Vajpayee on the warpath but it takes two to tangle

IN the beginning, they say, was the Word. The phrase, to be precise. It went like this: “He that is not with me is against me.” This singularly egotistical basis for antagonism was appropriated and refitted with the collective pronoun by George W. Bush’s speech writers, and it continues to be a staple of presidential pronouncements.

But they didn’t coin it. If the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke are to be believed, it was Jesus Christ who said it first. And it fitted in neatly with the plan for a post-September 11 crusade. In turn, the impression that terrorism is more or less exclusively a Muslim trait slotted in perfectly with the political interests and agendas of the leaders far removed from the carnage in the United States — such as Ariel Sharon and Vladimir Putin. And Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Nobody was raising too many questions about the systematic Russian repression in Chechnya in the first place, but of late Putin has had a complete carte blanche: Grozny has dropped off the international radar. Sharon has lately attracted some of the opprobrium he so obviously deserves, but only after he went completely overboard in decimating Palestinians as part of his plans for a final solution. Vajpayee has thus far looked on enviously while progressively pumping up the volume of belligerence in his rhetoric, but now appears determined to go further.

The Bush administration couldn’t care less about Chechnya. It is, likewise, largely unconcerned about the plight of the Palestinians, but has an interest in Middle Eastern stability because it relies on the region for vital oil supplies; besides, continued conflict makes its plot to topple Saddam Hussein that much harder to implement. Pakistan, under the present circumstances, is a slightly different proposition, because of the US bases on its soil and joint, or at least coordinated, anti-terrorist operations.

Yet it would be pure folly on the part of Pakistan to construe the US military presence on its soil as even a temporary guarantee against an all-out Indian attack. The bases could abruptly seek to exist — they are, after all, not really required any longer in the Afghan context, and although some Al Qaeda and Taliban elements may indeed have slipped across the border, they are more likely to pose a threat to Pakistani rather than US interests. Vajpayee may even be able to win Bush over to his apparent view that Pakistan deserves a spanking. One would have thought, nonetheless, that Washington would at least be horrified by the prospect of a nuclear exchange between the subcontinental neighbours. But in that case would it have taken so long to despatch State Department arm-twister Richard Armitage to Islamabad and New Delhi?

Perhaps Armitage couldn’t make it any earlier because the US state and defence departments need all available hands on deck as they try to terrorize the American public with a flurry of warnings about impending doom. The likes of vice-president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld (described by Henry Kissinger, no less, as the most ruthless man he knows — which is quite a remarkable commendation, given Kissinger’s past) have been saying that further attacks on the 9/11 scale are not just likely but inevitable. When? Where? How? That they are unwilling to say.

Should one then conclude that the military campaign in Afghanistan has been an utter failure, given that its object was to root out all terrorists and those who harbour them? Have Osama bin Laden and his cohorts once again outwitted the best minds of the world’s most powerful nation? And if that is the case, should American citizens not be running scared?

There is evidence that New Yorkers, at least, are reasonably complacent. They have been able to see through the Bush administration’s ploy: the dire warnings are intended to deflect attention from mounting evidence that had US intelligence agencies and other government wings been able to put two and two together, it is possible that Al Qaeda’s plot could have been foiled.

One of the alleged conspirators was under arrest; Zacarias Moussaoui had been taking flying lessons, shown an inordinate interest in Boeing 747s and, like some of the Florida flying school alumni who put their training to the test on September 11, been openly contemptuous about take-off and landing procedures.

Earlier this month it emerged that one of the FBI agents involved in the Moussaoui case even raised the prospect of a hijacked plane being flown into the World Trade Centre. Meanwhile, a report on possible hijacking attempts by Al Qaeda was sent to the White House five weeks before 9/11. A scenario involving the use of aircraft as missiles had been floating around the US intelligence networks since 1995.

There can, of course, be no excuse for the monumental crime that was committed on 9/11. Nor can there be any question of blaming the victims. But recent revelations suggest a degree of neglect on the part of American government agencies that borders on the criminal, and it is only fair that the issue of culpability is being raised in Congress as well as in the press. There are no easy answers. Hence the rather ham-handed effort at a cover-up.

There are clearly some lessons for India (as well as for Israel) in the trajectory of American behaviour and its consequences. Just as the Bush mafia refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the circumstances that breed hostility towards the US and Sharon seeks to paint virtually all Palestinians as psychopathic bomb-throwers, Vajpayee is determined to maintain the fiction that all would be hunky-dory in Kashmir but for Pakistan’s perfidy. This allows him to conclude that a military response is called for.

Vajpayee was stung, with plenty of justification, by the fact that even as he was exchanging pleasantries with prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, Pakistan’s army, under General Pervez Musharraf’s command, was busy mounting the Kargil operation. His government nonetheless tried to be nice to Musharraf on the latter’s maiden visit to India, yet Pakistan’s newly self-ordained president insulted his hosts by refusing to mince his words at a meeting with the press. The bitterness was compounded when, post-September 11, the US declined India’s offer of bases and decided — logically enough — to use Pakistan as one of the main launching pads for the assault on Afghanistan.

However, that is only part of the story. Just as it is absurd of New Delhi to pretend that there is virtually no such thing as indigenous Kashmiri militancy, it is ridiculous of Islamabad to insist that cross-border infiltration is broadly a myth, or that jihadi groups manage to mount their operations without any Pakistani assistance. Independent reports suggest that the extremist organizations ostensibly banned earlier this year are still active, with the Lashkar-i-Taiba, for example, openly soliciting donations. A Lashkar official told a foreign correspondent last week that a suicide squad from the group’s Al Mansoureen wing carried out the attack on an Indian army base near Srinagar that killed 34 people, many of them women and children — and provoked Vajpayee’s frenzied war-dance.

The same correspondent quotes a Pakistani military source as saying: “Every jihadi has links with the ISI. You cannot be a jihadi without having links with the ISI.” This would suggest that Musharraf’s purge of the ISI has been less than effective. The president is either ignorant of the ISI-jihadi activities or insufficiently powerful to do anything about them. Neither of these likelihoods reflects too well on him. A military dictator unwilling or unable to rein in the army he commands cannot expect high marks for credibility. A “western diplomat” — usually a euphemism for a US embassy official — has reportedly said: “Musharraf in January promised infiltration would stop. It has not happened.” It should have happened. Not out of fear of India or because of American pressure, but because it is wrong and counterproductive. Those responsible for acts of terrorism in Kashmir — regardless of whether their victims are Indian soldiers or their families, or the likes of Abdul Ghani Lone — are the enemies not only of India but also of Kashmiris. What’s more, they are the enemies of Pakistan as well, given that their efforts over the past six months seem singularly geared towards provoking a war. If they cannot be persuaded to see the light, they must be stopped by force.

It was puerile of Vajpayee to take the bait, but not particularly surprising that he did so — partly, perhaps, because he was outraged, but also because the Bharatiya Janata Party government he leads has been desperately seeking a raison d’etre in the wake of its disgraceful performance in Gujarat. Vajpayee on the warpath is not a pleasant sight, and it is mildly gratifying that the level of hysteria has lately been scaled down somewhat. However, he remains obdurately opposed to talks, and unless Pakistan demonstrably chokes off the flow of militants across the Line of Control, he may yet feel obliged to order military action a couple of months down the line.

In view of the prevailing tensions, conflict on any scale could spiral out of control. It must devoutly be hoped that Pakistan’s veiled nuclear threat and the Ghauri missile tests are intended as no more than deterrent bluster. But even all-out conventional war could prove considerably costlier in every sense than the 1965 and 1971 engagements, while the unfathomable stupidity of a nuclear exchange would kill millions on both sides. And the ritual bloodletting on a vast and possibly unprecedented scale would resolve not one of the disputes that divide the neighbours. If anything can be guaranteed in the event of a war, it is that both India and Pakistan would be losers.

Let no one be fooled by unscrupulous fanatics. The “liberation” of Kashmir by military means is not, and never has been, an option. What we could be faced with, if matters get out of hand, is the obliteration of the subcontinent. Is that a consequence even the least rational factions on either side of the divide are willing to countenance?

India’s midsummer madness

What is going on in the subcontinent is unbelievable and yet true. In less than three years there have been three large-scale mobilizations of the armed forces of India and Pakistan which have now been face to face for the last six months or so. It used to be said in a light-hearted vein that the people belonging to a particular community which frequented the northern parts of the subcontinent went mad around noon with the excessive heat having travelled to its head.

This was more by way of a myth rather than reality. But in the contemporary situation of the subcontinent it seems that the myth has indeed turned into reality and no community in the subcontinent is an exception to the heat-wave having spread to their respective heads. The fact of the matter is that India is right now very much on the war-path under a BJP-led government and Pakistan is following suit. Mr Vajpayee has come to the conclusion that the days of his government would be numbered if it does not settle what he perceives as ‘the Pakistan question’ ‘once and for all’.

The BJP has by now sensed that in a matter of months Messrs Blackwill and Co. will soon enough want to cobble together another coalition government in Delhi, this time led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-Indian darling of the West. The trouble with the present ruling coalition in India is that they have found it impossible to outgrow themselves from their self-inflicted Pakistan phobia. The BJP particularly believes that the present situation in the region and the one inside Pakistan which is faced with a yawning political vacuum is a second chance of a life time to ‘conquer’ what is left of Pakistan.

Now whether they can do this or not only time will tell. However in attempting to do so they can only inflict on themselves mortal blows from which they can hardly ever hope to recover. The lack of statesmanship in the present ruling coalition in India is so complete after the Gujarat pogroms and now the Jammu killings that an ailing Vajpayee continues to be the only slender thread that is momentarily holding it together.

In the frontlines of the BJP the only ray of hope for peace in South Asia happens to be an ex-army officer, none other than the foreign minister Jaswant Singh who is viewed with suspicion of nursing ambitions for the top job of prime minister and chief executive of India. He may, of course, never quite make it to the top, thanks to the reigning mediocrity of the BJP, but the fact is that he is cool and farsighted enough to be able to understand that first of all militarily conquering a neighbouring country will not solve India’s problems — that an armed conflict with Pakistan will only further complicate and compound matters.

Only two years ago, he advised the Government of India to refrain from going into Sri Lanka in support of the Tamil Tigers. And he did so at a time when there was a lot of international encouragement and interest in allowing India a permanent interventional beach-head on Sri Lankan soil. Jaswant Singh’s book ‘Defending India’ is replete with arguments that the defence of a country lies in having a robustly booming economy coupled with a political system that is fine-tuned with the rest of the democratic world.

Now a lot of his detractors are bound to say that as the BJP’s and Vajpayee’s foreign minister he is dutifully carrying out a confrontational policy towards Pakistan and that he is as much of a hardliner as any other BJP MP — so what is really so great about him. Well I suppose when you are working within the confines of a parliamentary system of government a minister is only duty-bound to carry out a policy that has the approval of the cabinet and the majority in parliament.

The difference about Jaswant Singh and the others is that he is definitely not the run-of-the mill politician in that he has meticulously educated himself over the years with the nuts and bolts of the fundamentals of conducting foreign policy and is a voice of moderation in the Indian Cabinet. What is more in his Rajasthan constituency which he represents in the Lok Sabha there is a large Muslim population most of whom support him strongly each time there is a general election. In fact his constituents affectionately refer to him as ‘the field-marshal’. He is indeed a man to watch on the Indian political scene and could well be part of even a future Congress-led coalition.

But coming back to the current state of things, Vajpayee at present appears to be in a state of extreme political desperation and is having to get closer and closer to the Advani crowd in the BJP and the extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) elements. The war on terrorism today has a mixed bag of fellow travellers and adventurers in the post-September 11 situation. India also seeks to gain some advantage out of this world-wide not-so-free-for-all bonanza.

There is a school of thought in India’s South Block secretariat which is of an entrenched view that now is their last chance that they are ever likely to get to overwhelm Pakistan having found out that the American establishment is deeply divided in opinion on its short-term Pakistan interests and its long-term India interests in the South Asian region. This is a situation which therefore needs a very careful and clever handling by the Pakistan Foreign Office. It will require all the political and diplomatic adroitness and dexterity in handling this new situation. If it has already not done so it should call in all the old and tried hands in diplomacy — people like Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, Agha Shahi, Sultan Mohammad Khan, Najmul Saqib Khan, Akram Zaki, Shahryar Mohammad Khan, Najmuddin Shaikh and the likes in an advisory panel on how to go about it.

Notwithstanding having given all the diplomatic inputs as stated above the biggest handicap for Pakistan is going to be what to do about the political vacuum which seems to be getting chronic by the day. In the 1971 situation the Indians thrived on the sense of deprivation and cumulative hostility of our Bengali brothers. A similar political vacuum is building up in parts of what in effect is residual Pakistan. The recent referendum has not quite been able to make the international grade in so far as the yardsticks of acceptability and/or respectability are concerned. And whether we like it or not, once again we find ourselves internationally/diplomatically/ politically in a back-to-the-wall situation.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the Indians are fully aware of our internal lack of cohesion and are therefore hell-bent on stirring mischief. Pakistan has always been a fixation with them but it is our job now to be able to play out the impending crisis with the objective of ensuring our country’s safety. I therefore daresay that all major indigenous political forces of the country need to be harnessed in an attempt at shoring up the civilian defences of Pakistan. The army single-handedly cannot pull it off because this is indeed a multifaceted international situation. The integrity and the fighting strength of the Pakistan army not only needs to be preserved but also enhanced in every possible manner.

By way of recall I can remember having told my erstwhile colleague and friend the very outstanding Mirza Mohammad Abbas, DIG Rawalpindi, in 1971 when I was the district magistrate of Rawalpindi-Islamabad that ‘when the chips are down no foreign power will come to our rescue.’ In 1971 the Chinese and the Americans were of no avail to us and we were all witness to the over-running of East Pakistan.

The Indian army is today a lot more beefed up in numbers as well as equipment. Also the Indian economy is in a lot better shape than ever. There is no doubt that the Pakistan army is man to man qualitatively a lot superior to the Indian army. But that was the case earlier also. Where we have always been deficient has been in the art and practice of politics and diplomacy.

If there is a real sharing of power in our country an internal equilibrium will have arrived to pre-empt external machinations. There is indeed no substitute for utilising the power of the people in times of crises. The western world learnt this lesson a long time ago and have not regretted since for having done so. The common man happens to be the pillar of western society because he is at the same time both the voter as well as the consumer and as such the pillar on which the political structure as well as the economic edifice rests.

One thing one has to say to the credit of the Indians is that they are great ones at coming to terms with the reality of political strength or otherwise. The moment they will have found that we have united across our present political divides their language will transform into that of peace. But as of now the Indians happen to be in the throes of a massive midsummer madness that needs to be taken very seriously.

Mr Putin in prspective

THE announcement of two important security agreements between Russia and the West and the approach of last week’s summit meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin have triggered a round of euphoric rhetoric.

It is widely proclaimed that Mr. Putin is leading Russia to “join the West”; the Bush administration’s ambassador to Moscow, Sandy Vershbow, last week spoke of the United States and Russia “increasingly becoming allies in the full sense of the term.”

Certainly the new agreements, on reductions of nuclear weapons and cooperation between Russia and NATO, are welcome, even if both offer more in political symbolism than in substance. So is Mr. Putin’s willingness to cooperate with the war on terrorism. But before the lovefest in St. Petersburg gets fully under way, it’s worth pointing out that, in both foreign and domestic policy, Mr. Putin’s state continues to differ dramatically from the democracies that are genuine U.S. allies.

The Russian leader has been given enormous credit for dropping his resistance to further NATO expansion in exchange for a new mechanism for including Russia in alliance decision-making. Yet, even as he has negotiated this deal, Mr. Putin has been stepping up Moscow’s efforts to establish political and economic dominion over the European and Central Asian countries outside the alliance, ranging from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in Europe to Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

To preserve its influence at the expense of the West, Russia is backing corrupt, anti-democratic and anti-Western forces all through this “near-abroad”; Mr. Putin is single-handedly propping up Europe’s last Stalinist dictator, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

Russian troops continue to occupy bases and strong points in the sovereign states of Moldova and Georgia, despite promises to pull out. And Mr. Putin continues to wage the brutal and bloody military campaign he initiated against Chechnya in 1999, rejecting Western calls for a political settlement.

—The Washington Post

The hidden hand: OF MICE AND MEN

SINCE we hate to face reality in both personal and national matters, we are inclined to see a hidden hand in anything that goes against our plans and pet desires. The conspiracy theory appeals to our imagination, and, instead of looking for simple explanations within ourselves, we tend to romanticize and ascribe happenings to the hidden hand. Even our presidents and prime ministers have not been able to resist the temptation to blame it.

Sometimes, however, in rare cases though, the hidden hand is as clear as daylight. For instance, the air crash that killed General Ziaul Haq and others 14 years ago was the work of a hidden hand but nobody has so far succeeded in naming it, nor has it come forward to claim responsibility. Maybe the hidden hand was just an act of God to show that a dictator too can be rid of without firing a shot.

In Pakistan’s politics the hidden hand is very active and usually plays an important role. When politicians fail to achieve a desired end, they start looking for the hidden hand. Of course they can’t see it because it is supposed to be hidden, or invisible. But whether it is there or not, if offers a convenient handle, almost a scapegoat, for putting the blame on something or someone no one can identify and locate.

If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a hundred times, a tale of woe about individual failure, either in business or a profession or in government service. The narrator is signally blind to his own deficiencies and holds intrigue and conspiracy responsible for his downfall or retarded progress. Someone or the other is always interested in doing him down, for reasons that are not very clear. The hidden hand somehow never makes its motives known.

In general elections, of which we have seen four (or is it five?) this syndrome was very much in evidence. Candidates who would have lost in any case accuse either personalities or contrived circumstances for what had happened to them at the hustings. The conspiracy theory was at its height, fuelled by indignation on the part of the losing political party. I’m sure it will be the same in October.

Coming down to families, some parents think their son is a prodigy, a genius. He is far ahead of his school-fellows in every subject. He must always stand first, in fact he is hounded into standing first. Then, as the matric result is announced, it is found that he has only secured a very good first division. This is not enough for the fond parents, for he should have broken all records in the Board’s history. The hidden hand is looked for. Instead of making the boy conscious of his faults, or the parents scaling down their ambition, he is exalted into a martyr.

There are other parents who have twice arranged a match for daughter, but both the times the thing fizzled out for one reason or another. This time the offer is ‘pucca’, as is the practice in our society, it is being kept a closely guarded secret. You might think it was a nuclear pact between two countries. “Don’t tell brother A or sister B about it yet. You never know in these matters. We’ll just call them when the nikah has been fixed”.

But if fate is averse to the match something untoward again happens and the engagement is called off, naturally to the grief and frustration of the family. The hidden hand is held responsible. “Somebody must be interested in getting the affair broken off”, lament the inconsolable parents.

Pakistanis are particularly prone to see the hidden hand at the international level. If a disturbance takes place in the country because of our own lack of vigilance or our indifference to the sentiments of other provinces and other national groups, we at once hold the Hindu-Jewish lobby guilty of creating the schism. In fact the Hindu-Jewish axis is our favourite whipping boy. One is simply amazed at the range of mischief it is able to engender in Pakistan. It must really be the most formidable force that exists in the world.

Within the country anti-Pakistan elements are another popular hidden hand. If a woman fails to put the dopatta over her head on TV, these elements are said to be active in a surreptitious way. If there is a typographical error in a textbook which gives a slightly different meaning to some words of the Quaid-e-Azam, it is the anti-Pakistan sections which are busy doing mischief and trying to distort the ideology.

The only truly diabolical hidden hand that I can think of in Pakistan is the one that organizes the terrorist murders of innocent people in the big cities of the country, and the one that rides a motor cycle to kill Muslims in mosques, now even in the villages, just because they are either Sunni or Shia or Christian.

That is the hidden hand which has to be exposed and then cut off at the root, but which we have not yet been able to identify and catch and throw on the dirt heap. It is threatening our very existence, let alone our unity and integrity and our peace of mind. It is also giving us a bad name in the outside world, as if corruption and drug-trafficking were not enough.

It is a wonder that our law and order agencies, which claim to know every criminal in their jurisdiction and call him by his first name, have invariably failed to find out the hidden hand. Same is the case with our secret agencies which are adept at harassing the political opponents of ruling regimes but seem to lose their touch when it comes to providing solid, positive service to protect the state by fighting terrorism.

Figures indicate that they now have a strong presence in every district, but there are no figures to show the catches they have made. These agencies may be pastmasters at intimidating harmless innocent citizens, but when it comes to identifying and apprehending terrorists and enemies of the state, their intelligence powers somehow desert them.

I remember President Pervez Musharraf reacting angrily at their ineptness some time ago and vowing to set them right but then he got involved in the referendum. Maybe these agencies too are under the influence of a hidden hand.

As the standoff continues

TEST-FIRING of ballistic missiles by India or Pakistan cannot be seen in isolation from the unfortunate race for building up arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in which these internally unstable and economically backward countries of the Subcontinent have allowed themselves to be trapped.

Other redeeming feature is that a large number of people in the two countries do not regard nuclearization of South Asia as a blessing. In fact, large groups of lawyers, doctors, writers, artists and journalists in the two countries remain strongly committed to the objective of disarmament and denmmitted to the objective of disarmament and denuclearization.

In January 2002, on the eve of the SAARC summit in Kathmandu, a representative gathering of senior media personnel from the SAARC nations expressed “alarm at the prospect of inter-state conflicts leading to wars, including nuclear wars, which could cause a tremendous loss of life, devastation of environment, destruction of precious resources and enormous misery to peoples.”

The on-going military standoff between India and Pakistan with the forces of the two countries massed along their common border, has created serious apprehensions of an armed showdown. Any such conflict would inflict incalculable devastation in both countries because, unlike 1965 or 1971, both India and Pakistan are now in possession of nuclear weapons. A recent study conducted by US and Asian researchers at American’s Princeton University estimated that at least three million people would be killed if “even a limited nuclear war broke out between Pakistan and India.” The destruction to property, industrial and economic infrastructure would also be colossal.

The prospect of nuclear conflict in the subcontinent began with India testing nuclear device in May 1974. However, 24 years later, in May 1998, it went overtly nuclear and conducted a series of nuclear tests.

With a Hindu communalist BJP government in power in New Delhi, the flaunting of its nuclear capability by India’s ruling establishment was only to be expected. More so with super-hawkish home minister, Lal Krishna Advani, setting the pace for an arrogant display of power. On May 18, while Pakistan was still weighing the advantages and risks involved in responding to India’s nuclear tests, Advani warned Pakistan that with the Indian tests the geostrategic situation in the subcontinent had undergone a “decisive” change particularly in regard to “finding a solution to the Kashmir problem”. The Indian defence minister, George Fernandes, also threatened “hot pursuit” of “Pakistan-backed terrorists” operating in Indian held Kashmir into Azad Kashmir.

Two Indian scholars, Praful Bidwai and Achin Vinaik, known for their commitment to non-proliferation, have recorded the May 1998 scenario saying that Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, “showed a distinct reluctance to test... to seize high moral ground and overcome some of the stigma deriving from his support to Islamic extremist groups such as the Taliban...” However, he could not with and for too long the increasing pressure from the jingoists on the home front, especially when his close aides expressed the view that in the event of non-testing the troops’ morale would be affected.

According to Bidwai and Vinaik Nawaz Sharif even resisted offer of a five-billion dollar US package in economic and military aid offered as an incentive not to test ultimately decided to go for nuclear tests of his own and “get even with India.” This was only to be expected in the peculiar context of the subcontinent where a tit-for-tat propensity has long been the defining characteristic of the military equation between two of its major countries.

Against the backdrop of the on-going military stand-off on its eastern border, there has been a growing concern in Pakistan about its security, particularly since the middle of December when India, accusing Pakistan of masterminding an attack on its parliament house in New Delhi, ordered the massing of forces on this country’s eastern border. There was also an alarming escalation in cross-border shelling.

The other day, Mr Vajpayee told Indian forces confronting Pakistan across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir that “the time has come for a decisive battle. “For his part, President Pervez Musharraf has made it clear that Pakistan is not seeking a war with India but if one is foisted on it, it is capable of meeting any threat to its security.

The frightening prospect of yet another India-Pakistan war has prompted the world powers to express deep concern primarily because both India and Pakistan now happen to be nuclear powers. The US ambassador in Islamabad confirmed last week that the US was deeply disturbed over the heightening tensions between India and Pakistan and was working with both countries for de-escalation and for an end to the five-month-old military stand-off.

Earlier, the US assistant secretary of state, Christina Rocca, visited New Delhi and Islamabad to assess the situation and advise restraint on both sides. However, some later developments, including the forced recall of Pakistan’s high commissioner in New Delhi, made it plain that nothing concrete came out of Ms Rocca’s visit. Moreover, the pitch of her trip was marred by the killing of more than 30 people at an army camp in Jammu allegedly by infiltrators from Pakistan.

The US has since decided to send a higher level envoy on a peace mission to India and Pakistan in early June. The British foreign secretary, Mr Jack Straw, is also due to visit Islamabad and New Delhi on similar mission. Many other world powers, including China and Japan, have also urged Pakistan and India for de-escalation of tensions and for the resumption of a peace dialogue.

The chances of peace and normality between and Pakistan are not likely to improve as there is the tendency on the part of the western powers to go along with the Indian contention that “cross-border terrorism” is the only problem in occupied Kashmir — without taking into account the basic cause of unrest and violence in the held territory. There is indeed little attempt on the part of the world leaders to address the core issue — the Kashmir dispute — as the actual reason for between India and Pakistan.

However, perhaps as a result of some behind-the-scenes pressure by the US, India has of late somewhat softened its war-like posture. It has decided “to give Pakistan another two months to crack down on extremists before considering military action.”

What may make a tangible contribution towards the easing of tensions in the subcontinent is our invitation extended by Russian president Vladimir Putin to India and Pakistan for “negotiations” in Kazakhstan next month. The format for the proposed dialogue is not clear but, as India interprets Putin’s invitation, the likelihood is that President Putin will hold separate talks with Mr Vajpayee and Gen Pervez Musharraf. India’s response to Mr Putin’s suggestion has been somewhat guarded. Its foreign office spokesperson, Narupama Roy, has merely said that New Delhi’s understanding was that President Putin would meet the two leaders separately.

Meanwhile, the report about the idea of a “civic dialogue” in an open forum convened by the Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA) and the institute for Asian Studies of Portland state University suggests a possible format for the “search for a solution” of the Kashmir issue.

The discussions in the open forum were stated to be intensive and open. It developed the draft of a “comprehensive agreement based on the idea of creation of five autonomous regions in Kashmir — Azad Kashmir, Northern Territories, Jammu, (Indian occupied) Kashmir and Ladakh — each to be governed by representatives elected by its permanent residents. Foreign affairs will be conducted by India or Pakistan for the region under their respective control. The regions would be required to create a joint governing council of Jammu and Kashmir within two years to regulate inter-regional a fairs. The council would be required to come up with a detailed plan for the “settlement of all Jammu and Kashmir-related matters within five years. Until the final resolution of the matter, the LoC would be treated as the international border between India and Pakistan.

In a broad sense, the draft agreement comes close to what would have been the shape of things if the plan for region-wise plebiscites proposed by Sir Owen Dixon of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) in 1950 had been implemented. However, today’s Kashmir may prove to be too complex for the proposed solution. Yet it deserves to be studied and its practicability in the given configuration of things objectively examined.