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Make Peace not War

The 13th December attack on Parliament has enraged public opinion and shocked the world. Pakistan's hand is yet to be proven, especially since the timing could not have been more embarrassing for it. But since both the Lashkar-e-Taiyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are based and trained in Pakistan, the demand for military retaliation by the Vajpayee government and the sangh brigade was only to be expected. The post-Kargil scenario had worked electorally for the BJP and allies before, so once again war would be good politics, now that proxy voting for the military is on.
War should always be an avoidable option. Nothing short of a full scale war would destroy the bases and training camps which are well inside Pakistan. Given Pakistan's formidable air force and India's lack of smart bombs, 'surgical' air strikes are out of the question. A full scale war is not only wholly unwarranted and internationally unacceptable, but could escalate into a nuclear exchange. We should not forget that during Kargil, nuclear threats were exchanged 13 times.
The US, including President George Bush, the EU and the G-8 including President Putin have called for restraint and are clearly against punitive Indian military action. The international coalition has yet to stabilize the interim Afghan government. Thousands of their troops are in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistani air bases, support and their troops guarding the Afghan border against Al Qaeda escapees, are playing a crucial role. The last thing the coalition wants is the weakening of the Musharraf regime, a transfer of the Pakistani troops to the Indian border, or any threat, even indirect, to its own troops. Indian military action would thus be internationally condemned including in the UN Security Council with the permanent members then all aligned against India. This would provide the US and others sufficient reason to intervene in Kashmir, with this internationalisation of the Kashmir conflict being just what Pakistan has tried for so long, and failed to achieve.
But there is an even more fundamental argument against military action. Terrorism in Kashmir is not merely a Pakistani creation. Pakistan has tried since 1947 to destabilise the Valley. The militancy which started in 1989-90 is the consequence of the blatantly rigged elections of 1987 and the events that followed, in which Kashmiris like Syed Salahuddin, the Muslim United Front candidate, and now the leader of the Hizbul Mujahiddin, and his counting agent Yasin Malik, later leader of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front [JKLF] and the Hurriyet Conference, took to the gun. The militancy in Kashmir, therefore, is largely a product of political alienation consequent on perceived malgovernance by India and its believed client regimes in the Valley.
Political alienation can only be tackled politically, foremost by dialogue. But the Vajpayee government is not even willing to discuss the State Autonomy report prepared by its ally the National Conference, and overwhelmingly passed by the State Assembly. It has not made any sincere effort to talk with the Hurriyet Conference. The refusal to talk with Pakistan is scarcely new. The rejection of dialogue started well before December 13th, shortly after the aborted Agra talks. According to informed observers, the failure was due not so much to the Pakistanis, but a revolt against Vajpayee in the sangh brigade.
Now there is much talk about war, but hardly any talk about talks. Can we resolve the Kashmir issue with Pakistan including cross border terrorism without dialogue with President Musharraf? The official argument is a vicious circle: no talks until terrorism stops; but terrorism will not stop without talks; so terrorism continues, no talks; and so on. This shortsighted circular logic can only lead to a continuation of militancy, a prolonging of Kashmir's tragedy, and the ever present possibility of a war which will solve nothing, and prove a human and political disaster.
Politicians are taking people for a ride. They, particularly scam tainted ones, are willing to fight till the last soldier. Because the coming Assembly elections will be critical for the longevity of the Vajpayee regime, both the NDA and its rivals, excluding the Left, are making bellicose noises. Guns are pointed towards Pakistan, but politicians are focussed on UP and Punjab. Warmongering must stop. We must make peace, not war.

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South Asians rally for peace between India and Pakistan

It was only forty-eight hours since the call for a Public Rally was sent out. Yet, people kept coming. They came from all over the city of Vancouver. And from many suburban communities: Burnaby, Delta, Richmond, New Westminster, North Vancouver, Surrey, Coquitlam. One young woman drove all the way from Seattle just for the Rally. The inclement weather did not deter them. They were more concerned with far more menacing clouds over the South Asian skies - especially along the long India-Pakistan border. Yet another war between the neighboring countries was looming large - with not only threatening noises but also full-scale mobilization of tools of mass destruction, including nuclear-warhead-capable ballistic missiles.
Approximately two hundred people assembled at the steps of the Art Gallery in downtown Vancouver. While most of the people were from Punjab (India) and Pakistan, there were also people from many other parts of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Middle-east, the Philippines, and also from the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Movement of Vancouver.
Called by INSAF (International South Asia Forum), and its Vancouver affiliate SANSAD (South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy), the Rally carried banners and placards with slogans like: "War is not the Answer", "No More Wars between India and Pakistan", "India-Pakistan CAN be Friends". "Make Friends - Not Enemies", "India: do not do a 'Bush in Afghanistan' or 'an Israel in Palestine' ". A few little children came with a banner of their own: "Not Bombs, We Want Food, Books, Good Health".
Sixteen people spoke at the Rally - echoing the messages of the slogans on the banners and the placards. Again and again it was reiterated that all the previous wars between India and Pakistan have not solved any of the outstanding issues of discord between the two countries. In fact, the basic issues of the masses - grinding poverty, hunger, housing, education, health, gender and caste based oppression - have remained unresolved, while vital and scarce resources are wastefully deployed in militarization.
At the end, the Rally unanimously adopted a resolution to be delivered to the authorities in India and Pakistan, and to the international community.
The Resolution:
Recognizing that the December 13 assault on India's parliament building was an utterly deplorable and condemnable act;
And recognizing also that the Indian government should not have shunned the various options that were available to it, instead of arbitrarily creating a war-like hysteria,
We the people assembled at the steps of Vancouver Art Gallery on December 29, 2001
o Urge that the governments of India and Pakistan immediately pull back their armed forces to the position that existed on or before December 13, 2001;
o Urge immediate restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries that were cut down by India's initiative;
o Urge immediate restoration of the Bus and Train services across the Indo-Pak border, arbitrarily stopped by the Indian government;
o Urge the immediate re-opening of airspace to the civilian flights of the two countries, which was closed down by India's initiative;
o Urge that steps be immediately taken to peacefully negotiate the outstanding issues of dispute;
o Request that the Canadian Government use all available influences to bring normalcy at the borders of India and Pakistan.
Organized by INSAF and SANSAD, the Rally of December 29, 2001 had the support of following organizations in the South Asian community in the Vancouver area:
- Canada Urdu Association
- Council of Muslim Community of Canada
- India-Pakistan Friendship Society
- Pakistan-Canada Association
- Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society (PICS)
- Punjabi Vichar Manch
- Shree Guru Ravidas Sabha
- South Asian Cultural Association

Hari Sharma
President, INSAF
President, SANSAD

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Public Meeting of People for Peace

Allah, Ram, Isa aur Nanak laachar khade dekh rahe
Kaun unki banayee zamin ko loot rahe
Agar aaj tum na aaye aage
To ye khudgarz neta jeet jayenge

These lines of poetry were composed and recited by 16 year old Anjala who had been devastated by the thought that never again would she see her cousins who live in Pakistan.
At a Public Meeting of People for Peace it was resolved that a huge mobilization of peace loving people would be organized at the Wagah Border in mid January. Its main agenda would be to prevent war between India and Pakistan. This demonstration is aimed at reflecting the aspirations of the silent majority. These are the common people on both sides of the border who want friendship with their neighbours, and say, in unequivocal terms, NO TO WAR.
The meeting, held at 4.00 pm today at the Indian Social Institute, had a wide cross section of speakers including women and children from Satbari village near Gurgaon, Shri. I.K.Gujral, Salman Khurshid, D. Raja, Kuldip Nayar, Syed Shahabuddin, and Nirmala Deshpande. The children and women expressed the hopes and the aspirations of India's citizens who abhor the thought of war and want all matters to be settled with dialogue. They recalled the time when Pakistani visitors had come to their village and seemed to them just like part of their own families.
All speakers emphasised that the cancellation of Samjhauta train and Sadbhavana bus has only hurt the common people; they demanded restoration of train, bus and air service to Pakistan. It was also resolved to urge the two leaders of Pakistan and India to meet and renew dialogue on the sidelines of SAARC summit in Kathmandu and arrive at peaceful solutions to all outstanding matters.
The statement prepared by the People for Peace was read and endorsed by all present.
It was resolved that the plan of action of People for Peace would also include a nationwide mobilization to tap the enormous peace constituency that exists all over the country. Civil society of Pakistan was urged to undertake and promote similar mobilization at their end. It was further resolved that public meetings be held in various mohallas of Delhi to sensitize the people to the devastating dangers of war and the advantages of living peacefully with neighbours.
Two coordinating committees have been formed
1 To take care of the Wagah border programme.
2. To coordinate the Delhi programme.

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Pull India, Pakistan From the Brink

Even before the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has been completed and that country has been stabilized, another conflict looms that could be even more destabilizing for the region. Preventing war between India and Pakistan, with their fledgling nuclear capabilities, has to be of the highest order for the international community. The world cannot afford to test whether the principle of deterrence can work in this case as it did during the Cold War.
How did we get to this point and how do we defuse it? The buildup to this crisis shows how states can be brought to the brink of conflict by the actions of groups that fall outside of government control, even if, at some point, they had seemed to be useful.
This certainly has been true regarding two extremist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which allegedly masterminded and carried out the Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament. Indeed, the two groups represent a larger phenomenon in Pakistan: the radicalization of a segment of Pakistani Muslims deriving from the Soviet-Afghan war and the belief by some segments of Pakistan's military and political establishment that such groups could help achieve the country's strategic and political goals. It was a similar misguided perception that led Pakistan to nurture and support the Taliban in Afghanistan and to try to use similar groups in the Kashmir conflict.
Yet there was a downside. The activities of some Muslim extremist groups promoted sectarian tensions in Pakistan and the deepening of internal divisions. Thus even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Pervez Musharraf had begun to rein in these extremist groups. Because of intense domestic pressures, the crackdown was not extended to groups engaged in Kashmir. This has proved to be a cardinal mistake. [...]
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-000000241jan02.story

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New Delhi Would Be Smart to Give Musharraf Its Support

LAHORE, Pakistan India is threatening to wage war against Pakistan for "aiding and abetting terrorism" in Kashmir, territory held by India but hotly disputed by Pakistan since the independence of both nations in 1947.
India's view is that if America can attack Afghanistan for hosting Qaida terrorists, why can't India follow suit against Pakistan for sustaining Islamic groups bent on terrorist violence in Kashmir? [...].
http://www.iht.com/articles/43440.html

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Now Is the Time for India and Pakistan to Strike a Bargain

By Nayan Chanda
The writer is director of publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and co-editor, with Strobe Talbott, of "The Age of Terror: America and the World After September 11." He contributed this to the International Herald Tribune.

NEW DELHI--In India there are signs that cooler official heads are prevailing. The door to negotiation with Pakistan is being opened. In Islamabad, the government of General Pervez Musharraf is acknowledging the new realities of the post-Sept. 11 world by starting to crack down on the two groups that India blames for recent terrorist attacks.
It is time to push for a real peace in the subcontinent, not just another truce. The crisis since the Dec. 13 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament offers an unprecedented opening for the United States to exercise leadership and turn danger into an opportunity for a far-reaching settlement between India and Pakistan.
India has a government led by a popular Hindu nationalist party. Pakistan has a pragmatic military leader. The international community is eager to end the scourge of terrorism. These developments provide an opportune conjunction that should not be missed.
To carry America's anti-terrorism struggle to its logical conclusion, the Bush administration must deal with the intractable conflict in Kashmir, which has already caused two wars and is now the cause of serious tension that brings India and Pakistan dangerously close to a nuclear confrontation.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks prompted the United States to force Pakistan to make a 180-degree turn on its support for the Taliban. America's newfound ally India now wants the attack on its Parliament to generate similar pressure on Pakistan to stop fomenting low-intensity conflict in Kashmir.
India's much publicized military buildup was clearly meant to pressure Washington to take its grievance seriously and force Pakistan to rein in the militant groups thought to be responsible for the attack.
But that is only the thin end of the wedge. Once Pakistan admits the responsibility of the groups, India will surely press for an end to Pakistan government support for armed struggle in Kashmir.
That is something no Pakistani ruler can risk without a demonstrable quid pro quo from India and other benefits. Here is where the United States, Pakistan's old ally and India's new strategic partner, is in a uniquely strong position to act. With the U.S. decision to go after Qaida and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan was left no choice but to stop coddling the Taliban and their foreign guests. The audacious attack by Pakistan-based militants on India's Parliament - aimed at killing or taking hostage India's political leadership - has brought into focus the contradictions of Pakistani policy: On the western border Pakistan has joined U.S. forces in mopping up terrorists, but its old policy continues on the eastern front, where it backs terrorists in Kashmir as freedom fighters.
The Musharraf government is unlikely to have been behind such a risky operation as the attack on the Parliament, but India has tried to maximize its advantage by showing the world Pakistan's double-faced policy on fighting terrorism.
General Musharraf's pledge to unshackle Pakistan from its past of "militancy, extremism and intolerance" offers an unprecedented opportunity that India should accept and America should strongly back. Instead of scoring points against Pakistan, India should push for a grand bargain.
It is evident that the fate of Kashmir cannot be determined by military means. The latest confrontation only underlines the gravity of the risk in such a test of wills by the nuclear-armed neighbors.
After 50 years in which Pakistani military and political groups have made recovery of Kashmir their raison d'être, it is inconceivable that a Pakistan government would wash its hands of Kashmir, as it did of the Taliban. Neither can a secular India let religion alone determine the political status of the territory it controls. But India, too, must make concessions. It has to give up its claim to all of Kashmir, acknowledge its repressive rule and drop its opposition to international involvement.
When violence in Kashmir has stopped and the line of control is accepted as an international border, a democratic India should allow a free and fair election to be held in Kashmir on both sides of the border, as Pakistan has long demanded.
The acceptance of an internationally supervised election will give face to Pakistan and allow Kashmiris to start rebuilding their lives in peace.

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Amid war rhetoric, a carnival of peace

New Delhi, Jan 2 (IANS) Kabir Malhotra, an eight-year-old boy, scribbled furiously on a poster wall before stepping back and looking at his work in satisfaction.
"Say no to war, terrorism and Bush," read the short message from little Kabir, who joined hundreds here at a peace rally coinciding with the death anniversary of activist and trade union leader Safdar Hashmi, who was killed 13 years ago.
Kabir hailed his friends Ayan and Mrinal from across the marquee at the venue to show them his work. They approved, adding a succinct "Only peace and happiness."
Coming at a time when India and Pakistan have deployed troops along their border, the annual commemoration event had peace as its theme. Both countries have adopted belligerent postures following the terror attacks on the Indian Parliament here and New Delhi's accusations against Islamabad.
Kabir's message also echoed the perception in some quarters of U.S. President George W. Bush as a promoter of war.
Bush had sworn revenge on Osama bin Laden, the prime accused in the terror attacks in New York and Washington, and his harbourers, Afghanistan's erstwhile rulers the Taliban. Ironically, Bush asked India to exercise restraint instead after it decided to sanction Pakistan for its alleged support to terrorists.
The Hashmi commemoration, organised by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, better known by its acronym Sahmat, included street plays, paintings, dances and speeches focusing on peace.
But Sahmat's message seemed lost on one elderly visitor, who snapped after looking at the posters: "Why don't you tell these jehadis about peace?"
He was referring to terrorist groups targeting India that claim to be waging an Islamic holy war to free Kashmir.
The hundreds of artists, intellectuals and students who attended the Hashmi commemoration peered at a photo collage depicting the horrors of violence in Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir.
Said Shubendu Ghosh, a cultural activist and professor at Delhi University who sang at the event: "India and Pakistan are not even willing to talk. We want to show the world that a large section is opposed to this deadlock.
"The event provided me an opportunity to express myself in the language of an artist. I am glad to see that there are so many people who share my opinion and want peace. Let this view be shared with the masses."
Said activist Praful Bidwai: "There is a fearsome military build-up on the borders. There are reports of nuclear missiles being deployed on both sides. This bears no logical relationship to the stated objective of countering terrorism.
"The political leadership of the two countries cannot take one billion people in the subcontinent hostage. This madness should stop."
A woman tourist from Britain who was in the audience said: "Terrorism is a problem, but the two countries should negotiate and discuss the issue.
"We should establish peace schools because people don't understand the politics behind war. India and Pakistan have so much of poverty and hunger. This should be the focus," she said, requesting anonymity.
"Why kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" said one among scores of posters denouncing war and urging a peaceful resolution to conflicts. The posters lined a street named after Hashmi, who was killed while performing a street play in solidarity with industrial workers on Delhi's outskirts. The street was the venue of the anniversary commemoration.
Ram Rahman, who designed one of the posters with "peace" written in 10 languages over a statue of the Buddha, said: "We believe all conflicts can be solved through negotiations. India has a history of peace as political philosophy. I want to tell people not to fall into the trap of violence and divisive forces."

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India, Pakistan urged to hold talks

KARACHI, Jan 1: A large number of people staged a demonstration at Karachi Press Club on Tuesday to press the governments of India and Pakistan to defuse tension at the borders and called on both the countries to resolve their disputes through negotiations.
The demonstration was organized by the Action Committee for Civic Problems. The speakers said history has proved that no dispute had ever been settled by waging a war. The demonstrators urged both the governments to control extremist and fanatical elements in their countries.
Both Pakistan and India, they said, have been spending huge amounts on defence and called on both the countries to cut down their defence expenses and enhance spending on provision of basic facilities including health, education, sanitation and employment.
After terrorist attack on parliament in New Delhi, the Indian rulers have created an environment of war and sense of uncertainty in the region resulting in the crashing of stock markets in both the countries, they said.
"The process of dialogue between the two countries should be initiated and the rulers rather than making fiery speeches should try to meet and start negotiations," the speakers said, adding that people-to-people contact between both the countries be initiated. They demanded the restoration of bus and train services between the two countries and called for lifting of ban on the telecast of satellite channels, through cable operators, in both the countries. They condemned the baton charge on the participants of a peace rally in Lahore on Monday in which many peace activists were injured. Representatives of various NGOs and political parties, including Pakistan Muslim League, People's Party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan, National People's Party, Awami Tehrik, Sindh National Front, National Workers' Party, Qaumi Jamhoory Party, Tehrik-i-Insaf, PILER etc. participated in the demonstration.
Volunteers offered: Two organizations have announced to recruit volunteers who would serve with the administration and the armed forces in different parts of the country, including the borders. This was announced at a solidarity rally organized jointly by the Awami Ittehad Tehreek and Gen Pervaiz Musharraf Himayat Tehrik at the Mazar at the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on Tuesday.
The speakers on the occasion criticised the Indian government for extending threats to Pakistan. They urged the international community to take notice of the Indian propaganda against Pakistan which was resulting in tension on the borders.
They advised the Indian leadership to initiate dialogue to resolve all the issues between the two countries.
Later the participants took out a procession and marched through various streets and reached Saddar later on.

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With Wrath and Wire, India Builds a Great Wall

NURSERY BORDER SECURITY FORCE POST, Jammu and Kashmir, Jan. 1 - The partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, an enduring symbol of longing and loss, is being enshrined here in concertina wire.
On the India-Pakistan border, along a strip of land pocked with elephant grass, the Indian Border Security Force is erecting a barbed wire fence, laced with concertina wire. Overlooking the border, like giraffes with bright eyes, stand 25-foot-tall floodlights. All night long they wash the thatched-hut villages nearby with their hot white glow.
The point of this ambitious and wildly expensive project is not to keep out illegal immigrants, or even to stanch the illegal traffic of gold, liquor and dried fruits across the border that had been, until recently, a source of bounty for villagers on both sides.
This fence is India's effort to keep out what it says are terrorists trained and backed by Pakistan to wrest control of Kashmir, the valley just to the north that has been the subject of two of the three wars between India and Pakistan. (India says that the gunmen who stormed the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13 were from groups involved in the guerrilla effort in Kashmir, backed by Pakistan, a charge Pakistan vehemently denies.)
When completed - Border Security officials say it could be as early as the end of 2003 - the fence will stretch across much of the Indian side of the roughly 1,800-mile border with Pakistan, except the mountains and marshes where it is impossible to erect one.
Those spotted trying to cross from Pakistan to India are shot and killed. Last year, 87 people suffered such a fate and several guns were seized, border officials said.
One mile of fence costs 3.2 million Indian rupees, or $68,000, a lot for a country where many villagers live on a dollar a day. Laborers from villages near and far - pumped up by motivational speeches about one's duties for Mother India - do the construction work. They carry out their job on this perilous chunk of border interrupted by spurts of gunfire between Indian and Pakistani forces.
"No matter the cost, it's for our national interest," said Vijay Raman, the chief of the border force in the southern part of this state. "This is a physical barrier to check infiltration."
But nature sometimes rebels against Mr. Raman's designs. In Rajasthan, the sprawling Indian desert state that shares the largest stretch of border with Pakistan, shifting sand dunes obscure the fence from time to time, or a fierce sandstorm smothers entire sections of barbed wire. (Border guards there supplement the fence with patrols on camelback.)
In Gujarat, the border is so marshy that the Border Security Force has not yet figured out how to erect a proper fence. In Punjab, weeds sprout every day beneath the fence; border guards have to crawl through the wire and pluck out the underbrush. Given the lessons from Punjab, a concrete bed has been built under the barbed wire fence in Jammu.
Of course, before the violent division of the subcontinent in 1947, such a fence was unthinkable. There was no this side and that side. The people who lived in this area were kinfolk and friends. They spoke the same tongue. They ate the same chapatis.
They still speak the same tongue and break the same bread, though they are now citizens of enemy nations on the precipice of war - and if they happen to live on the border, they bear the brunt of gunfire across dividing lines.
The border fence, along with the land mines that have been planted during the last two weeks, have swallowed up acres of fertile farmland here in Jammu. Many villagers said they had not seen a penny for their land. Mr. Raman said they would ultimately be compensated.
There is arguably no more powerful a symbol of souring relations between the two nations than the border fence, and never more so than today when travel links have been frozen and diplomats have been called back. The last direct flights between Pakistan and India left today, and trains and buses had already stopped running between them.
Border officials here say it was different only a few years ago. They would hunt in each other's territory. They would conduct joint border patrols to inspect the condition of the pickets that mark the border. During Eid and Diwali, the biggest holidays of the year for Muslims and Hindus in these parts, they would exchange sweets and greetings. The holidays passed this year in November and December without such pleasantries.
Before the fence was built, animals that strayed across the border became subjects of border diplomacy. If a Pakistani farmer's cow crossed into Indian territory, say, a flag would be raised by the Border Security Force, a meeting between two sides convened and the offending bovine returned to its owner, recalled Sukhjinder Singh Sandhu, the commander of the Border Security Force's 39th Battalion, which controls this part of the Jammu stretch.
If a wild boar migrated from India into Pakistan, instructions would be dispatched to come get the unmentionable animal. (Pakistani Muslims will not touch a pig, or even speak its name, so border guards there would invite border guards here to come recover the "hunt.")
The animals are no longer able to stray hither and thither, thanks to the fence. Today, only birds, like the black partridge native to this land, can fly freely over the border.

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Running Naked

"Two or three years after the partition, it occurred to the governments of India and Pakistan that lunatics, like prisoners, should also be exchanged -- Muslim lunatics should be sent to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs be transferred to India," writes Urdu short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto.
Published in the early 1950s, it is considered so far the best story on the human tragedy that accompanied the partition of the Subcontinent in 1947. Parts of the story, still read and enacted in schools and colleges on both sides of the dividing line, aptly describe the madness that has plagued both the nations during the last 53 years.
Three wars and countless skirmishes have failed to resolve their disputes. Equally useless have been dozens of meetings and conferences arranged by the international community to let the two neighbors resolve their differences.
They are still at each other's throats. At least once in a decade, their madness gets out of control and they dash at each other with whatever weapons they can lay their hands on. Exhausted, they pause and wait another decade to build up enough hatred to dash at each other again.
The Muslim majority Himalayan valley of Kashmir is the main dispute that caused two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought. But any issue, even a friendly cricket match, can turn ugly and stir their madness. Kashmir also is in the center of the current crisis stirred by an attack on the Indian parliament by a group of armed men last week. India says the attackers were Pakistan-backed Kashmiri fighters. Islamabad denies the charge and says they could have been Indian agents who attacked the parliament to justify an armed Indian incursion against Pakistan.
"One inmate had got so badly caught up in this India-Pakistan-India rigmarole that one day, while sweeping the floor, he dropped everything, climbed the nearest tree and installed himself on a branch. From this vantage point, he spoke for two hours on the delicate problem of India and Pakistan. The guards asked him to get down; instead he went a branch higher, and when threatened with punishment, declared: 'I wish to live neither in India nor in Pakistan, I wish to live in this tree,'" writes Manto.
Unfortunately, unlike Manto's lunatics, today's Indians and Pakistanis do not have this option. They have no tree to climb. They have to live through this insanity and suffer. And now that their leaders have nuclear toys to play with, their sense of insecurity has increased. The theory of nuclear deterrence that Indian and Pakistani leaders invoked to justify their nuclear tests in 1998 does not make them feel better.
"There are enough crazy people on both sides of the border. Besides, the chance of an accidental nuclear war is greater here than it was between the United States and the former Soviet Union, who coined the theory of nuclear deterrence," says Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani scientist. Hoodbhoy, a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from MIT, is an anti-nuclear lobbyist and a campaigner for peace between India and Pakistan.
"We share a long border, and it will take a nuclear-tipped missile less than a minute to hit its target on either side of the border. There's no room for correcting an error as it was between the United States and the Soviet Union," said Hoodbhoy.
Rulers on both sides of the border, however, assure that their insanity will not lead to a nuclear war. "We are talking about precise attacks on terrorist targets, not an all-out war against Pakistan," India's minister of state for foreign affairs, Omar Abdullah, told journalists in New Delhi on Tuesday. He, however, did not say what will prevent Pakistan from going for an all-out war if attacked.
Similarly, Pakistani rulers have long defended their open and hidden support to Kashmiri militants as a reminder to India, and the rest of the world, that the Kashmir dispute needs to be resolved. They also fail to explain why should India continue to suffer these hit-and-run attacks by Kashmiri militants without engaging Pakistan in a war.
"We are sitting on a powder keg which can explode any moment," says N.H. Nayyar, another anti-nuclear lobbyist in Islamabad, Pakistan. Authorities on both sides of the border describe such people as alarmists, arguing that "both India and Pakistan are mature enough to understand the repercussions of a war between two nuclear neighbors," as a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad said. "They do not want to commit suicide."
But to ordinary observers it seems that suicide is what the two governments want to commit. "People who understand what a nuclear weapon can do, live under great stress," says Nayyar.
"Peace campaigners and anti-nuclear lobbyists are too weak to affect decision making in India or Pakistan. All we can do is to sit and pray," said Rashid Khalid, another anti-nuclear lobbyist who teaches defense and strategic studies at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University.
In Manto's story, characters at the Lahore asylum, where lunatics were being divided on the basis of their religion, reacted differently to the stress of the partition. "A Muslim radio engineer ... who never mixed with anyone ... was so affected by the current debate that one day he took all his clothes off, gave the bundle to one of the guards and ran into the garden stark naked."
Maybe this is what peace lovers in India and Pakistan ought to do: Run stark naked in the streets to force their leaders to give peace a chance.
---
About the author: A Washington-based journalist working for an international news agency. This article appeared in Chowk.com

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Pakistan Is Said to Order an End to Support for Militant Groups

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 1 - Senior officials said today that Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, had ordered the country's military intelligence agency to cut off backing for Islamic militant groups fighting in the disputed territory of Kashmir. They said future support would go only to groups with local roots that are not part of the Islamic holy war movement that has its most notorious expression in Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/02/international/asia/02STAN.html

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Towards a mutual knockout?

In the aftermath of the Afghanistan affair and the shooting events of December 13 in the outer precincts of the Indian parliament, both Pakistan and India are gravitating once again in the direction of an acute confrontation with each other in Kashmir as well as on their common international borders. India has not only moved troops up but Pakistan has done likewise and we are fast approaching an eyeball to eyeball situation. This is indeed now and here a major threat to world peace that we are faced with in our own backyards.
Both countries will only have themselves to blame if the situation gets out of control and the subcontinent of South Asia goes up in the flames of conventional and/or nuclear war. History will of course condemn the leaderships of both countries in all sorts of ways but that would just about be a 'post facto' academic exercise of no use to anyone.
An old adage says that wisdom lies in acting well in advance before the event and not afterwards. Both countries need to immediately return to the dialogue table in searching for an immediate 'modus vivendi' that can eventually be enlarged into a lasting peace in South Asia. India being the larger country, of course, has a double-duty to contribute towards peace and reduce tension in the South Asian region.
Many people in Pakistan talk about the need to have an international third party mediator for sorting out the Pakistan-India relationship as if there is some magic attached to mediation. The history of mediations is that they only complicate matters and also worsen the situations that are already bad on the ground. The case of the Palestinian-Israeli mediations is a vivid example of how much bad blood can take place between parties which subject themselves to the mediation process and that too after having signed an international agreement to have a peaceful settlement i.e. the Oslo Agreement. Every one who turned up as a mediator in the Middle East has only made matters worse between the Palestinians and the Israelis - the latest of them being the luckless retired US Marine General Anthony Zinni.
If anything can and should bring peace to the South Asian region it is through a compact between the countries that constitute this region. It is therefore essential that instead of debunking the Simla Pact of 1972 we ought to be invoking it to seek a meeting with India under its umbrella. It is an agreement which India has consistently upheld and which in effect is also what the western powers have been publicly urging us to act upon.
In fact that is the only possible respectable recourse we have available to us in a rapidly worsening international situation. This will not be pussyfooting on our part by any means. We are signatories to the Simla Agreement as is India. And the great thing about this agreement is that it is bilateral and does not ruffle the sensitivities of any of the interested parties. All that it says is that differences between Pakistan and India must be ironed out between them without any outside third party interventions. Both countries have enough statecraft and maturity available at their disposal to be able to rise to the occasion. The Lahore Agreement of 1999 and the starting of the Lahore process by the top leaders of Pakistan and India provides enough evidence of the possibilities of establishing good relations between the two countries.
But what do we have facing us today - a confrontation with very disastrous possibilities. The lesson that we need to learn from the recent happenings in Afghanistan and the cumulative effects of our past mistakes is that we were unable even in the record time of 20 years available to us to work out a regional settlement of the Afghan problem. Instead of working out some sort of a condominium settlement over there in cooperation with Iran the other significant neighbour of Afghanistan, we let things drift for years altogether and instead attempted a shabby writ on the Pakhtun part of Afghanistan via the Taliban whom we failed to effectively control and who created any number of problems for us. Is it not therefore quite paradoxical that the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Iran could only get together and discuss cooperation among themselves after both countries had been effectively pushed out from positions of being able to influence events in Afghanistan.
That indeed is the story of the recent past. Now that the focus after Afghanistan having shifted to Kashmir in a broader Pakistan-India situation on the issue of cross-border terrorism what can we reasonably expect to happen in the future? Our track record has not been very impressive as we have in the past displayed a lot of ineptitude that is evidence of a gross lack of anticipation of international events and an inability to manage ourselves from being taken by surprise.
Both countries have already moved their troops and other ancillary forces right up to the border. The slightest false move from either side can trigger full-scale war with all its attendant effects. The Indians have indeed been acting a lot cockier this time and it is difficult to know as to how much international support they may be having in making their current moves.
The situation is thus perfectly poised for the arrival of foreign emissaries in the subcontinent as peace-brokers. One must not forget that each such envoy carries with him a tight brief that he must follow and that brief will not necesssarily be for the benefit of the peoples of the subcontinent. It would therefore be advisable that both countries should, before this starts to happen, open up their own direct diplomatic channels and start cooling off things before we make a laughing stock of ourselves before the world.
The paradox is that we happen to be abysmally poor nations and we also seem to have a high propensity of waging war against each other at a time when we are heavily indebted. We only have to take a look at the Middle East elsewhere where mediations by third parties have played such havoc with the local issues. We must settle our subcontinental squabbles among ourselves without running from pillar to post. No wonder Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first and most revered prime minister, was extremely averse to outside mediation in the disputes between Pakistan and India. The same has been the line taken by Prime Minister Vajpayee and it is surprising that he should be cosying up so much to the outside world of late in the wake of the September 2001 happenings.
Pakistan needs to engage India actively as part of a long-range policy. If we have to get anything out of each other it will have to be through the conduct of civilized modes of diplomacy, good manners and politeness towards each other. The cultures of the subcontinent call for a raising of the quality as well as the quantity of the Pakistan-India interaction. Both peoples expect it and we owe it to them that the respective power elite's of the two countries take the lead in developing a very special relationship between themselves. Both countries have indeed made mistakes in the past. But that does not mean that corrective steps cannot be taken now prospectively. If we do not heed the requirements and the demands of the people and continue to play in the hands of the more powerful international players, we may only be inviting catastrophes in South Asia. Pakistan and India should try to avoid mediations in their 'inter se' relationship because these will be the forerunners of foreign interventions and re-establish a permanent foreign presence on our soils. This must never be allowed to happen. After all, both countries are philosophically committed to never allowing another East India Company in the subcontinent.
Our respective founders struggled to rid the subcontinent of foreign hegemony. Pakistan's Founder Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was always committed to a healthy and robust Pakistan-India relationship. Kashmir is an important issue between the two countries but that is not the only problem between us. There are many urgent and burning issues that need to be addressed simultaneously by both countries in cooperation with each other as well as individually.
We must therefore return to the Simla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore process of 1999 and take regular and frequent steps of engaging each other. We are not novice countries that we should be needing mediators, advisers and tutors. We must behave maturely and responsibly within our respective countries as well as abroad. In the instant case of Kashmir and the connected cross-border terrorism issue we need to calm each other rather than cause undue excitement. Think of the thousands of people on both sides of the Pakistan-India border who are right now in the process of being displaced from their villages and homes to provide the space for troop movements and possible hostilities.
If the two countries are not careful in the current situation that has arisen in the region there is the very real danger of both finding themselves totally ousted from the Kashmir jigsaw to their utter surprise and long-term discomfort. A repeat of how Afghanistan has gone cannot be ruled out in Kashmir unless Pakistan and India are able to collect themselves. Because right now Pakistan and India in their current war-like mood are only hurtling towards finding themselves mutually knocked out of Kashmir specifically to the benefit of third parties.

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SAF Press Communiqué

The South Asia Foundation, a non-official organization for promoting regional cooperation is deeply concerned with the escalating war-like tension between the Governments of India and Pakistan as its disastrous consequences would further aggravate not only the suffering of their own people but of the poverty-stricken masses in other South Asian countries.
War could hardly penalize the dastardly terrorist attack against India's most sacred and secular democratic institution - the Parliament. On the contrary, horrors of wars are terrorism's ultimate reward. Terrorists are warmongers no matter the causes or ideologies they propound.
At this critical crossroads of history, the people of South Asia either continue to follow the politicians and military dictators who are misleading them in the direction of fratricidal conflicts and nuclear holocaust, or go the way of Mahatma Gandhi by taking the peaceful path of communal harmony and regional cooperation - as recently reiterated by the Foundation at its Conference, 11-12 December 2001, in Kathmandu on the eve of the 11th SAARC Summit.
The Foundation of which the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Madanjeet Singh is the Founder, proposes to step up the campaign against the sentiment for war.
Among the measures taken, the biannual "UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence" has now been raised to US$ 100,000.00 from the previous amount of US$ 40,000.00. The award was established to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi by the UNESCO Executive Board at its 146th session at Paris and Fez on 16 May-4 June 1995. Among the laureates, the 1998 Prize was jointly won by Indian and Pakistani anti-nuclear activists - Mr. Narayan Desai and his Shanti Sena (Peace Brigade) for promoting education and youth training camps and Ms. Shahtaj Kizilbash, representing thirty NGOs in Pakistan that are working against all odds for women's rights and religious tolerance.

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Cold war's many costs

It is clear that while a war is still possible through miscalculation, escalation or accident, neither New Delhi nor Islamabad wants it. For one thing, it may force nuclear strikes on both. For, it will be odd for any general or government to risk heavy losses or defeat and not use the weapon that can reduce or avoid them; even a winning side may wish to shorten the war or reduce the costs by nuking the enemy. However, the rest of the world is horrified by the prospect and appears to be putting effective pressure on both sides not to let the cold war become a hot one. Hence this stultifying stand off may continue in some form --- until the two see its futility and make peace.
Meanwhile both peoples should re-asses the policies of their respective government that have resulted in this endless deadlock. Apart from the initial specific disputes over territory, states, stores and cash, both India and Pakistan inherited attitudes rooted in culture, circumstances and interests that made them rivals. Thus they had peculiar but similar illusions. India, drawing upon six thousand years-long heritage, staked a claim to leadership; 'light comes from the east'. Pakistan, almost as second best, wished to be the leader of Islamic World to the annoyance and even derision by most Muslims. Later, the dynamics of Kashmir dispute made the two states cold warriors and before too long became nuclear powers.
One cost of this disputation that became unending military confrontation from around 1986-87; it clearly had a nuclear dimension. Indians thought that given their nuclear status, Pakistan would desist and stop challenging it militarily over Kashmir. That did not happen and Pakistan acquired its own nuclear capability; it has gone on challenging it. Pakistanis considered their new capability to be an invincible shield which they can go on needling India through a Jehad without it being able to use its superior military strength to bear on itself.
The denouement, sort of, is this paralysis of will on either side. This stand off has brought quite a few things into relief: their common militaristic approach to disputed problems has resulted in both states becoming national security states par excellence. A large proportion of their people has stayed poor, unlettered in indifferent health, with high birth rates. Future will not be bright for both until they do not extend the meaning of national security to achieve high levels of human development; indeed human development has to be seen as most of national security. Politics in both countries has been distorted by a jingoistic nationalism that benefits the elite classes and chauvinistic approach.
But first consequence is the un-sustainability of peace and stability in South Asia so long as the two rival nuclear deterrents exist eyeball to eyeball. Nuclear weapons in Pakistan are designated for India. Indian Bomb, too, can only be oriented for use in Pakistan; there is no other conceivable use for it. Defenders of which country can trust the intentions of the other so long as this weapon of offence is sitting there? The Bomb's actual utility between India and Pakistan is either nil or, in exceptional circumstances, lies in a surprise attack of a massive kind. It has no defensive role.
Earlier illusions about these weapons being status symbols or currency of power have to be discarded. Look whether nuclear bombs have made India or Pakistan any whit more respected than before? The world is excoriating both for it and an attempt is on to push them away from the confrontationist path.
On particular illusion was, and is, particularly pernicious: it is the Bomb's deterrence. Was Pakistan deterred from supporting the Jihadis in Kashmir because of Indian nuclear capability? India is threatening to take offensive military action despite the Pakistani Bomb; that is the heart of the current crisis. Should India invade, Pakistan has now proclaimed that it would not make a nuclear response. Or else it stands to suffer totally unacceptable damage from the expected Indian riposte. The Bomb has thus proved to have no deterrent power nor is it any practical use. Let Indians make their own assessment of their Bomb's cost effectiveness. India's wish to make war, or its noises, is predicated on Pakistan's Kashmir policy and apparently the presence of the Pakistan Bomb has made no difference.
The conclusion emerges: both countries, all things considered, cannot go to war. So why are their forces deployed on forward positions? Why incur the extra costs? The BJP government's wisdom in scrapping agreements and established trading practices regarding normal visas, rail, road and air links or MFN status is open to question. Who will suffer most? Not the ruling elite in either country but the common Indian or Pakistani --- mostly members of divided families or small traders shall suffer. Denial of air space to Pakistani aircrafts will do what? How will it change the policies that India dislikes? It is claimed that common Indian sentiment is being responded to? It bears examination from which Indian quarter is this pressure coming? Could it be that political and electoral benefits are seen by the spin doctors of the ruling Parivar? The true human and economic costs need to be seen.
The immediate political costs are borne by secular democratic parties and forces in India, while Hindu chauvinist parties stand to profit from the aroused anti-Pakistan sentiment in the February polls. Ideas of equity and fairplay are forgotten in the jingoistic propaganda of 'let us punish Pakistan'. In Pakistan war psychoses work wonders for the ruling Junta of generals. All talk of immediate elections and true reform are relegated to the background and what becomes ostensible is to 'stand united behind the Army because the enemy stands menacing at the door'. The generals cannot ask for a better gift from India than this cross-border tension. May be the two ruling groups are helping each other's political longevity.
What Messrs Vajpayee, Fernandes and Jaswant are doing is to politically strengthen the anti-Hindu religious parties and groups and other anti-India Rightwing groups in Pakistan. This preempts the politics of dealing with the concrete problems of common people. In fact all social and economic reforms --- except those suggested by IMF, WB and WTO --- is being preempted by the politics of jingoism on both sides. Economic progress is being downgraded as a value.
The politics being pursued has an international dimension: Automatically, the Americans are being invited to come and separate the two --- who want to get at each other's throat but dare not do so. The US leadership role in Asia is being immeasurably strengthened and helped. Pari passu, others' role is being diminished. Even the Indians and Pakistanis are showing themselves to be unable to keep peace --- so necessary for maintaining stability sought by all major powers --- without outside help.

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Give us a chance to help Pak fight terror: US to PM

ACKNOWLEDGING Pakistan's steps to crack down on the Lashkar and the Jaish, Washington has urged New Delhi to "give all of us a chance to work with Musharraf" to bring the terror ists to justice. "He's cracking down hard and I appreciate his efforts," Bush said in Crawford, Texas, where he is on vacation. "Terror is terror and the fact that the Pakistani President is after the terrorists is a good sign." In his conversations with Musharraf and Prime Minister A B Vajpayee, Bush appeared to place more of the onus on Pakistan to defuse tensions in the region and he voiced sympathy for India's anger in response to the attack on its Parliament.

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Landelijke India Werkgroep - 17 januari 2002