its implications for Pakistan-Afghanistan relations with influential kinsmen of Daoud; the two nations ran the risk of a retaliatory spiral. My friend, the late Professor Louis Dupree, was an accidental witness to the counter-stroke that came in the form of an uprising in Panjsher on the night between July 21-22, 1975. He had found that the Panjsher insurgents were almost entirely Panjsheri Tajiks linked to religious parties — the Afghan version of the Ikhwan and probably trained in Pakistan. They failed to trigger off a general revolt against Daoud but played an important part in persuading him to seek reconciliation with Pakistan.

Bhutto was at his best when he visited Kabul and talked to Daoud alone twice between June 7-11. He understood that Daoud could not immediately announce acceptance of the Durand Line. Bhutto persuaded the Afghan sardar to locate bilateral relations in a framework of the basic concepts of the non-aligned movement. Daoud would, over a period of several months, endorse inviolability of existing borders while Bhutto would wind down the tussle with the “leaders of the Pushtun and Baloch people.” If Daoud was not able to convene a Loya Jirga to sanctify a new Panjshila-based border with Pakistan, the fault largely lay with Bhutto’s failure to accelerate the dismantling of the Hyderabad tribunal against the NAP leaders.

The story of the Marxist coup that eventually led to Soviet intervention and the Afghan jihad is fresh in our memory. I do not wish to repeat what I have been writing in this column and, in any case, A.R. Siddiqui has just provided an illuminating comment on our role in these events. What is more important is to point out the re-emergence of factors that affect the Afghan optics about Pakistan.

Some of these factors deserve special emphasis. We have once again plunged the tribal areas and Balochistan into turmoil. The delicate nature of the situation in these territories will never go unnoticed in Afghanistan. Secondly, the unrest there invariably creates a temptation for hard-liners in New Delhi to exploit Pakistan’s difficulties. Third, Kabul’s renewed engagement with a superpower — the agenda of which is not at all clear — shifts the goal post vis-a-vis Pakistan. Fourth, the growing instability in Afghanistan will once again exacerbate misgivings about Pakistan’s intentions.

One vivid lesson of history is that periods of uncertainty demand direct intervention by the highest leadership of both the states. I know it from personal experience that in 1976 late Mr Bhutto had realized that tension in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations tended to become a vested interest for certain elements on both sides of the Durand Line and that he had resolved to transcend it. Once again, it is a matter fit for the direct engagement of Pakistan’s top leaders. We need to reach an understanding with Kabul not only about the present exigencies but also about the framework of long-term relations. Afghanistan is not in a position to make any dramatic gestures but that should not be a barrier to the identification of ultimate objectives and the adoption of a grand design for political and economic collaboration for decades to come.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Balochistan: how will it all end?

MANY foreigners got their first introduction to the rugged blue Baloch hills in the 1956 film “Zarak” which was supposed to be based on the life of Zarak Khan, a strapping, handsome youth of the Harrenzai tribe, who fell, rather inconveniently, for one of his father’s wives.

He was a sworn enemy of the British, particularly a Major Ingram, who hunted him at every nook and corner, and eventually after recognising his exceptional courage and talents recruited him in 1942 for the cause of King and Empire. Zarak Khan embodied all the qualities usually associated with the Baloch - derring-do, a sense of honour and a fierce nationalism.

In 1950, Victor Mature as the biblical Samson managed to kill a hundred thousand Philistines in the space of 10 minutes through the adroit use of the basic laws of physics when he knocked down the two pillars on which their temple rested. He was the obvious choice to play Zarak Khan and was done up like an early bin Laden on a bad day. Unfortunately, there was no mention in the film of the epitaph which a British soldier scribbled on the Baluch warrior’s grave after the Japanese had captured him and flayed him alive in the jungles of Burma. ‘No greater love hath any man than that he lay down his life for his enemies.’

Apparently the tradition of laying down one’s life for a cause has been carrying on in Pakistan’s western province for as long as one cares to remember, and it is, in fact, this fierce nationalism, over the years, that had gotten the Baloch nationalists Khair Bux Marri, Ataullah Mengal, the late Ghaus Bux Bizenjo and the inveterate Akbar Bugti into trouble with almost every administration since independence.

At times one is tempted not to include Akbar Bugti’s name in the quartet that struggled long and hard for provincial rights as he once served as an agent of the federal government when he was appointed governor of Balochistan by the late Mr Bhutto, and held that position throughout the time of the insurgency without uttering a word in favour of either Baloch rights or provincial autonomy.

With the passage of time, however, the issue has become complicated, especially after Akbar Bugti is increasingly being regarded by the media as one of the more important spokesmen of the Baloch people, and has recently started to portray himself as the great and patriotic Baloch nationalist fighting for the rights of his province - rather than for his tribe. To illustrate his point phrases like ‘gas royalties’, ‘provincial autonomy’, ‘the rights of the Baloch people’ and ‘constitutional rights’ have crept into his demands. The centre, irrespective of who was heading the pecking order, never quite saw things the same way.

In fact, the governments of the two previous civilian prime ministers, as well as the current government of the military strong man, were convinced that while Akbar Bugti was wresting money from Islamabad, presumably for the welfare and development of the Bugti tribesmen who work the gas plants that supply precious fuel to large parts of the Punjab, most of the largesse was siphoned off by him for his private use.

They also believe that every time negotiations on the size of the endowment got bogged down, and it looked like the icing was going to be scraped off the cake, he would prod his fiercely loyal tribesmen to rocket the pipelines. It was when the attacks became more frequent and menacing that the Pakistan army was called in to quash the few scattered armed bands operating under tribal command.

The federal government has not only sent in the troops to safeguard what are regarded as national treasures. It has tried to endorse and legitimise its action by spouting an assortment of phrases basically economic in nature. Balochistan is the backwater of Pakistan and there’s a crying need to open up the province for economic and political development, is the one most often heard. The evil and exploitative tribal system where tribal leaders enslave tribesmen, particularly women, inhibit progress and perpetuate a repressive culture that has existed for centuries is another. But as the student of history tells us, this is nothing new.

Thirty years ago, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was obsessed by what he thought was a conspiracy to Balkanise the country added another dimension to the tension that already existed between this unfortunate province and the centre when he included the treasonable charge of separatism. He dismissed the Balochistan government in February 1973, after police had discovered an Iraqi diplomat with a large quantity of arms which were allegedly meant for the Baloch nationalists.

After most of the Baloch leaders had been imprisoned, the nationalist movement was taken over by the second rank of Baloch leadership, mostly students and members of the middle class, who launched a guerrilla war with Marxist overtones. The Baloch Peoples’ Liberation Front and the Baloch Students’ Organization mobilised a sizable force of militants. But the Pakistan army deployed an exceptionally large force in the province, and received the support of the Shah of Iran who, it was widely believed at the time, feared that some of his citizens of Baloch origin might also entertain separatist ideas of their own and form a fifth column. Though statistics are often questionable a researcher pointed out that in the period between 1973 and 1977 around 5,300 Balochs and 3,300 soldiers lost their lives. What a tragic loss of manpower. By the time the shooting stopped in 1977, separatist feeling greatly intensified. The use of superior fire-power by the Pakistani and Iranian forces left a legacy of bitter and enduring hatred. And the indiscriminate air attacks on Baloch villages, reminded some of the senior citizens of Quetta and Zhob of the time when Freddie Young used the RAF to flush out Syed Sibghatullah Shah, father of the current Pir of Pagaro.

The struggle of the Baloch has a long and torturous history which the late Iqbal Burney tried to document but unfortunately never completed. While the struggle had its ups and downs it took a definite, militant shape after Ayub Khan introduced One Unit in the 1960s. The spotlight fell on Sher Mohammad Marri, a tribal leader, who protested against what he referred to as the usurpation of ‘provincial rights’, and fled to the hills along with a band of loyal tribesmen from where he conducted a Castro-like operation against the Pakistani army. The seeds of Baloch provincial awakening gave rise to Baloch nationalism in the aftermath of the 1970 national elections, the eruption of Bengali separatism and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

The Baloch stand is that they are not fighting for independence but for regional autonomy ‘within a radically restructured, confederated Pakistani constitutional framework.’ But their demands continue to fall on deaf ears. One sympathises with their plight and wishes there would be an end to the standoff, that cooler heads would meet across the table and begin a new chapter in a province that does not deserve to be treated like a pariah.

Nobody applauds when soldiers start killing their own people, whatever the motive. But the tribesmen simply have to stop damaging institutions which belong to the nation. Public sympathy, though somewhat muted, is certainly with the Baloch people. It would become more vociferous if the destiny of the province was in the hands of the progressive middle class which is concerned about issues like education, the creation of jobs and the development of utilities, instead of a clutch of reactionary, retrogressive waderas who are against anything that smacks of liberalism and cling to the belief that the present system should be perpetuated at all costs. How it will all end is anybody’s guess.

The IMF has lost its way

HERE’S a big idea for the next US treasury secretary: Reform the International Monetary Fund so that it can help the world balance its chequebook — reducing America’s deficits and Asia’s surpluses — before there’s a financial crisis that hits everyone from Beijing to Boston.

The leaks and rumours are flying that Treasury Secretary John Snow is on his way out. But replacing the incumbent won’t accomplish much if his successor doesn’t have a strategy for reducing America’s nearly trillion-dollar trade deficit and its counterpart, the huge trade surpluses in Asia.

Economists have been arguing about which is the chicken and which the egg — a “savings glut” abroad or a spending binge in the United States — but the real point is that these imbalances are inherently unstable. America is buying the rest of the world’s products only by writing IOUs on our future. At some point the rest of the world will stop taking our cheap paper.

A starting point for thinking about these global financial issues is a speech given Feb. 20 by Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England and, with the departure of Alan Greenspan at the Fed, probably the world’s most respected central banker. King argued that the IMF today is an institution without a clear mission. “If not in a deep slumber, then the Fund has appeared drowsy. It is an institution, it is said, which has lost its way.”

The IMF’s disorientation is in part a result of globalisation’s success in creating a largely self-regulating system. Under the old Bretton Woods regime and its fixed exchange rates, the IMF’s job was to act as financial cop — imposing austerity measures in exchange for its assistance to countries that consumed more than they produced and ran trade deficits. Back when the IMF was young, the dominant surplus country was the United States, and it could insist that deficit countries make any necessary adjustments. When postwar Britain, say, went into deficit, the IMF could demand policy changes to raise unemployment and suppress consumer demand until balance was restored.

The old financial architecture collapsed during America’s last big unfunded war, in Vietnam. When the United States abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the rigid backbone of the system disappeared. It was replaced by flexible exchange rates, which usually allowed gradual adjustment of imbalances. A country that was importing more than it was exporting would suffer a decline in its exchange rate. Domestic demand for more expensive imports would drop, and foreign demand for cheaper exports would rise, until the deficit was erased. In this self-balancing world, the IMF’s main role was lending money to profligate countries that fell into chronic deficit.

The problem with this new system can be summed up in two words: America and China. The United States began running very large trade deficits, while China began accumulating very large surpluses. Some analysts argued that this is an unwritten “Bretton Woods II” deal to encourage export-led growth in China. But it lacks the usual self-balancing mechanisms. Since the deficit country (America) maintains the world’s reserve currency, and the surplus country (China) is willing to hold these dollars, the usual debtor-creditor pressure doesn’t exist. The imbalances have gotten larger and larger — and analysts fret that the adjustment, when it finally comes, will bust the world financial system like a broken piggy bank.

King’s speech set off a lively discussion of how a revitalized IMF might take the lead in organizing a global effort to reduce these imbalances before they reach a crash point. Lawrence Summers joined the debate last month with a speech that showed why he remains one of the world’s best economists, even as he prepares to depart as Harvard’s president. His address forcefully explains why the current situation, in which the world’s most powerful economy funds its huge deficits by sucking in the world’s savings, “cannot go on forever.”

King argues that the IMF, as a neutral convener, could bring all the financial parties to the table and coordinate a gradual adjustment process. It could encourage European nations to stimulate their domestic economies; it could press China to raise exchange rates and make domestic demand its growth engine, rather than continuing the export binge that has triggered a protectionist reaction in America and Europe; and, perhaps most important, it could foster a gradual increase in U.S. savings and a corresponding reduction in U.S. demand for imports — so that the towering American deficit shrinks gradually, rather than toppling in a cataclysm.

America is still the leader of the global financial system, but it hasn’t been acting like one. Now is the time for the Bush administration to help create a new IMF that can repair the international structure before the hurricane hits.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

A wing and a prayer

THE decomposing body of the swan washed in and out with the tide in Cellardyke Harbour for several days. After a while, seagulls started to feed off it. Children played on the beach beside it.

On March 29, several days after it was first sighted, it was reported to the authorities, but too late for the now rotten remains to be collected that day. There was a delay for the weekend. By Wednesday, nervousness in government circles was reflected in a meeting of Cobra, the government’s emergency planning arm.

But not until Thursday April 6 was it announced that the bird, a mute swan, was infected with the deadly H5N1 strain. Bird flu had arrived in Britain. It might be the first paragraph of a thriller, with a synopsis proposing hundreds of thousands of deaths, mass graves, a worldwide human and economic catastrophe. But, with luck there is still time to write our own ending.

There is a long backstory to recap. Bird flu has not come upon us like some biblical plague. Its advance has been meticulously tracked along the flight paths of migrating birds from China and south-east Asia across central Asia, skirting the shores of the Black Sea north and south into eastern Europe, fanning out as it went west and north and south too, down into Africa.

In its wake, hundreds of bird carcasses have been found to be contaminated with the virus. It is spreading into domestic poultry flocks. In poorer countries, where farmers and their families live in close proximity with livestock and where hygiene is inadequate, there have been human deaths. There is a little evidence that there has been human-to-human transmission.

The World Health Organisation depicts this as phase three of a potential pandemic. Phase six — pandemic — comes when the virus is sufficiently adapted for “efficient and sustained transmission” between humans.

The Department of Health and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insist their contingency plans are well-prepared. Defra has vetoed mass vaccination of the poultry flock on cost-benefit grounds. But it is prepared for the safe incineration of millions of birds (no more funeral pyres). At the health department, there should be 14.6m doses of Tamiflu available. Delivery of a further 3.5m doses of an untested vaccine is awaited.

Britain’s preparations have impressed the WHO. But this is a global event.

—The Guardian, London