| October 15, 2008 | Wednesday | Shawwal 15, 1429 |
|
Zardari’s overture to India
THERE is something remarkably refreshing about a Pakistani head of state declaring that “India has never been a threat to Pakistan.” In terms of factual accuracy, it’s a risible claim; it would be equally ridiculous, of course, for anyone on the Indian side to proclaim that Pakistan has never posed a threat to India.
Could the threatening postures — not to mention the three and a half outbreaks of war — have been avoided? And can they be transcended? The correct answer on both counts, hopefully, is yes. What’s more, fibs and illusions cannot serve as the basis for meaningful progress: the unpleasantness of the past cannot effectively be exorcised by pretending that it never really existed. In some circumstances it is indeed wise to let bygones be bygones, but it’s important to know precisely what is being relegated. If you turn a blind eye to past mistakes, the chances that they will be repeated multiply manifold.
For all that, Asif Ali Zardari’s remark about India — made last month to a reporter from The Wall Street Journal during an interview “held under tight security at a midtown Manhattan hotel” — is welcome because it holds out the prospect of India losing its status as Pakistan’s primary official foe. If New Delhi senses a genuinely conciliatory mood in Islamabad, chances are that it will be happy to reciprocate.
One cannot, of course, be too sure: all too often in the past, hesitant expressions of warmth from one side or the other have been coldly received. Nor can anyone deny that in the past governments on both sides have frequently sought to derive political advantage from the adversarial relationship. In Pakistan, anti-Indian sentiment has even been mobilised to serve as a spurious raison d’etre, a substitute for nationalism in a country bedevilled by regional, ethnic and sectarian rivalries; equally crucially, it has long served as an excuse for bloated defence budgets.
For all that, notwithstanding decades of official and semi-official propaganda, the majority of Pakistanis would be inclined to accept friendship with India without a great deal of persuasion. Hopefully, most Indians would feel the same way. After all, cultural and historical affinities between the two countries run deeper than the machinations of shallow politicians and generals.It would of course be premature for anyone to jump to the conclusion that Zardari’s remarks signal a sea change in Islamabad’s mindset. As has been demonstrated often enough in the past eight months, his words and intentions don’t always coincide.
It would nonetheless be churlish not to acknowledge that “Why would we begrudge the largest democracy in the world getting friendly with one of the oldest democracies in the world?” is a sensible sentiment vis-à-vis Indo-US relations. In the past, whenever Delhi and Washington have shown signs of getting fresh with one another, Pakistan has invariably adopted the jilted posture of a jealous concubine, refusing over the decades to acknowledge that, given her stature and size, Uncle Sam has always been more interested in Mother India.
In his interview with the Journal, Zardari also broached the question of trade with India, saying “there is no other economic survival for nations like us”. There can be little question that restrictions on Indo-Pakistan commerce have not benefited either nation. This also happens to be a sphere in which, given the requisite will, considerable progress is possible within a relatively short period of time. And, what’s more, growing commercial relations are bound to increase the incentive for rapprochement at the political level.
The single sentence in the Journal’s report that attracted most attention in Pakistan and its environs reads as follows: “He speaks of the militant Islamic groups operating in Kashmir as ‘terrorists’ — former President Musharraf would more likely have called them ‘freedom fighters’ …” The outburst that followed necessitated hasty clarifications from Sherry Rehman in Islamabad and Wajid Shamsul Hasan in London, but neither of them could prevent Zardari from notching up another first: no previous Pakistani leader has been burnt in effigy on the streets of Srinagar. To be fair, only a complete transcript of the president’s remarks could indicate whether his condemnation was wholesale or selective. After all, it’s hardly a state secret that jihadi infiltrators from the Pakistani side wreaked havoc in Jammu and Kashmir, until the flow was stemmed by Pervez Musharraf.
Whatever the case, Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s riposte that “Zardari made these remarks to please the Americans” is, in all probability, an accurate enough critique that could be extended to more or less everything the president said in New York. It would be a shame if the broader, potentially groundbreaking comments about India were made purely to ingratiate himself with his hosts, with no intention of following through.
On the other hand, if American pressure could push India and Pakistan towards amity — as happened under Musharraf, albeit to an inadequate extent — the consequences may well be positive. Ultimately, however, improved relations between the two nations can be sustained only if both of them realise that good-neighbourliness is in their own interests.
It comes as no surprise that in his Journal interview Zardari vociferously declared: “I am an American friend.” If that relationship is not entirely unilateral, and if he is also a friend of Pakistan, it may behove him to raise the occasional question during bouts of intimacy. Such as why is it that any kind of dialogue between Pakistani authorities and belligerent militants invariably attracts a stern American reprimand, whereas the Karzai regime is being encouraged to pursue the path of negotiations? And why is it that Pakistani exports to the US are so heavily penalised?As last month’s report by the US Pakistan Policy Working Group points out, “We raise the same tariff revenue from Pakistan’s $3.7bn in exports to the US as from France’s $37bn in textile exports to the US. The average US tariff rate on Chinese exports to the US is three per cent, compared to 10 per cent on Pakistani exports.”
Surely, seeking to slash this absurdly discriminatory level of protectionism would be less degrading than extending a begging bowl inscribed with the phenomenal figure of $100bn?
Zardari appears, during his American sojourn, to have charmed neocons and so-called liberals alike. The Journal report was tagged ‘The Most Difficult Job in the World’. A companion piece in The New York Times by Roger Cohen was headlined ‘The Most Dangerous Job on Earth’. In both cases, that might not be much of an exaggeration. It is undoubtedly a tough job. But there is little kudos to be gained from botching it.
The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.
mahir.worldview@gmail.com
