A policy of denial and defiance

 

What is with Pakistan’s rulers? Have they made their state a state in denial or are they themselves in a state of denial? It was both interesting and disturbing to see speakers from Pakistan coming on Indian TV channels with only one slogan: Deny and Defy.

It was like playing one of those class 5 school cricket matches where the umpire was from the batting side. Instructions to him used to be that LBW was not out. A snick behind the stumps or a run out, could be a maybe; acceptable when there were no alternatives left. That is how the debate has been childishly denying wrongdoing, being petulant and insensitive, blaming the victim and then threatening with continued misbehaviour.

There was a time when many nostalgic Indians romanced about a Greater India. That romance evaporated long ago, no one thinks about this any more. The reality is that we are now two different nations on two different trajectories. Let us stay that way, happy or otherwise but reconciled to be being good, if not cordial, neighbours. Surely this should be attainable.

Pakistani Rangers and IBSF personnel perform the ‘flag-off’ ceremony at the Wagah Border Post on Jan 15, after the desecration of an Indian jawan’s body by Pak soldiers

There are however two main problems that negate this hope. One is the typical response to the Indian assertion that Pakistan harbours persons like Hafiz Saeed and Abdur Rehman Makki for terrorism against India is that there would be a thousand Hafiz Saeeds and Makkis if the Kashmir issue is not ‘settled’. Translated, this means that the Pakistan state will continue to nurture, train, equip and send these jehadis into Kashmir and this justifies the killing of innocent citizens and non-combatants. Pakistan cannot hold this threat of use of terrorists against India, say that these terrorists are not under the control of the state and then talk of peace.

The second issue is the core. The biggest threat that Pakistan’s ruling class fears to its own existence is not just the strength of the Indian armed forces or India’s growing economic clout. The main threat is that the Indian Muslim feels much safer in India than the Muslim in Pakistan. This negates the Two-Nation Theory and successive Pakistani rulers, especially from the armed forces who fancy that they are the guardians of Pakistan’s ideological frontiers, have been unable to reconcile themselves to this reality. More Muslims have been killed by Muslims in Pakistan than anywhere else in the world in the last 65 years.

Negotiations between sovereign nations can be long and arduous especially between countries such as India and Pakistan given their troubled history. This does not mean that Pakistan has the liberty to periodically target jehadi terrorism at India and expect to get away with it forever. Patience is running out particularly after the Mumbai Terror of November, 2008. Retaliation by India is now demanded by the people as a sovereign right. This is NOT escalation. It would be escalation if Pakistan were to respond to India’s legitimate retaliation with further violence.

Pakistan’s rulers will give up almost everything and endanger their own country but will not give up belligerence and animosity towards India. India’s rulers will give up everything including their credibility but will not give up acquiescence and appeasement. The tragedy of our region is that both will change only when it is too late.

Successive Indian Prime Ministers have tried to walk down the path of peace but Pakistani roadblocks have simply changed location. It is therefore time to try something different because the alternative to peace does not necessarily have to mean total war nor the response to belligerence have to be surrender. Preaching peace from the pulpit cannot be an end in itself.

Neither India nor Pakistan can relocate but India’s options are getting limited and if Pakistan really wants to move forward it cannot keep jumping back to 1947. Besides, in their paranoia, many Pakistanis give themselves too much credit when they say that we covet their territory. There is no such desire in India. Instead, the goal has to be interests and security of the nation and not sweet nothings. India can live without trade with Pakistan, without MFN status and without transit rights to Afghanistan.

The usual discourse that India must help strengthen democratic forces in Pakistan makes good after dinner conversation but is misplaced. Only Pakistanis can do this for themselves; maybe a process has begun and India should simply wait for this to happen.
 

This appeared in the Midday, Mumbai on January 24, 2013

We need a strong fence

The kind of things that amuse a person shows his or her character; so do the statements made in anger. The other night, watching a heated and provocative debate on television one saw and heard four angry Pakistanis — an ex-diplomat, a retired Admiral, a loquacious lawyer and a man in a trench coat. They were discussing (denying or defending may be better words) the latest atrocity where an Indian soldier had been beheaded in the Mendhar sector by intruding Pakistanis.

Three of their remarks stand out; the rest was lost in the din. One, do not forget we are a nuclear nation. Indians are aware of low Pakistani thresholds but this one was really low. Two, do not forget that a few jihadis had come to India a thousand years ago. This was a short course in religious bigotry. Three, unless Kashmir is solved (give it to us) these kinds of incidents will continue. This was meant to be a threat.

This is the mindset we are up against. If this is the mindset of an educated ruling class then what peace dividends are we looking for? Our great desire to periodically sue for peace and exhibit our magnanimity is surely misplaced.

Meanwhile, tension on the Line of Control (LoC) is high with continued exchange of gunfire, which as we know is a tactic the Pakistan army uses when an infiltration is organised, either as a cover or as a diversion. The beheadings have to be seen in the context of Hafiz Saeed’s recent threats of impending violence, the killing of a sarpanch and attempted killing of another, the recent visit of a group of Kashmiris to Pakistan and PoK and their meeting with Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin. These were no social calls and there seems to be logic in all this. These gentlemen are separatists and the government of India, in its hugely mystifying reasoning, allows these persons to contact those very persons who openly talk of destabilising India through violence. We seem to be officially assisting Pakistan in its designs.

Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne declared on January 12 that India was considering other options. Earlier on January 9, the Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani declared in Sialkot that the military was fully prepared to respond to threats of any kind whatsoever — direct, indirect, overt or covert.

A great deal of the present crisis arises because the Pakistani establishment sees all its own internal problems as arising from India. There is an inability to accept that the problems in Pakistan are just too overwhelming for any outside power to contemplate intervening. This internal turmoil, is thus, paradoxically a guarantee against any intervention. Pakistan has to sort out its own problems, no one else can.

The 1994 Green Book has traditionally described the Pakistan army’s role as being to protect the country’s ideological and physical frontiers. The army now has competition within from radical groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan who now claims to be the army of god. Terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba will always be around as these have the support of the State in a manner which even Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda did not. This is what makes them so dangerous. A system that habitually double crosses its main benefactor, the US, is not likely to do differently with its avowed enemy.

One would reasonably assume that at a moment like this when Pakistan was facing problems of Shia genocide and sectarian war, with the entire country west of the Indus in turmoil, its rulers’ priority would be setting their house in order instead of indulging in activity that could easily escalate into military adventurism. But there is a rationale in the irrationality of these policies. Pakistan obsesses with India and periodically threatens national suicide or indulges in mass murder when its demands are not fulfilled. Pakistan could do much better if it seriously counted the cost of its desire to seek equality with India. This makes counting strength in terms of missiles and nuclear weapons far too expensive.

India, on the other hand, takes irrational steps when it portrays itself as a rational reasonable State through grand gestures of magnanimity accompanied by displays of helplessness. India should stop coddling treasonous elements, stop hoping that Pakistan would succumb to our incessant and uninterrupted peace overtures. Instead we need to protect the elected representatives of Jammu and Kashmir and seriously capitalise on the peace dividend by ensuring the fulfilment of the legitimate aspirations of the people within the Union of India.

There are many options between war and capitulation. Endless offers to talk and confidence-building measures are taken as signs of weakness. We have to evolve responses that hurt those very elements that plot and conspire against us and go beyond pro forma expressions of anger and disappointment. The stopping of all confidence-building measures across the board would cover many of these options.

Finally, soldiers, paramilitary and security personnel will continue to suffer losses in the call of duty. The State needs to honour its martyrs by not immediately announcing that talks with the perpetrator would continue regardless of the sacrifices. Besides being tactically unsound, it is as insensitive as Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik’s remark about Saurabh Kalia or Hina Rabbani Khar’s denial. The State must stop treating its martyrs as unavoidable statistics in the pursuit of peace at all costs.

We cannot change or save Pakistan; only Pakistanis can do that. Whatever happens in Pakistan, we have to be ready and learn to live with our neighbour; with a strong fence.

Meanwhile we need to ask ourselves, why are we talking to them, with whom, about what, to what end and for how long?

Source : Hindustan Times , 14th January 2013 , Vikram Sood is former Secretary, Research & Analysis Wing

Pakistan eyes Afghanistan once again

Pakistan and the Taliban have their eyes fixed on 2014 when the US packs its bags and leaves Afghanistan. The US now seems disillusioned with Hamid Karzai but have not yet found an obvious successor in his place and this becomes an impediment in their smooth departure.

Meanwhile, the US-Pakistan relationship continues to lurch from crisis to crisis with periods of extreme bon homie thrown in. The two are currently in the happy phase of their relationship if one goes by the recent announcements on aid and finance for Pakistan.

Pakistan has other worries in the region of threats that emanate from the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan and its growing profile not only in FATA and Khyber-Pakhtun-Khwa but also in Karachi, a city which has the largest concentration of Pakhtuns in the world and is Pakistan’s jugular.

The Pakistani game in Afghanistan is similar to the one that General Zia ul Haq had followed during the Afghan jihad

 

The killing of a prominent Taliban leader Mullah Nazir, in a US drone attack, indicates the dichotomy in the US-Pakistan relations. The US is unable to stop itself from being generous with Pakistan, yet there is considerable suspicion about Pakistan’s intentions.

Mullah Nazir fulfilled Pakistan’s definition of a good Taliban, as he concentrated on activity in Afghanistan, fighting both the Karzai government and the US led forces. Pakistan’s argument has been that it was better to have Nazir on their side and fight in Afghanistan than to have him fighting Pakistani forces.

The fact that Pakistan will continue this policy, despite the killing of Nazir, is evident from the fact that Nazir’s successor, Bahawal Khan who had done a ‘tour of duty’ in Kashmir and has been appointed successor to Nazir. Bahawal Khan’s group has been one of the four groups operating into Afghanistan from FATA and had supplied Taliban fighters.

He is therefore an indication of the continuation of the Pak policy of trying to influence Taliban control in Afghanistan and thereby influence Kabul. So while Nazir’s killing might have been a setback to Pakistan, his quick replacement by another surrogate indicates Pakistan’s ability to quickly retrieve the position and also the kind of games two ‘allies’ play against each other.
The Pakistani game in Afghanistan is similar to the one that General Zia ul Haq had followed during the Afghan jihad. Zia had instructed his trusted aide and DG ISI Akhtar Abdul Rehman that he should keep the CIA at arms length and that “The water in Afghanistan must boil at the right temperature.”

Zia did not want the water to boil over. In this case too, Pakistan has carefully calibrated its strategy to keep the pot boiling to maintain relevance through nuisance and avoid any massive US retaliation through a financial squeeze or closing of essential military supplies.

Even though this policy of harbouring terrorists and using them as a foreign policy weapon has had dubious domestic results, the Pakistan establishment had concluded that it could not give up the option of supporting groups like the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban.

Much is being made out of recent reports that Pakistan has established contacts with the erstwhile Northern Alliance and that this indicated a paradigm shift in Rawalpindi’s thinking. Pakistan had made overtures to Ahmed Shah Massoud and Abdur Rashid Dostum in 1992 before backing Gulbuddin Hikmetyar till his failure to deliver Kabul to Pakistan in 1994.

It was then that the Taliban was conjured and the US oil interests, notably Unocal, were keen on links with the Taliban. An aura of reasonableness and being accommodative suits Pakistan as it lulls the US into accepting a self-serving prophecy that they would be leaving behind a reasonable Pakistan.
The US, as of now, seems willing to ignore Pakistan’s hold on the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura and is willing to keep quiet on what is happening in Balochistan as a price for leaving Afghanistan as a ‘victor’ with Mission Accomplished.

Internationally, there will be more players in the field as China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia become more involved in looking at post-2014 Afghanistan. Possibly the US will want to leave Afghanistan with Pakistan the paramount power; never mind how the Afghans feel about this.

Presidents Obama and Karzai will be discussing all these delicate matters of war, peace and departure when they meet on January 11. What happens in Afghanistan or for that matter in Pakistan after 2014 is another story to be told later.

Source : Mid Day , 10th January 2013, The writer is a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)