In an article of November on
India-Pakistani relations, I wrote as follows:
The positive factors noticed since the
beginning of the year should not be interpreted as
indicating the beginning of the end of
Pakistani-sponsored terrorism. [President General
Pervez] Musharraf has retained his capability to step
on the terrorism accelerator once again, if needed.
The terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory in
the form of training camps and sanctuaries remains
intact and he has not taken any action to arrest the
over 20 Indian and Pakistani terrorists, including
Dawood Ibrahim, wanted for trial in India and hand
them over to the Indian authorities. While the US has
definitely pressurized him to reduce, if not stop, the
infiltrations, its pressure, if there has been any, on
him to put an end to the terrorist infrastructure and
arrest the Indian terrorists in Pakistani territory
and hand them over to India has not produced results.
Musharraf's calculation is that so long as he keeps
the jihadi terrorism confined to J&K [Jammu and
Kashmir] and concentrated on the security forces
without indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians,
the international community in general and the US in
particular would remain inclined to agree with his
projection of the happenings in J&K as a freedom
struggle and not terrorism and would not exercise
undue pressure on Pakistan to stop even this. One
should not be surprised if his calculation proves
right.
Two subsequent developments should
be of great concern to India. The first relates to
Musharraf's meeting with President George W Bush in
Washington DC on December 4, and the second to the
casualties suffered by the Indian security forces in
J&K in two terrorist strikes coinciding with his
visit. The first took place just before his arrival in
the US and the second on the day of his talks with Bush.
His visit to the US was preceded by a
notification sent by the Bush administration to Congress
of its intention to give to Pakistan another military
package amounting to US$1.3 billion. The earlier
post-September 11 military lollipops to Musharraf were
projected by the Bush administration to India as
counter-terrorism equipment meant for use against the
Taliban and al-Qaeda dregs near the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border. The explanation sounded plausible.
The
latest package has no counter-terrorism value. It
consists of items such as Orion naval surveillance
aircraft, which could be used by Pakistan only against
India and not against al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Musharraf
has managed to get from the US all that he wanted except
the F-16 aircraft. According to him, the F-16 request
was discussed by him with Bush, but there was no
announcement on this. It is only a question of time
before he gets even this. Our concerns are going to be
of no avail in Washington DC, so long as it continues to
look on him as one of the main guarantors of homeland
security in the US by keeping al-Qaeda in disarray
through his military operations, ostensibly directed
against al-Qaeda dregs in Pakistani territory.
Musharraf has once again demonstrated his
usefulness to the Bush administration not only by
preventing the Taliban from disrupting the presidential
elections in Afghanistan in October, but also by
ensuring the victory of Hamid Karzai in the first round
itself, by mobilizing the Pashtun votes in Karzai's
favor on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Without the absentee ballots in his favor from
Pakistan's refugee camps, Karzai was very unlikely to
have won in the first round itself.
The US has
refused to recognize the fairness of the elections in
Ukraine, inter alia, on the ground that Moscow
manipulated the absentee ballots of the Ukrainians
living in Russia to ensure the defeat of a pro-US
candidate. But it had hastened to proclaim the fairness
of the elections in Afghanistan despite a similar
manipulation of the absentee Pashtun votes by
Musharraf's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to ensure
the victory of Karzai, who enjoys the US benediction.
With Musharraf's continuing usefulness for
ensuring homeland security in the US and the US's
strategic interests in Afghanistan thus proved, there
ought to be no surprise that the question of the
continuing anti-India terrorist infrastructure in
Pakistani territory received no mention, either before,
during or after Musharraf's pow-wow with Bush.
The Washington meeting was preceded by a raid by
terrorists into a special operations group's camp in
Sopore in J&K in which five paramilitary personnel
were reportedly killed. Coinciding with the Washington
meeting, the Hizbul Mujahideen, whose leader Syed
Salahuddin continues to operate from his sanctuary in
Pakistan, blew up with a remote-controlled landmine a
military vehicle at village Nain Batapora in south
Kashmir's Pulwama district, killing nine military
personnel and two civilians.
What do these
terrorist strikes indicate: First, they underline once
again Musharraf's confidence that he has nothing to fear
from the US so long as he keeps the jihadi terrorist
strikes confined to Kashmiri territory and directed
against the Indian security forces. Second, they are
meant to convey a message to public opinion in Pakistan
that his close relations with the US and his cooperation
with it in the so-called war against al-Qaeda would not
come in the way of Pakistan's continuing proxy war
against India in J&K.
India finds itself a
prisoner of its own unwise and unwarranted over-anxiety
for a thaw in India-Pakistan relations. This
over-anxiety has made us mute spectators of continued
use of jihadi terrorism by Pakistan against India lest
any public articulation of our concerns come in the way
of this chimera of a thaw and be viewed by the
international community negatively.
Under normal
circumstances, India would have been and should have
been in the forefront of those drawing the attention of
the international community to the over 200 references
to Pakistan and terrorism in the report of the US
National Commission on September 11, to the role of Dr A
Q Khan, Pakistan's nuclear scientist, with the consent
of General Mirza Aslam Beg, General Jehangir Karamat and
Musharraf, in assisting Iran and North Korea in
acquiring a military nuclear capability and to the
continuing Pakistani sponsorship of jihadi terrorism
directed against India and to its repeated violation of
the provisions of the UN Security Council Resolution No
1373 relating to sanctuaries to terrorists.
But,
since the meeting between Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former
prime minister, and Musharraf in Islamabad in January,
we have been observing a strange silence on all these
issues. Have our silence and inaction benefited us? No.
It has only benefited Pakistan by encouraging it to
continue on its present path and by helping it to
rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the international
community. By our silence, we are unwittingly letting
ourselves become the objective allies of Musharraf in
his efforts to keep us bleeding.
B
Raman is additional secretary (retired), Cabinet
Secretariat, government of India, New Delhi, and,
presently, director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer
Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. Email:corde@vsnl.com
