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BRIDGING THE
SOUTH ASIAN DIVIDE
Two steps forward, one step back
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI -
Understandably, Tuesday's announcement that India and
Pakistan will next month hold talks on disputed Kashmir
and other contentious issues has been widely hailed as a
significant step towards laying the foundations for
lasting peace between the fractious neighbors.
But while politicians on both sides of the
divide present a unified and optimistic front, behind
the scenes the picture is not as rosy, as neither side
has given any indication of halting state-sponsored
proxy wars.
On the positive side, though, the
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
summit in Islamabad at which the peace initiative was
announced proved to be the first international event in
the past 50 years at which neither India nor Pakistan
resorted to mud-slinging. Under United States pressure,
the event was staged in such as manner that despite the
reservations of opposition parties in both countries,
all expressed cautious optimism and avoided unnecessary
criticism of the peace move.
Even a leading
liberation movement in Kashmir hailed the initiative.
Talking by telephone to Asia Times Online, Saleem
Hashmi, the spokesman for the largest indigenous
Kashmiri liberation movement, the Hizbul Mujahideen,
welcomed the announcement of talks on Kashmir next
month.
"As far as talks are concerned, we the
Mujahideen welcome the negotiations and at the SAARC
summit and at the sideline parleys both sides recognized
Kashmir as an issue, which is a good development,"
Hashmi maintained. He added that although it was the
first time that Pakistan had not raised a strong voice
for the right of self-determination for Kashmiris, the
Mujahideen believed that since the two countries had
agreed to have dialogue on the issue, there were
positive hopes.
However, Hashmi set aside any
chance of the Mujahideen silencing their guns just yet.
"The process of dialogue continues, and so does the
struggle. The same happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
However, the supreme commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen,
Syed Salahuddin, has laid down conditions that if India
recognizes Kashmir as a disputed territory, pulls out
its army from the valley and releases arrested
Kashmiris, the Mujahideen will declare a ceasefire in
the valley and immediately be available for dialogue."
In the broader picture, though, behind the
curtains, India and Pakistan have chosen their
battlefields in attempts to continue to destabilize each
other.
India's battlefields
Balochistan: The rugged mountains and
the valleys of Quetta, the capital of the southern
Pakistani province of Balochistan, echo with a fresh
wave of destabilization that is being taken very
seriously by the decision makers in Islamabad. In the
most recent visit of this correspondent to Balochistan,
a freshly-retired top bureaucrat of the province said
that Islamabad is convinced that a powerful military
operation against rebel forces in the territory is
inevitable.
Although there is no immediate
threat of insurgency in Balochistan, Islamabad is
concerned that hidden hands are trying to stir up
separatist forces. The Baloch, like the Pashtun, are a
tribal population whose original territory extends
beyond the national borders. Over 70 percent of the
Baloch now live in Pakistan, with the remainder in Iran
and Afghanistan. There have been sporadic separatist
movements in Balochistan since Pakistan's independence
in 1947. Baloch have long been accustomed to indirect
rule, a policy that leaves local elite with a
substantial measure of autonomy. The 1970s saw a sharp
deterioration in relations between Balochistan and the
central government, which turned particularly brutal.
A recent bomb blast in Quetta and seemingly
aimless rocket attacks every other day are being read as
a precursor to a new round of unrest. Separatist leader
Ataullah Khan Mengal, who had been living in exile in
the United Kingdom for a long time, recently suddenly
returned and has become active again. Nawab Khair Bux
Mari, another separatist leader who returned to Pakistan
after the fall of the communist regime in Afghanistan in
the early 1990s had been living quietly in Pakistan, but
he is now active shuttling between the Pakistani port
city of Karachi and Khuzdar and Quetta in Balochistan to
reactivate rebel sleeper cells.
The Pakistani
establishment sees the hand of India behind this
fast-growing instability, and is preparing plans for
military action accordingly.
A senior
intelligence officer in Quetta told this correspondent
an interesting fact - that Balochis have very special
relations with India, so much so that a number of
Balochi men have taken Indian wives, and subsequently
forged family ties in India. This is just a small
example of how India can spread its influence in the
region.
Sindh: Another playing
field is Sindh province, where Pakistani intelligence
sources tell Asia Times Online that an Indian proxy
network has established a sizeable presence among Sindhi
nationalist elements which aim to take the Punjabi
establishment head on over the issues of the
construction of the Kalabagh dam and the Thal canal,
which Sindhi nationalists outright oppose.
The
federal government plans to construct a mega hydropower
dam on the River Indus at Kalabagh. Only one out of the
four provinces of Pakistan, the Punjab, favors this
project, with Balochistan, North-West Frontier Province
and Sindh opposing it on the basis that it is an
unsustainable project whose economic, environmental,
ecological and agricultural consequences will be
catastrophic. It is expected to cost up to US$12 billion
to build.
Pakistan's
battlefield
Pakistan has chosen new battlefields
in India's Punjab and Manipur regions. A renegade Indian
Sikh leader and the president of the World Muslim Sikh
Association, Man Mohan Singh, who is wanted dead or
alive in India and who is based in Britain, has launched
a regrouping operation in Indian Punjab, Haryana and
Delhi.
Insurgency is already simmering in
Manipur and Nagaland due to successful intelligence
operations on the part of both Bangladeshi and Pakistani
intelligence agencies operating from Bangladesh.
The unnatural divides created on the Indian
sub-continent by the British colonial power in 1947 have
not all been papered over in the past half century or
so, and they remain fertile grounds for unrest, which
both Pakistan and India will continue to exploit,
regardless of what Uncle Sam may be dictating on the
wider political front.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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