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Skeptical Indians begin to come
around
By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - With the foreign-secretary-level India-Pakistan
talks about talks ending on Wednesday with a clear
time-frame and roadmap for future dialogue to start soon
after Indian elections in April, this positive note in
bilateral relations after a long period of bitterness is
naturally a cause for satisfaction in India. But what
political and diplomatic circles in New Delhi are even
happier about is emerging evidence of a clear change in
the mindset of the Pakistani establishment - which they
felt was the primary cause of the decades of hostility
in the first place.
Such evidence started
emerging at the beginning of the week. On Monday, the
day the official dialogue started, one of Pakistan's
major newspapers, The Nation, reported that several
jihadi groups, including key ones such as the Hizbul
Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and others, have clearly
been told by senior Pakistani officials that they must
wind up their activities. The Hizbul spokesman denied
it, and only time will tell whether the report was
correct. But from India's point of view, it is clearly a
good beginning.
Even more heartening to India is
news that Mumbai underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's
security cover provided by Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) has been withdrawn. Ibrahim is
perhaps the most important criminal on the wanted list
provided by India to Pakistan for extradition. He is
believed to be responsible for the serial bomb blasts
that took hundreds of lives in Mumbai in 1993. Quoting
Indian intelligence sources, The Times of India reported
on Friday that the move has been made on the personal
orders of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.
The ISI had been providing Ibrahim a security ring of 12
men since he moved to Pakistan after the Mumbai blasts.
India's list of 20 criminals wanted from
Pakistan is reportedly being discussed at covert
meetings between the chief of India's external
intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, C D
Sahay, and ISI chief Ehsanul Haq that have been going on
since last month.
In an even more significant
move - also being looked at quite favorably in India -
on the last day of the first round of India-Pakistan
talks, Musharraf exhorted the ulema (religious
scholars) at a well-attended convention in Islamabad to
play a proactive role in fostering unity and sectarian
harmony and weeding out extremist elements from
Pakistani society. He said it was only a small minority
of extremists whose actions gave rise to misperceptions
about Pakistan, while its vast majority was moderate.
"We are not extremists or terrorists. But we
have to prove to the world that we are a moderate
Islamic country where the moderates are in absolute
majority," he said. Musharraf said Pakistan faced no
external threat but a small number of extremist forces
"can harm the country internally".
Dressed in
his military fatigues, Musharraf ordered an "end to a
jihad led by individuals" and sought the resolution of
the "freedom struggle" in Kashmir through dialogue.
"Individuals cannot undertake jihad when and where they
like. The decision to undertake jihad can only be given
by the government. We have to show [to the world] that
we are responsible people. [As for] the freedom struggle
going on Kashmir, we have to resolve this through
dialogue ... with India," he said.
Musharraf
said he had been informing the world that the
madrassas (religious schools) were the biggest
non-governmental organizations accommodating and feeding
hundreds of thousands of poor children but, he
regretted, some institutions "are involved in inflaming
hatred and discord".
"I appeal to you to
identify and expose such institutions and help bring
them on the right path," he urged. Referring to the
Pakistan Army's action against foreigners in the tribal
areas, Musharraf said no foreigner "has the right to be
in Pakistan without legal documents" and anyone trying
to kick up trouble in Afghanistan from here would be
stopped firmly. "I am fully confident that we will
combat them," he stated, vowing stern action against
foreign elements trying to misuse Pakistani soil for
their own agenda.
No country can progress in
isolation in today's world, said Musharraf, adding: "We
will have to remove misperceptions about our country to
attain economic prosperity." The ulema, he said,
could greatly help in creating awareness at the
grassroots level about the problems facing the country.
"We need to correct the misperceptions about the country
and put our house in order. We have to project a true
image of Islam, which stands for peace, love,
brotherhood and harmony and does not allow extremism.
Let us pledge today that we shall not stop here and take
forward our consistent efforts to stamp out extremism."
He said he hoped that such conventions in the provinces
would add to the momentum created against the menace of
extremism at this conference.
These comments
were clear evidence that fresh winds are blowing in
Pakistani politics - as clear as India could have hoped
for. Several observers had reacted with skepticism when
a respected Pakistani journalist visiting Delhi had
talked about this change a couple of days earlier.
Returning from his last visit to India five years ago,
Najam Sethi, the editor of the Daily Times of Lahore and
the better-known weekly Friday Times, had been arrested
by the then democratically elected government of
Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif - whom Musharraf
ousted in a coup four years ago - on charges of sedition
for having made a speech in Delhi criticizing the
government. But during Musharraf's military dictatorship
he and the Pakistani media in general have enjoyed
unprecedented freedom to criticize the government. So
one could understand his good feeling toward the present
establishment.
But Sethi was talking in the
context of India-Pakistan bilateral relations when he
told the newspaper Indian Express: "There is a change of
mindset in the Pakistani establishment," a recognition
that "in the case of the low-intensity conflict with
India, the cost-benefit ratio has been overturned".
Post-September 11, 2001, the transformation on
Afghanistan and Kashmir and of pushing "moderation"
rather than "political Islam" domestically have to go
hand in hand. Nor has it been a one-sided change. "Both
countries tried to make the other budge" to no avail. If
the Pakistani establishment has discovered the
limitations of low-intensity jihad, the Indian
government "mobilized troops at the border, got ready
for war" but in the end realized it couldn't be done.
Left with no option, the two have now decided to try
peace, he concluded.
Indeed, several Pakistani
intellectuals and strategic thinkers, including
establishment figures, are beginning to see the world
from a perspective that augurs well for bilateral
relations and gives India hope that the new turn of
events may not prove as ephemeral as some skeptical
Indians still think. In fact much of what is appearing
in Pakistani press nowadays is music to Indian ears.
With the Internet enabling Indian newspapers, at least
those such as the Indian Express and Asian Age that
still have space for news and views and have not become
mere purveyors of infotainment, to reproduce articles
from Pakistani newspapers, the new standpoint of
Pakistani intelligentsia is acting as a veritable
confidence-building measure, more credible than anything
that the Pakistani government could do.
Two
Pakistani intellectuals, among many who have been
commenting with a changed perspective, can be cited to
support that point. A former Pakistani diplomat, Afzaal
Mahmood, seems to look at the Pakistan-India issue in
exactly the same terms as an Indian would. He writes in
Pakistani's influential newspaper, The Dawn: "The time
has come when Pakistan must face the ground realities as
they exist and not as it would like them to be. Compared
to India, we are a small country and cannot hope to be
an effective rival of our big neighbor in international
politics. It is therefore futile on our part to oppose
India's efforts to achieve its potential and act as a
big power in world politics - we simply cannot prevent
it. Even the pretense to being the rival of India became
meaningless after the country had been halved by the
separation of East Pakistan.
"Pakistan's
obsession with being treated as equal to India is
actually a legacy of pre-Partition days' rivalry between
the Muslim League and the Congress. After the Cabinet
Mission Plan, when the British withdrawal from India
became a certainty, the Muslim League demanded 50
percent share for 30 percent Indian Muslims at the
center - equal representation for Muslim-majority
provinces with Hindu-majority provinces at the center,
which of course was not acceptable to the Congress.
"Instead of adopting a negative attitude towards
India's progress, we should focus on making Pakistan a
progressive, democratic, peaceful, stable and prosperous
country. If rivalry with India has become a part of our
psyche and we cannot live without it, then let us have a
healthy rivalry - competition with our neighbor in the
fields of individual freedoms, human rights, independent
judiciary, free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of
power, treatment of minorities, economic prosperity, the
care of the elderly and poor, social reforms, literacy
rate, the quality of education and, of course, sports.
Let us hope this is not asking too much of most
Pakistanis."
Almost as if to prove that Afzaal
Mahmood was not daydreaming and his views actually
represent a change, Musharraf denied on Tuesday that
Pakistan was engaged in any military competition with
India. He specifically denied any plans to try and match
India's nuclear weapons capability while confirming that
in the next few weeks Islamabad would test-fire its
Shaheen II, a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers.
"We are not interested in competing with India.
If they want to reach 5,000 kilometers or have
intercontinental ballistic missiles, we are not
interested in those. We are only interested in our own
defense," he told the Financial Times in his first
interview after he pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan, the
father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, for his
self-confessed proliferation activities. The president
also asserted that Pakistan had no intention of freezing
its nuclear-weapons program, stating that it was
self-sufficient and would not require the import of more
material or designs from abroad. "We will never stop our
nuclear and missile program," he said. "That is our
vital national interest. It is totally indigenous now.
Whatever had to be imported and procured has been
obtained."
As skeptical Indian strategists
wonder about the durability of the peace process,
another Pakistani intellectual, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a
high-profile physicist based in Islamabad, gives more
evidence of a change in Pakistani thinking. He makes
almost the same points and raises the same questions on
the nuclear proliferation issue in a Washington Post
article that any Indian strategist would. He says: "The
investigation is likely to raise more issues than it
settles. While Musharraf has said that 'there is no such
evidence that any government personality or military
personality was involved', this attempt to ascribe all
wrongdoing to a few greedy individual scientists will
find few takers. Nor should it."
Hoodbhoy adds a
little background to his arguments: "Since its
inception, Pakistan's nuclear program has been squarely
under army supervision. A multi-tiered security system
was headed by a lieutenant-general [now, two] with all
nuclear installations and personnel kept under the
tightest possible surveillance. Diplomatic immunity was
insufficient to prevent a physical roughing up of the
French ambassador to Pakistan some years ago when he
journeyed to a point several miles from the enrichment
facility. Kahuta was considered sensitive to the point
that Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, claims
that even while in office she could not receive
clearance to visit the labs. In such an extreme security
environment, it would be amazing to miss the travel
abroad of senior scientists, engineers and
administrators, their meetings with foreign nationals,
and the transport and transfer of classified technical
documents and components, if not whole centrifuges."
The Pakistani physicist puts the blame entirely
on the doorstep of the military: "While individual gain
may have been part of the motivation, the substantial
cause lies elsewhere. From the inception of the bomb
program, Pakistan's establishment has sought to turn its
nuclear ambitions and success into larger gains. For
one, it wanted (and gained) the support of hundreds of
millions of Muslims the world over by claiming to
provide a Muslim success story. (That this involved
replicating a 60-year-old technology for mass
destruction is a sad commentary on the state of the
Muslim world.) For another, it enabled Pakistan to enjoy
considerable financial and political benefits from
oil-rich Arab countries. Among others, Libya reportedly
bankrolled Pakistan and may even have supplied raw
uranium. After Pakistan's nuclear tests six years ago,
the Saudi government gave an unannounced gift of [US]$4
billion worth of oil spread over five years to tide
Pakistan over during its difficulties caused by
international sanctions."
As this sense of
satisfaction for Pakistan moving in the right direction
percolates down from strategic thinkers to the average
Indian citizen, the Kargil and Agra-induced mistrust
toward Musharraf and the Pakistani establishment is
beginning to lift a little. Asked by private television
channel NDTV 24x7 on Wednesday if they could trust
Musharraf, 55 percent of those viewers who voted in the
informal poll answered in the positive. With the first
round of India-Pakistan dialogue ending on a positive
note, this percentage is set to grow.
As
hundreds of common Indians visit Pakistan in March to
watch the cricket matches between the two countries that
are going to be played again after more than a decade
and experience the welcome and immense hospitality of
average Pakistani citizens toward them, a sense of
confidence in the possibility of peace is likely to grow
further. It is thus becoming possible to dare to hope
for the present dialogue as marking the beginning of
durable peace on the South Asian subcontinent.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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