THE postponement of the foreign secretaries’ talks is a major setback to the process of normalisation of relations between Pakistan and India. There should be no mistake about this. It is not merely normalisation at the level of governments that has been dealt a severe blow. At the popular level, there had never been a stronger desire on both sides of the border for peace and friendship.

There was a general welling up of affection and a sharp repudiation of the hatreds of the past. This was best seen at the regular conventions of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace, when many delegates brought their families along to turn the events into some sort of a mass celebration.

Now the old misgivings and suspicions can easily reassert themselves. People who had after long years been converted to the idea that they should and could live in peace, if not actually friendship, with one another can recede into their shells of suspicion or isolation. The Communist Party of India was against the precipitate postponement of the composite dialogue talks, but one of its members who was due to travel to Pakistan decided not to. This is how even committed peaceniks are driven away. It has been a long haul for Pakistani supporters of peace and friendship who were once dubbed as belonging to the Indo-Soviet lobby to get to this stage. It was always a bit of an adventure meeting the Soviet ambassador at journalist Abdulla Malik’s house in Lahore’s Shaukat Hayat Colony or being invited to dinner with the Indian foreign secretary at Viewpoint editor Mr Mazhar Ali Khan’s house in Shah Jamal. The hardliners on both sides must now be gloating. The old, self-defeating game of blaming each other has resurfaced.

India has been hurt by the Mumbai train bombings, of this there can be no doubt, just as it was hurt by the assault on parliament house in New Delhi. There is also no doubt that, as repeatedly reported, training camps for jihadi outfits continue to operate from Pakistani soil and that Syed Salahuddin, based in Azad Kashmir, continues to move about freely in Pakistan. But there is a genuine Kashmir connection that Islamabad cannot be expected to renounce till a satisfactory compromise is worked out. India should have understood this and reacted with some restraint. It is one of the many sad aspects of the India-Pakistan relationship that India has hardly ever done anything that would strengthen the hands of the advocates of peace in Pakistan; it gets easily provoked. On its part, the Pakistani establishment has not yet fully understood that its pinpricks and statements such as the post-Mumbai one by the foreign minister (sill, despite the subsequent clarification) have a habit of recoiling. Pakistan has more to lose than India if ties with India remain hostile. Its fealty to people like Syed Salahuddin, Maulana Azhar and even Dawood Ibrahim should not be carried to a point where it begins to endanger what we all so glibly describe as the “national interest.”

There is a genuine groundswell of public opinion in both countries in favour of a mutually productive working relationship. If there was at one time resistance to the idea of normalisation with India, particularly in Punjab — both on the part of the right wing intelligentsia there and the military, which draws the bulk of its support from that province — it was seen visibly to melt by the time of the Vajpayee bus ride into Lahore in 1999. It was an exciting time even if we had such as unexciting prime minister as Mian Nawaz Sharif. Many young journalists were in the group in Dawn’s Lahore offices watching the live television coverage of Mr Vajpayee’s arrival at Wagah. There was a sense of great hope amongst all the young people. “I would like to be on the next bus to Delhi,” one of them said. The same optimism and warmth were reflected in the reception given for Mr Vajpayee at Governor’s House where the Indian prime minister broke into poetry.

These were precious hopes, and must not be shattered. If peace with India is still opposed, it is only by the so-called ideology-wallahs or the religious parties who have used hostility to India as one of the key components of their politics. How far our military has realised that peace is also necessary for its own continued well-being and prosperity is difficult to say: hawkish generals suddenly become doves on retirement and ardent advocates of peace in print and on the television screens, but the transformation comes after they have already spread their old “bania”-hating gospel among those who succeed them. But sometimes the cold logic of reality mollifies encrusted attitudes, and one can only pray that this has happened.

The industrial and business lobbies have appeared confident enough to want normalisation to proceed and gather speed. In fact, these lobbies have been among the most ardent advocates of economic and commercial links with India. The frequent exchange of politicians between Pakistan’s Punjab and east Punjab is a major indicator of how sentiments are changing on both sides of the border.

The Indians have acted rashly, and put much at stake. The Mumbai tragedy could well have been engineered by indigenous groups protesting against the oppressive conditions in Indian held Kashmir. It is important for the political leadership in the two countries to stop playing the ISI-RAW game. The fact that no new dates have been announced for the postponed meeting is even more disturbing: this at least should be done immediately, without setting any preconditions and after mutual consultation.

Congress-led governments have usually been far more eager to adopt hostile and intimidating postures. This probably dates back to the years after independence and all through the 1960s when Pakistan was regarded as the West cat’s paw in a region that India thought should follow its example of non-alignment. There indeed was a clear ideological divide in those days of “pactitis”. But now? Now we are both solidly in the American camp, with the Indian government going even so far as to enter into a nuclear agreement with the Bush administration.

It is true that India has lured Washington into the agreement — which makes nonsense of efforts to bring about nuclear disarmament — on the strength of its economic and political development as a key Asian power with the potential of rivalling China while Pakistan’s value continues to be that of a country which happens to be situated at a strategically important junction in the region. But the Congress party should realise that it no longer has the ideological superiority that enabled it to command the high moral ground in matters concerning Pakistan or indeed the rest of the world. Its reaction to the US and Israeli acts of aggression have been as timid and slurred as Pakistan’s.

The world has changed dramatically in the past few years. We in Pakistan and India must also change. India must stop bullying Pakistan and Pakistan should learn to come to terms with the fact that India is a far bigger, stronger and politically developed country. There is so much that we can give to each other. After all, we were one country till 1947 and still live in the same subcontinent, with our people and our governments sharing the same problems.

We have overpopulated cities groaning under civic strains; we have economies that have been unable to provide a welfare net for the bulk of our people; we both have malaria, tuberculosis, Aids, malnutrition, dirt and squalor.

We are both burdened with mediaeval traditions and customs and we both face fundamentalism and extremism in one form or another. With so much to fight against jointly, learning from each other’s experience, must we remain forever locked in a web of attrition and acrimony? How much can we achieve working together? How long will the suspicions of the past continue to hound us?

We need a Faiz to say, as he did after his first visit to Dhaka after the creation of Bangladesh: “Hum key tehrey ajnabi itni mudaraton ke baad/Phir banen gey ashna kitni mulaqaaton key baad (we who have become strangers after such closeness, how much time will it take for us to be friends again?).”

Every time progress is seen to be made towards an improvement in Indo-Pakistan ties, something happens to throw a spanner in the works. But if the peace process could survive Kargil, it should be able to get over Mumbai.

THE perverse justification that the current Israeli onslaught on Lebanon is an exercise in self-defence is in line with the distorted view held by the US and Europe of the Middle East crisis. Just as deplorable is equating the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers with the killings of more than 400 civilians and the destruction of infrastructure in Lebanon.

This savagery in the name of retaliation defies logic. Israel, with its high-tech weaponry and destructive capacity, is being represented as the victim against the primitive arsenal of Hezbollah. The international media has been manipulated to present Hezbollah as a deadly organisation, supported and sustained by Iran and Syria.

Watching this carnage from the sidelines are Europe and its human rights apostles. In fact, inaction amounts to abetment in these crimes against humanity. The US too has made it clear at the summit held in Rome that it is not in favour of an immediate ceasefire.

The deafening silence of Muslim countries is equally shameful. The Arab League had an emergency meeting but only indulged in rhetoric, without committing any support to Lebanon. The Saudi reaction was typically cryptic as it made clear that Hezbollah’s acts were unexpected and irresponsible.

Pakistan also limited its comments to an appeal for ending the crisis and moving towards a ceasefire. There was no specific condemnation of the aggression and indiscriminate Israeli raids that have killed innocent civilians.

The Israeli aggression, based on the arrogance of power, has violated all principles of inter-state relations and conduct. The use of brute force as an instrument of policy and international acquiescence in this policy create enormous risks to small and defenceless states. Israel’s rejection of the UN appeal for ceasefire is being seen as undermining the moral authority and principles of the UN. Israel’s pretext for an attack on Lebanon amounts to state terrorism. Death and destruction in south Lebanon cannot advance Israel’s stated objective of defeating Hezbollah and destroying its “terrorist network”.

The impact and long-term consequences of Israel’s horrific attacks on Lebanon, and its endorsement by EU and the US need serious reflection. Any state policy based on brute force has proved counter-productive. US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan bear testimony to this proposition. There has been an overwhelming radicalism in these countries and suicide bombings are increasing both in intensity and frequency.

There was no Hezbollah before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. There was no Hamas in the occupied territories until 1993. Initially, both worked only as social welfare organisations dispensing medicines, money and other social services to Palestinian families of those killed by Israel and poor segments of society. But Israel’s policies of targeted killings and massive arrests of Palestinian activists led Hamas to assume the political role of a resistance movement.

There are strong indications that Israel with the connivance of US will extend the theatre of war to Syria and Iran. Already a relentless media campaign has been launched against these two countries as supporters of terrorism. Hezbollah is being projected as a creation of Iran, and Syria is accused of providing it with weapons and other logistic support. None of these allegations have been documented. Yet President Bush has held the two responsible for current the crisis, and has said that to tackle it the world should deal with Hezbollah and Syria and continue to work for the isolation of Iran.

It is obvious that such statements are an explicit invitation to Israel to extend the area of its military onslaughts and provoke Syria and Iran. Both have remained on the US hit list and perhaps the current circumstances are being regarded as most propitious to settle the score and, at the minimum, secure regime change in both countries.

While spurious arguments are being advanced in defence of their aggressive designs, the so-called champions of the rule of law and the inviolability of human dignity and rights remain indifferent.

The TV images of the injured and wounded women and children, as a result of indiscriminate Israeli bombings, do not stoke the conscience of human rights activists and international NGOs, none of which are seen in Beirut to provide help and succour to the wounded. As the US continues to replenish Israel’s inventory of weapons, these NGOs do not find the Lebanese tragedy gruesome enough to send at least medicines. It is quite brazen to declare the Darfur tribal conflict a genocide and remain silent on the internal displacement of some 750,000 Lebanese.

Seldom in Pakistan’s history, has a government been so out of sync with public sentiments and the popular will than the present one, be it the issue of peace with India or cooperation with the US on the war on terror. The failure of the government to unequivocally condemn Israel for its barbarity and cruelty towards the Palestinians and its aggression in Lebanon has failed to match grassroots sentiments and has driven a clear wedge between the rulers and the people. Even if our policy planners are afraid of adverse repercussions on bilateral relations with the US, the dire humanitarian situation and increasing civilian casualties in Lebanon deserve a forthright stand.

Our silence at this juncture does us no credit. We lose no opportunity to stress our solidarity with the Arabs and the reciprocal esteem and respect in which Pakistan is held by Muslim countries. Yet the current mayhem in Lebanon has not resulted in concrete action where we are concerned. The paralysis that afflicts our representative organisation, the OIC, on this issue, not only undermines its image in the eyes of Muslims but also violates the ideological basis of the organisation. It is sad that while some voices are being raised in the US, Europe and even Israel against the disproportionate use of force, the Muslim countries remain silent spectators.

The writer is a former ambassador.