Will policy change avert war?
The writer is a former Senator and a
former federal and provincial minister
Jan 04, 2002
The tense stand off on the borders continues even though Pakistan is taking extraordinary measures to diffuse the crisis. The arrest of Jaish and Lashkar leaders and hundreds of their workers is not an ordinary event. Neither is the winding up of their offices, recruitment centres and training camps. Their funds have also been frozen and collection of new donations has been disallowed. In military jargon - which we all understand after the Afghan war - their command and control has been disrupted, their operational capability reduced and their financing curtailed. These are huge steps for any government in Pakistan but particularly exceptional for a military government.
It is no secret that the armed forces or at least some of its elements have had a very special relationship with the Jihadi groups. One unusually poignant example was provided when the Jaish leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, was sprung from an Indian jail after the Kandahar hijacking. Here was a person who owed his freedom to a crime and I naively expected that he would be locked up on return to Pakistan. There was not even a pretence towards it. He was allowed a free run and even formed a new fighting force, the Jaish-e-Mohammad.
There are other examples of official mollycoddling of these groups. When the military government banned all public meetings and processions, the political parties were taken to task if they violated this ban. Not the Lashkar-e-Taiba. It descended on the Mall in Lahore in the summer of 2000 and blocked it from the High Court to Regal chowk. No action was taken against its workers or leaders. Hafiz Saeed, who has now been arrested, staged a mock demonstration of the Lashkar's attack on Delhi's Red Fort in front of an Eid congregation at the Gaddafi Stadium. I am told that General Musharraf was privately furious but the fact is that no action was taken against him.
These are just a few publicly known samples of soft treatment. What happened behind closed doors can only be guessed at. One thing is not a conjecture though: it was not uncommon in private gatherings to hear some important people describe the Jihadis as Pakistan's reserve army. They were, without doubt, playing a significant role in the armed struggle in Kashmir. It was proudly claimed that they had tied up 600,000 Indian troops who otherwise would have trained their guns on Pakistan. It was also maintained that their effort was a serious financial drain on the Indian economy. A drain that would ultimately take its toll.
These were the assumptions that created a mindset of fanciful expectation in our powerful circles. They were convinced that a combination of financial and human cost in Kashmir - thanks to the Jihadis - would bring India to the negotiating table. It was this hypothesis that made some people see Vajpayee's Agra Summit invitation to Musharraf as a sign of Indian weakness. This led to a miscalculation on the part of the Pakistani team. They went with the expectation that India was ready for a deal on Kashmir and were shocked when they found no such thing. They pressed harder and the Indians became even more rigid leading to an impasse. These false assumptions were an important reason for the failure of the summit.
The Jihadi effort in Kashmir was thus an important part of our military's overall strategic equation. In their worldview, these groups were not only waging a freedom struggle in Kashmir, they were also playing a vital role for Pakistan's national security. These assumptions of our 'strategic' planners may have been misplaced but there was no one to stop them and no civilian oversight. This freedom of action and lack of civilian accountability made the entire state of Pakistan hostage to a flawed security doctrine. As always there was also a blowback. The Jihadis started to throw their weight in domestic politics and even threatened to takeover the state. If it was not for September 11 and the American pressure on the government, they may well have done this in a few years.
For the people of Kashmir valley the Jihadi onslaught also had severe repercussions and coloured their view of these groups. Over an 11-year period they suffered 70,000 dead, were subject to systematic rape and torture by the Indian army and saw their economy totally destroyed. What may be even more important, they saw an indigenous national liberation struggle taken over by outsiders. While our military planners may have seen the Jihadis' role in Kashmir as vital to our national security, the Kashmiris did not share or subscribe to this view. I have heard senior Kashmiri leaders both from Azad Kashmir and from the Indian-held Kashmir ask ruefully whether Pakistan would fight to the last Kashmiri.
In the backdrop of all this - strategic objectives, Kashmir liberation, bringing India down to its knees, etc - the government's move against the Jihadi group is not only significant, it is also a dramatic change. It is a major policy turnaround that will have a significant impact not only on the armed struggle in Kashmir but also on the future of the Pakistani state. It means that an obsolete but deeply loved security doctrine has finally been abandoned. Only a military government could do this because a civilian government trying any such thing would have been caught by the ears, to use an Urdu expression, and thrown out.
The beauty of it all is that this sensational change is coming about without much fanfare. There has been no dramatic announcement just routine security activity by the provincial governments. Even in the press no one is calling this change a great betrayal or saying that Islam or Pakistan has been put in danger. Qazi Hussain Ahmed and his party are saying this but who is listening to them. Not the ordinary people who are only concerned about an outbreak of hostilities between two nuclear powers.
I cannot believe that India is not watching or closely observing what is going on here. What is clear as daylight to ordinary mortals like me must have been, by now, masticated and digested by policy planners in Delhi. Yet, India is not letting up the pressure. If an excuse was needed by India to declare victory and withdraw its forces from the borders, it has been provided by General Musharraf. Still, it continues to make threatening noises.
There can be only two reasons for this. Either, they are not sure how serious this drive is against the Jihadis. Or, they have a bigger design which has only a marginal reference to what they call cross border terrorism. Concerning the first aspect, they only need to wait and then judge for themselves the sincerity of the Pakistani government's action against the Jihadi groups. Becoming trigger-happy at this stage only complicates the scenario for General Musharraf. He is doing what the Indians (and the Americans) want but would hate it to be seen as such. The Indians should give space to the General and not queer his pitch at this very important juncture in our history.
The second scenario is more dangerous and I hope not true. The Indians may have convinced themselves that they can win a military victory against Pakistan. That is why they are not backing down even after 'positive' steps by the Pakistani government. In this scenario the target is not the state of Pakistan or stopping cross border terrorism but Pakistan's military. They may decide in their fanciful dream to take out the Pakistani military, topple the Musharraf regime, and so degrade the military in Pakistani society that its hold is finished in our polity forever. A sort of repeat 1971 but more. The solution of the Kashmir issue will be a by-product of all this but the real purpose would be to finish the hold of what they insultingly call a 'rogue' army on their western borders.
They may have been strengthened in this belief because civilian leaders of Pakistan, with the exception of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, have always been more amenable to a settlement with India. Both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir, the two most important civilian leaders in Pakistan, have made no secret of their desire for normalisation of relations with India. Benazir on her latest Indian visit has removed any doubt about her desires and, throwing caution to the winds, has said more than what any civilian leaders has been willing to say about the future of Indo-Pak relations. Nawaz initiated a breakthrough of sorts with India and there is no reason to assume that his views have changed.
The only problem with this scenario of taking out the Pakistan army is that it will surely lead to a major cataclysm. First, our Army is not a pushover and will give back as good as it gets. Second, if God forbid Pakistan is pushed to the wall it could certainly contemplate using the nuclear weapon. This would destroy us all but I have little doubt that no one in Pakistan will countenance a major military defeat.
This then is the holocaust that stares us in the face. We have miscalculated in the past and the Indians might be doing it now. It is time that they realise the gravity of the situation and pull back. The events are in any case moving towards a final and peaceful settlement in the subcontinent. A wrong move now will cost all of us - Indians and Pakistanis - our future. This is a time for wisdom not desperation.