index
A war causes colossal human suffering... In all this, the `economic'
costs seem trifling. But there is a huge cost, both short and long
term.
CITIZENS ARE not supposed to question their governments in times of
war. This "truth" has been rephrased in recent weeks by senior
members of the Union Cabinet who make comparisons between the U.S.
media's silence about that country's actions after September 11 and
the noisy reaction at home to the Government's plans to deal with the
terrorism of December 13. However, those who make policy are
unnecessarily worried. By and large, there is, unfortunately, public
acquiescence to even the most extreme of plans of the Government - a
war with Pakistan.
But question the Government we must, because there can be no
guarantee that the brinkmanship which the two Governments are now
indulging in will remain under control. It cannot be otherwise when
one day the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, speaks the
reasonable language of diplomacy and yet the next day raises the
prospect of the ultimate spectre by publicly saying, "Whatever
weapon is available will be used, no matter how it wounds the enemy".
The impact of a war on the economy cannot be the main criterion to
guide a Government's final decision. The human, social and political
costs of a war are always much more widespread and of a qualitatively
more serious nature. But there is a huge cost that any economy will
have to bear during and after a conflict. So when the Union Finance
Minister, Yashwant Sinha, says a war will have no economic impact or
when senior officials claim it will cost nothing because stocks of
armaments and ammunition have already been accumulated it is
irresponsibility of the highest order.
The implications of a war, however brief it may turn out to be, on
two of the world's poorest economies should be self-evident. For
India, first, there is the financial burden on the Central Government
which has to meet the direct costs of the conflict. Second, there is
the cost of displacement and disruption in the areas where the
conflict will take place - both are likely to be considerable. And,
third, there are the medium and even long- term costs the economy
will experience in the form of lower economic growth. As against this
the only benefit - if there can be such a thing in war - is that
presumed to flow from better use of unutilised capacities in the
economy.
Precise figures in rupees and paise cannot be placed on the costs of
war. But the past wars provide enough indications of the colossal
cost that awaits us if we are to embark on a war with Pakistan. Our
neighbour will experience much the larger difficulties, but ours are
not going to be negligible. One thing is certain. It will be a short
conflict and not the least because we can expect the major powers to
intervene and put an end to the military adventure. Any war will go
on only as long as the inventories of ammunition and spares last in
both countries, for whatever the claims about self-sufficiency in
defence even India is still heavily dependent on imports to keep the
war machine going.
The immediate and direct costs to the Government will be what it will
have to incur on consumption of inventories of missiles and
ammunition, on additional inputs such as fuel for the Air Force
sorties, the costs of destruction of armaments and the spending on
deployment. Inventories are replenished after a conflict and the
additional expenditure after the Kargil war of 1999 gives an idea of
how much even a contained and short war could cost at the bare
minimum.
Defence expenditure in 1998-99 was Rs. 39,897 crores. During the year
of the Kargil conflict (1999-2000) it jumped by 18 per cent to Rs.
47,071 crores. Some of the replenishment costs would have been
incurred in the next financial year as well, defence outlay increased
further by 16 per cent to Rs. 54,461 crores in 2000-01. That was a
total of Rs. 14,564 crores or a 36 per cent growth over two years.
Not all of this additional spending can be attributed to Kargil since
an increase in defence expenditure had been planned even before the
mountain war of 1999. Still, if the contained Kargil conflict cost
about Rs. 10,000 crores one should expect a broader India-Pakistan
war to cost many times - four to five times? - this amount. Such
spending on a war will mean less Government investment in the
infrastructure and social sectors. This, besides having a negative
effect on its own account, will also have a ripple effect in the form
of lower private investment.
A war also results in the destruction of civilian infrastructure,
disruption of local economies and a dislocation of production and
transport elsewhere in the economy. There is also the possibility of
a spurt in inflation if shortages arise from dislocation. The overall
outcome is a slowing down of economic growth. The economist Jean
Dreze in a study of militarism, development and democracy points out
that of the six countries which experienced an economic contraction
at double-digit rates in 1990-97, five had gone through wars or civil
wars in that time. The Indian experience with past wars is striking.
In 1962-63 (the year of the war with China), the economy grew by only
2 per cent; in 1965-66 (war with Pakistan) growth was a negative 3.7
per cent and in 1971-72 (the Bangladesh war) it was as little as 0.9
per cent. All three years witnessed a deceleration and it took a
couple of years before the economy recovered. Again, this was not
always the fallout of the conflicts. In 1965, for instance, there was
a severe nationwide drought. Yet, it is hard to deny that the three
wars of the 1960s and 1970s must have contributed substantially to
the deceleration in GDP growth. The impact of the Kargil war is more
ambiguous. The economy grew at the same pace in 1999-2000 as the year
before - a healthy 6.5 per cent. But that was an unusual year. The
Fifth Pay Commission bonanza led to a rapid growth in the service
sector and that also gave a temporary boost to the industry. After
that it has been downhill all the way.
There is yet this idea that a war can be good for an economy. World
War II was indeed good for the U.S., which was then just emerging
from the 1930s Depression. But the economic effect of a mass
mobilisation of people and machines in the U.S. over four years, on
the scale witnessed in World War II and far from the theatre of
conflict is very different from the effect of an India-Pakistan war.
A burst of expenditure here on munitions, fuel and transport, and
large-scale imports from the global arms market is not going to boost
domestic demand for Indian industry.
The short and simple truth is that a war will be bad for the Indian
economy. A war cannot also come at a worse time. The economy is in a
slump. Even a short conflict will push it deeper into a quagmire. All
these arguments are well-known. If yet they have to be elaborated, it
is because powerful voices are blinded by the thirst for revenge.
A war causes colossal human suffering - to the men in uniform, to the
civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and,
to their families and friends. It also destroys homes and places of
work. After the immediate suffering comes the lifelong damage to mind
and body. In all this, the "economic" costs seem trifling. But
there is a huge cost, both short and long-term. On that there cannot
be any doubt.
KOLKATA, JAN. 4. The Nobel-Laureate and Master, Trinity College,
Cambridge, Amartya Sen, today denounced the Union Government's
reported move to impart religious values as part of primary
education. Chances were high that this move would impart a sectarian
attitude based on religion, he said.
Addressing the media after a two-day workshop on `Education, Equity
and Human Security', co-hosted by the UNICEF, Harvard University, the
Commission on Human Security and Pratichi Trust, Prof. Sen said
religious self-esteem, in practice, was often misdirected to a
sectarian outlook which might bring more harm than good.
On the Centre's move to change the educational content and
curriculum, he said ``there is a danger that some political groups
may manipulate the educational content and curriculum in schools for
subversive purposes. Openness of the curriculum and a secular and
inclusive approach that cultivates reasoning and scrutiny can be
central to the role of education to promote human security''.
Describing the lack of education and other social infrastructure as a
far greater threat to human security than ``terrorism'', he said the
number of people who had died of AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis across
the world on September 11, would far outstrip the number of
casualties in the World Trade Center crash.
On the tension between India and Pakistan, he said it was time the
Indian media came out of the clutches of Government propaganda and
promoted the existence and the role of the intelligentsia in Pakistan
who were no less critical of their own Government.
The Vajpayee government is provoking a military confrontation which
could have devastating consequences for both India and Pakistan.
THE prospect of war menaces India and Pakistan as thousands of
troops, missiles, tanks and heavy artillery are deployed on the
border, and as the rhetoric of mutual hostility is ratcheted up with
each passing day. The military build-up is vastly larger than the
preparations before and during the Kargil war. Greater too is the use
of devious political argument and varied forms of pretence and
deception. This last category includes the show of injured innocence
by the leaders of the two countries.
Thus, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told a Bharatiya Janata
Yuva Morcha rally on December 25 that India "does not war"; war is
being "thrust" upon it. Home Minister L.K. Advani took the same line.
But their government is daily cranking up its belligerent
anti-Pakistan rhetoric. On December 27, it upped the ante for the
second time in a week by taking tough diplomatic measures against
Pakistan. There are signs that India has arbitrarily broadened its
agenda and now wants Pakistan to take "effective" action against all
terrorist groups, not just against the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the
Jaish-e-Mohammed. It has rejected Pakistan's December 26-27 moves,
including the detention of 30 militants, as "cosmetic" and insincere.
The Vajpayee government has also contemptuously dismissed the
suggestion that it should share with Pakistan the evidence of the
LeT's and the JeM's culpability for December 13. At the same time, it
charges Pakistan with failure to discharge its "responsibility". It
says Pakistan is not doing "enough" to fight terrorism, but does not
say what constitutes "enough". It increasingly appears unreasonable.
This unreasonableness goes back to September 11 and even earlier. It
bears recalling that India was peeved when President Bush first
demanded that Musharraf join the so-called "international coalition"
against terrorism, or face the consequences. India protested against
Pakistan's inclusion and proposed that a "Concert of Democracies",
excluding Pakistan, should be the right agency to fight terrorism.
According to highly placed sources in the defence services, the
Vajpayee government had made, well before September 11, a plan to
launch punitive attacks against Pakistan across the Line of Control.
The "October 20 Plan" was inspired as much by the Bharatiya Janata
Party's communal antipathy towards Pakistan as by its desire to
"teach Islamabad a lesson" for fomenting terrorism in Kashmir.
September 11 put paid to this scheme. Other aggressive plans were
also made under Vajpayee, as part of its "pro-active" Kashmir policy.
The Vajpayee government is now planning just such a misadventure
under Right-wing pressure related to Uttar Pradesh politics. Many
political commentators have long suspected this. Now there is strong
evidence. On December 20, Vajpayee was grilled for two hours by
Rajnath Singh at a meeting attended by top-ranking leaders of the BJP
and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh including L.K. Advani, Murli
Manohar Joshi, Jana Krishnamurthy and Kushabhau Thakre. (The
Telegraph and The Asian Age, December 22.) They reportedly told him
that all of Rajnath Singh's Hindutva work in Uttar Pradesh would be
wiped out unless India launches military strikes to show that it is
not a "soft state". War may be the BJP's sole vote-winning device
after it has lost all its trump cards. If the BJP loses Uttar
Pradesh, the ramshackle National Democratic Alliance could itself
come tumbling down.
Given its visceral hostility towards Pakistan and aggressive past
plans, the Vajpayee government is being sanctimoniously hypocritical
in claiming that it "does not war". In reality, it is making all the
belligerent moves. It is painting itself into a corner as it takes a
tougher and tougher line, from which it will find it hard to climb
down. The logic of this position is, simply put, war.
Nothing could be more undesirable in strategic, social, political and
economic terms, or more unproductive as regards India's stated
objective of countering terrorism, than war. To demand that a
military attack on Pakistan, however limited in range, must be
averted at all costs is neither to minimise the gravity of what
happened on December 13, nor ignore Islamabad's overall complicity in
terrorist activities, especially in Kashmir. Rather, the rationale of
the argument is that India's diplomatic options are broader and
worthy of trial. It is India's duty to explore and develop them fully.
The top brass of India's armed forces is opposed to the use of
military force in today's circumstances. It has repeatedly expressed
this reluctance in the Cabinet Committee on Security and even in
public statements. This is also the mood among a majority of retired
Generals and Admirals who have publicly commented on the issue,
including V.P. Malik, L. Ramdas, V.N. Sharma, Shankar Roychowdhury,
V.R. Raghavan and Afsir Karim. The restraint they advocate contrasts
sharply with our political leaders' sabre-rattling.
In fact, we may be witnessing the first disconnect since Independence
in perceptions between the country's political and military leaders.
Even when Sam Maneckshaw offered to quit over pressure to attack East
Pakistan prematurely in early 1971, he disagreed with Indira Gandhi
over the timing, not the basic military strategy.
The services chiefs reportedly believe that attacks on Pakistani
territory will yield poor results while carrying high risks. Our
forces lack accurate information on the location of such few
"training camps" as remain after most were shifted deep into
Pakistan. (Most Kashmir militants do not undergo rigorous training
which needs elaborate and permanent facilities, as opposed to
temporary parade/drill grounds and firing ranges.) Given the
information constraints, high-altitude air strikes will be largely
ineffective. Low-flying planes will be vulnerable to ground fire.
Most suspect camps are beyond the range of heavy artillery.
That leaves the options of "pro-active" ground attacks and "hot
pursuit". These are fraught with high casualties. "Hot pursuit" over
land, as distant from the sea, is legally problematic unless it is
subsumed under self-defence. Any ground-troops operation is likely to
escalate. Today there can be no "limited war" or swift "surgical"
strikes between India and Pakistan. Given their relative strategic
parity, any military confrontation will last several weeks. This
might mean opening up many fronts, on some of which India is
vulnerable.
An Indian attack will certainly trigger Pakistani retaliatory
strikes. Musharraf cannot afford to be seen cowed down by India.
After the Taliban's defeat, and the collapse of Islamabad's
quarter-century-old Afghanistan policy (including its reversal by
him), he has no option but to hit back hard. Already he is facing
flak from the religious Right for "selling out" to the Americans and
losing the "strategic depth" supposedly offered by Afghanistan.
A PROTRACTED war will all but destroy Pakistan's fragile economy.
India's own economy will be set back by many years. Besides, there is
a likelihood that the war will escalate into a nuclear conflagration.
Any use of nuclear weapons is totally, absolutely, unacceptable -
irrespective of the circumstances. Even the threats of use must be
defused. Nuclear wars cannot be won. They are suicidal and genocidal
for all concerned. They must never be fought.
We must pause and ask what New Delhi will achieve even if, short of a
nuclear holocaust, it "wins" the war - leading to Musharraf's fall
(or assassination), a general collapse of Pakistan's state, and its
disintegration along ethnic lines. A failed state collapsing on one's
borders is disastrous enough - as Pakistan has discovered in respect
of Afghanistan. A nuclear power disintegrating would be catastrophic
for India.
The legitimate purpose of any anti-terrorist operation cannot be
Pakistan's disintegration, but effective action to rein in militant
groups and put Pakistan on the road to moderation. By embarking on an
open-ended confrontation, New Delhi will have pushed Pakistan's
extremists further down the terrorist path. This would be
self-defeating. One cardinal lesson of September 11 is that all
states, no matter how powerful, are vulnerable to terrorist attacks
on their homeland.
We must acknowledge that our military options against Pakistan are
limited, fraught with grave danger, or ineffectual. Instead of
discouraging terrorism, they will, at minimum, encourage extremist,
irresponsible conduct on the part of an embittered neighbour.
Tragically, India's rulers are contemplating such a course. Their
motivation is profoundly irrational and vengeful. It is to teach
Islamabad a U.S.-style or Israeli-style "lesson". But Pakistan is not
Gaza. And India's ability militarily to bend Musharraf to its
dictates is limited.
More important, Indian leaders know that Musharraf probably did not
order the attack on Parliament House. He would have to be insane to
do so when he is under watch or attack, both externally and
internally. On the one hand, he is under close, probably intrusive,
American scrutiny, and under pressure to deliver on his premise to
act against terrorists. On the other hand, he is targeted by
religious extremists. His Interior Minister's brother was recently
killed by them. They describe him as a "traitor" and a "sellout". In
all probability, December 13 was an amateurish operation by a group
acting independently of Musharraf. Even assuming that some rogue
elements of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) were behind it, a
military confrontation would only strengthen them.
Vajpayee capitulated to Right-wing pressure when he took harsh
diplomatic measures against Pakistan on December 21 and 27. He is now
under even greater pressure to ratchet up hostility till war becomes
likely, even inevitable. Besides cancelling Pakistan's
most-favoured-nation trade status, the government is considering
abrogating the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, an act that could lead to
starving Pakistan of much-needed water.
Such measures will erode India's diplomatic leverage, and inflict
heavy punishment upon Pakistan, thus breeding more resentment -
without encouraging moderate, reasonable conduct on its part. They
will also weaken secular Pakistani opinion which stands for
moderation. Abrogating something like the Indus Treaty would be
tantamount to laying economic siege to a country, which is
impermissible under international law. (India once almost invited
stiff Security Council sanctions for choking off the flow of the
Ganga to Bangladesh.) The Treaty pertains to the Indus Basin (26
million hectares), the largest irrigated area of any one river system
in the world. It comprises the eastern rivers, the Sutlej, the Beas
and the Ravi, and the western Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. The Treaty
basically allots the waters of the eastern rivers to India and most
of the flows of the western rivers to Pakistan. Much of Pakistan's
agriculture is critically dependent on these flows. Killing the
Treaty will cause it irreversible damage.
The Indus Treaty is one of the few abiding stories of success among
many failures and disasters in the history of Indo-Pakistan
relations. It was brokered by the World Bank by means of tortuous
negotiations. If India abrogates it, renegotiating it will be an
extremely difficult task.
THERE is a sane, rational, cool-headed, low-risk alternative to such
destructive measures. India should take the December 13 terrorist
issue to the wider world, in particular to the Security Council on
the basis of solid evidence. It should invoke Security Council
Resolution 1373, mandating all states to take effective action
against terrorism - on pain of sanctions. This will generate the
right kind of pressure on Musharraf to take verifiable measures,
including the arrest of extremist leaders, a clamp-down on their
facilities and assets, and destruction of their ISI links.
This course has the merit of winning - and retaining - the support of
the international community on a transparent multilateral basis and
of impelling Musharraf to fight a menace for which Pakistan has paid
heavily. This will also help New Delhi build upon today's favourable
situation in Kashmir. The Taliban's defeat has had a huge impact on
the Valley. This creates a big opening to revitalise the political
process and get the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference to participate in
the next Assembly elections. War will close that opening. Good
diplomacy will expand it and create conditions in which terrorism
gets thoroughly discredited and foreign militants get isolated.
However, as a precondition, the government must abandon its
military-adventurist approach. The Left has been pushing for this
change. Now Centrist parties such as the Congress(I), Samajwadi,
Bahujan Samaj and the NDA's "secular" components must join in. They
must not lend uncritical, unconditional support to the government's
"anti-terrorist" fight. Such life-and-death issues are too precious
to be left to any one group, especially the sectarian-communal
BJP-RSS.
The time has also come for citizens to act. They must firmly say no
to war. It has never been more imperative to give peace a chance.
If the Indus Waters Treaty becomes a casualty of spiralling tensions
between India and Pakistan, this would be most unfortunate for both
countries - apart from denigrating all those negotiators, engineers
and decision-makers who had toiled day and night to see through a
13-year-long marathon effort.
The treaty, facilitated by the World Bank, was signed on September
19, 1960, between Jawaharlal Nehru and Field Marshal Ayub Khan. It is
one of the few examples of a successful settlement of a major
international river basin conflict. The treaty has withstood the test
of time and survived all highs and lows of India-Pakistan relations.
It also provides answers to many present diplomatic and political
riddles.
The standard literature on negotiations mentions four stages:
ripeness of the issue, pre-negotiations, negotiations and the
agreement. Application of this framework on the Indus waters
negotiations may facilitate our understanding of the dynamics of
successful negotiating in the future.
What made the Indus waters issue 'ripe' was that both nations were
anxious to reach a settlement through a mutually agreed approach to
resolve it. Considering the technicality of the issue and the
financial resources it demanded, both India and Pakistan agreed to
involve the World Bank. With its technical and financial assistance,
the negotiators, engineers and political leaders of the two nations
agreed to a framework within which negotiations were conducted.
There also existed a shared perception of the desirability of an
accord on both the sides. India and Pakistan were eager to solve the
problem as they knew that its resolution would accrue enormous
economic dividends. Besides, Nehru and Ayub Khan were politically
strong enough not only to conclude an accord but also to implement
it. This catapulted the dispute to a maturity point where
negotiations could be launched.
During his visit in 1951 to India and later to Pakistan , David
Lilienthal of the Tennessee Valley Authority convinced the two
leaders of the benefits of a settlement. He even argued that by
developing the full potential of the Indus system, the ongoing
Kashmir problem could be muted, if not resolved. After initial
discussions (read pre-negotiation), India and Pakistan then formally
agreed to participate in the meeting of engineers. The World Bank
thus found a way out of the impassé reached in bilateral discussions
between the parties.
The pre-negotiations period - from February 1951 (when Lilienthal
visited India) to March 1952 (when formal negotiations started) -
centred around India and Pakistan 'defining the problem', 'developing
commitment to negotiation' and 'arranging the negotiations'. In this
period, the two countries moved from considering conflicting
unilateral solutions to a search for a cooperative multilateral or
joint solution.
The first crucial element that made for success in the negotiations
phase was that it had a pragmatic and rational - rather than a
political - drive. There was also a broad understanding that the
waters of the Indus rivers system "should be solved on a functional
basis independently of political issues". Codified law, legal
principles and procedures were preceded by principles of water
resources development, irrigation and engineering.
The second factor was the composition of the working party. The
principal negotiators were engineers and administrators rather than
diplomats or political leaders. There was no political point to score
and no place for rhetoric or inflammatory debating tactics. The
working party consisted of engineers who dealt with the
technicalities and the discussions were controlled by the lawyers.
But significantly, considerable emphasis was placed by both sides on
the need to secure agreement on at least some part of the work to be
done jointly and avoiding the talks to break down.
The third factor was that the negotiators possessed intimate
knowledge of the subject matter of the negotiations. They had respect
for one another and enjoyed a pleasant rapport. Through their
experience, they overcame occasional obstacles and were not at all
bothered by public opinion.
The fourth important factor was the faith the leaders had in their
negotiators. As a result, the latter enjoyed greater autonomy of
action and decision-making. Critical decisions were taken at the
political level, but the protracted and complex negotiations were
conducted by senior professional officers or engineers.
The fifth crucial element was the skill and ability of World Bank's
team and its financial assistance. The bank was able to raise $ 1
billion for the replacement of canals - an important consideration
for Pakistan in the final outcome. The World Bank played more than a
financial role. It did not have any political leverage, but its
ability to bring in friendly countries with financial commitments was
a key feature. At various stages, the bank's subtle threats to
withdraw pressurised both parties to make compromises.
The sixth critical factor was the venue of the negotiations. The
negotiations were eventually held in Washington - far from the
subcontinent. This enabled the negotiators to pay full attention to
the work, away from distractions at home and saved them from
reporting on a daily basis to their governments. Not much public
debate occurred, since the negotiators could not be approached by
their national media.
The seventh and very important factor which helped in the negotiation
was the political stability in both countries at crucial moments.
>From 1947 to 1960, India was stable under Jawaharlal Nehru. Pakistan,
however, had a chequered political history with Mohammed Ali Jinnah,
Liaquat Ali, Nazimuddin, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Chaudhary Muhammad Ali,
H.S. Suhrawardy, I.I. Chundrigar and Firoz Khan Noon playing musical
chairs. But after Field Marshal Ayub Khan assumed power in 1958,
there was a relatively stable internal political situation.
Before 1958, weak and changing governments in Pakistan often put its
negotiators in difficult positions. Sometimes, the government gave
conflicting instructions and assigned roles to foreign engineers and
lawyers. With Ayub Khan in command, within two years the Indus treaty
was signed.
The eighth factor was India's accommodative attitude. International
law did not impose limitations on the freedom of a State to use
waters at their own discretion. But Indian leaders of the time viewed
the problem of water as a human problem capable of being solved on
the basis of humanitarian considerations. The contents of the treaty
show the extent of India's compromise on the issue. The financial
assistance which India also extended to Pakistan was also an
important gesture.
The last and most important factor was that the two parties -
particularly Pakistan - agreed to de-link the dispute from the
resolution of the Kashmir issue. The treaty itself, however, dealt
with the water problem in isolation and a provision was made in
Article XI to the effect that the water settlement would not
constitute any recognition or waiver of any rights or claims
whatsoever other than those expressly recognised or framed in the
treaty.
It was essential that the problem of waters should be separated from
the intricate legal and political issues involved in the Kashmir
question. The spirit of compromise displayed in regard to this
problem, it was hoped, would eventually permeate the consideration of
other issues.
The Indus Waters Treaty came to be written with extreme care and
precision so that its implementation did not pose any major
obstacles. The nine elements of success mentioned above contributed
to the eventual success of the treaty and stand relevant even after
four decades.
The writer is Programme Consultant, Malaviya Centre for Peace
Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, Banaras Hindu University
There are millions of my countrymen who agree with me that we must
never ever go to war against Pakistan again - or for that matter,
against any nation. Sabre-rattling is not patriotism; it is a foolish
person's show of bravado.
Persons who have not seen the havoc modern-day weaponry can cause to
both, those on battlefields and civilians, who have not seen
once-flourishing cities in Poland and Germany reduced to rubble and
the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have little idea of what war is.
I have. The vast majority of those who perished in World War II were
not soldiers but civilians - men, women and children. I never want to
see that happen in India, Pakistan or any other country.
Are our responses to the attack on our Parliament the best we could
do to fight terrorism? I do not think so. Pakistan condemned it as
soon as it occurred, as it did after the attack on the Kashmir
assembly. Accusing President Musharraf and his government of being
behind these attacks is unwarranted. So is recalling our high
commissioner from Islamabad.
Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Jaish-e-Moha-mmed and the Taliban are
not creations of Musharraf's regime. They were created by his
predecessors and came to him as unwanted inheritance. They have
strong presence in Pakistan's armed forces and have gained popularity
among the common people of Pakistan.
Musharraf has an unenviable task of getting rid of them. He did a
right about-turn by disowning the Taliban in Afghanistan under
American pressure. Under the same pressure, he is doing his best to
disown other Islamic militant organisations. It is not in our
interests to add to his troubles but to help him in the task he has
been compelled to undertake.
His hold on Pakistan is very tenuous. There are many in Pakistan's
defence services who would like to see him out of power. They will be
more extremist and anti-Indian than Musharraf. Would helping subvert
Musharraf's regime at this juncture be in India's interest? Our
government seems to think so. I think it is a grave error.
Stopping train and bus services to Lahore is also a retrograde step.
The need of the hour is more people-to-people contact between Indians
and Pakistanis, not making it almost impossible. To say that these
buses and trains are conduits for terrorists is a canard no one
should believe.
Agha Shahid Ali
The telephone rang late in the evening of Saturday, December 8. Few
people ring me up at that hour. I had a premonition that it might not
be good news. The voice at the other end betrayed no emotion. "This
is Yaseen Malik speaking," he said.
I knew he had been in the United States for medical treatment. "Where
from?" I asked. "America or Tihar Jail?" He was not amused. "No, I am
speaking from Srinagar. I have some sad news to convey to you."
I interrupted him, "No doubt our telephone is being tapped." "I don't
care," he replied. "I just wanted to tell you that Agha Shahid Ali
died a few hours ago in New York. I believe you know his parents and
have written about him."
I was numbed. Yes, I knew his parents and had reviewed a couple of
his collections of poems and translations of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I also
knew that he had brain surgery and survived the ordeal. But dying at
the age of 52 and taking so much of his yet-to-be exposed talent to
the grave seemed tragically unfair. I spent much of the night
re-reading his The Country Without a Post Office (Ravi Dayal) and his
translations.
Death was there with Agha Shahid throughout his adolescent years. He
brooded over it while doing his doctorate in Penn State University
and teaching creative writing in Massachusetts. Melancholy filtered
through his mind to his pen and whatever he wrote had the refrain:
"When you leave home in the morning, you never know if you'll return."
It reflects the turbulent times the people of Kashmir have been
living through for the last many years. Some lines are poignant:
"Don't tell my father I have died," he says and I follow him through
blood on the road and hundreds of pairs of shoes the mourners left
behind, as they ran from the funeral, victims of the firing. From
windows we hear grieving mothers, and snow begins to fall on us, like
ash. Black on edges of flames, it cannot extinguish the
neighbourhoods, the homes set ablaze by midnight soldiers.
Kashmir is burning: By that dazzling light We see men removing
statues from temples. We beg them, "Who will protect us if you
leave?" They don't answer, they just disappear On the road to the
plains, clutching the gods. Two lines from the Koran in the beginning
of his last collection of poems sums up Agha Shahid's emotions: "The
Hour draws nigh and the moon is rent asunder."
In an apocryphal story that did the rounds after the 1965 Indo-Pak
war, a group of Indian and Pakistani officers met at the border soon
after the fighting had stopped. One Sikh officer asked his Pakistani
counterparts with a grin: "Yar, we sardarjis are supposed to go mad
at noon, but what happened to you guys?"
Thirty seven years later, the question is what has happened to
everybody in the subcontinent? Or at least to everybody who matters
in Islamabad and Delhi? Judging from the words and actions of the
sorry cast of characters in the current shoddy drama being played out
in and over Kashmir, the proverbial midday madness of the Sikhs is
highly contagious. Consider the inflammatory words of George
Fernandes, the Indian defence minister, when he spoke about his
country being ready to survive a 'nuclear first' strike and then
completely destroy Pakistan. For a responsible politician to utter
such bellicose words at such a sensitive time is to betray not just
his deep hostility, but his ignorance of the lingering and deadly
effects of a nuclear holocaust. To him, an atom bomb is just a bigger
conventional bomb.
Indeed, the chain of events, threats and counter-threats since the
attack on the Indian parliament on December 11 seem oddly divorced
from the realities of the 21st century. The attack itself was as
reprehensible as it was amateurish. Mercifully, no Indian MP was
killed or wounded. In the scale of casualties caused in South Asia by
the terrorists of one ilk or another over the years, a dozen dead
(including the terrorists) does not appear to justify talk of nuclear
Armageddon. It is clear that the Indian government has seized upon
this bloody incident as a justification to inflict serious diplomatic
and possibly military damage on Pakistan.
But for its part, Pakistan has opened itself to the charge of
sponsoring the Delhi attack through its decade-long policy of
supporting the uprising in Indian Kashmir. Despite Islamabad's
protestations that it has extended only 'diplomatic and moral' help
to the freedom fighters, some Pakistan-based groups have reportedly
been arming and training volunteers to take part in the Kashmir
'jihad'. In addition, a number of powerful underworld fugitives from
Mumbai have also taken refuge in Karachi.
It has long been evident that Pakistan's ISI has been acting on its
own shadowy agenda. While its activities in influencing the country's
internal politics have even been revealed before the Supreme Court,
its role in Afghanistan and Kashmir has long been shrouded in
secrecy. Nevertheless, the existence of training camps run by radical
Islamic groups supported by Pakistani intelligence agencies has been
the subject of press reports in the past. Some religious parties have
been openly collecting funds and recruiting volunteers for the
Kashmir cause in major Pakistani cities for years. Even when the
government tried to ban such activities, these groups openly flouted
the decision.
In brief, the last twelve years or so have seen the evolution of a
jihadi culture in Pakistan driven by events in both Afghanistan and
Kashmir. Each has fuelled the other, with Pakistani religious groups
providing support and sustenance to both the Taliban and the Kashmiri
freedom movement. The extent of the involvement of Pakistani
governments and intelligence agencies in these covert cross-border
activities is a matter of surmise, but given their track-record, it
should come as no surprise that they have exercised considerable
control over both movements.
Our relationship with the Taliban has been consigned to the dustbin
of history, thanks to American 'daisy-cutters' and other assorted
munitions, but General Musharraf and many others in Pakistan have
sought to draw a distinction between terrorists and 'freedom
fighters'. While a very powerful legal argument can be built to
justify the difference between the two, the fact is that in the
post-September 11 scenario, such sophistry is just not acceptable to
the only superpower in the world. The leaders of three countries
plagued by 'terrorists' or 'freedom fighters' have all jumped on
board the anti-terrorism train with great alacrity: thus, Putin,
Sharon and Vajpayee have used the attacks on New York and Washington
to deal their own armed opponents fearsome military and political
blows.
Pakistan finds itself in a particularly difficult bind as it has
committed itself to opposing terrorism while it is simultaneously
supporting a freedom struggle. But Vajpayee has made Musharraf's task
even more difficult by blaming Pakistanis for the attack in New Delhi
without providing a shred of information. His demand suggests that he
considers India to be in a win-win situation: without leaving his
Pakistani counterpart any face-saving way out, he may well be
precipitating a war nobody needs or wants.
While in New Delhi for a week in November, I met a number of
politicians and journalists, and was struck by the fact that even the
most liberal ones seemed convinced that there was no possibility of a
settlement over Kashmir. The most they thought India could ever
concede was the conversion of the Line of Control in Kashmir into the
international boundary. I pointed out that this was hardly a
concession, but they seemed totally wedded to the official Indian
position in a way that is not true in Pakistan where a number of us
have consistently questioned the government's policies over Kashmir
and everything else.
Apart from wanting to bring the uprising in Kashmir under control,
what else are the Indian aims? In a letter to the Guardian recently,
a reader wrote: "India's war aim goes far beyond the 'short,
conventional campaign' to topple General Musharraf envisaged by Peter
Preston. The Indian plan is to drive into Pakistan with armour and
infantry to the point that all north-south ground communication is
cut. That achieved, India could declare a cease-fire and sit tight to
await the disintegration of a sundered Pakistan, and thus fulfil the
dream Hindu nationalists have held since the 1947 partition."
Had this letter appeared in a Pakistani newspaper, it would have been
rightly dismissed as the rambling of a deluded jingoist. But the
writer is Neville Maxwell, an eminent journalist and scholar, and
author of "India's China War", a superb account of the 1962
Indo-Chinese war. I happen to disagree with Mr Maxwell's gloomy
analysis simply because I don't think responsible Indians want a
volatile, disintegrating Pakistan as a neighbour.
Ever since the crisis escalated into a threatened nuclear exchange, I
have been asked by friends in London to explain why India and
Pakistan are on the verge of such a catastrophe. It is not easy to
tell them about the contagious madness at noon.
KATHMANDU, JANUARY 4: PAKISTAN said here today China
would help it "in any eventuality" if there was an outbreak of a
conflict between India and Pakistan. Military spokesman Major
General Rashid Qureshi told the press here soon after the General
flew into Kathmandu from Beijing that the friendship between
Pakistan and China was a long standing one, which had been de
scribed in the words of Chinese leaders as being "deeper than the
seas and higher than the mountains". Pakistan had interacted with
China in every crisis, and Beijing was appreciative of the restraint
exercised by Pakistan, Qureshi said.
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Landelijke India Werkgroep - 17 januari 2002