Crisis India-Pakistan:
Achtergrondinformatie, analyse en nieuws
uit de Indiase, Pakistaanse en internationale media.

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The News International, Wednesday February 13, 2002

Right to protest

Dr Riaz Ahmed

India and Pakistan are on the brink of yet another war. Like its democratic counterpart in India the military dictatorship of General Musharraf is also not doing much to ease tensions. Pakistanis and Indians are angry at hate-mongering of the governments. Peace rallies are being held in major cities of both countries. The Joint Action Committee, an umbrella group of radical NGOs, socialist organisations and non-NGO peace groups of journalists and professional engineers and statisticians had a successful vigil on Dec 31st at the Karachi Press Club. Encouraged by the response they decided to hold another at Hassan Square, the new city centre. However soon as the protestors gathered on January 7th the police started dispersing them. Some adamant protestors refused to disperse and two were arrested and one bruised. The hundreds who arrived later were turned away. All this brutality took place despite earlier police assurances that sidewalk protest would not be stopped.
Isn't this a usual story? Another issue another protest? Day in and out protesters gather at press clubs around the country and the police allows them a 'side-walk' protest. So what was wrong with the Hassan Square protest? Well, as one of the friends said 'because it was not at the Press Club'.
The question asked by most of the liberals, progressives and those taking the regime of General Musharraf as 'liberal, anti-fundamentalist, anti-war' is that why would this government attack peace-protesters? Isn't the General for peace? Ironically the statement is self-contradictory. The history of the dictator in General Musharraf shows that he and military bosses behind him, in the given circumstances, are playing peace and at other times they have done more to create disruption. Remember those opposing Lahore Declaration, creation of the Kargil debacle, the nuclear explosions? Peace protests have been repressed elsewhere, another example being at Wagah. It will be a folly to expect a military regime to give us the rights it has taken away by imposing military rule. The question here is not that 'why the military regime would attack the peace protesters' but it has to be that 'what causes it to attack all those who criticise, challenge and protest against ruling elite's policies'.
Press clubs are in the quietest old-city areas. Insignificant traffic passes by, working people don't even know where it is unless they have to protest. That way the protests are limited, controllable, manageable. By allowing protests and pictures of protesters the government appears liberal: safeguarding the rights of its critics. Protesters' anger gets vented and initial small numbers of protesters gets demoralised for lack of solidarity.
If protests are held in public places surely not hundreds but thousands will come to know of them. People will get to see the protestors they sometimes notice in print only. The protestors and the passers-by will come into real-life contact. Ideas will be exchanged, debates made and more will join the protestors. The protesters will get solidarity. The passers-by will know that 'some are protesting'. They will realise that protests 'are possible'. This will be a realisation that may radicalise millions into thinking that it is possible to disagree, it is possible to protest. This will be a first step towards real emancipation of the people -- 'an act of the people by the people'.
Rulers in general and military rulers in particular know that to allow protest is to allow people to think about their own lives and to act to change it. Criticism bares open that which is fetishised. Protests concretise this re-thinking of the masses. They usually begin for retaining past reforms. Military rule relies solely on the threat to use force. However a prolonged military rule itself takes away the might conceived in its coercive stance. This is what happened in General Zia's dictatorship. Five years into his rule he was faced with a massive movement for restoration of democracy. From then on the military ruler had to give in to various demands. This may happen with General Musharraf and more quickly as the state and economy are weak.
Denying the right to protest does not mean that protests will not take place. In fact the recent protests have proved contrary to that assertion. The more people protest the greater there is a desire to protest more. And if the protesters succeed in getting a demand realised then it gives confidence to argue for more reforms. In the past one year or so radicalisation of our society has intensified. Only last month, schoolteachers in Sindh and Punjab staged massive protests, tens of thousands of land-less peasants protested for land rights in Okara and other areas, college teachers in Karachi protested against denationalisation, university teachers protested against repression, anti-war protests were staged all over the country. And most importantly the peace rally at Wagah on December 31st which was attacked.
Since the war on Afghanistan the protesters movement has intensified. So when India and Pakistan threatened war the peace activists were quick to respond and within days they were at the Karachi Press Club. Within a week they were out there at Hassan Square and the mood was fantastic. New faces, young people and mostly women -- these are the colours and mix of the new movement.
The military regime of General Musharraf is apparently trying to avoid war and by that token the stance of a peace protester may be the same as that of the regime. But that is a coincidence. By design, military is a war machine, a vital protector of the state when faced with a challenge, be it be internal or external. So the military may be against an immediate war but it would not allow people to protest against the war. The military regime does not need people to be awakened about the dangers of war because soon it may need a war to protect itself. By allowing protest now the regime faces the danger of allowing formation of an internal challenge to a future war or against other policies. To protect itself the ruling class has to ensure that its own house is united. The grouping together of the various shades of political and fundamentalist parties around the military government is testament to that unity. By denying people to protest the military regime denies masses an opportunity to group together. They fear that such grouping in turn itself may rise against the ruling group.
World history shows that like all rights the right to protest is never given by the state; rights are always taken, achieved. The right to protest is one of the most difficult under military rule. But the new movement of resistance has shown that it is necessary to move beyond Press Clubs, out into the larger places and relate to the masses. It has shown that the right to protest will never be legitimised by the state. If our lives have to change and we wish to control them then this right need only be legitimised in the minds of masses. Little preaching can help in restoring that realisation, it needs practice. More protests against war, deprivation and denial are the only way that we can challenge fundamentalists, the repressive rulers and gain the right to protest.
The writer is assistant professor, department of applied chemistry, University of Karachi

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The Times of India, Febr. 13, 2002

Musharraf says India preparing new nuclear test

AFP [ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2002 3:53:21 AM ]
WASHINGTON: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said here Tuesday he had told US officials "indications" exist that India may be planning a new nuclear test. "There were certainly indications," Musharraf said in remarks to two Washington think tanks. "I did share these with the US leadership. "I can't give conclusive evidence of it, but I thought if at all there was a possibility, it should be checked," he said. Musharraf is in Washington on a working visit and is to meet on Wednesday with President George W. Bush at the White House.

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The Times of India, Febr. 13, 2002

US promises aid to Pak, rejects mediation in J&K

Chidanand Rajghatta

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's military leader Pervez Musharraf found economic solace and aid from the United States in his effort to rescue his crisis-ridden country, but he got no political or diplomatic support in his campaign for Kashmir.
US President George Bush rejected a mediatory role for Washington and said the best thing the United States could do was to encourage India and Pakistan to have a meaningful dialogue.
"The only way a solution can be found is for India and Pakistan to sit down and talk," Bush said, ruling out a direct American role. But he offered no suggestion on how the dialogue could resume and on whom the onus lay to restart the process.
Bush and other senior officials also did not respond immediately or publicly to Musharraf’s complaints of a "massive and aggressive" deployment of troops by India and his calls for withdrawal. The silence appeared to endorse the administration's known position that Pakistan still had to do a lot of groundwork on stamping out terrorism before it could expect India to back down off.
But Musharraf found plenty of support from Bush for the social, economic and political reforms he has initiated although aid in monetary terms was not immediately disclosed. There were also indications that Washington would resume bilateral military co-operation. The matter is expected to be discussed at length when General Musharraf meets Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later on Wednesday.
At a Rose Garden press conference following talks between the two leaders, Bush expectedly praised Musharraf heartily for being a frontline ally in the war against terrorism. He also enthusiastically endorsed Musharraf's social and education reform campaign and indicated the US would enhance monetary aid for the process.
In response to a question from a Pakistani journalist about Washington's reliability as a long term partner and patron, Bush said his administration was committed to Pakistan but qualified it by suggesting that this was valid so far as Pakistan shared US goals and ideals. Despite the evident bonhomie between the leaders, US officials are said to have been pressing for a road-map for Pakistan’s return to democracy.
Bush also denied suggestions from a visiting journalist that Pakistanis in the US are being racially profiled and indiscriminately detained following the 9/11 attack. Bush said they were being treated humanely and in any case his first task was to protect the American people.
Musharraf implicitly agrees to end crossborder terrorism.
PTI adds: The United States has said that Pakistan President Musharraf's commitment to fight terrorism made to President George Bush also implies that he would end cross-border terrorism against India from Pakistan's side.
"President Musharraf directly addressed the question saying that he will fight all forms of terrorism," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said on Wednesday when asked specifically whether President Bush and President Musharraf discussed cross-border terrorism and the list of 20 terrorists and criminals India wanted Pakistan to handover during their meeting yesterday.
Fleischer implied that what Musharraf meant in using the term "all forms of terrorism" certainly includes cross-border terrorism.

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Dawn, 12 February 2002
Review

'Zameen ka nauha' (When the mountain cried)

Reviewed by Akhtar Payami

The publication of this book could not have been more timely. As the armies of the two nuclear powers of South Asia face each other on their vulnerable frontiers, it is indeed important to evaluate the thinking of the conscious section of the population on the current explosive situation. It is a matter of great pride and satisfaction that never for a moment, the writers, poets and intellectuals of the subcontinent have deviated from the path of peace and understanding between nations.
Be it Japan, Vietnam, Rwanda, the Gulf region or Afghanistan, they have consistently upheld the cause of justice and fair play. How else can one explain Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi's memorable short story, "Hiroshima se pahley, Hiroshima ke baad"? Hiroshima was far away from Lahore where Qasmi lives. But he shared the anguish of a people who were subjected to incredible atrocities dropped on them in the form of an atomic bomb. And now when two Asian neighbours are threatening each other with nuclear options, once again the community of writers has raised its voice against this menace.
Here we are not concerned with the hawks of Pakistan and India who are blinded by hatred for each other. They are found in every society and every country and at all times.
When some insane individuals embark upon a devilish mission of defacing the beauty of the Earth through atomic explosions in the hills and the seas, writers have the responsibility of guiding the people to the path of reason. In these testing times, who else but Zamir Niazi has come forward to document the outpourings of committed writers and poets in a book? This indefatigable chronicler of the press in Pakistan has produced a revised and enlarged edition of his book first published a year ago.
Zameen ka nauha is a rare anthology in many respects. Besides Zamir Niazi's exhaustive and informative treatise on the rise and expansion of nuclear devices, the first part of the book contains articles by Khalique Ibrahim Khalique and Asif Farrukhi. They have discussed the implications of a nuclear war and its aftermath for the entire humanity. Though the literary excellence of the writings by various writers and poets included in the book cannot be judged and properly evaluated at this stage, comforting is the fact that all of them felt and realized the horrors of a nuclear conflict between two states. Along with the elder writers and poets a sizable number of them belonged to the younger generations.
Apart from Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi's memorable short story, the stories by Saadat Hasan Manto, Hasan Manzar, Intezar Husain, Zahida Hina, Masood Ashar, Firdaus Haider and Fatima Hasan are quite poignant literary pieces. Two new additions to the edition under eview are Hijab Imtiaz Ali and Ibne Saeed. The latter has captured the images of Hiroshima after its total destruction. He is instinctively a fiction writer. It's a pity that he has stopped writing in Urdu. Manto's masterpiece "Chacha Saam ke naam panchwan khat" embodies the frustrating helplessness of a people who are condemned to live at the mercy of a big power.
Besides original writings several short stories and poems written in other languages and translated into Urdu have also been included in the book.
The nuclear explosions in India and Pakistan also stirred up the imagination of the poets of the two countries. Inspiring poems were written by Sheikh Ayaz, Habib Jalib, Ahmad Faraz, Sehr Ansari, Parveen Shakir (new entrant to this edition), Zia Jalandhri, Mohsin Bhopali, Kishwar Naheed, Fahmida Riaz, Hasan Abidi, Muslim Shameem, Saeeda Gazdar, Saba Ekram, Azra Abbas, Attiya Dawood, Hilal Naqvi, N.M. Danish, Zeeshan Sahil and host of other equally gifted poets. It is not possible to name all of them. Neither is any discrimination intended. All of them have felt the pain that humanity may have to endure as a result of nuclear conflicts.
Zameen ka nauha will be regarded by the future generations as a proud legacy handed over to them by their ancestors. This is a valuable document that records the feelings and fears of bewildered people who were once alive to witness the horrors of the atomic blasts. It also serves as a reminder to humanity to be on guard against the designs of self-centred and ambitious rulers who are ever eager to dominate the world through nuclear terror.
The book is a remarkable contribution of revered writer Zamir Niazi. It was indeed a painstaking task to collect literary pieces written in Urdu and other languages on the nuclear explosions in South Asia . But he has successfully and neatly done it. The Urdu reading people would always remain grateful to him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zameen ka nauha
Compiled and edited by Zamir Niazi
Scheherzade, B-155, Block 5, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Karachi
E-mail: scheherzade@altavista.com
375pp. Rs100

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The Statesman, 12.2.02

Ansari admits to USIS attack

NEW DELHI/KOLKATA, Feb. 10. - Aftab Ansari, prime suspect in the attack on the American Center in Kolkata, has admitted to his involvement in the incident. He had links with jiha-dis in Pakistan, especially with Omar Sheikh, one of the three terrorists released by India during the hijacking of IC-814 in 1999. CBI sources said: "He has reportedly admitted to his involvement in the crime. He has also revealed that he was the man behind the arms smuggling in Gujarat in which some of his associates were arrested by the CBI. He further said that about six gangs are operating in the coastal areas of Gujarat under the command of Dubai-based underworlds." Ansari, alias Farhan Malik, held yesterday by the CBI along with his associate Raju Sharma after being deported from Du-bai, were today produced before the Patiala House Court and remanded in seven-day transit custody. The court sent Raju to five days of transit remand.

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The Times of India, Febr. 12, 2002

Hand Omar Sheikh to us, India tells Pak

PTI
NEW DELHI: India on Tuesday demanded that Pakistan handed over Omar Sheikh, leader of banned terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad and main suspect in the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl, saying he was wanted in some cases in the country.
"We would like him to be handed over to India in good faith," Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah said.
Abdullah, however, said that the timing of the arrest of the militant caused suspicion as it came a day before Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was scheduled to meet US President George W. Bush.
Asked whether India could demand extradition of Sheikh as he was a Pakistan national, Abdullah told Star News there was no bar on seeking deportation of the terrorist who was released along with Jaish Chief Maulana Masood Azhar in December 1999 in exchange for the passengers of an Indian Airlines plane which had been hijacked to Kandahar.
To another question as to what would be India's stance if the militant was handed over to the US, the minister said that India would then raise the matter with Washington.
Earlier, an external affairs ministry spokesperson termed Sheikh's arrest as a confirmation of Pakistan providing safe haven to such criminals.

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Mon, 11 Feb 2002

Do it right, do it quick

By M. B. Naqvi

There are no easy options for President Pervez Musharraf, who should be discussing things, among them Kashmir rather importantly, with the US President George W. Bush today. He will have to accept what economic package the US government has already prepared for Pakistan. Real significance attaches to the US mediatory role in Kashmir desired by Pakistan. What are the chances?
Few surprises are in store, as the US position is more or less an open book. In deference to Pakistani wishes, and in pursuance of its own responsibility, the US is trying to make India relent over de-escalating the tension on the borders by starting to thin out and eventually withdraw its troops. Pakistan will happily follow, if only India begins the process. But the Indians have dug their heels in and are demanding, as a condition, that Pakistan has to prove that it has changed its Kashmir policy by stopping what it calls cross-border terrorism or the proxy war. Who is to judge that this condition has been met? Why, India itself --- and not the US or international community.
There can be no two opinions about the priority of this de-escalation; it overrides other matters. At issue is war or peace in South Asia --- because an easily-possible war can quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange, even if it does not start as a nuclear war properly socalled, as this writer believes may now have become 'logical' in the given circumstances. Happily the fear of consequences has forced both sides to shrink back from a 'massive' preemptive nuclear strike. But pride and prejudice --- the driving force of realpolitik in the Sub-continent --- prevents the logic of this true military deadlock being translated into doing what is unavoidable: to deescalate, mutual withdrawals and a return to whatever degree of normalcy may be possible between such hostile neighbours --- and bilateral negotiations.
Two points need being made on this all-important issue. First is about the war itself: recent history proves that neither India nor Pakistan can go to war so long as they retain sanity, including the ability to react rationally to what the outside world says. The crucial fact is that (a) no Indian leader or general can wait for the enemy (Pakistan) to make a preemptive nuclear strike first and then react with an atomic riposte. (b) Pakistan, so long as sanity prevails, cannot make the initial, preemptive strike because it can neither cripple all the Indian capability to reply in kind nor can it contemplate with equanimity the size of the inevitable Indian reply: India can destroy all the major industrial-urban centres of Pakistan. Thus, the fear of Pakistani nuclear strike preventing a conventional war seamlessly graduates into the position where war ceases to be an option for either side.
The second point is that both countries, and their sane and peace-loving citizens, have to clearly realise and emphasise that war is not an option and have to make policies accordingly outside the government sphere. Look at what has been happening over the recent years. The political classes that have ruled New Delhi and Islamabad have been primarily --- as a first priority --- preparing for another war over Kashmir. For, all Pakistani governments in recent years have proved by their actions that they will not sit idle and will continue making the life difficult for India so long as it keeps the Kashmir Valley under its control. After gaining the nuclear capability in the middle 1980s, it acquired a parallel arrogance of its own. The Indians, possessing as great, if not greater, capability see no reason for accommodating Pakistan. Politics of each ruling set of elites is based on the hatred of the other and both sets of them have flourished.
A third point merits consideration by Pakistani establishment which has been keen on third party mediation, mainly by the US. Mediation is done by a neutral party, if its own interests are not involved on the crucially important issue and if the other side agrees to it. The US has its interests throughout Asia; with India it is building a strategic consensus that is much wider in scope than what it might agree upon with Pakistan. Moreover on the issue of "cross-border-terrorism" itself, listen to the US Secretary of State Colin Powell telling the US Congress:
"(apropos the Jan 12 speech by Gen. Musharraf) it sent a clear message to Pakistanis that terrorism must end if Pakistan has to enter the 21st century with expectations of progress and decent life for its people. President Musharraf showed great courage and foresight in sending such a decisive message to his country and by extension to the Islamic world at large. Now he must show equal courage in implementing his concept in Pakistan."
What was Powell driving at? Musharraf must courageously implement his anti-terrorism concept in Pakistan --- and by extension in Kashmir. If there ever was diplomatic endorsement of Indian demand of the stoppage of cross-border-terrorism it was this, though it is not to be confused with the American drive to have the religious extremism extirpated from Pakistan. This last is important for the US and is a commonality of purpose with India. Even otherwise, the post 9/11 policy U turn on Afghanistan by President Musharraf led logically and relentlessly --- for the sake of the survival of Musharraf Presidency --- to Jan 12 policy shift. Now, the same logic unfailingly and no less rigorously leads to the stoppage of whatever insurgency or violence in Kashmir is taking place from Pakistani and Azad Kashmir territories. It is right. And this needs to be done expeditiously. The US will not formally mediate. And to the extent it is prepared to go, it is already doing so --- as an ally of India.
Let no Pakistani supporter of Jihad in Kashmir forget that the sole basis of insurgency in Kashmir was Pakistan's nuclear deterrent: impossibility for India of going to war. The post-Dec 13 Crisis shows that India has actually threatened war, or at least creating a near-war situation that will arguably hurt Pakistan more than it does India, as some say. It is threatening in fact a proper war despite the risk of nuclear exchange. In other words, being sure that Pakistan dare not use its nuclear weapons for fear of a reply in kind, Indian government is ready to fight a conventional war in which it thinks it has an edge over Pakistan. Does it suit Pakistan to fight such a war? No it does not. In fact there should be no war at all; why should common people suffer for the sake of the elites' pride and prejudice.
The situation since Dec 13 attack on Indian Parliament shows that it is an unsustainable situation for both sides, certainly for Pakistan which is suffering unacceptable financial losses. Politically too it is unmanageable. At the very least, the Crisis signals a new phase of cold war with covert subversion as the main instrument; it may be beginning or might. It is simply too stupid: neither state can be defeated in this way while it makes common people suffer needless losses and, above all, it degrades the quality of public life and culture in both countries.
Therefore President Musharraf will do well to accept the Kashmir part of American advice --- for want of any alternative --- just as he is likely to find that there is not much scope for enlargement in the package of economic aid. Musharraf certainly needs peace to restructure the governing processes for remaining in power for five more years after Oct 2002. And ordinary Pakistanis need peace (even simple absence of war) to rebuild their political parties with a view to creating an eventual democratic dispensation.

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The News International, Monday February 11, 2002

The wages of obedience

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Buried under the rubble of the World Trade Centre lies a decade-worth of Pakistani foreign policy. Faced by a furious United States, Pakistan's establishment abandoned what had earlier been declared as vital national security interests. First, Pakistan junked the mullahs beyond the western border. A still bigger earthquake followed just weeks later as thousands of jihadists suddenly found themselves being hunted down and carted off to jail rather than ushered across the Line of Control.
General Musharraf did well to surrender to these American demands. In all likelihood the Americans would "have done an Iraq on Pakistan", as one highly placed member of the foreign ministry conceded to me in the week after September 11. He was probably right. Generations of Pakistanis would have cursed a leadership that gave the US a reason to destroy the country's agricultural and industrial infrastructure.
But pragmatism should not be mistaken for principle, and temporary reprieve for victory. Pakistan's present crisis desperately demands reflection upon the ruinous impact of its past plans and policies. Tragically, our officially designated foreign policy experts remain unmoved. They cavort daily on television screens, fill newspaper columns with vacuous political commentaries, and energetically condemn today what they had passionately defended until yesterday. As ever, they are tasked with articulating, elaborating, and justifying the ever-changing wishes and desires of their patron-of-the-moment.
The aim of this article is to understand the systemic failure of a whole class of people to think honestly and seriously, in short a failure to do their job as political analysts. Personalities are incidental. Therefore various analysts referred to below shall be merely denoted as X,Y,Z... However, the quotes are accurate and were published on the indicated date in a major Pakistani newspaper. A sufficiently interested reader may duly verify them.
Consider first the writings of columnist X. Well-known for impassioned defence of the Taliban, X ridiculed those who insisted Pakistan was being isolated internationally for supporting the mullahs of Kabul. In "The Myth of Isolation", X glowed about our being in the best of all possible worlds since "Pakistan's bilateral relations with its regional friends and other global players are on track....There exists no crisis in diplomatic, security and economic relations with any of these countries." [25.2.2000]. An article entitled "Defending Taliban" was followed with another wherein Mullahs Mutawakil and Omar were represented as tragically misunderstood by the world. X reassured us the kinder, gentler aspects of the Taliban needed only our eyes to see: "since coming to power the Taliban worldview has demonstrably evolved. There is also a demonstrable willingness to gradually adopt a contemporary mode of governance"[3.3.2000].
Alas for the Taliban, X's staunch support evaporated immediately after Pakistan joined the US led coalition and B-52's darkened the skies of Afghanistan. The death, the dying, the refugees, our responsibility in helping destroy Afghanistan, induced no remorse or rethinking from X. Instead, we were given proof of the triumph of strategic analysis over commonsense as X insisted that "the fundamentals of Pakistan's Afghan policy remain unchanged" [13.11.2001].
Example Number Two. Before September 11, columnist Y had a similar world-view but still more critical of the US and UN (for not recognizing Mullah Omar's regime). As Pakistan ditched its friends, Y somersaulted, writing "The rapid fall of the Taliban government from Kabul vindicates Pakistan's support to the anti-terror coalition" [22.11.2001]. Never short of praise for whatever the state chooses, Y was moved to laud "Pakistan's timely decision to join the war on terrorism" [30.12.01]. A tailor of principles, Y explained the now urgent need to deal with the "armed obscurantists" who had "led so many innocent and misguided Pakistani youth to their death in Afghanistan".
Deceptions, contradictions, lies, abound. Consider Y again, who flatly denied that jihadist organizations operated from within Pakistan and warned of those suggesting such a thing, writing "One dangerous theme that is being propagated is that the struggle is being waged by jihadis from Pakistan" [15.06.2000]. Seemingly blind to the obvious implication, Y explains that "the mujahideen struggle on the ground is of prime importance and it cannot be allowed to stop prematurely"[12.07.2001, emphasis added]. Nevertheless, once the jihadists were dumped, Y joined in the chorus of clapping.
Still more interesting is the case of Z, a star of Pakistan's strategic community, who offered publicly the well-considered advice that Pakistan-based mujahideen must attack targets not just in Occupied Kashmir but also deep inside India. This statement was repeated in a BBC Radio program in early February this year. When the Indian Parliament was attacked on December 13, Z took no credit. The heinous attack was, Z said, obviously a cunning plan by the Indians to smear Pakistan.
It is for others to consider why the pundits mentioned here and their many peers did not recognise earlier the ruthless oppression of those who not only stifled and crushed women but also prohibited chess, football, the homing pigeon, kite flying, and singing in Afghanistan. Or why they were so blind to the erosion of Pakistan's social, economic and political fabric by the Kashmir jihad. Are they so filled by hate of India that they see nothing else? Are they mere intellectual soldiers of fortune, paid to defend the indefensible? Is it about getting airtime and column inches, a power trip? Being invited to head institutes or sit on policy meetings?
Nations that have confidence in their future approach the past with seriousness and critical reverence. They study it, try to comprehend the values, aesthetics, and style. By contrast, peoples and governments with an uncertain sense of the future manifest deeply skewed relationships to their history. They eschew lived history, shut out its lessons, shun critical inquiries into the past.
It is an important fact that, over the last decade, several Pakistani dissidents - marginalised and made irrelevant by the establishment - had repeatedly warned that Pakistan's Afghanistan and Kashmir policies, built upon unbridled fantasy and wild assumptions, were doomed to collapse. None said this more eloquently and forcefully than the late Eqbal Ahmad.
Banned from Pakistani television, Eqbal Ahmad wrote about the Taliban as being the expression of a modern disease, symptoms of a social cancer that could destroy Muslim societies if its growth was not arrested. He warned that the Taliban would be the most deadly communicators of this cancer if they remain organically linked to Pakistan. He foresaw catastrophe - and he was proved right.
It is therefore important to seriously reflect on Eqbal Ahmad's words on Kashmir. He warns that although New Delhi's moral isolation from the Kashmiri people is total and irreversible, yet it will be foolish of Pakistani leaders to believe that India's chronicle of failures can ever translate into Pakistan's gain. Pakistan once had most of the cards. Yet, its Kashmir policy has been so fundamentally and severely defective that it has repeatedly "managed to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory".
Over the years, Pakistan's policy has been reduced to bleeding India, and India's to bleeding the Kashmiris, and to hit out at Pakistan whenever a wound can be inflicted. Indian intransigence and bloody-minded determination to crush the Kashmiris has increased, not decreased, as a result of covert Pakistani involvement. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris have died yet the liberation of Kashmir from the Indian yoke is further away today than at any time in the past.
While the General Aslam Begs and General Hamid Guls fantasise about bleeding India to death, it is now Pakistan that teeters on the brink of a precipice. Internationally, Pakistan stands isolated - countries that support Pakistan's stand on Kashmir can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Today India and Pakistan must realize that a military solution of the Kashmir dispute is simply not possible. The solution must be political, may take decades, and must be left for the Kashmiris to handle. The people of Pakistan will support General Musharraf if he takes this wise course.
The proof for this support exists: ordinary Pakistanis condemned the killings of innocent Afghans as they fled the Daisy Cutter bombs and the Cobra gunships flying from Pakistani bases into the slaughterhouses of Qila Jhangi and Kunduz. But almost everyone breathed a sigh of relief at being rid of the misogynist and mindless Taliban. There was also silent public approval as the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and the state-sponsored Jaish-i-Mohammad were stripped off their status as liberation movements, declared "terrorist organizations", and their accounts frozen.
The people of Pakistan have their own battles to fight against the monsters of mass unemployment, ignorance, misogyny, ethnic and religious hatreds. It is time we turned our attention to these battles, started reflecting seriously upon battle strategies, and stopped the puppet shows on PTV.

The writer teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad

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[Update Febr 11, 2002]

NUCLEAR SAFETY, NUCLEAR STABILITY AND NUCLEAR STRATEGY IN PAKISTAN

A concise report of a visit by Landau Network Centro Volta, Como, Italy
January 2002 [ with updated note on 11 February 2002]
Download: http://lxmi.mi.infn.it/~landnet/Doc/pakistan.pdf.



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