Considering the ease with which anti-Pakistani feelings can be ratcheted up in India by the opposition parties and sections of the media, it takes a great deal of courage to try to reduce tension and move towards peace. In this respect, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s initiatives in Sharm-el-Sheikh were a bolder venture than even Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s bus journey to Lahore a decade ago.
The boldness was all the greater because the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting was preceded by 26/11 whereas Vajpayee’s excursion was followed by the Kargil conflict, the Kandahar hijacking and the attack on parliament. Had it been the other way round, Vajpayee would not have travelled to Lahore at all.
Yet, Manmohan Singh praised his predecessor’s overtures to a duplicitous neighbour during his address to parliament. The reason was that Vajpayee had to overcome the strong lobby of Pakistan-baiters in his own Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and in the RSS-led Sangh Parivar, a member of which advised him to go to Lahore in a tank and not in a bus.
The same group in the BJP was active yet again in parliament with a former minister, Yashwant Sinha, even accusing Manmohan Singh of walking over to the Pakistani side.
At the end of the parliamentary debate, however, the reference to Balochistan in the Sharm-el-Sheikh document remained the only point which gave the BJP some solace. Otherwise, Manmohan Singh’s reiteration that a return to the negotiating table was not possible till Pakistan acted against its supposedly “non-state” terrorists left the opposition without any substantial talking point.
In contrast to the BJP’s politically-motivated obduracy, what was evident was the reasonableness of Manmohan Singh’s stand that, first, war was not an option and, second, that channels of communication could not be shut down even if the interlocutor was perceived to be mendacious.
Hence the prime minister’s reference to Ronald Reagan’s “trust, but verify” directive in the context of the American peace initiatives with the Soviet Union. Arguably, the Indian efforts to reach an understanding with Pakistan face even greater obstacles than the Reagan-Gorbachev dialogue.
The reason is that the US knew who it was dealing with in Moscow. India, however, cannot be sure whether President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani are really calling the shots in Islamabad, and not army chief General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani.
India cannot forget that even as Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif were meeting in Lahore, then Pakistani army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf was preparing for his Kargil misadventure.
Similarly, Kayani’s recent comment that the army will bring the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) under “control” if India stopped “messing around” in Balochistan indicates that the links between the military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with the LeT remain intact.
The same impression is conveyed by Pakistani objections to the proposed American “surge” in the anti-Taliban operations in Afghanistan since this can lead to the influx of terrorists into Balochistan and elsewhere in Pakistan. Their arrival will compound the situation for the army because it is unwilling to move its troops from the Indian border to fight the internal menace.
It is this suspicion of dualism which probably made Manmohan Singh express the hope that the “leadership in Pakistan will have the courage to defeat those who want to destroy peace”. His reference may not have been only to the terrorists but also to their backers in the military and ISI.
At the same time, the resultant uncertainty about whether it is worthwhile to negotiate with those who do not have real authority in Pakistan explains the prime minister’s remark that while he shares Vajpayee’s “vision”, he also feels “his frustration in dealing with Pakistan”.
Although this is the fundamental difficulty of interacting with Pakistan, it is a point not raised by parties like the BJP because it will dilute their criticism of the government and the prime minister’s supposed weakness, on which it is again focussing even though this line of attack was of no help to it in the elections.
If, on his part, Manmohan Singh was able to dispel much of the misgivings about delinking acts of terrorism from resumption of the dialogue, this could not be said about the reference to Balochistan in the document even if it was due to bad drafting, as Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon conceded.
But if Pakistan believes that allegations of Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing’s (RAW) involvement in Balochistan will balance the Indian charges against ISI, it is still a kind of self-goal for Islamabad because it underlines the prevalence of serious unrest in a large province a la the former East Pakistan before 1971.
Whether RAW is funneling funds to the Balochistan Liberation Army or not, as a well-known Pakistani television journalist, Hamid Mir, has mentioned in a recent article, Baloch separatism is another indication of Pakistan’s fragility, which is also exemplified by the continuing influence of the Islamic fundamentalists in the north-west.
India’s willingness, therefore, to talk to Pakistan if it can rein in terrorism not only entails propping up the somewhat more dependable civilian leadership vis-à-vis the military and ISI for the sake of peace but also to ensure that the latter’s flirting with religious extremists does not further destabilise the failing state.
(01-08-2009 – Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at aganguli@mail.com)
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state of emergency former President Pervez Musharraf imposed in 2007 was unconstitutional and declared invalid the appointments of judges he made during that period. The decision Friday could lay the …
Islamabad: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can change the sub-continental strategic equation if politicians in both countries “care to listen to him”, a leading English daily said Friday while analysing his defence of the India-Pakistan …
Close observers of Pakistani politics will have no doubt noted this story, in which it is claimed that the judiciary is backing off from charging former president Pervez Musharraf with treason.
ISLAMABAD: Chief justice turned down a request on Thursday to launch a treason case against former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, saying the Supreme Court lacked the authority.
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’’s remarks could reassure both the fragile civilian government and military establishment, as they can ill-afford any fresh crisis at a time when the country is fighting a Taliban insurgency.
‘This is not the proper forum to initiate such case. We are not authorised to do so,’ Chaudhry told the court.
The question I”m wondering about is: why? It’’s not as if the Chief Justice and the apex court have in the past shown any reluctance to overstep their bounds and tread where they are not authorized to do so. There are a few explanations I can think of.
First, the judiciary (and by that I mean Chaudhary) thinks Musharraf is irrelevant now that he is no longer in power. Therefore it makes little sense to waste time, energy, and political capital, and risk considerable political turmoil, for someone who doesn”t matter anymore. Chaudhary might reason that his time is better spent getting in Zardari’’s way than punishing Musharraf, because the former is still central to Pakistani politics.
Second, Chaudhary and the court might have been chastened from the recent hullabaloo over the carbon tax and its rescinding. For the first time since March 2007, his actions were actually questioned and debated, rather than simply thought of as the delivery of divine justice. Most people — and this is just a hunch; I have no data to back it up — probably still supported his stance, but at least there was a discussion. When Ayaz friggin” Amir (of all people) takes issue with Iftikhar Chaudhary and the judiciary, you know something’’s up. The point is, if Chaudhary and his activist court was being debated in the public sphere for the mere reason of a carbon tax, he might have thought that trying Musharraf for treason for crimes that were no more egregious than those of every Pakistani ruler that has ever lived (including his closest political ally, Nawaz Sharif) might be a bit much.
Third, it would strike many (including perhaps Chaudhary himself, who by all accounts is a good man, if a misguided one) as hypocritical for the court to try Musharraf for subverting the constitution when, um, Chaudhary was the one who not only rubber-stamped his coup in 1999, but also in 2000 gave him the right to amend the constitution. Tricky business this, when people actually have long memories, don”t fawn over you and actually examine the historical record, no?
Fourth, Chaudhary (like Musharraf) is a patriot, and might have reasoned that there is enough political turmoil in the country as it stands. He might also have been politely told by stakeholders as varied as Kayani and Gillani that this might not be an especially bright idea. Not in so many words.
My best bet is that it is a combination of numbers one and four, with two and three playing background roles. Or maybe this is much-ado-about-nothing; maybe Chaudhary is just delaying the moment at which Musharraf is tried, and not actually forswearing the possibility that he will be. Who knows?
Posted: Jul. 30 5:48 p.m. Updated: 6 minutes ago NEW YORK ‘” Accusations that a North Carolina man recruited and trained would-be terrorists to wage violent jihad are “pure poppycock,” his older brother said Thursday, portraying the charges as an …
New Delhi (Dawn.com): The alternative to dialog is war said the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the legislators during his speech. He was defending the declaration signed between the Prime Minister’s of India and Pakistan on the sideline on …
KARACHI: The city will soon loose a unique slum, Bandar Basti (monkey colony), when its inhabitants would be vacated from the area as the Pakistan Railways has started building a compound wall to protect its land from encroachment. Bandar Basti is a …
KARACHI, July 31 (Reuters) – Pakistani stocks ended more than 3 percent higher on Friday on hopes the International Monetary Fund will approve an additional $4 billion in funding for the country next week. Friday’s 3.06 percent jump in the Karachi …
An appeals court tossed out the ruling, but the brush with Shariah law did not shake Boyd’s Muslim faith. Today, U.S. officials accuse the 39-year-old of being so extreme that he planned to wage holy war. Police and court records from his 1991 trial …
Srinagar, Jul 30 : People from across the Line of Control (LoC) continue to visit the Kashmir valley in large numbers with 55 residents of Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (POK) arriving here today. In all, as many as 133 people crossed sides on the LoC …