Reining in the agencies

DESPERATE situations call for drastic remedies. Over the years, the intelligence network run by the country’s armed forces has assumed the trappings of a state within a state, clearly above the law and accountable to neither the executive nor the judiciary. Externally, the all-powerful agencies have been in the forefront of many a ‘strategic depth’ misadventure, while on the home front they have been used to subvert the political process, manipulate elections and silence those who disagree with the state policy. The agencies have always been around in one garb or another, but the genesis of the supra-constitutional powers they now wield lies in the Afghan uprising against Soviet occupation. Backed by the American CIA and flush with funds provided by Washington and Riyadh, the Inter-Services Intelligence grew in stature in the 1980s and consolidated its position during the Afghan civil war, in which the ‘mujahideen’ turned on each other and which ultimately resulted in the emergence of the Pakistan-backed Taliban. The occasional setback notwithstanding, there has been no looking back for the ISI since the heady days of the eighties.

The Supreme Court is now echoing what others have long maintained — that the intelligence agencies have become a law unto themselves and must be reined in. Hearing petitions filed by the HRCP and others regarding the whereabouts of the country’s ‘disappeared’, Justice Javed Iqbal has hinted at a ruling that will not only punish the guilty but also provide parliament with guidelines for framing a law to restrain the intelligence agencies. In July last year, the Supreme Court was informed by the assistant judge advocate-general of the Pakistan Army that the defence ministry has no operational control over the ISI and the Military Intelligence, in effect confirming that the agencies can do as they please without any check or hindrance. The government, for its part, has consistently maintained that it has no knowledge of the whereabouts of the missing, only to admit later that it has managed to locate a few more. This is precisely what has been happening in connection with the petitions being heard by the Supreme Court. Also, take the case of journalist Mukesh Ropeta and cameraman Sanjay Kumar, who disappeared in Jacobabad in March 2006 while filming an airbase used by US forces. For three months, the official line was that their whereabouts were unknown; then, suddenly, the two were produced in court.

President Musharraf has claimed on more than one occasion that the ‘disappeared’ are actually jihadis who have gone off for training without informing their families. This may be true of some missing persons who are affiliated with religious organisations but clearly does not apply to Baloch and Sindhi nationalists, more than a hundred of whom have disappeared without a trace and who share no ideological space with the jihadis. In all, some 400 cases of involuntary disappearances have been documented by human rights groups and the actual figure may be even higher. Those who have been freed tell of harrowing treatment at the hands of their captors, and some have vanished again after going public with their plight. Those suspected of anti-state activities must be produced in court so that the law can take its own course. The personal liberty of every citizen is guaranteed by the Constitution and no agency, however powerful, can be allowed to trample this right.

Where is the debate?

IT IS not clear why the Speaker of the National Assembly has been shying away from a full-scale debate on the judicial crisis that has gripped the country since March 9. After it was prorogued on February 23, the Assembly was scheduled to meet in March for its spring session but failed to do so after two postponements. It convened last Monday but the grave issues that have polarised the nation and thrown different sections of society at loggerheads have not been debated in the manner they merit. At a time when lawyers, politicians, clerics and human rights activists are out on the streets chanting slogans and challenging the actions and policies of the government, it is not easy to understand why the hall of the National Assembly is considered to be so sacrosanct that controversial issues cannot be taken up. The Assembly is basically a forum for the elected representatives of the people to express their views on vital issues of the day. Of course, its main function is to pass laws. But if laws are not to be rammed through the House by the government making the body a mere rubber stamp, it must be given the opportunity to discuss threadbare any matter that concerns the people of the country. It is only after a free debate has been held that the members of parliament will feel sufficiently informed and educated to plan their move on any bill or policy.

It has been observed that when a controversy gets hot, the two sides lose the ability to debate issues calmly and dispassionately. They become emotional and go overboard in condemning one another and trading charges that may not even be true or relevant. Regrettably, politics becomes the order of the day and the issue under discussion becomes a tool for the opposition to beat the government with. No wonder, adjournment motions and walk-outs become common. Pakistan’s experience of parliamentary democracy has not been a very happy one. But a beginning has to be made somewhere. The MNAs — both from the treasury and the opposition benches — need to take a crash course in the art of parliamentary debating so that the country can benefit from their performance.

A cleric on the loose

THE firebrand cleric in Swat, Maulana Fazalullah, now has a new target: lady health workers. After spearheading a successful campaign against the polio vaccination — 4,000 parents refused the vaccine for their children during last week’s three-day government immunisation campaign — the cleric has turned the heat on lady health workers. According to a report in this newspaper on Saturday, around 70 lady health workers have resigned from their jobs in the past few weeks, mainly because they are afraid for their safety. Maulana Fazalullah has been using his illegally set up radio station — which has proved to be a powerful tool in spreading his vitriol — to tell women to stay home. And it has worked. This only proves how real the threat of Talibanisation of society is and how, in this instance, women’s health will be adversely affected. Already women in the NWFP cannot be treated by a male doctor, an edict passed by the MMA government when it came to power. If lady health workers are also to vanish, who will attend to women’s basic health needs? The clerics may not care but the government must. For this reason, it will have to tackle Maulana Fazalullah and his kind.

Unfortunately, the government’s record in this regard has been poor. This is partly because many in the MMA government subscribe to the cleric’s points of view. However, that does not absolve them of their responsibility to enforce the law and protect people’s health and safety. The maulana is in violation of many laws. Past attempts by the government to persuade him to work on the polio campaign have failed, as have the police’s attempts to arrest him. It is time to get tough with him and his illegal FM station. Failure to do so will have serious consequences.

Is the honeymoon with India over?

THE Indians have not yielded an inch on our concerns. No movement in the frozen wastelands of the Siachen glacier or lifting the heavy military paw in the Vale of Kashmir. India’s principal demand when the Vajpayee-Musharraf thaw set in about five years back was: stop government support to cross-border terrorist infiltration and come to the table with the least expectation of any further division of Kashmir. Pakistan complied; rather over-complied.

The Indians have conceded that illegal cross-border movement is down to a trickle, but, whenever they wish to stir the cauldron, terrorists are found coming out of the woodworks – such a declaration was made by the junior defence minister of India, last week.

President Musharraf’s open-ended four-point offer which is tailored to meet Indian sensibilities on Kashmir has evoked no official Indian response other than an endless backchannel dialogue. “The sands of an expiring epoch are fast running out; and the hour glass of history is once again turned on its base”, said Lord Curzon in a different context. The best of intentions may yet turn to ashes.

We are squeezed on our western borders by the Americans and their demands in fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The Indians love to negotiate on details endlessly with assurances for the future. The trouble with Indian “assurances” is that they have a historicity of unreliability. Between 1948 and 1953, Pakistan received six top-level assurances from India that a fair and impartial plebiscite was the most feasible means to ascertain the wishes of the Kashmiri people. The last such assurance was a press communiqué issued on the conclusion of meetings between Prime Minister Mohammed Ali (Bogra) and Pandit Nehru in August 1953; it went so far as to say that a plebiscite administrator would be appointed by April 1954.

In December 1953, the commitment to hold a plebiscite was broken by India on the plea that Pakistan was about to accept arms aid from the US. Nehru declared the plebiscite promise null and void. Never was it said anywhere that the UN resolutions accepted by India were latched to any conditionalities. Indeed, in August 1953, when the last Indian assurance for a plebiscite was given, it was well known that Pakistan was negotiating an arms pact with the US.

India broke its word to its neighbour; the end of this story is yet to be written. It can be said in retrospect that all Pakistan’s miseries, wars, religious fanaticism, alienation and subcontinental disunity can be traced back to this broken pledge. If, God forbid, there is a nuclear war some day, its origin will lie in this broken promise.

Pakistan was labelled a “lackey of imperialism” in the so-called non-aligned club headed by Tito and Nehru. Nine years later, in November 1962, when the Indians started receiving massive arms aid from the US in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian border clash, Pakistan’s sin in accepting US arms aid leading to the abrogation of the Kashmir commitment was replicated by India. During the Sino-India clash, the US administration begged Ayub Khan to refrain from “seizing Kashmir” – a gesture that Kennedy wrote to say would be deeply “appreciated by India”.

Oddly, the correspondence between Ayub Khan and Kennedy in the winter of 1962-63 never pressed home the logic that India’s raison d’etat for going back on the Kashmir plebiscite promise was upturned by the same event. Had the Indo-Pak war of September 1965 occurred in November 1962, the Valley would have fallen like a plum in Pakistan’s lap – and all Pakistan had to do was to hand it over to the UN for holding a plebiscite. But Ayub Khan was a Sandhurst-trained gentleman officer. ‘You don’t attack your neighbour, no matter how much he has wronged you, if he is down and out’.

We will now fast track to the Simla Agreement of 1972. In the preceding decade, two wars were fought with India and half of Pakistan lost. Prima facie the Simla Pact does not read like the Treaty of Versailles, which inflicted heavy penalties on Germany on the conclusion of WW-I. It does not read as if Pakistan lost the war of 1971; but, it is a masterpiece of hidden intent: It introduced the concept of “bilateralism” in sweet-sounding language.

It was not fully appreciated at the time what it meant. Its meaning only became clear later. Kashmir was no longer an international dispute, subject to UN resolutions, but, an India-Pakistan dispute, to be settled by the victor of the 1971 war. It is thus an unequal treaty. Both parties swore that no unilateral action would be taken by either party “to alter the ceasefire line as of December 17, 1971, which would be respected by both sides without prejudice.”

True, the Siachen glacier was a no man’s land. The Line of Control stopped well below the glaciers at a point marked NJ9842 on the maps and did not extend north to the glaciers. Therein lay the ambiguity of the 1949 agreement that left delimitation vague in the glacier region. In disregard of the Simla spirit and the written words of the agreement, on April 13, 1984 India occupied two key mountain passes in the glacier which have strategic importance for Pakistan and China.

On June 17, 1989, an agreement was reached on Siachen between the defence secretaries of India and Pakistan, which reads: “There was agreement by both sides to work towards a comprehensive settlement, based on redeployment of forces to reduce the chances of conflict, avoidance of the use of force and the determination of future positions on the ground so as to conform with the Simla Agreement and to ensure durable peace in the Siachen area. The army authorities of both sides will determine these positions.”

The agreement was repudiated by New Delhi without giving reasons. The dispute remains locked in its frozen wasteland, for the last 18 years. The Indian demand is delimitation of positions based on “ground realities” – this expression is code language to cover up the initial aggression and to position its claim in the future, if and when the LoC is to be delimited in the glacier region. Pakistan Kargil misadventure was essentially in response to the Siachen grab.

Let us now move to the early 1990s. Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao declared, “If autonomy (in Kashmir) is acceptable (to Pakistan), the sky is the limit.”

President General Musharraf’s four proposals have been welcomed in the Valley and accepted by a wide range of Kashmiri opinion which includes the influential and brave, Mirwaiz of Kashmir. They do “formulate a set of proposals which rejectionists on either side would find difficult to reject…” But the above formulation needs to be revisited. It is hard to convince rejectionists such as Syed Ali Gilani or those demanding independence for the old state or the extremists in the BJP or the Jamaat-i-Islami that politics is the art of the possible; not the impossible. We have no apocalyptic visions. Therefore, the new initiative is to formulate proposals that civil society and the international community would find hard to reject. Civil society in both countries consists of businessmen, retired bureaucrats and defence officials, women’s organisations, student and labour leaders, journalists and professional organisations.

The above groups of civil society should engage in direct confabulations with one another. To give flesh to the above inter-connectivity and a real head-start to finding solutions at the level of civil society, we should relax our visa and trade policies. The sole determinant of the trade regime should be economic advantage minus political considerations.

India must reciprocate. It must give up its mantra of “cross-border terrorism”. For every six or seven Valley Kashmiris there is one fully armed combat soldier. The LoC is fenced (and mined); the Indian army operating under emergency laws is brutal and abuse of power is well documented. It is reported that the Indian security forces have developed self-serving interests. If India is shining, Indian Kashmir is in dark gloom. The Indians must be firmly reminded that the insurgency in the Valley is no different from the insurgencies in NEFA and Assam and other parts of India controlled by Maoists. Indeed, some of these insurgencies are today far more serious and more violent than in the Kashmir Valley. Surprisingly, our press is devoid of articles on these mutinies against authority.

To sum up, our faith in Indian ‘assurances’ is a little incredulous given the history of the past. We are the injured party and Indian civil society should appreciate this fact.

But, if nothing happens (notwithstanding the unrestrained optimism of Foreign Minister Kasuri), say within a year from – well after the Pakistan elections – it will be legitimate for Pakistan to repudiate the ‘bilateral’ clauses of the Simla Agreement, which, as stated earlier, is an unequal treaty. India, in retaliation, may decide to walk out of the agreement altogether; so be it. This agreement has failed to provide peace or security in Kashmir. It has not avoided war, nuclear weaponisation has. So long as “bilateralism” means an Indian monopoly in determination and interpretation being the bigger, the more powerful and in possession of the disputed area, India’s own decisions will be ruled by the safest option available. The Indian song is sweet and seductive but when it comes to ground realities in dealing with neighbours, it hardly moves a millimetre.

The writer is an MNA.
murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk