UNTIL a few days ago, Indian spokesmen were saying that the quest for peace with Pakistan had been halted temporarily, and that it would be resumed at a more propitious time. The present time, according to them, is bad because “elements” based in Pakistan enter the Indian side of Kashmir to hit military and civilian targets, and that some of them cross into India itself to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism.

These “elements” are said to include not only religious extremists (the so-called “jihadis”) but also operatives from the Pakistan army and its intelligence agencies. Indian officials and media further allege that the militants under reference are housed and trained in camps located on territory under Pakistani control.

This allegation lends itself to several interpretations. It is possible that those making trouble for India are located on Pakistan-controlled territory, but its government does not know where they are. Second, one may say that even though the government of Pakistan does know of their existence and location, it simply does not have the capacity to control them. Third, it may be said that, yes, the government of Pakistan did for a time support the likes of them (Al Qaeda, Taliban, and similar other groups) and their “jihad” in Afghanistan (as did America) and in Kashmir (to which America did not object), but that Pakistan has broken its connection with all of them, in stages, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Pakistan has repeatedly asked India to provide evidence regarding the location of militants, their bases and training centres, but apparently the latter has not done so. That does not necessarily mean that the government of Pakistan has never known where the militants and their camps were. It seems to me that the third of the aforementioned possibilities, to wit, that Pakistan has broken its connection with extremist and militant organisations, and that it is doing what it can to put them out of commission, may be valid.

A couple of developments may be cited in support of my interpretation and to counter India’s cynical view that the break is more apparent than real. First, consider the fact that Pakistan has banned Al Qaeda, Taliban, the lashkars, and some other religious extremists, arrested and detained hundreds of their members and supporters, and frozen their assets. Second, nearly a hundred thousand Pakistani troops and paramilitary forces are battling the Al Qaeda and Taliban guerillas in the country’s northwestern areas bordering with Afghanistan and, in the process, they are also killing their own citizens. Third, Pakistan has its own compelling reasons for opposing militants inasmuch as they are wreaking death and destruction in its own towns almost every day of the week. The incidence of terrorism in Pakistan itself is far greater than it is in India.

Pakistan’s association with certain militant groups in the past cannot be taken to mean that this association is still continuing. America patronised the same groups during the 1980s, but that is no longer the case. If it is easy to understand the change in America’s posture in response to changed circumstances, why should it be difficult to allow for the same kind of shift on the part of Pakistan? India and China were once “brothers,” then became bitter foes, and now they are building friendly ties again.

Could one say that while there is a group of terrorists whom Pakistan is attempting to eradicate, there is another, India-specific, group that it nurtures, controls, and directs? That is conceivable but not likely.

If ideologically charged persons, willing to commit terrorism in India because they disapprove of its government and society, were brought together as a group, their operations could not be confined to India alone. They would find plenty of things in Pakistani government and society that are repugnant to their ideology, and they would feel free to mount terrorist acts in Pakistan as well. Recall that the Taliban who fought the Soviets later fought (and are still fighting) fellow-Afghans who were (and are) of a different mind. It is therefore highly improbable that Pakistan is maintaining an India-specific contingent of terrorists.

Let us now turn to recent acts of terrorism in India. Writing in this space (July 22, 2006), Mr Kuldip Nayar speaks of an “unholy alliance” between the “mosque and the cantonment” in Pakistan and alleges that its military establishment and Islamic fundamentalists have a shared interest in seeing “secular and pluralist” India bleed. The general impression in India, he says, is that Pakistan has been behind the terrorist acts in Varanasi, Bangalore, Delhi, and most recently Mumbai. He quotes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as having said that the peace process with Pakistan has no future if “terrorist modules are instigated, inspired, and supported by elements across the border without which they (terrorists in India) cannot act with such devastating effect.” Manmohan Singh claims to have “credible information” in support of his assertion.

The Indian prime minister did not mean that the mischievous “elements across the border” were some stray individuals or obscure groups acting on their own initiative. The implication would appear to have been that one of the agencies in the government of Pakistan was the “element” that inspired and directed them. Pakistan, of course, rejects this insinuation as being entirely unfounded.

Indian politicians and civil servants have formed the habit of blaming Pakistan routinely, and without a second thought, for many of the things that go wrong in that country. A similar inclination is at work in Pakistan. I remember hearing, not too long ago, a Pakistani spokesman asserting that Indian consular establishments in Afghanistan were sending funds and weapons to the insurrectionists in Balochistan.

Pakistani officials have said also that several thousand agents working for India’s RAW (Research and Analysis Wing in the Indian prime minister’s secretariat) are deployed in Sindh to infiltrate “nationalist” groups, organs of civil society, and the media, among others, for the purpose of spreading disaffection, disrupting peace, “inspiring” terrorist acts, creating chaos, and destabilising the government. We may assume that India will deny all of these charges just as Pakistan rejects the ones the Indians hurl at it.

American, Indian, and even Afghan spokesmen periodically declare that Pakistan is not doing “enough,” and that it must do “more,” to eliminate actual and potential terrorists who may be present on its soil. This is absurd, for it assumes that, unlike all other governments in the world, the government of Pakistan has unbounded capacity for dealing with ugly events and situations. Terrorists destroy installations and kill scores of persons in Iraq every day, and the United States, the occupying power in that country and the strongest in the world, cannot stop them.

The government of Afghanistan is not able to subdue its own homegrown Taliban who control portions of that country and mount acts of terrorism in its other parts. India has deployed a large number of troops on its side of the LoC in Kashmir but it has not been able to wipe out the militants and terrorists in that part of the state. Its forces stationed along the LoC should be able to intercept, apprehend, and kill “infiltrators” coming in from the Pakistani side but, more often than not, they fail to do their duty. They fail because of inadequacy of capacity, not due to want of will. Nor have the Indian forces been able to end the terrorist acts committed by the rebels in its northeastern states.

Some of the terrorists in India are surely natives who live there, and yet the Indian police and intelligence agencies cannot find and catch all of them. Why should Pakistan then be expected to accomplish to perfection a task that no other country has been able to accomplish, and that too in its virtually self-governing tribal areas where the writ of no government, either during British rule or since independence, has ever been fully effective?

It is possible that each side’s allegations contain a small element of truth, but it appears to be mixed with a great deal of exaggeration induced by their long-standing mutual distrust. If the element of truth in them is substantial, then one must ask why they initiated the so-called peace process in the first place, and why they have been carrying it on for more than two years. A plausible explanation may be that the quest for peace is not genuine.

The two countries have not fought a full-scale war for some 35 years and, considering that each possesses nuclear warheads and delivery systems, war between them is not likely to break out in the foreseeable future. The quest for peace is then really a quest for friendly and cooperative relations. Its outcome depends on how much each side wants friendliness. Government leaders and most of the politicians in Pakistan consider the resolution of its disputes with India to be a precondition for the development of sustainable friendliness. In other words, they want friendliness if it comes with a satisfactory resolution of these disputes, including the one concerning Kashmir.

India is a status quo power so far as its disputes with Pakistan are concerned. It is most reluctant to make concessions to the Pakistani point of view. That is why it has been stressing CBMs (confidence-building measures) a lot more than it has been willing to enter substantive negotiations during the “composite dialogue”. It would rather live with the present state of its relations with Pakistan than make concessions to attain a larger measure of Pakistani goodwill. It figures that if Pakistan wants to be friendlier without demanding changes in the status quo, that would be great, and it would then reciprocate.

India’s current allegations against Pakistan may then be seen as a cover for its decision to return the disputes in question to oblivion. The CBMs, on their part, also appear to be reaching a dead end: buses and trains between the two countries are said to be running with far too many vacant seats.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

RECENTLY, a large number of homes belonging to a minority community in a Sialkot village were set on fire by a mob enraged by the news that one of its members was seen burning the pages of the Holy Quran. The undisputed fact is that some worn-out pages of magazines carrying Quranic verses were indeed burnt within the compound of the community’s place of worship where a pit was also dug to bury the ashes.

The incident was seen by a neighbour from his rooftop. He conveyed the news to the people gathered at a festival taking place nearby. A rampage followed. It wasn’t unusual. The act, or even a rumour, of someone burning or discarding Quranic pages has been a cause of frequent mob violence in Pakistan.

The targets of rage generally have been minority groups as for instance the Christians of Sangla Hill and the Hindus of Taftan on Balochistan’s border with Iran. But the Muslims are not spared either. One can recall the lynching of a man in Hafizabad (central Punjab) by a hysterical mob despite his protestations that being himself a Hafiz-i-Quran he could not have ever thought of insulting the Holy Book.

Surely, the Quran is “exalted and purified in the hands of noble and virtuous scribes” (Sura Abasa) and disrespect to it in physical form or disparaging its message arouses grief and anger among Muslims. No punishment, however, is prescribed for the offence either in the Holy Quran or by the Holy Prophet (PBUH). The awe of its majesty, as the Quran itself says, is ingrained in the hearts of the people.

Wilfully defiling, damaging or desecrating a copy of the Holy Quran or an extract from it and using it in a defamatory manner or for any unlawful purpose was made an offence punishable with life imprisonment by General Ziaul Haq who added a new section (295-B) in the Penal Code in 1982. Before that, damaging or defiling a place of worship or an object held sacred by any class of persons was, and still is, an offence but the maximum punishment provided was two years’ imprisonment. Incidents of mob violence were rare before 1982. It is as if increased punishment has provided an impetus to accusations and violence.

The critical point to be considered is the correct way to dispose of the worn-out pages of the Holy Quran.

Among present-day scholars, Hafiz Sanaullah Madni of Ahle Hadith holds that throwing worn-out pages in a running stream or in a well or burying them in the ground is permissible but the best form is to burn these as Hazrat Usman had done. Mufti Mohammad Shafi of Deoband holds that burying and then lighting a fire over it is also permissible. Hazrat Shah Ahmad Raza Khan of Bareilly and other scholars belonging to his school, however, consider only burial to be proper.

Opinion on the details of this matter differs as it does in many other aspects of Islamic faith and practice. But it is tragic for people to be killed or driven out of their homes for the act of burning when their intention undoubtedly is not to desecrate the Holy Quran but to save it from desecration. One has not heard of riots or murders for difference of opinion on this count in any other country where the objective is the same.

The real and recurring danger in making Islamic laws part of the country’s penal code is that in their interpretation and enforcement emotions obscure reason and mob rage pre-empts fair trial. Perhaps no one so far has been sentenced to life imprisonment for defiling the Holy Quran but quite a few have been murdered and many hurt and harmed by angry mobs. The latest to die, according to press reports, is the imam of a Hasilpur (Punjab) mosque and a divine of the town who had intervened to rescue him.

Similar dangers, experience has shown, are inherent in the application of penal provisions for derogatory remarks against the Prophet, outraging the religious feelings of any class and laws specific to the Ahmadiyya community.

The current controversy on the repeal of the Hudood laws centres on their arbitrary or unjust use. The fact of the matter is that the standards of human behaviour, as also of evidence and justice under Islamic jurisprudence, are so exacting that in the present state of private and public morality they are bound to operate against the weak and poor whom they are intended to protect.

The exemplary punishments envisaged in Islamic laws have failed to check crime or deter criminals. As was reported in this paper a few days ago, the number of armed robberies in Karachi has doubled in a year. The same may be true for the rest of the country. This tragic paradox was summed up by a visiting foreign journalist who reported that if Islamic punishments were to be awarded many Pakistanis would be without a limb or bear marks of lashings on their backs.

It is conceded by clerics and scholars who oppose the repeal of the Hudood Ordinances that the fault lies not in the laws but in the investigative and judicial system. This defence itself clinches the argument. We should have only those laws which we are able to administer justly and speedily. The Hudood and other Islamic laws as they stand at the moment have become only a tool in the hands of the police and rabble rousers to oppress the weak and unwary.