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ONE NIGHT, as troops from Pakistan's army massed 300
miles away to hunt for remnants of Al Qaeda in the tribal
areas bordering Afghanistan, I went to a concert in my
hometown of Lahore. It was a pleasant evening, warm, with
a light breeze carrying the smell of April flowers: flame trees,
magnolias, jasmine. We sat outside on carpets spread across
the lawn of a white bungalow, the audience ranging from
teenagers with soul patches and ponytails to elegant matrons
in saris. My back ached slightly, and I mentioned this to a
friend as I reached for the only available cushion I could see.
"Don't even think about it," she said, patting her very
pregnant belly. "It's mine."
The music we had come to hear was a fusion of modern and
traditional percussion. There were seven musicians, all Pakistani.
Three wore Western clothes and played Western instruments:
keyboards, drum set and trumpet. Three wore
loose-fitting, traditional Pakistani dress and played the dhol: a
heavy, two-sided barrel of a drum hung from the shoulders on
a thick leather strap. The seventh played a slender Egyptian
drum held between the knees. The performance was a work
in progress, an experiment that the group hoped to refine and
take on tour to Europe and the United States in the summer.
For all their individual talents, the musicians had trouble
finding a groove. But at times the audience could sense the
potential of what was struggling to emerge, and in those moments
I could see the excitement on people's faces.
The words "explosion" and "revolution" are often applied
to Pakistan, a nuclear power contending with a tangle of domestic
and geopolitical challenges, but the words should also
be applied to the cultural life of the nation. Pakistan is witnessing
an explosion of music, part of a revolution in art and
media with potentially far greater appeal to its young people
than the sermons of religious conservatives urging them to
abandon modernity and confront perceived threats to Islam.
Over the past three years, a dozen independent television
channels have sprung up, from general networks to specialized
news, fashion and music stations. Combined with a
boom in advertising, increasing economic growth and rapid
cable and satellite penetration, these outlets are fueling not
only a new industry, but also a new culture--one not limited
to a narrow Westernized elite.
True, Pakistan is desperately poor, with half the population
of 150 million illiterate and many subsisting on less than
a dollar a day. But between 30 and 40 percent live in cities,
and that percentage rises to more than 50 percent when one
includes settlements within commuting distance of urban
centers. For this half of Pakistan's population, electricity,
telephones and television have become a part of ordinary life.
Even in rural villages, TV can be found in restaurants and tea
shops that are often as crowded with viewers as movie theaters.
Last year, when members of the Pakistani rock band
Junoon visited some of the country's most destitute and isolated
regions, they found themselves mobbed by fans who
knew their songs by heart.
This budding mass culture, virtually unknown to the
West, is being created in cities like Karachi, Islamabad and
Lahore. Karachi, home to 13 million people, is Pakistan's
commercial capital, an enormous, humming metropolis
whose occasional spasms of sectarian and criminal violence
make for international headlines. Islamabad is Pakistan's political
capital, small and quiet, with fewer than a million inhabitants
and yet the most international of Pakistan's cities.
But Lahore occupies a special place in the new mass culture.
Aprosperous city of seven million, Pakistan's cultural capital
has long been a bastion of liberalism, hedonism and easy living,
where late-night partying, open-air dining and colorful
festivals, such as the kite-flying extravaganza of Basant every
spring, draw visitors from all over the country and beyond.
DURING THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES, the Mogul
rulers of what was then India left Lahore a magnificent fort
with an entrance ramp wide enough for elephants, a royal
mosque among the largest in the world when it was built, and
a palace with a mirrored ceiling that reflects candlelight like
the flickering of stars. More recently, the British Empire built
universities, clubs, courts of law and military quarters, or cantonments,
in Lahore. The young protagonist in resident Rudyard
Kipling's novel Kim told "tales of the size and beauty of
Lahore"; a visiting Mark Twain came to the conclusion that
he "could easily learn to prefer an elephant to any other vehicle."
Famous for producing poets and artists and writers,
the city is now also becoming known for its newscasters, actors,
fashion models and pop stars.
And not a moment too soon, because Pakistan needs symbols
of openness, debate and the potential for progress and
prosperity in times that many Pakistanis find dangerous and
deeply unsettling, as I was reminded by my parents' night
watchman when I went to their house after the concert.
Rahim Khan is from Pakistan's North-West Frontier
province, from the mountains near the tribal areas where recent
fighting has taken place. He looked worried, so I asked
him what was the matter.
"Have you heard that the army is going back into Waziristan?"
he said, referring to a region that has seen heavy casualties
among both soldiers and civilians in operations to hunt
down foreign militants belonging to Al Qaeda, the Taliban
and other groups.
"Yes," I said.
"It isn't good," he said. "Pakistanis will kill Pakistanis, Muslims
will kill Muslims, all for the Americans."
PAKISTANI SKEPTICISM about U.S. intentions runs deep.
To try to get a better understanding of its origins, I went to
see one of Lahore's most distinguished journalists, Rashed
Rahman, who has covered political developments in Pakistan
for more than two decades. We sat under an intricately
inlaid wooden ceiling in his house in the Cantonment
neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, he beside an antique
writing desk, and I on an old leather couch. He lit a
Dunhill cigarette and shut his eyes for a moment. "Back in
the 1950s and '60s," he said, "there were lots of Americans
living in Lahore. People wanted American cars and American
products. Elvis was huge here. Pakistan was an important
American cold war ally. The U.S. supported our military
regime and gave us aid and weapons."
His desk lamp went out, suddenly and for no apparent
reason. But other lights in the room remained on, so he
shrugged and continued. "Pakistanis thought our alliance
was meant not just to protect America from communism,
but also to protect Pakistan from India. So when Pakistan
and India fought a war in 1965, we expected America's support.
Instead, America slapped us with sanctions and cut off
our aid, because America had come to see India as a counterweight
to China. After the 1965 Pakistan-India war, America
acquired the reputation in Pakistan of being a fair-weather
friend."
He stubbed out his cigarette. "For over a decade, relations
between Pakistan and America kept getting colder," he said.
"Gen. Zia-ul-Haq seized power in a coup in 1977. Two years
later, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, bringing them close
to the massive oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. President Reagan
invited General Zia to the White House and gave him
three billion dollars of aid in exchange for Pakistan's support
against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Thus began the most disastrous
period in Pakistan's history. General Zia's regime set
out to Islamize society, and it didn't tolerate any protest or
dissent. Laws that ended equal rights for women were
passed. Democracy activists were imprisoned. But worst of
all, in camps near our border with Afghanistan, the regime
worked with America to create a monster called the mujahedin
to fight the Soviets." He was referring, of course, to
the now infamous guerrilla groups composed of Afghan and
Muslim fighters from around the world.
His words reminded me of my days as a schoolboy in Lahore
in the 1980s. Religious militants quickly spread from
the mujahedin training camps into the rest of country. Guns
and hard-eyed men with beards became commonplace in our
cities; as a more intolerant and narrow brand of Islam took
hold among civic authorities, my fellow teenagers and I
would be arrested just for going out on dates. Radio and television
began broadcasting news in Arabic, a language spoken
by very few Pakistanis. And my father, then a professor
of economics at Punjab University, came home with stories
about colleagues resigning after being held up at gunpoint
for expressing views that were "un-Islamic."
"The face of Pakistani society was destroyed during our
alliance with America in the 1980s," Rahman went on. "Then
Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988, and once again the
army stepped back," allowing the return of civilian rule.
"From 1988 to 1999, elected governments were in power,
with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif alternating as prime
minister. But relations with America deteriorated. In 1989
the Soviets were finally driven from Afghanistan, and the
very next year the Americans slapped Pakistan with the first
of many sanctions for our nuclear weapons program, which
they had turned a blind eye to during the 1980s. In Pakistan,
the perception was that America had flushed us down the
toilet because we were no longer needed."
He leaned back in his chair and spread his arms. "Many
people here may not be educated, but they know what has
happened in the past. So they are skeptical of our current alliance
with America." He smiled. "And if you look at the
track record, their skepticism is logical."
PAKISTAN'S CURRENT ALLIANCE with the United States
began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. America's secretary of state, Colin Powell, called Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and asked for the
use of Pakistani bases, airspace and logistical support for
America's military campaign in Afghanistan. Musharraf, a
Westward-leaning reformist who had seized power in a
bloodless coup in 1999, agreed, thereby ending Pakistan's
backing of the Taliban. In an address to the nation, the president
explained that refusing the U.S. request "may endanger
our territorial integrity and our survival," but by supporting
the United States "we could emerge as a responsible
and honourable nation and all our problems could diminish."
The overwhelming sentiment among Pakistanis, captured
in newspaper editorials and television interviews, was that
America's war in Afghanistan would bring enormous suffering
to fellow Muslims in one of the poorest countries in the
world. Religious conservatives were furious: "Any collaboration
with the United States is treason," declared a cleric at
Islamabad's Lal Masjid mosque in late September 2001. But
the massive antigovernment street clashes the naysayers
promised failed to materialize. "I was in a peace march," my
mother told me. "There were hundreds of us, all women with
placards and flowers, and we managed only to attract the attention
of one or two foreign journalists. But along the way
we ran into a couple dozen men with beards chanting, 'Death
to America,' and they were mobbed by international television
crews and photographers. It was like they were the Beatles."
After the defeat of the Taliban in 2002, Pakistan's role
shifted to hunting down Al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan
itself. More than 500 Al Qaeda and Taliban members were
captured by Pakistani soldiers and handed over to the United
States. Recognizing Pakistan's contribution, Colin Powell
announced in March 2004 that the United States would designate
the country a major non-NATO ally. Some Pakistanis,
particularly religious conservatives, sympathized with the
goals of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and condemned the Pakistani
government's continued support of the United States.
(Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered in
Karachi in 2002 by terrorists linked to Al Qaeda.) Others,
like my parents' night watchman, saw army operations in the
border regions as drawing innocent Pakistanis into America's
fight against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. America's
invasion of Iraq, treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and
support for the policies of Israel's prime minister Ariel
Sharon have also sparked widespread condemnation in Pakistan.
But although they may not like what America is doing
around the world, most Pakistanis are also increasingly fed
up with the religious militants in their midst. And for good
reason. In recent years, both Sunni and Shiite militants had
grown increasingly assertive, and their violence against fellow
Pakistanis had spiraled out of control.
Fatima Hassan is a young painter and a member of Pakistan's
Shiite minority, which represents about 20 percent
of the population and has been the prime target of some
Sunni militant groups. Encouraged by recent changes in
Pakistan, she decided to return home from the United
States. I went to see her in a modern house in Lahore's upscale
Defense neighborhood where she was working on a
mural of decorative patterns and floral forms. She was
wearing track pants and a T-shirt, and her hands and arms
were splattered with paint. "We just didn't feel secure," she
said of the decade before Musharraf 's takeover. "There was
a period when they were killing Shiite doctors, trying to
scare educated professionals into leaving Pakistan. My
brother-in-law was a doctor, and he was threatened. Some
men came for him at the house, but he wasn't home. After
that, we were petrified whenever he was late coming back
from the hospital. He moved into a hostel for a month so
they couldn't find him."
She crossed her arms and shook her head. "It was really
bad. My brother's friend was killed. Lots of Shiite business
leaders got shot. But things have gotten much better under
Musharraf. The killing has almost stopped. At night, when I
was trying to sleep, I used to be terrified of people coming
to the house. It isn't like that anymore. Thank God."
Although sectarian violence persists--particularly in
Karachi, wracked by recent bombings--government officials
have made stopping it a top priority and begun speaking out
against the ideologies that underpin militant movements.
"Musharraf said on television that none of these militants
should think they have the right to decide what Islam is for
the rest of us," Hassan told me. "It was a good thing to hear
our president say."
NO LESS IMPORTANT than Pakistan's alliance with the
United States has been the shift in its relations with India.
At independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan, with a
population of 70 million, was partitioned from Hindu-majority
India, with its population of 480 million, as a homeland
for the region's Muslims. The fate of the predominantly
Muslim state of Kashmir (with three million
inhabitants) was left undecided, and the two countries have
been fighting over it ever since. India controls two-thirds
of Kashmir's territory, Pakistan the remainder. But both
countries claim Kashmir in its entirety, with India accusing
Pakistan of supporting an insurgency by Muslim rebels
in the Indian part of Kashmir and Pakistan accusing India
of refusing to obey a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for Kashmir's
people to decide which country they would rather belong
to.
In December 2001, five armed men attacked the Indi-
an Parliament. Claiming that they were Pakistani-backed
militants, India moved more than 500,000 troops to the
border and deployed its nuclear-capable missiles. Pakistan
responded in kind, sending more than 300,000 troops to
the border. For 18 months, the two nuclear powers stood
poised for war. Lahore is only 20 miles from India, and convoys
of trucks rumbled through the city for weeks, delivering
supplies to our soldiers massed along the 1,800-milelong
border. Helicopters flew low overhead, artillery fire
was exchanged to the north and there were rumors that
traffic on the freeway was being stopped so our fighter pilots
could practice landing on it in case an Indian nuclear
strike destroyed our airfields.
But a growing realization that the consequences of nuclear
war were unthinkable, coupled with intense mediation
efforts by the United States and other countries, brought
Pakistan and India back from the brink in May 2003. On a
historic visit by Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
to Pakistan in January 2004, both he and Pakistani president
Musharraf committed themselves to negotiating their differences,
including the status of Kashmir. The restoration of
commercial air links and an easing of travel restrictions followed
soon after.
Suddenly, anxiety gave way to optimism and euphoria. For
the first time in more than a decade, India and Pakistan
agreed to a full tour of Pakistan by the Indian cricket team,
unleashing in March an influx of Indian spectators so huge
that Pakistan had to set up special visa camps in India to accommodate
demand. Journalists, film stars, celebrities and
politicians, including both children of India's late prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi and his wife, Sonia, descended on the five
match venues of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and
Multan. So did thousands of ordinary cricket fans, swept up
in a sport that, for the fifth of humanity that lives in South
Asia, has an importance, in American terms, roughly equal
to baseball, football and basketball combined.
The series was unlike any sporting event I had ever seen.
In stadiums in all five cities, Pakistanis cheered for the Indian
team and painted the flags of both countries on their
faces; they even launched fireworks to celebrate the Indian
victory in the final and decisive one-day match in Lahore.
Outside the stadiums, Pakistani shopkeepers gave Indian visitors
gifts, and restaurant owners refused to let them pay for
their meals. I did a quick survey in Lahore's Main Market
among several boys who sell paan, a delicacy made of nuts
and fragrant syrup wrapped inside a betel leaf. "We were
happy for the Indians to be here," one named Saleem said.
"Of course we didn't let them pay. We wanted them to know
they were our guests. We are fed up with war. We want
peace." Loudly, the others agreed.
"The massive outpouring of hospitality and affection was
spontaneous and genuine," Ejaz Haider, an editor at the
Daily Times, an English-language newspaper based in Lahore,
told me. "The Indians were taken aback. The image they had
of Pakistan was of a violent, conservative state whose people
hated them. Instead, they had a reception more generous
than anything they could possibly have imagined. I had
Indian journalists telling me that Lahore is cleaner and more
beautiful than any city in India."
For the most part, Pakistanis expected that India's prime
minister Vajpayee, who had made peace with Pakistan both a
personal mission and a plank in his reelection platform, would
continue in power after India's elections, which were held in
April and May. But the stunning defeat of Vajpayee's Bharatiya
Janata Party by the Congress Party, led by Italian-born Sonia
Gandhi, created uncertainty about the future of India-Pakistan
relations. While the Pakistan government welcomed
comments by Gandhi and incoming prime minister Manmohan
Singh that the peace process would continue, many here
speculate that it will suffer, with the Daily Times commenting
that "there may be some unexpected hurdles ahead." But
others pointed out that Gandhi's son and daughter, Rahul, 34,
and Priyanka, 33, had demonstrated their support for peace
by coming to Karachi for the cricket finals, where they had
clearly been thrilled by the reception they received.
what no doubt impressed the Indian visitors, and
what impresses even Pakistanis returning after just a few
years abroad, is a nation emerging from economic stagnation
and years of inaction against the domestic terrorism of religious
militants. The country has won praise from the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund for its economic
turnaround. Pakistan's stock market was among the world's
top performing last year, up 66 percent, and real estate values
are soaring. Although still generated from a tiny base, tax revenues
have jumped 40 percent in the past four years, enabling
the government to spend more on development, especially
on education--a critical investment for Pakistanis
under 19, roughly half of its current population.
A good example of this vibrancy is the creation of many new
private educational institutions. Navid Shahzad, a literature
professor and education consultant, helped found Beaconhouse
National University (BNU) in Lahore. I went to see her in her
office, walking past bulletin boards plastered with announcements
for student plays and concerts and art projects. "Three
things happened in higher education," she told me. "First, the
government finally understood that it did not have the resources
to meet the education needs of the population by itself."
She raised two fingers. "Second, they realized that the
crumbling public education system-and the religious madrassas
[schools] that stepped in to fill the gaps--contributed to the
problems of unemployment and militancy in our society." She
raised a third finger. "Finally, they saw that some private universities
in Pakistan were providing qualitatively superior education
in a way which was financially self-sustaining."
A group of students with backpacks slung over their Tshirts
walked by outside her glass door. "So," she continued,
"after years of being a public-sector fiefdom, things are finally
changing. In the last year, seven or eight private universities
were granted charters in our province alone. BNU
opened five months ago, and we now have 109 students, including
16 international students. We plan to have 2,000
within five years. Our nonprofit foundation already has an
endowment which allows us to give over 30 percent of our
students' financial aid. And even though Pakistan is supposed
to be a dangerous place, I've had no difficulty recruiting
faculty from Britain, South Africa, Germany and the
United States. People hear about what we're doing, and
they're excited to come and teach here."
And what is BNU teaching? She smiled. "The demand for
people in media, culture and the arts is booming," she said.
"It's driven by the proliferation of television channels, and
now also of radio and newspapers, as well as by a growing
middle class. BNU is training people to meet that demand.
Many of our programs are the first of their kinds in Pakistan:
photojournalism, for example. At public universities they
stopped teaching sculpture because of the Islamic injunction
against idolatry. But here, we teach sculpture. And we teach
many disciplines that marry art and technology and make
new things possible, like sound engineering and computer
visual effects."
Down the hall from Shahzad, in an office shared by four
female faculty members from three different countries, I
met Zahra Khan, a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College
in South Hadley, Massachusetts, who has starred in a
popular television sitcom here. She was wearing glasses and
a diamond stud in her nose and sat at her desk under a poster
for the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction. "Music, television
sitcoms, dramatic serials-everything is exploding right
now," she said. "Young people are expressing themselves, and
powerful modern forces are finally taking on the old conservative
ones. It's really exciting to be part of it."
OF COURSE, few in Lahore would argue that Pakistan's longoverdue
embrace of television is a panacea for its deep-rooted
problems, as Ahmed Rashid, the internationally best-selling
author of Taliban and Jihad, is only too happy to point out.
Sporting both a beard and a pair of shorts, an unusual combination
here, Rashid led me into his study, a single room entirely
lined with bookshelves and separated from his house in the
Cantonment by a walkway shaded by hanging vines. His electricity
and phone service were both out.
"The problem Pakistan faces right now," he told me, folding
his legs underneath him, "is that our government has a
two-track policy, a kind of institutionalized schizophrenia.
Take the issue of militants," he said, referring to the thousands
of foreigners and Pakistanis engaged in an armed
struggle against the West, against India in Kashmir, or
against those who practice a different form of Islam.
"Musharraf has promised to clamp down on all militants operating
in Pakistan. But in reality, two different things are
going on. The army is trying to eliminate Al Qaeda, foreign
militants who are in Pakistan to fight a global jihad against
America. But the army is not trying to eliminate Pakistani
militants who want to fight India in Kashmir. The army
wants these domestic Kashmiri militant groups to pause
their activities, but it doesn't want to dismantle them yet in
case negotiations with India fail. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda
and our domestic militant groups are deeply embedded in
each other. So the army's policies are pushing in two opposite
directions at the same time."
The lights came back on, and Rashid got up to send a fax,
then gave up in frustration because the phone was still out.
"Many Pakistani militants think Musharraf is a long-term
threat," he went on. "Especially the sectarian groups, the
Sunni extremists who are instigating violence against Shiites.
They've been fingered twice for trying to assassinate Musharraf,"
in two attacks 11 days apart in December 2003. "The
army is trying to distinguish these sectarian groups from the
ones fighting for Kashmir and go after them. But because all
these groups-Al Qaeda, the sectarian groups and the groups
fighting in Kashmir-are interrelated, it's hard to do."
He poured me a cup of tea. "It's the same situation with
Abdul Qadeer Khan and this entire nuclear proliferation
scandal," he told me, referring to the mastermind of Pakistan's
nuclear program who, in January, admitted selling nuclear
secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran. "Right after
September 11, we should have said, privately perhaps, to the
Americans and the International Atomic Energy Agency,
'Look, we want to come clean. We are guilty of proliferation.
But that's over now, and here's how we're going to assure you
that those days are finished.' The army should have taken responsibility.
Instead, the army waited until we got caught
with our pants down, with Libya and Iran telling the world
that we helped them, and then the army set up A. Q. Khan as
a scapegoat to limit the damage. So now we're in the same
position of cooperating with the Americans and the IAEA,
but only after destroying our own credibility." In particular,
Musharraf 's decision to pardon the once hugely popular
Khan after his confession was widely seen as an attempt to
limit the damage of the scandal.
Rashid also criticizes the undemocratic nature of Musharraf
's government and its antagonism toward the parties of
former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
Rashid's concerns would spill into the news a week later, in
May, when Nawaz Sharif 's brother, Shahbaz, attempted to
return from exile abroad and was immediately deported by
armed security personnel.
Rashid checked his fax machine again. It was still not
working, so he called out to his driver and asked him to take
the fax to the bazaar to be sent off. "At the end of the day,"
he said, after the driver had left, "the schizophrenic nature
of our government-hunting some militants but protecting
others, admitting proliferation but passing the blame, liberalizing
the economy but destroying the two mainstream political
parties--is tied up with Pakistan's search for its own
identity. We need to decide which way we want to go. The
fundamentalists don't have mass support, but they're very
vocal. It's time for the rest of civil society--for businesspeople,
traders, teachers, professionals, intellectuals-to find its
voice. There is mass support for peace with India, and economic
development, and an end to militancy. But the question
is: Are we at that tipping point where mass support can
finally change our policies?"
AFTER MY MEETING WITH RASHID, I decided not to take
the most direct route home. Instead, I drove down Mall Road,
with its old, shady trees, many planted by the British before
Pakistan's independence. The divider was lush green, with
thick beds of orange flowers on long, elegant stems. I passed a
white mosque near my grandfather's former house. The
mosque had been small when I was a child, barely more than a
room. Now its minarets and glossy green dome jutted into the
sky, festooned with flags pulled taut by a stiff breeze-signs,
perhaps, that a religious assembly would soon take place.
I turned left along the canal. Weeping willows along its
banks dragged the tips of their branches through the water.
The road had been improved lately, modern underpasses
transforming it into a quick-moving artery for traffic through
the city. At intersections, billboards with attractive young
women and men advertised clothes, cars, credit cards, ice
cream. On one billboard was a splattering of dark paint
where someone with conservative views and good aim had
tried to obliterate a particularly fetching female face.
I remembered my mother telling me about a local production
of The Phantom of the Opera she had seen. A woman
wearing Western-style trousers and a shirt, but also a head
scarf, had introduced the show. "At first," my mother told me,
"I thought it was silly. Why bother with a conservative head
scarf if you are going to put on those tightfitting clothes? But
then I listened to her speak, and she was confident and spoke
well. So I thought, if it makes her feel more comfortable to
wear a head scarf, then fine. The important thing is that she
was well educated and free to speak her mind."
As the city of Lahore, and Pakistan as a whole, leaves behind
two decades of repression and violent intimidation by
religious militants, more and more people are finding their
voices. And much of what they have to say reflects a longing
for peace and progress. Even if overshadowed in the news by
the explosions of bombs, Pakistan's other explosions-of
music, media and mass culture--are powerful and growing
sources of hope.
Islamabad, July 29: Seven months after India and Pakistan began a
wide-ranging effort to improve their difficult relations, signs of strain
are emerging. Pakistani officials express growing frustration over the
failure of the two countries to engage in a detailed discussion of
Kashmir, the dispute territory over which the two nuclear-armed
neighbours nearly fought a third war in 2002. Indian officials say the
process should not be rushed and accuse Pakistan of failing to dismantle
militants' camps. They also charge that the infiltration of fighters
supported by Pakistan into the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir has
resumed in recent weeks. US diplomats, who also called for the dismantling
of training camps earlier this month, say they continue to offer strong
support for the peace efforts. A peace agreement between India and
Pakistan is considered vital to stabilising Pakistan and Afghanistan, two
major fronts in the effort to curb terrorism. The Pakistani Army's
perception of India as a major military threat has been largely
responsible for Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons, its support for
the Taliban in Afghanistan and its financing of Islamic militant groups
battling Indian forces in Kashmir. Advocates of a settlement to the
56-year dispute say peace would foster economic growth, curb militancy and
strengthen democracy in the region.
The Congress-led UPA government has certain
advantages over its political predecessor in
dealing with the situation in J&K state. Since
the Congress, unlike the BJP, not only has a
presence in Kashmir valley but also other
Muslim-majority parts of the state, it can
provide a far better link between the Muslims of
the state and the people elsewhere in the
country. The party has a similar advantage
vis-a-vis other regional Valley-based political
outfits, since it exists in all parts of the
state and can thus be a fit instrument of
emotional integration between its three regions.
However, the UPA government has somehow failed to
press home its obvious advantages. Instead, it
has managed to further strain its state-level
coalition with the PDP. While the Congress is
competing with the BJP in catering to the
populist sentiment in Jammu, the PDP is competing
with the National Conference in the Valley. Two
recent instances show how the coalition partners
are divided along regional lines. First, a PDP
minister supported the public protest against the
decision of the State Public Service Commission
to reduce the share of the Valley in state
administrative services.
Second, Congress ministers resigned in opposition
to the reduction of the period of Amarnath yatra
from two months to one.
Indeed, all recruitments, promotions and
development activities are now being viewed by
the coalition partners from the narrow viewpoint
of their respective regions. That the state
cabinet has not met for almost five months is an
eloquent commentary on the way the government is
functioning.
While Jammu's politics has always centred round
the issue of regional discrimination or 'Kashmiri
domination', such issues have received a fresh
impetus even in the Valley due to two factors.
First, as the role of militancy and secessionist
politics in articulating popular discontent
shrinks, the latter is getting diverted into
regional claims and complaints. Second, the
presence of the Congress-led government at the
Centre has enhanced the weight of the
predominantly Jammu-based party in the state
coalition.
The first task of the Congress is, therefore, to
restore normal governance, and ensure a cohesive
and smooth functioning of the cabinet as well as
the coordination committee. The latter end is
hardly possible in the current situation when a
non-resident PCC president also doubles up as
president of the coordination committee. Then
there is the need to replace the present highly
centralised and unitary constitution of the state
by a federal and decentralised system to remove
the root cause of regional tensions and
consequent misgovernance and other complications
in state politics.
Jawaharlal Nehru was the first national leader to
appreciate and accept my plea for regional
autonomy in the state, to prevent what I believed
was the explosive potential of regional tensions.
On July 24, 1952, he, in the presence - and with
the consent - of Sheikh Abdullah, declared at a
press conference that "the state government was
considering regional autonomies within the larger
state". The Praja Parishad, a Jana
Sangh-affiliate, rejected the suggestion with a
powerful agitation which instead sought the
solution of the Jammu problem in the abrogation
of Article 370.
Later, the outline of an internal constitution
for the state, drafted by me and unanimously
adopted by J&K People's Convention - called by
Sheikh Abdullah during his days of estrangement
with India in 1968 - provided for regional
autonomy and a further devolution of power to
districts, blocks and panchayats. This convention
had the representation of the entire political
spectrum in the Kashmir region. The idea of
regional autonomy was also backed by Nehru,
Jayaprakash Narayan and the Left parties. But the
Jana Sangh strongly denounced the move for "it
would benefit only the supporters of Sheikh
Abdullah and pro-Pakistan elements".
Before agreeing to handing over power to Sheikh
Abdullah in 1975, Indira Gandhi wanted to ensure
that he would be acceptable to the people of
Jammu. On his part, Abdullah reiterated his
commitment to regional auto-nomy at a convention
of representatives from Jammu and Ladakh. But
when Rajiv Gandhi moved the 73rd constitutional
amendment, aimed at ensuring the decentralisation
of power from district to the village level, it
was not made applicable to J&K state. The
Congress-led UPA government should pick up the
thread where Nehru, Indira and Rajiv left it; so
that power is shared among the three regions of
the state and is further devolved to districts,
blocks and panchayats.
By now, the people of Jammu are convinced that
the abrogation of the Article would not safeguard
their interests. Likewise, the people of Kashmir
have also learnt that their autonomy and identity
cannot be protected until the autonomy and
identity of Jammu and Ladakh are guaranteed.
The support in the NDA manifesto for the creation
of autonomous regional councils in J&K state, at
the obvious behest of the BJP, and the evasive
reference to Article 370 in the party's manifesto
- after vilifying the idea of regional autonomy
and its sponsors for over 50 years - should
facilitate the task of the Congress-led
government in federalising and decentralising the
state administration. The committed support of
the Left on the issue will, if anything, make
things easier. It's time for the Congress to act.
For the first time since India and Pakistan broke
the ice in January, a jarring tone is detectable
in official statements about their bilateral
dialogue. Foreign Minister Natwar Singh’s visit
to Islamabad only confirms that the euphoria and
exuberance evident only weeks ago are yielding to
anxiety and fear. Talks on the only
confidence-building measure (CBM) on the table -
a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad -
are deadlocked.
If things don’t improve before Singh and Khurshid
Mahmud Kasuri meet on September 5-6, the entire
dialogue process could unravel. To prevent this,
the apex political leadership in both countries
must give the process high priority and momentum.
Pakistani leaders must amend their negative view
of the Manmohan Singh government. And Singh must
personally take charge of the process.
We cannot afford a failure of the first
India-Pakistan comprehensive talks in over 30
years. This will mean losing a handsome peace
dividend, and worse, resuming hostility in a
bitter form. Failure is completely, categorically
unacceptable - no matter which side is
responsible for causing it.
By all informed accounts, Natwar Singh’s
exchanges in Pakistan produced no advance, no new
understanding. India on July 24 voiced its
"disappointment" over the "tone and substance" of
Pakistan’s comments about Singh’s discussion with
President Pervez Musharraf. It said the comment
don’t reflect the discussions’ "comprehensive
nature". It expressed discomfort with Musharraf’s
demand that "a final settlement" of Kashmir in
accordance with "the legitimate aspirations of
the Kashmiris" must be reached "within a
reasonable timeframe".
Similarly, Musharraf declared an "endless"
dialogue with India" neither "wise nor
desirable". He wants India to reciprocate
Pakistan’s "flexibility, sincerity, and courage",
which he believes, is lacking.
Indian officials are strongly sceptical about the
"timeframe" demand and Pakistan’s emphasis on
"legitimate [Kashmiri] aspirations", which they
say sits ill with the fact that it hasn’t allowed
elected assemblies in the Northern Areas. Many
Indian policy-makers are worried by Musharraf’s
recent speech: "while we are working both on
dialogue and CBMs with India, Kashmir is the main
dispute ... Until there is progress towards its
resolution, there can be no headway on CBMs or
other issues."
Whether or not this represents a major shift of
stance - away from simultaneous movement on CBMs
and the "2+6" issues, including Kashmir - it’s
clear that the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus is not
around the corner. No other CBMs are likely.
Pessimism seems to be crystallising among
Islamabad’s policy-makers.
From across the border, three factors appear to
have influenced this. First, many Pakistanis feel
uneasy about new government in India. They feel
Manmohan Singh won’t be as keen on peace, as was
Vajpayee - a "tall leader", "a man of peace"
uniquely committed to reconciliation with
Pakistan. They have a negative perception of the
Congress, which they associate with Partition,
"soft-Hindutva", anti-Muslim violence, and a hard
line on Kashmir.
This perception is largely mistaken. Vajpayee did
invest energies in the dialogue. But just two
years ago, he was talking of aar-paar ki ladai
(battle to the finish) - as he mobilised 700,000
troops at the border. Besides, the BJP believes
not in "soft-Hindutva", but hard-boiled,
aggressive, Islamophobic communalism. This is
integral to Vajpayee’s politics. To depict
Vajpayee as a "man of peace", while burdening
Singh with all the baggage from the Congress’s
past is wrong.
Pakistanis would be wrong to read too much into
Natwar Singh’s early pronouncement that the
dialogue would be conducted within the Shimla
Agreement framework. The statement was
unfortunate. But Singh has since admitted that
India and Pakistan have gone beyond Shimla, even
Lahore. In deference to Pakistani sensitivities,
he didn’t utter the S-word in Islamabad.
Second, Pakistani policy-makers prefer to deal
with one authority/power-centre-preferably, one
individual. Nobody fits that description in
post-NDA India. Is Singh really in charge? Or is
Sonia Gandhi? Who can take a high-level political
decision? This view underestimates the strong
Indian consensus on improving relations with
Pakistan and the existence of multiple sources of
decision-making in India’s fairly
institutionalised democracy.
Many Pakistanis regard Manmohan Singh a
"technocrat", an administrator - not a politician
who can take bold decisions on sensitive issues,
where he might be vulnerable to the charge of
"selling out" India’s interests. This is unfair.
It underestimates Singh’s tenacity. Whatever
one’s view of his 1991 neo-liberal policy turn -
and I admit to a largely negative view - it
polarised opinion and brought charges of "selling
out" (even from the BJP). That didn’t deter
Singh. Besides, his political personality is
still evolving.
Nostalgia for Vajpayee could become
counter-productive. Vajpayee is gone and may
never come back. Implicit in the pro-Vajpayee
obsession is the idea, rooted in the early 1970s
pact between Washington and Beijing, that only
the Right can take controversial decisions; the
Left cannot. This view is simplistic. Nixon’s
Right-wing proclivities and Kissinger’s
deviousness cannot explain the deal with China,
attributable to growing tensions with the USSR
over the sharing of military technologies, etc.
The analogy doesn’t apply to India-Pakistan or
BJP-Congress.
Many Pakistanis resent US deputy secretary of
state Richard Armitage’s statement that Pakistan
must do more to combat terrorism, in particular
dismantle the supporting infrastructure.
Pakistani observers believe the remark was made
at India’s behest and bears little relationship
to reality: Pakistan has cooperated with the US
in anti-al-Qaeda operations and reportedly lost
400 troops. Indian officials admit there has been
little cross-border infiltration since November
(barring this month). But Pakistani observers may
be overreacting to Armitage. Similar statements
were made by Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and
Paul Wolfowitz too.
The real issue is, should these perceptions, even
if legitimate, be allowed to change the course
and fate of the dialogue process, especially when
they can be corrected (partly because the reality
underlying them is itself changeable), and when
neither India nor Pakistan has evolved a
comprehensive policy on Kashmir which can be put
on the negotiating table?
My answer is no; there is a heavy risk of losing
a great opportunity for peace - and that too
before the two sides have fully explored each
other’s concerns. I say this, although I am
sensitive to Pakistani policy-makers’
apprehensions about the proposed
Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus. Their fear is
two-fold. If they agree to allow its passengers
to carry national passports, as distinct from
United Nations documents or special
"for-Kashmiris-only" permits, they would
implicitly accept the LoC as the international
border, without proper negotiations. Secondly,
once the bus starts rolling, it will further
legitimise the LoC as the international border.
These fears must be addressed. But a mutually
acceptable solution can be found. It would be
premature to give up on it without trying - and
trying hard. The best way to try would be for
both Manmohan Singh and Musharraf to start making
formal/informal contacts with each other.
Musharraf has been part of the dialogue process.
Manmohan Singh has not. Singh must demonstrate a
visible, strong commitment to the dialogue,
including willingness to move away from stated
positions. He must appoint high-level
interlocutors to start exploratory talks on
Kashmir. Singh must personally take charge of the
process. He must be seen to own it. Musharraf
must be maximally flexible and keep the talks
going. Neither country can afford an impasse.
Pakistan-India dialogue has barely begun and
discordant notes have already been struck.
Implying that undue delay in solving the Kashmir
problem might be intentional, President Pervez
Musharraf told Indian Foreign Minister Natwar
Singh that the Kashmir issue needs to be resolved
within a "reasonable" timeframe. Mr Natwar
Singh's reply came the next day, when he said
that "India-Pakistan dialogue is not a 100 metres
race; talks cannot be rushed".
Pakistan President has been showing signs of
dissatisfaction with the pace of this dialogue
for sometime. Hitherto, only Foreign Secretaries
meeting has taken place in New Delhi. Six other
meetings at experts level will soon be held. But
the substantive give and take session will begin
in early September, when the two Foreign
Ministers will meet in Delhi - perhaps final
conclusions may be expected subsequently at the
summit level. Meantime politics has moved on.
Indians are pressing ahead with their Strategic
Partnership with the US and Israel and are
working to modernise their armed forces,
upgrading their equipment.
Now these developments ring alarm bells in
Pakistan's security establishment. Pakistan
thinks that India is strengthening its
conventional deterrent to a stage where Pakistan
cannot match or counter it. President Musharraf
has asserted on several occasions that Pakistan
will anyhow maintain a balance of power - in both
conventional armaments and nuclear weapons,
including missiles to carry them. Indeed he went
further: he would enhance Pakistan's security to
a point beyond what was earlier fixed as the
minimum required.
Now both these activities constitute arms race.
It is always justified by inimical propaganda
against the adversary power. Which is what a cold
war is, and Pakistan and India have run it for
over half a century, though its continuance is an
anomaly. Current dialogue was intended to reverse
the trend. Or was it? Let's ask the question what
kinds of relations are aimed at in this dialogue?
In terms of January 06, 2004 statement after the
meeting between President Musharraf and Indian
Prime Minister AB Vajpayee, the purpose is
normalisation of relations.
What is not clear is the definition of
normalisation: which state of relationship
between the two is to be taken as normal; it has
taken twists and turns. Do the Indians want
Pakistan to be a friend and a partner? They need
to clarify for the benefit of at least the
Indians. As far as Pakistanis are concerned,
there is some evidence that all Pakistan
officials wanted way back in January 04 was to go
back to the relationship as it was on December
13, 2001. It is an open question as to which
stage of Indo-Pak relationship the two want to go
back to.
There was the initial period when there were no
visas required for inter-state travel. By early
1950, visas had been introduced but travel was
free enough until 1965 war. After it, the two
bureaucracies armed themselves with tremendous
powers, tightening up the visa regimes. It
remained so until after the 1971 war. The Shimla
Accord began normalisation efforts and talks
sporadically continued through any number of high
military tensions (1986, 1990, 1995, June 1999
and above all January 2002) until December 2001
attack on Indian Parliament. Normalisation
objective, however, continues to elude.
Which kind of relationship is aimed in this new
dialogue? No one is sure. It seemed initially
that the new Indian government wanted to
accomplish what it had not succeeded in 30 years
of desultory negotiations under the Shimla
agreement. Pakistan appeared to disfavour
proceedings under the Feb 1999 Lahore process.
Natwar Singh solved the problem by calling the
Shimla and Lahore documents as a continuity India
is seeking good relations with free trade,
economic cooperation, cultural exchanges and
regional integration. Pakistan appears to remain
uncertain about its preferred nature of
relationship with India.
A few general remarks are in order. The kind of
policies that prevented any normal good
neighbourly relationship with India for 32 years
after 1971 were predicated on some assumptions:
Pakistan needed time to militarily prepare itself
to face India again. To reinforce the rejuvenated
Army, Bhutto had started a crash programme for
acquiring nuclear capability. India had already
embarked on a big military build up programme in
the 1960s - after the 1962 war with China.
Pakistan regarded that as a challenge to its own
security and expanded and re-equipped Pak Army.
Thirteen years after the 1971 defeat Pakistan
could boast of a nuclear capability and in 1986
it could warn India of a nuclear riposte. That
determination to keep up with India militarily
gelled with a policy of minimal contacts with
India, the closest neighbour.
Well, post 1971 decisions have to be reassessed
after Kargil operations. They have not made
Pakistan safe. They have made it more insecure.
The 2002 Crisis has shown that whatever the
generals on both sides may say, it is now madness
to go to war for both India and Pakistan; it
carries totally unacceptable risks. Period. True,
Pakistan is capable of taking out at least half a
dozen Indian towns. In return, India can send
Pakistan to the Stone Age. Who gains what? Thus
no go for both. Nuclear dimensions of the next
war are insistently relevant because one side is
so vulnerable in conventional armaments that it
cannot but have recourse to nuclear weapons at a
fairly early stage. So the bases of pre-2002
stand offish policies have disappeared.
Pakistan's negotiating position is weak. If the
1970s, 80s and 90s assumptions are adhered to,
talks would collapse before long. India cannot
accede to Pakistan's wishes after 56 years of
cold and hot wars, especially when, for the first
time, it showed that the Invincible Shield of
nukes is not enough for Pakistan to win a war in
2002. Possession has again proved to be nine
points of law as far as Kashmir is concerned.
President Musharraf has clearly dropped the
condition that India should agree to a Kashmir
plebiscite by the UN. Indeed, he went further: he
gave India a veto on all solutions of Kashmir
problem that did not suit it. In other words, he
wants a Kashmir solution that India can live
with. Would such a solution promote Pakistan's
interests? Not that there is any agreement in the
country regarding what are now Pakistan's precise
interests in Kashmir. The outside world, too,
seems to have accepted Indian claims on Kashmir.
This may shock many Pakistanis. The earlier
stances were based on the logic of 1947
settlement. But after Pakistan went to war twice
and later vainly stoked the fires of Islamic
insurgency in Kashmir. What were the results?
Change the constitutional status of Kashmir
Valley requires defeating India's armed forces
first. This is a situation that has stared
Pakistan since 1999, when Pakistan was forced to
unilaterally vacate the Kargil heights. Since the
Kashmir issue remains, Pakistan has to find new
objectives and new means. Military action is
wholly inappropriate now. What will be
appropriate is what can Pakistan diplomacy make
India do in and about Kashmir Valley.
All new thinking will need Pakistan befriending
India by going well beyond simple normalisation.
Pakistan needs to normalise for its own economic
and cultural benefit. Since all old policy
assumptions have proved to be unrealisable, it is
about time to think what will work. Indians are
unlikely to woo Pakistan; they would rather let
it stew in its own juice in relative isolation.
It is for Pakistan to chalk out a plan of action
that will primarily benefit Pakistan and should
not harm Kashmiris. India being the closest
neighbour with a thousand and one commonalities -
and problems and a chequered history - Pakistan
can no longer ignore it or live the way it has
done until now.
There are a few commonsense guidelines: If a war
is out of question, cold war policies become
stupid, for they were predicated on going to war
if it becomes inevitable. A new kind of
relationship with India is called for, distinct
from what was obtained between 1972 and 2004.
Kashmir will have to go on a backburner until new
opportunities arise. The new policy orientation
cannot but be the opposite of what sustained
post-Shimla attitudes. In other words, instead of
running a balance of power with India, let there
be a new peaceful and peaceable race to promote
mutual enrichment.
The goal of negotiations with India should be to
create maximum wealth in a bilateral cooperation
that will enrich both. This will need friendship
and a close working relationship. Reversing the
history of 57 years will require hard work. How
to start working for friendship suddenly after
such spectacular examples of mutual hatred in
2002? But if there is will there is a way. Given
the twin conclusions that normalisation concept
is too imprecise and it by itself does not
connote anything noble, Pakistan has to go beyond
it to seek maximum friendship. Now, friendship
itself can have many stages. Which kind of
friendship does it need and why?
Short answers are: the nature of friendship, when
one is moving away from the arms race and cold
war, has to be one that promotes economic
cooperation and cultural exchanges. The aim
should be to effect radical reconciliation
between the peoples of India and Pakistan,
extendable to all South Asians - the way the
French and Germans have done. If India and
Pakistan can borrow detailed proposals on CBMs
from the US, why can't they borrow from the
French-German Treaty of 1963 that succeeded so
brilliantly? South Asia needs such an approach.
Let Pakistan graduate from futile militarism to
peaceable economic and cultural enrichment.
NEW DELHI, JULY 24. A day after the External Affairs Minister, Natwar
Singh, returned from his five-day Pakistan visit for the SAARC Foreign
Ministers meeting, India expressed disappointment at the tone and
substance of some of the comments made in the press release issued by the
Pakistan Foreign Office on Friday after Mr. Singh's meeting with the
Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf. "The press release does not reflect
the comprehensiveness of the discussions," the official spokesman said
today. Ministry sources said the reference in the press release to a
"reasonable" time-frame for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue
sounded strange coming from those who avoided any discussions on the
subject between 1972 and 1989, made discussions impossible from 1990
onwards because of the sponsorship of terrorism, and made the prospects of
a final settlement difficult by ignoring the realities and by adopting
non-pragmatic positions.
New Delhi, July 24: India and Pakistan took the edge off the peace process
on Saturday with Kashmir and terrorism emerging once again as areas of
irreconcilable differences. Indian sources rejected the time-frame concept
for a solution of Kashmir, insisted on a complete end to terrorism as a
basis for talks and ridiculed Pakistan's oft-expressed con cern for the
Kashmiris as surprising and strange. The 90-minute meeting between
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and minister of external affairs
Natwar Singh in Islamabad clearly failed to break new ground and merely
confirmed existing suspicions that have been subsequently aired by both
governments over the past two days. The rigid language used by the sources
here in itself a clear indication peace for India is a reality only on
its own terms, where a time frame cannot be predetermined where Kashmir
is not up for discussion with all the other issues, and where more
assurances are required on terrorism and cross border infiltration.
It is talking time again. Pakistani and Indian
government officials met in New Delhi on June 19
and 20 to talk. The Foreign Ministers met briefly
in China on 21 June, the Foreign Secretaries will
apparently talk sometime in late July, and there
are suggestions of a possible summit meeting
between President Pervez Musharraf and India's
new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. But while
talking is better than fighting, it is important
to remember the fact that India and Pakistan have
met and talked many times since the 1999 Lahore
summit, where the Prime Ministers claimed that
they shared "a vision of peace and stability
between their countries, and of progress and
prosperity for their peoples". What followed
Lahore however was not peace or stability but
instead the Kargil war, the armed stand-off in
2002 after jihadis attacked India's parliament,
spiraling military spending, missile test after
missile test, and the consolidation of nuclear
strategies.
Leaders on both sides seem to recognise that
their nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles cast
a dark, potentially fatal shadow over the future
of both countries. India's new Foreign Minister
Natwar Singh recently declared "To me personally,
the most important thing on our agenda should be
the nuclear dimension". General Musharraf claims
that "we have been saying let's make South Asia a
nuclear-free zone". He also suggested that "If
mutually there is an agreement of reduction of
nuclear assets, Pakistan would be willing". These
are hopeful indications. But we have heard such
words before.
After the recent meeting on reducing the risks of
nuclear weapons in the region, the joint
statement claimed the two states shared a
"positive framework, aimed at taking the process
forward, and making them result oriented". Sad to
say, the aim seemed more to portray themselves as
'responsible' nuclear weapons states and the
agreements that were actually announced amounted
to little more than a step sideways.
The only new measure is another hotline, this
time linking the two foreign secretaries, through
their respective foreign offices, "to prevent
misunderstandings and reduce risks relevant to
nuclear issues". There are several hotlines
already. J.N. Dixit, a former Foreign Secretary
of India and newly appointed as National Security
Adviser reports in his book "India-Pakistan in
War and Peace" that in November 1990 Prime
Ministers Chandra Sekhar and Nawaz Sharif met
during a SAARC Summit in Male, and "decided to
establish a direct hotline. They also took a
decision to activate the hotline between the
offices of the foreign secretaries and the
directors of military operations". In Mr. Dixit's
judgement "hotline conversations between the
director-generals of military operations remain
routine and the prime ministerial hotline has
seldom been used, as has the hotline between the
two foreign secretaries". The war, near war and
turmoil in the past five years certainly suggest
that these lines of communication are not very
satisfactory in preventing or defusing crises.
India and Pakistan need to go beyond just finding
ways and means to talk to each other about the
risks of nuclear weapons. They need to agree on
measures that will concretely reduce the nuclear
danger. A little common sense shows there are
some obvious things that they could do, if they
want to do more than just build 'confidence'
while their nuclear arsenals keep growing.
Both India and Pakistan have emphasised
repeatedly that they seek only a "minimum"
nuclear arsenal. General Musharraf's remarks
about Pakistan's willingness to consider a
"reduction of nuclear assets" makes clear that
this threshold has already been crossed. This
should be no surprise. Pakistan and India have
been making the fissile material (the nuclear
explosive) for their weapons as fast as they can
for decades. They already have enough for several
dozen nuclear weapons. The table below shows the
casualties that would be inflicted if they each
used only five of these weapons against the
others cities (assuming each weapon is about the
same size as those tested in May 1998) A total of
2.9 million deaths is predicted for these cities
in India and Pakistan with an additional 1.5
million severely injured. The experience of
death and destruction on this scale would be
beyond imagination for either country.
The excitement, always somewhat ersatz, over the
Union budget proposals is nearly abated. The
budget in any case is a bit of a hoax, an
exercise in public relations on the part of the
government. It draws attention to what the regime
considers it worthwhile to draw attention to. The
new government's supposed anxiety to derive
appropriate lessons from the poll outcome and
concentrate on fostering rural welfare was made
the keynote of this year's exercise. The media
have responded in the Pavlovian mode: they have
gone overboard to record the breathtaking rural
transformation which the budget is seemingly
determined to usher in.
In this raucous milieu, one runs the risk of
being considered a pariah by mentioning, with or
without temerity, such facts as that while the
allocation for the ministry of agriculture was Rs
3,170 crore according to the revised estimates
for 2003-04, the allocation suggested for 2004-05
is Rs 4,192 crore, an increase of merely around
Rs 1,000 crore; or that the position is much
worse with regard to the ministry of rural
development, in whose case the revised allocation
of Rs 19,200 crore in 2003-04 has actually been
slashed to Rs 1,600 crore in the current year's
budget. Equally revealing is the comparison
between the Central plan outlays in the two
years: these were Rs 12,238 crore and Rs 3,671
crore respectively for rural development and
agriculture in 2003-04; and are down to Rs 9,239
crore and Rs 2,643 crore respectively in 2004-05.
Given the surcharged atmosphere, ground reality
has to stand aside and offer homage to vacuous
hoopla. The media have little time to comment on
the nearly 30 per cent jump in the allocation for
the ministry of defence, from around Rs 60,000
crore last year to roughly Rs 77,000 crore this
year, and the defence minister has already hinted
at a further upward revision in the latter figure.
Unalterable India, unalterable the reign of the
establishment in New Delhi. The colour of the
government changes; the defence lobby though goes
on forever. And rest assured, in the
parliamentary debates, members of parliament will
make themselves hoarse praising or condemning
this or that teeny-weeny bit of allocation for
the rural sector and split hairs over the merit
or demerit of a couple of crore of rupees
marginally allocated for, say, mid-day meal
schemes. The defence budget, however, for all one
knows, will be guillotined and passed within a
space of ten seconds. Even if it is not
guillotined, an aura of hush-hush will descend on
Sansad Bhavan: the issue of defence is
sacrosanct, the very security of the nation is
involved, therefore tread softly, do not raise
your voice, and, please, do not stray into
posting patently unpatriotic questions about this
or that item of expenditure.
Any query which challenges, even remotely and
indirectly, a proposed outlay with a high-import
content will be dubbed a sensitive matter;
members will be privately advised to be demure.
They can only watch from the sidelines even as
actual allocations for the two ministries that
are crucially relevant for amelioration of rural
poverty, those of the ministry of agriculture and
the ministry of rural development, get reduced in
the net over the year, while the allocation for
the ministry of defence is raised heftily. The
allocation for defence is almost four times the
amount set aside for the two agriculture-related
ministries.
The story does not quite end here. Budgetary
funds being placed with the ministry of home
affairs include large chunks of money for
purposes of security operations. This is really a
second front for defence outlay. There are a
number of other secret niches which conceal funds
allotted for purchase of weaponry and espionage
operations. On a conservative estimate, the total
funds currently doled out under several heads to
the military and security establishments will
easily amount to a neat Rs100,000, or even more,
each year.
It is in this context that one is impelled to
refer to the daunting, unfinished agenda of
Kashmir. The valley remains unquiet despite the
temporary détente worked out with Pakistan and
despite the fact, tacitly acknowledged by New
Delhi too, that across-the-border infiltration of
men and arms has declined considerably in recent
months. In fact, such infiltration can be said to
be almost a matter of the past, at least for the
present. That has not however led to any
cessation of violence in Jammu and Kashmir.
Unhappy incidents continue. Fiercely committed
militants, whom many across the globe will regard
as devout local patriots, persist with their
activities; several amongst them embracing what,
whether we like it or not, most Kashmiris hail as
a martyr's death.
The recent Lok Sabha polls have been a sobre
eye-opener. A change in the complexion of the
government at the state level 18 months ago has
not restored the faith of a majority of Kashmiris
in the Indian polity; votes cast in the
parliamentary elections this year have been
barely 35 per cent of the total electorate as
against 43 per cent in the last assembly
election. In constituencies such as Srinagar and
Anantnag, the proportion of votes polled has
actually been as low as 20 per cent or less.
Clearly, whatever the nature of reverie indulged
in in New Delhi, the problem of Kashmir will not
go away. Should an honourable peace in the valley
be the key objective, army occupation,
indefinitely extended, will be of no avail;
additional appropriations for augmenting defence
and security measures are also unlikely to strike
any extra terror in the hearts of the insurgents.
To ruminate over how the great divide has come
about is neither here nor there. A meaningful
first step for bringing peace to the valley is
recognition, with some humility, of the reality
of Kashmir being an alienated persona. The need,
no question, is to start on a clean slate. The
United Progressive Alliance government, the prime
minister has gone on record, will be open to
having free-ranging discussions with Pakistan on
all issues, including Kashmir. Is there then any
need, within the domestic contour, to stand on
ceremony and keep postponing direct parleys with
the so-called extremists in the Hurriyat
Conference?
The Centre can here easily take a leaf from out
of the Andhra Pradesh government's gesture
towards the People's War: pre-conditions have
been shed on either side, accompanied by the
declaration of a ceasefire. Kashmir is of as much
grave import to New Delhi as the Naxalite
rebellion is to Hyderabad. And if Hyderabad can
afford to take certain risks, why cannot New
Delhi? If emotions are past, and inhibitions a
roadblock, they deserve to be at least suspended
for the present.
True, there is a further problem beyond
run-of-the-mill sentiments and prejudices. The
jacked-up budgetary allocation for purposes of
defence and security packs into itself a grisly
datum. Some determined groups are around who
would like to log on to Kashmir for eternity; the
persistence of the imbroglio in the valley
amounts to prolonging the discord with Pakistan
and thereby encouraging rising defence
expenditure. Foreign merchants and their local
agents will not willingly give up Kashmir, one of
their major lifelines over the past five decades.
It is not for nothing that scandals such as those
of Bofors and coffins keep recurring.
May not an appeal be made, and with some ardour,
to the country's left? Kashmir is an issue which
should occupy the top of their agenda. Between
the end of World War II and the Gorbachev-Yeltsin
joint act of skulduggery that drew the curtains
on the Soviet system, the left was in the
forefront of the battle for global peace. Kashmir
provides them an opportunity to re-explore the
source of the idealism. To speak up on behalf of
the valley and its people is no betrayal of
patriotism either: a lowering of defence spending
and the transfer of resources thus saved to
worthwhile directions such as health, education
and rural development could be a significant blow
for accelerated economic development cherished by
every patriotic Indian.
ISLAMABAD, JULY 21. The Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan will meet
in New Delhi on September 5 and 6, at the end of the first round of the
talks on the eight subjects identified under the resumed composite
dialogue process. The External Affairs Minister, K. Natwar Singh, and his
Pakistan counterpart, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, agreed this morning on the
new dates for their bilateral meeting during an interaction over breakfast
on the sidelines of the SAARC Council of Ministers conference here.
Originally, they were scheduled to meet on August 25 but it has been
postponed due to scheduling problems. The meeting in Delhi will be
preceded by a one-day conference between the Foreign Sec retaries on
September 4. By then they would have the benefit of the outcome of
official-level meetings on all subjects of the composite dialogue. Mr.
Kasuri emphasised that the talks were "free, frank, friendly and honest."
"Frank talks could also mean unfriendly," he said at a joint media
appearance with Mr. Singh. According to official sources, there was a
clear understanding on both sides that the dialogue would have to be a
"sustained process" and that there could be no quick fix to the
complicated problems between India and Pakistan that have evaded answers
for over five decades. Implied in it was the suggestion that it would be
unrealistic to set any deadlines on the concerns of each other.
ISLAMABAD, JULY 20. Much to the consternation of other member-states in
the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC),
India-Pakistan disputes indirectly took the centre stage of the two-day
Ministerial council meeting of the forum, which began here today. The
Pakistan President, Per-vez Musharraf, advocated the need for a mechanism
within the SAARC forum for the resolution of political conflicts among the
member-states even as the External Affairs Minister, K. Natwar Singh,
talked about the dangers posed by the scourge of terrorism in the region.
Gen. Musharraf expanded on his thesis of linkage between economic
integration and peace and security when the SAARC Foreign Ministers made a
collective call on him at the Presidential palace. Earlier, in his brief
inaugural address to the SAARC Ministerial Conference, the Pakistan Prime
Minister, Chaudhary Shujaat Hussaln, referred to Pakistan's efforts for
the resolution of all differences with India, including Jammu and Kashmir.
In his opening remarks at the SAARC Council of Ministers session, Mr.
Natwar Singh acknowledged that SAARC was perhaps the "weakest" among
various regional cooperation organisations, but refused to join issue with
Pakistan on the need to expand the SAARC charter to include bilateral
issues related to peace and security.
The schedule of the long-stalled Composite
Dialogue between India and Pakistan has been
agreed. Beginning July 28; it will reach the
Foreign Ministers level meeting on August 25
next. This preliminary process is to start the
substantive political-level negotiations from
August 25 onward where actual give and take can
take place. Definitive results will start coming
later.
It is notable that officials' talks are being
held amidst almost a euphoria. There is, for no
solid reason, hope and expectation in the air,
more in Pakistan but also some in India. Not too
long ago, the relations between the two countries
were at an all time low and a war seemed imminent
during the long military confrontation of 2002.
There was intense propaganda of hate in both
countries. And yet the red hot tensions quickly
gave way, after India's PM was mysteriously
persuaded to switch from a jingoistic stance to
extending a hand of friendship to Pakistan last
year. Clouds of war soon began to lift and
people's latent desire for peace and friendship
in both countries asserted itself. What helped
was, of course, the US 'facilitation', Track II
diplomacy by establishment's trusted emissaries
and work of innumerable Track III groups: like
Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and
Democracy, many similar bodies and Imtiaz Alam's
SAFMA. People's true desires were articulated by
this third track of non-officials.
The common people on both sides are aware of what
they have lost in the huge extravagance of vital
resources in futile confrontations and mutual
boycott by Pakistan and India. This is the true
bedrock on which a real people-to-people
reconciliation from grassroots up can be built if
properly led - such as has happened between the
German and French peoples in post-war period. On
this foundation imposing edifices of not only
Pak-India friendship, free trade, economic
cooperation and politically harmonious policies
of peace can be raised but also real regional
integration can be anchored in.
Let no one forget that Pakistan-India
relationship can shift from love to hatred
quickly. This is what enabled BJP government to
stir up much hatred, at least among the upper and
middle classes, against Pakistan during and after
Kargil affair. Pakistan could also reply in kind.
Mark the swiftness with which dominant sentiment
changed and all classes, at least in Pakistan,
quickly awakened to the need for peace and
friendship. After all South Asia used to be
Historical India, where Hindus and Muslims lived
cheek by jowl in harmony for centuries. Thanks to
the rise of acrimonious communalisms under the
British, it is now necessary to remind that
Hindus and Muslims of India jointly created the
magnificent Indo-Persian civilisation; its
sources, bases and imperatives are still alive -
hence a basis of close friendship exists.
Let no one forget that huge stumbling blocks to a
friendship policy have been erected since 1940s.
They flourish on the latent negative legacies
that are also there. These are many.
(a) There is
the complex and difficult problem of Kashmir; two
rival nation states of unequal potential are
vying for the same real estate on which so many
and so diverse people live. That it is a
complicated problem is well known. It is bound to
be a long haul and no quick fix seems possible or
will be realistic. Both sides need patience and
goodwill.
(b) Two competing nationalisms have arisen and
are based on the growth of communalisms during
the Raj. These contradict and violate the legacy
of over seven or eight centuries of intimate
Hindu-Muslim coexistence: the Indo-Pakistan
Civilisation. The political dynamic of these
nationalisms requires contempt and hatred for the
"other". This fomented feeling is generated and
strengthened by packaging it in patriotism.
Allied to it is - and which has become the
outstanding feature of these rival nationalisms -
militarism and jingoism. Moreover, all large
militaries create powerful vested interests. In
America, they call it Industrial Military
Complex. Both Pakistan and India have their own
bureaucratic versions of this Complex. Its
leading lights can only enrich themselves and
acquire importance, when relations between the
rival powers are worsening. They are also able to
spend on propaganda handsomely and many media
persons are always obliging.
(c) Another result of these nationalisms is two
fully-fledged and rival Nuclear Deterrents in the
subcontinent. One thing that nuclear weapons do,
with absolute certainty, is to destroy basic
trust among nuclear rivals. The unfortunate fact
is that so long as Pakistani nukes - the Bomb,
delivery vehicles and accessories - are poised,
who in India will sleep easy that they will never
be used (i) as a result of deliberate intent,
(ii) accident, (iii) miscalculation or (iv) a
non-state revolutionary group getting access to
the Red Button. The same applies to Indian nukes:
none in Pakistan can ignore the possibility of
the use of Indian nukes in many of the same
eventualities.
This mistrust is fundamental; it is an
inescapable product of two rival nuclear
deterrents. In the presence of these WMDs,
long-term prospects of Pakistan-India friendship
will retain a roller-coaster quality. These can
prevent the bright possibilities from being
realised. There is no solution to the problem
they pose. South Asia can never settle down to
peaceful pursuits, so long as WMDs are not
consigned to the dustbin of history through more
enlightened and more focused agreements of far
reaching mutual dependence.
True, the two Foreign Secretaries are discussing
the nuclear subject. The official publicists on
both sides have given a great build up to the
proposals that the Foreign Secretaries have
exchanged in their last meeting in New Delhi.
India has proposed several nuclear Confidence
Building Measures. Pakistan has also proposed an
elaborate set of the same genre, called Nuclear
Restraint Regime. One suspects the origin of both
sets of CBMs is common. In fact, it may be a
notional and 'in-principle' agreement between
Pakistan and India that the US has helped shape
through the Track II diplomacy - that itself came
into being as a result of US initiative. The
agreement is that both should remain nuclear
powers and seeking recognition as nuclear powers.
The US only desires that India and Pakistan
should strengthen their Command and Control
Systems, so that the possibility of accidents,
unintended, miscalculated or unauthorised launch
should be prevented by timely mutual consultation.
The US diplomacy has evolved voluminous
literature on how two military enemies can arrive
at detente to prevent accidents, unauthorised
launch and how to keep the WMDs safe from
terrorists. They acquired this wisdom from
generation-long negotiations with the Soviets.
They have shared it with both India and Pakistan,
and both seem to have lapped it up because both
love to have the tacit American approval of their
nuclear status. Thus, by seeming to be a selfless
do gooder, the US has the gratitude of both
countries' establishments. Cost of it all is that
the US is now the arbiter of Indo-Pakistan
affairs and the two new nuclear powers are eating
out of American hands. But the biggest negative
point is that the two countries are now more
likely to negotiate CBMs and ignore the real
problems posed by WMDs from a long term viewpoint.
Are CBMs, no matter how perfect, a solution to
the problems posed by NWMDs? One should not be
misunderstood: one is not against CBMs as such;
one supports all real CBMs. But when we have
eliminated the chances of accidents in storage,
transportation, servicing and have a perfect C3
for the WMDs, including preventing their
unauthorised use and present rulers' finger
staying firmly over the final button, what then?
Can such CBMs prevent the election of a party
like Shiv Sena or VHP in India? What if any
elected government in New Delhi, driven by
militant nationalism and manipulated by vested
interests, threatens a nuclear strike on Pakistan
territory? Which CBM will prevent that? The same
applies to Pakistan, where another general or a
Jihadi group can seize power. What if he
threatens to nuke India unless it relents on
Kashmir quickly? Pakistani rulers are known to
have taken many imprudent decisions.
Is it wise for Pakistan and India to preserve
NWMDs and remain on high alert for all times to
come? One will go so far as to say that Pakistan
cannot go on living on edge, constantly worrying
about the balance of power, balance of terror and
the constant effort to upgrade its deterrents.
That involves huge opportunity losses and a
financial burden that will snuff out real
development and can lead to the Soviets'-like
implosion. Such a possibility needs to be
obviated. Pakistanis need higher living standards
and more freedoms. That requires working for a
Nuclear Free South Asia, as a first step. We
should aim at that.
CBMs, while being unexceptionable, are no
solution. The only solution is to do away with
the WMDs altogether. But one encounter with any
informed Indian will show that the constituency
for doing away with the nukes and reverting to a
Non-Nuclear South Asia is tiny. India is likely
to go on becoming ever more powerful, with more
of all kinds of weapons. Pakistan is claimed to
be irrelevant to it. Policy makers in Islamabad,
however, know no better than to go on scrapping
the bottom of the barrel to keep up with the
Indian Joneses. Would that do the job?
Unfortunately, it will neither enable Pakistan to
keep up a given power ratio with India nor will
it ever be able to attend to the problems facing
the common Pakistanis, with all the attendant
political, economic and social risks. The
situation poses a big challenge. More on it later.
KARACHI, July 18: Peace activists have called
upon India and Pakistan to drastically cut down
expenditure on building military might and,
instead, ensure respect for human rights and
provision of basic facilities to their toiling
people.
Participating in a two-day workshop on History of
Peace Movement in South Asia, organized by the
Labour Education Foundation, the activists
demanded launching of Khokhrapar and Muzaffarabad
bus service, and called on the two countries to
work jointly to neutralize the rising religious
extremism.
The title of the workshop had occasioned a lively
and meaningful discussion on the current state
Pakistan-India relation and what should the peace
activists be doing at this stage.
The ongoing talks between the two states,
especially after an agreement on a comprehensive
schedule of negotiations, occupied considerable
attention of the participants.
They called upon media in both the countries to
desist from negative propaganda, and suggested
that visa regime be made easy and India should
reopen its consulate in Karachi.
They appealed to Pakistan and India to cut down
their defence expenditure and reduce their
military strength by 50 per cent. The activists
stressed on amicable and peaceful resolution of
all disputes between the two countries.
They emphasized the need for Pakistan-India free
trade and economic cooperation. Speaking about
peace movements in Pakistan and India, Mr M. B.
Naqvi traced the history of peace initiatives.
Referring to the current status of Pakistan-India
peace initiative, he said the push for peace,
despite the two countries going nuclear, was the
manifestation of the success of peace movements
as well as the aspirations of the people of the
two countries.
Chairman of Labour Party, Pakistan chapter, Nisar
Shah advocate had doubts about the two countries'
sincerity in peace dialogue for securing a
durable peace. The last session of the workshop
was addressed by Fahmida Riaz who called upon
intellectuals and academics of both the countries
to turn their energies against those who talked
of war and exploitation. Secretary of the Labour
Education Foundation, Sindh chapter, and
coordinator Zahra Akbar Khan also spoke at the
workshop.
WHEN Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was Deputy
Chairman of the Planning Commission, he wrote to
then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi to propose
a cut in the defence expenditure. She sternly
rejected the suggestion. He was disappointed
because in a famished economy like India's he saw
no other way to find money for other sectors,
particularly agriculture. It is strange that the
same Manmohan Singh should be increasing the
defence expenditure by Rs 17,000 crore, a hike of
some 27 per cent, and that too within one month
of assuming power. True, the exigencies of the
budget cannot afford delay. But no new government
can have an estimate of its defence needs in a
few days' time. It is obvious that Manmohan
Singh's defence minister simply totalled up the
pending projects to include them in the budget.
This would not have made much difference if the
approach of the Congress had been similar to that
of its predecessor. The BJP is chauvinistic in
thinking. It believes that the more weapons a
country has, the greater is its say in the world
affairs. Its is arrogance of power. The Congress,
on the other hand, has had the tradition to
confine armaments to the needs of defence,
neither profligate nor offensive. The BJP-led
government took only a month after coming to
power to explode the bomb. But the governments
headed by the Congress and the non-BJP parties
did not explode the bomb although they had it in
the basement for years. Their reasoning was that
the explosion would nullify India's advantage in
conventional weapons if and when Pakistan
followed suit. Narasimha Rao changed his mind
even after all was ready at the Pokhran site. The
fallout deterred him.
Indeed, the reading that Pakistan would retaliate
turned out to be correct. Islamabad detonated the
bomb within a week of India's explosion. Then
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told me that he had
to do so because he could not resist the pressure
from his own people. "They would have killed me,"
he said. I am surprised that the Congress party,
which harks back on the values of Mahatma Gandhi,
should have increased the defence expenditure.
L.K. Advani's pride in exploding the nuclear
device is understandable. He belongs to the RSS
which has fascist tendencies. He does not realise
that the BJP is responsible for making India lose
the advantage of superiority in conventional
warfare.
My purpose is not to renew the discussion on the
bomb but to know what we have gained. We gave
Pakistan parity overnight. Does the colossal
expenditure on weapons from Israel, Russia or
America make much sense when Islamabad has made
it clear more than once that its defence was the
bomb.
Some 15 years ago when I interviewed Dr A.Q.
Khan, father of Pakistan's bomb, he minced no
words in making it clear that "if you ever drive
us to the wall as you did during the Bangladesh
war, we would use the bomb." Islamabad's
modernisation of its armed forces is nothing
except the strategy woven around the bomb.
President General Pervez Musharraf has often
argued that the modern war does not require a
large army. While effecting a cut in the Pakistan
forces, he made the same point and mentioned the
change in the conduct of warfare after the bomb.
I cannot visualise the situation where Pakistan
does not use it even when it faces reverse after
reverse. India will also use the bomb if
repulsed, however loud its declaration that it
will not be the first user. Moral postures hold
so long as they are not tested in the battlefield.
With improving relations with Pakistan and China,
the hike on the weaponry makes little sense.
Either we are not serious about normalising
relations with the two countries or we are not
clear about our defence policy. In both cases, we
betray lack of mature thinking. Even otherwise,
the world has arrived at a stage where war means
only destruction. There will be no victory, only
defeat for everyone. Strategists from now onward
will have to keep this in mind while planning
even a limited war. Violence cannot possibly lead
today to a solution of any major problem because
violence has become too terrible and too
decimating. One thing which is clear is that
there cannot be an imposition of ideas on any
large section of people. The experience of Iraq
is before us. America believed that it could
enforce its way of thinking on the Iraqis. See
the consequences: the resistance has come to
represent nationalism striving for freedom from
foreign control.
I am worried over the effect the sharp raise in
defence expenditure might have on the
neighbouring countries. Pakistan has reacted
adversely. Its people are also poor like ours who
need food and employment, not guns and warships.
Were Islamabad and Dhaka to tear a leaf out of
our book, they too would lessen expenditure on
social welfare and the poverty alleviating
programmes and go for the armament. For a country
like India every penny counts. A raise of Rs.
17,000 crore is too big an amount to be ignored.
I do not want to translate the allocation into
schools, hospitals or houses. But making a fetish
of defence does not help. People can always be
frightened into spending much more on "security."
Is the spending-spree on defence goodies
necessary when we are in the midst of fighting a
grim battle against poverty? The military is such
a holy cow that nobody wants to touch it. But
every purchase has to be justified. There is no
reason why we should look for more weapons, not
for avenues of employment. The Left's silence
intrigues me. It does not criticise the 27 per
cent increase in the defence, taking away quite a
bit of resources. But it picks on small
expenditures here and there to talk about equity.
It should have at least demanded some independent
agency to find out whether the money for the
armed forces was rightly spent. The Tehelka
disclosures have shaken people's faith in the
purchases made by the military. There has never
been a parliamentary committee appointed to look
into the spending by the military. Why not
appoint one now? The Auditor General's scrutiny
is too superficial. [...]
It is talking time again. Hardly a day goes by
without a report of Pakistani and Indian
officials, foreign secretaries or foreign
ministers meeting and talking. This a welcome
respite from the past several years of tension
interrupted by crises and threats of war. While
talking is better than fighting, it is important
to remember that India and Pakistan have met and
talked many times since the 1999 Lahore summit,
where the prime ministers claimed that they
shared "a vision of peace and stability between
their countries, and of progress and prosperity
for their peoples".
However, stripped of the rhetorical commitments
to 'peace and stability', the Lahore agreements
were little more than limited transparency
measures. The goal then was to assure the
international community that having tested their
nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan would behave
as 'responsible' nuclear weapons states. But what
followed Lahore was not peace or stability but
the Kargil war, the armed stand-off in 2002 after
'jihadis' attacked India's parliament, spiralling
military spending, missile test after missile
test, and the consolidation of nuclear strategies.
If the current round of nuclear talks is to offer
anything better than leaders and the public in
India and Pakistan will have to get serious about
changing their ways of thinking about nuclear
weapons, and recognise the need for concrete
measures that help slow the momentum towards ever
larger and more destructive nuclear arsenals.
This is necessary to set the stage for any kind
of nuclear disarmament: unilateral, bilateral,
regional or global. An inevitable part of this
process will be to break the monopoly of the
nuclear weapons community, the scientists,
strategic thinkers and pundits, military forces,
and bureaucrats who shape nuclear policy. They
have brought us the bomb and now seek to keep it,
because it keeps them.
Challenging Nuclear Assumptions
Leaders in Pakistan and India are of two minds
when it comes to their nuclear arsenals. On the
one hand, they recognise that these weapons cast
a dark, potentially fatal shadow over the future
of both countries. India's new foreign minister
Natwar Singh recently declared "To me personally,
the most important thing on our agenda should be
the nuclear dimension".3 General Musharraf
claimed that "we have been saying let's make
south Asia a nuclear-free zone" and added that
"If mutually there is an agreement of reduction
of nuclear assets, Pakistan would be willing".
These are hopeful indications.
At the same time, officials and leaders on both
sides seem bewitched by the power of the bomb.
They each believe that the threat of massive
destruction represented by their nuclear weapons
is a form of protection, and so a force for good.
Lost in this nuclear logic, they are forced to
concede that the possession of nuclear weapons by
the other state serves the same purpose. This is
reflected in the joint statement released after
the expert-level talks on nuclear confidence
building measures held in New Delhi on
June 19-20, which claimed: "Recognising that the
nuclear capabilities of each other, which are
based on their national security imperatives,
constitute a factor for stability." This
formulation was repeated in the statement after
the meeting of the two foreign secretaries in New
Delhi on June 27-28.
Full text: www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=07&filename=7426&filetype=html.
NEW DELHI, JULY 13. India and Pakistan have agreed on a schedule of
meetings for the "six issues" that remain to complete one round of
composite dialogue under the agreed "two plus six" framework. The Foreign
Secretaries of India and Pakistan have already discussed peace and
security and Jammu and Kashmir as the "two" issues last month in the
capital. Announcing this today, an External Affairs Ministry spokesman
said that talks on the Wullar barrage/Tulbul navigation project (at the
level of Water and Power Secretaries) would be held on July 28-29 in
Islamabad. A discussion on promotion of friendly exchanges in various
fields will take place on August 3-4 between the Culture Secretaries
while Defence Secretary-level talks on Siachen will be held on August 5-6
in New Del hi. Again, New Delhi will be the venue for talks between
Additional Secretaries (Defence) / Surveyors-General on delineating the
boundary of the Sir Creek on August 6-7. Home Secretaries will take up
the issue of terrorism and drug trafficking in Islamabad on August 10-11
while Commerce Secretaries discuss economic and commercial cooperation in
the Pakistani capital on August 11-12. According to the joint press
statement issued on February 18 by the two countries, the External Affairs
Ministers will meet in August 2004 to review the overall progress in the
composite dialogue. This will be preceded by a one-day meeting of the
Foreign Secretaries.
For some odd reason nobody seems to recognise
what is happening in Pakistan's own wild west:
the tribal belt of Pushtoons, FATA, especially
South Waziristan, along the long
Pakistan-Afghanistan border, known as Durand
Line. Actually a war of sorts is going on. The
potential of which is terrible to contemplate for
Pakistan.
The news being published in Pakistan is very
clearly 'doctored' by Pakistan's various
agencies. The two opposing sides can be clearly
seen: on the one side is Pakistan Army along with
its para-militaries and the side opposing them is
rather shadowy. It is generally being referred to
as Islamic militants who were proved to have
considerable military prowess in South
Waziristan. One phase of the warfare lasted a
fortnight during March last. In those 14 days the
Pakistan army actually suffered more fatal
casualties than did the militants. The final
count was 60:40.
But more important is the potential of this on
again and off again war. There are intervals in
it of negotiations and peaceful efforts to defuse
the situation by the use of traditional
combination of gold and guns, which the Americans
put simply as a carrot and stick policy.
So far nothing has worked for Islamabad. All its
peace efforts fizzled out and have resulted in
mutual recrimination. Negotiations begin but go
nowhere. Issues however are now clear-cut.
Prodded strongly by the Americans, Islamabad
wants the tribal elders, Maliks and other
influential leaders to force the militants into
making the foreign Jihadis, said to be of 1980s
vintage, to surrender. The tribals hum and haw.
The talks go in circles. But the inflexible
government terms are not met.
Islamabad is insistent that all foreigners -
Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks and some even Ughairs -
should surrender themselves, that Pushtoon
militants should stop armed resistance and
foreigners register themselves with the nominated
authority. For its part, Islamabad has promised
amnesty to all those who register themselves and
promise not to use violence for any purpose. They
would then be allowed to go on living in the area
( in their own homes). These talks, as noted,
have not succeeded despite several bouts of
negotiations and the expenditure of large sums of
money.
Most disturbed part
The most disturbed part is certainly NWFP's
tribal areas, though its impact on the so called
settled districts that is ruled by the six
religious parties' alliance MMA (Muttaheda Majlis
Amal) is predictable. Balochistan, another
province bordering on Afghanistan, is also
wracked by frequent eruption of violence of two
separate kinds: one set of violent incidents is
attributed to Balochistan's nationalist circles
that do not want the centre to start its own
large projects which will bring with it droves of
outsiders and these 'foreigners' may soon
outnumber the Baloch people.
The second set of violent incidents is more
complex, though its origin in Islamic militancy
is in no doubt. It takes different forms. Mostly
it takes the form of sectarian violence against
the Shias. But often it is pro-Taliban and is
targeted against the government's or military's
symbols. Punjab is politically the most docile
and quiet province, though crime rate in its big
cities is rapidly rising.
The Sindh province can be considered under three
heads: general lawlessness and bad governance
marks every part of the province, including the
larger cities of Karachi and Hyderabad. Secondly
the kind of sway that robbers have in the
countryside is perhaps unique to Sindh. The main
national arteries are often closed and public
transport is looted for hours on end - and
nothing really happens. The robbers roam the
countryside more or less with impunity because
their gangs are supported by powerful political
personalities.
In terms of crime, Karachi has a special place of
its own: it is a city of huge proportions that
requires efficient local governance to function.
It is this element that is missing. The crime
syndicates in the city have more or less created
linkages with different mafias: the drug lords,
the builders, the carjackers and kidnappers for
ransom. Thirty to 40 car hijacking and thefts are
often the daily average, though there are always
ups and downs in such statistics. In the city
that is frequently said to house 14 to 15 million
people, nobody knows the number of robberies
being committed everyday. Nobody reports a
dacoity to the police, except when a car jacking
is involved. Half the people do not report to the
police, out of the fear of further extortion.
But most important of all: Karachi needs to be
considered separately because Islamic militancy
is actually growing in this otherwise
traditionally cosmopolitan city. At one time, the
city was represented in the Parliament by
religious parties, who were later displaced by
ethnic Mohajir party, Muttaheda Qaumi Movement -
a part of the government now. Three parties lay
claim to be the dominant force in Karachi:
Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party,
Jamaat-e-Islami and MQM.
No hope left
Conditions in which the common people live in the
city leave them no hope and patience. Only the
Mullahs utilise their mosques as regular
platforms every Friday, preaching a millenarian
solution of all problems: Once an Islamic state
is established, all sorrows of the people would
disappear; there would be no crime; and no child
will go hungry. But then the faithful have to
unite and fight the forces of evil, now led by
the US. Such is the credo now being pedalled by
Mullahs in the length and breath of the country.
But Karachi provides an especially receptive
audience, thanks to the city's shortages of all
social amenities. It is not yet regarded as a
settled fact that al-Qaeda is coordinating the
violent attacks on government as well as on the
minorities in all places. But the growing
influence of militant Islamic preachers is
certainly a ubiquitous fact, the government
claims everyday of fighting al-Qaeda and
terrorists. Actually it is unable to stop any of
it and is at sea about how to counter these ideas.
Inter Press Service, July 5, 2004
NEW DELHI - Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan have returned in earnest to the negotiation table after a break that witnessed a parliamentary election and path-breaking political changes in India.
On May 28, they wrapped up the first round of talks to be held in six years between their foreign secretaries. They said these were "held in a cordial and constructive atmosphere, and with the objective of taking the process (of dialogue) forward."
Most importantly, for the first time ever, India and Pakistan have begun to discuss Kashmir, the thorny dispute which lies at the core of their creation as separate nations 57 years ago, and which has repeatedly driven them to war or to engineering or supporting covert operations against each other.
This raises the hope that the half-century-long relentless hot-cold war between them could at last end, and South Asia – where the danger of a nuclear attack is higher than anywhere else in the world – might return to normality.
The talks follow a gradual thawing of India-Pakistan relations over the past year, along with greater people-to-people exchanges.
There have been no fewer than 100 cross-border visits by civil society groups and political delegations over the past six months. The pro-peace climate in both societies was an important factor in a landmark agreement reached on Jan. 6 between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to start a dialogue on all issues, including Kashmir.
The resumption of the dialogue within a month of the swearing- in of the Congress-led Manmohan Singh government should dispel fears that Singh would not be as keen on the peace process as was former prime minister Vajpayee, who initiated it in April last year by offering "the hand of friendship" to Pakistan.
New Delhi and Islamabad are approaching the peace process cautiously and gradually, in measured steps.
Earlier this week, they explored a number of areas, including peace and security, nuclear and conventional military confidence-building measures (CBMs), regular communication between many tiers of military officers, full restoration of the staff strength of their embassies, speedy release of civilian detainees and better communication links and people-to-people contacts.
But they reached concrete agreement only on a few issues.
The most important is the restoration of the original strength of their respective diplomatic missions to their level before December 2001 when militants who, New Delhi believes, were working at Islamabad's behest attacked India's parliament.
They also agreed to re-open consulates in Mumbai and Karachi which have remained closed for a decade following deterioration in mutual relations.
This will greatly facilitate issuance of visas between the two neighbors.
Millions of people have families and relatives who were separated by the 1947 Partition.
Currently, all Pakistanis wanting to visit India must approach the Indian embassy in Islamabad, which is over 1,000 kilometers away from the southern provinces. Similarly, the New Delhi embassy of Pakistan alone grants visas to Indians. This system excludes large numbers of poor people.
India and Pakistan also agreed on the early release of all their civilian prisoners, especially fishermen who inadvertently stray into each other's territorial waters and are detained for long periods.
This is a long-overdue step to prevent harassment of innocent civilians. The two sides reiterated the agreement of Jun. 20 on nuclear CBMs, including warning each other in advance of missile test-flights.
Yet, they reached no agreement even on relatively modest proposals pertaining to Kashmir, such as launching a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, the capitals of the two parts of Kashmir under Indian and Pakistani control.
There were expectations that they would agree to start such a bus service, first proposed by India last October.
Indian diplomats reportedly made some other proposals too, including another bus link, between Sialkot in the Pakistani Punjab and Suchetgarh in the Jammu region of Indian Kashmir across the settled and undisputed International Border-in contrast to the disputed Line of Control in the Kashmir Valley.
These are CBMs, or steps towards closer communication links between the peoples of the two countries, especially of Kashmir. Negotiating them would not compromise either state's substantive position on Kashmir and on the means of resolving the dispute.
But Pakistan decided to treat these proposals with abundant caution, promising to discuss them in the future along with peace and security, and six other issues (mainly territorial or water-use disputes, but also including terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation, and promotion of friendly exchanges.)
This conforms to their agreement to hold a "composite dialogue" simultaneously in line with a "two-plus-six" formula, which privileges two issues: "Jammu and Kashmir" and "peace and security including CBMs". This is itself a compromise between Pakistan's insistence that Kashmir is the core or "central" issue in bilateral relations, and the Indian position that security and terrorism are equally important.
Talks on the "six issues" would be held between the third week of July and the first half of August. This is a fairly short time-span. But it is not unrealistic to expect some progress, for instance, on the Siachen Glacier dispute, where India and Pakistan fight the world's highest altitude conflict, over boundary demarcation.
Particularly hopeful are signs of growing economic cooperation and trade between the two countries. At the moment, there is more smuggling between them than official trade. Their economies are in some ways mutually complementary.
There is tremendous scope for cooperation in numerous fields: energy (including renewable energy), a range of industries, agriculture, and services, including information technology, banking, tourism and entertainment.
This potential for mutually beneficial cooperation and for a big peace dividend is unlikely to be realized unless there is some real progress towards resolving Kashmir.
Therefore, it is welcome news that India and Pakistan have begun talks on Kashmir and agreed on the goal of finding "a peaceful negotiated final settlement" to it.
It will not be easy to resolve a fraught dispute like Kashmir, which both states link it to the very core of their nationhood.
But they have both signaled their willingness to move away from stated positions.
One conceivable solution which might be acceptable to both is the creation of a "soft" border in Kashmir, with full freedom of movement of people across it. This must be facilitated and guaranteed by both states even as two parts of Jammu and Kashmir get exceptional autonomy within their respective national frameworks.
That is for discussion in the near future. What is of crucial importance today is that India and Pakistan have embarked on the course of negotiations just when the international community strongly favors peace between them. One can only wish the two governments well.
UROOSA, Jammu and Kashmir - From his front porch
in this village at the edge of Indian-held
Kashmir, Muhammad Sharif looks out, as he always
has, on the steep and lovely hills of
Pakistan-held Kashmir.
He sees, like a reflection, the faint outline of
Rehmand, the village opposite, where he presumes
people speak the same language, practice the same
religion, eat the same foods, although, never
having met them, he cannot say for sure.
But these days, Mr. Sharif, a 50-year-old farmer
and father of six, sees something else as well.
Up the hillside on the Indian side of the 1972
cease-fire line - a 460-mile narrow swath of
territory known as the Line of Control, which
divides the two Kashmirs - there snakes a new
manifestation of that division. It is a fence,
meant to keep at bay infiltrators from Pakistan
who are seeking to separate India's portion of
Kashmir from India.
India has been building the fence for about a
year, and it is largely completed. It follows the
construction of a less politically delicate fence
along the India-Pakistan border. It has the
symbolic potential, in some eyes, to make the
cease-fire line more like an international
border, as India desires.
The cease-fire line took its present format the
end of the last of three wars between India and
Pakistan. The conflict dates to the partitioning
of India and Pakistan in 1947 into predominantly
Hindu and Muslim states. At the time, Kashmir's
maharaja, a Hindu, joined the fortunes of his
Muslim-majority state to India. Pakistan invaded
in 1947 and took part of Kashmir and has
contended ever since that all of Kashmir has a
right to self-determination.
After Pakistan failed to take all of Kashmir in
war, it began backing an insurgency in 1989 that
at first relied mostly on indigenous Kashmiri
militants, then on Pakistanis, Afghans and others
crossing the cease-fire line to take up the
fight. Kashmiris from the Indian side crossed the
other way, for training, then returned.
The line runs along beautiful but rugged
territory over three mountain ranges that rise to
17,000 feet with deep gorges in between. Passes
through the peaks and folds of the mountains have
enabled thousands of hardy militants to cross
back and forth across the line. Now, crossing -
in or out - is that much harder.
The fence is similar to the barrier being built
by the Israelis to control the infiltration of
militant Palestinians. But the Indian fence has
received far less international scrutiny than the
Israeli barrier and surprisingly muted opposition
from the Pakistanis. Last November, a cease-fire
was negotiated between the Indian and Pakistani
armies, which regularly shelled each other and
civilians living in between. That cease-fire has
greatly expedited the fence's construction, and
Pakistani officials say that Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, knew that it
would when he agreed to the cease-fire.
In January, Pakistan agreed not to allow its soil
to be used for terrorist attacks against India.
One theory for Pakistan's low-key response is
that the fence will make it easier for the
country to better control militant groups.
Constructed on almost vertical mountainsides -
here at an 80 degree angle - the fence is an
engineering feat. Until the cease-fire, much of
the construction was done at night to avoid the
shelling.
The fence, which breaks only in deference to
unconquerable terrain, stands about 12 feet high
and is about 12 feet wide. Coils of concertina
wire are layered between rows of pickets.
Sharp-edged metal tape and, in places,
electrification make crossing even harder. So do
the soldiers standing guard.
"No obstacle in history, whether the China wall
or the Maginot line in France, can prevent
movement unless there is surveillance," said the
governor of the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir, S. K. Sinha, a former army vice chief of
staff.
The fence is part of a larger effort by India to
buttress its defenses and uses equipment acquired
from Israel, France and the United States,
including motion sensors, thermal imaging devices
and night-vision equipment. It also has allowed
the parceling of the cease-fire zone into a grid
system so that officers can be held accountable
for movement in designated areas.
In places, the fence has created divisions within
a division. Some farmers have been separated from
their grazing lands, and a few houses and hamlets
that have been in Indian-held Kashmir since 1947
are now outside it because the fence could not be
built around them without crossing into Pakistani
territory.
There are gates for cattle and people, with
proper identification, to cross back into India.
Senior Indian military officials say that they
already see what they called a new
"tentativeness" among militants, and that the
fence has allowed the army to foil at least four
crossing attempts. Militants in Pakistan say that
the fence has made crossing the cease-fire line
riskier but assert that they have enough men and
ammunition already inside Kashmir to sustain the
insurgency for years.
Indian officials agree with that assertion,
saying that despite a major decline in
infiltrations by insurgents compared with last
year, there has not been a corresponding drop in
violence. [On Saturday, four people died and 52
were wounded in bomb attacks in two Kashmiri
cities. Indian officials also said they had
killed five Pakistani militants trying to cross
the Line of Control in a new operation to curb
infiltration.]
Some question the fence's long-term effectiveness
in deterring motivated militants. "People who
want to come and are determined to come, they
will come," said Umar Farooq, a political leader
in Indian-help Kashmir who opposes Indian rule.
"They have routes and maps, and they will use
them."
"It's a waste of money,'' he said, adding that it
was better to pursue a political settlement.
With the fence, he said, the Indians are "trying
to sort of legitimize their claim day by day" to
Kashmir.
To come close to the cease-fire line - something
that is possible only with an Indian Army escort
- is to understand the judolike dynamics of the
conflict between these nuclear-armed neighbors.
The hill in the foreground is Indian-held, and
the one in the background is under Pakistani
control. The depression between them is the
cease-fire line.
This is some of the most tenaciously contested
territory in the world, as proved by the
pockmarks made by artillery shells in this
village and the Pakistani bunkers visible on
hilltops. Mr. Sharif and his sons described
school days lost to shelling, farm days lost,
peace of mind lost, until last November's
cease-fire.
Mr. Sharif, who readily concedes that his village
is economically dependent on the Indian Army,
favors the fence. But he also supports a plan to
start a bus service on the road that runs below
the village and between Srinagar, the summer
capital of Indian-held Kashmir, and Muzaffarabad,
the capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir. The bus
service is meant to be a confidence-building
measure that would also allow divided families to
reconnect. But the construction of the fence has
proceeded far more rapidly than the reopening of
the road. No agreement has been reached on the
thorny issue of which travel documents will be
required for crossing. India favors passports,
something the Pakistanis and those in Indian-held
Kashmir who are opposed to Indian rule are
resisting because it would convey the status of a
border.
"If we agree to use a passport then we have
accepted the division of Kashmir," said Maulvi
Abbas Ansari, a separatist leader in Srinagar.
After meetings earlier this week between the
foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan,
officials said the bus service was still on
track, but meetings to resolve outstanding issues
have not been scheduled.
Either way, the road is impassable. Some work is
being done on the portion that leads to
Wheatbridge, the military post just below this
village. But the final two or three miles of the
road to Pakistan's territory are so damaged by
avalanches and shelling that vehicles cannot use
it.
Military officials estimate that repairs will
take six to eight months. The work has not begun.
Instead, the road becomes a dead end at a
barricade that is reinforced by sharp razor wire,
just like the fence that scales the hill above.
Arif Jamal contributed reporting from Pakistan for this article.
Coastal fisherfolk of India and Pakistan are
often arrested for crossing borders. They are
victims of defined and undefined boundaries and
borders in the seas, and increasing conflicts
over renewable resources. These coastal conflicts
need to be understood from several overlapping
but distinct perspectives. Low-intensity
conflicts over environmental concerns are as
serious as conventional war and simultaneously
question cartographic and border
anxieties of these countries.
Full text: www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=07&filename=7383&filetype=html.
Early warning systems in South Asia have no
significant utility. Rather, they increase the
danger of inadvertent nuclear war.
AS A concrete step that would reduce nuclear
dangers in South Asia, we have suggested that
both India and Pakistan agree not to install
nuclear early warning systems (The Hindu, June 4,
2004). This may seem counter-intuitive in that
such systems are supposed to give advance notice
of a nuclear attack; it is often argued that this
warning time is vital for responsible
decision-making. For example, in his letter to
the editor (The Hindu, June 21), S.
Lakshminarayanan worries that "Without an
effective early warning system, we will be taken
unawares."
The notion of early warning, like the deeply
flawed notion of deterrence, is a carryover from
the nuclear confrontation between the United
States and the Soviet Union. It refers to the use
of radars and satellites for detecting a nuclear
missile attack under way. Detecting the missiles
is only the first stage of an early warning
system. This has to be followed by an assessment
of its reliability and significance before
interpreting it as a real "warning." Once
confirmed, this `warning' of an imminent nuclear
attack needs to be conveyed to the appropriate
military and political authorities. They will
need time to consider the situation and determine
their response - this will involve monumental
judgments about the start of a possible nuclear
war. Since the target of the incoming missile may
be the military and political leadership itself,
all these must happen in the time between the
detection of the missile and its arrival at the
target. In the case of the U.S. and the Soviet
Union, this entire process was forced to fit into
the 30 minutes their respective missiles would
take to reach their target.
We have studied the utility of similar early
warning systems and decision-making procedures
for South Asia. Our assessment of the
effectiveness of such systems was published in
the journal, Science and Global Security, last
year. We explain here the results of this
analysis that showed how the combination of
missiles travelling many thousands of miles an
hour and the geography of South Asia allows at
best a few minutes of warning. We make clear why
this is no warning at all if there is to be a
serious effort at verification of incoming
signals and the time taken for responsible
decision-making. We also point out that any early
warning system would inevitably generate both
genuine signals of incoming attack as well as
false alarms. In the middle of a crisis, such
false alarms, combined with the short decision
time involved, can raise the prospect of
technological and human error leading to
inadvertent nuclear war.
We first estimated the missile flight time
between different locations in India and
Pakistan; examples could be a missile launch from
Sargodha towards New Delhi or from Agra to
Lahore, a distance of some 600 km. The shortest
flight times come from sending long-range
missiles to nearby targets. We found that it
would take only about five minutes for Pakistan's
Ghauri and India's Agni missiles to reach a
target 600 km distant. To protect Delhi or Lahore
would require an early warning system to work
within these five minutes.
The first step is detecting the incoming missile,
either by radars or special satellites in high
altitude orbits. Since India has acquired Green
Pine, a missile detection radar made in Israel,
we looked at its capabilities. We found that a
missile fired from Pakistan's Sargodha Air Force
base towards New Delhi may be detected by such a
radar, placed for instance at Ambala, around a
minute and a half after launch.
This is just the initial detection. Confirming
the signal is real takes longer. There are many
sources of false and unpredictable signals that
radars pick up. In the 2003 U.S. war on Iraq, the
advanced version of the Patriot system reportedly
generated many false radar signals. The source of
the problem can often be mundane. Radar systems,
for example, have mistaken a flock of birds for a
missile. Radar signals also bounce off regions of
the atmosphere where no apparent reflecting
sources exist. Weather can also affect
performance. To be reasonably confident that the
radar is indeed picking up a missile requires
double-checking the signal. This includes
tracking the object over a period of time to
determine its path. All this will take some time.
In the case of the U.S. and Russia, several
minutes were allotted for verifying radar signals
before they were passed on to military
authorities. Clearly, the five-minute missile
flights relevant to South Asia permit no time for
such a comprehensive verification.
Missile launches can also be detected by special
satellites with infra-red detectors that detect
the intense heat from the exhaust plume produced
by rocket engines. Neither India nor Pakistan has
such a system - nor for that matter does China or
the United Kingdom have it, while France is still
seeking to acquire this capability. Even if they
did, such satellites have problems of their own.
The heat radiation from the missile plume is
absorbed by water vapour and carbon dioxide in
the lower atmosphere, and scattered by rain and
dust. Nor does it penetrate clouds. Thus a
missile can be reliably detected by such a
satellite only when it emerges above the clouds,
which typically takes about a minute. In effect,
a satellite would provide warning no earlier than
a radar in South Asia. This is markedly different
from the case of the U.S. and Russia, where
satellites provided several additional minutes of
warning. It is clear that India or Pakistan would
gain little if they acquire or develop early
warning satellites.
Both the U.S. and Russia have elaborate
procedures for nuclear warning assessment and
decision-making. Technology and operating
procedures are both fallible and can combine at
times to create false alerts of early warning
systems. Typically every year there were about
2,500 false alarms from U.S. early warning
systems, due to causes varying from swarms of
geese to the rising moon. In some cases, the time
allotted for checking the signal proved
insufficient to determine that a warning was in
fact false.
Though both sides built in time for efforts to
verify the data from their early warning systems,
it must be stressed that assessment and
decision-making were forced to fit into the
available time before the missiles descended on
the decision-makers. U.S. procedures left its
President and senior officials only about 10
minutes for deciding whether to launch their own
missiles. Russian procedures left even less:
their national command authority is allotted
three minutes to discuss and authorise permission
to launch Russian missiles. Russia had serious
concerns that these procedures might not work as
planned and as a fallback installed a "dead hand"
that would automatically transmit launch orders.
Given that missiles can travel between India and
Pakistan in less than five minutes, of which a
minute and a half would have been lost before
they are detected, the information from radars
(and satellites, if ever available) would need to
be processed and evaluated, decision-makers
informed, and action taken within three minutes
(and at most nine minutes, in the case of very
distant targets in the region). To put it
differently, a false signal would need to evade
identification only for a few minutes before it
leads to the possible calamity of a nuclear
response based on a mistake.
This is an unprecedented constraint on procedures
for evaluation and confirmation of any electronic
warning (with all its uncertainties) and for
decision-making about the retaliatory use of
nuclear weapons. There would, in fact, be barely
enough time for the warning to be communicated to
decision-makers. There would be no time
whatsoever to consult or deliberate after
receiving this warning. There would be no
decision-making in any meaningful sense of the
term.
The available time would not permit anything more
than praying before "pressing the button." This
could only trigger some pre-planned response. It
could be the launch of one's own nuclear
missiles. In the event of a false signal, this
will start a nuclear war where there was none.
Alternatively, anti-ballistic missiles could be
launched in an attempt to shoot down what are
believed to be incoming missiles. Again, a false
warning could potentially lead to disaster, since
the other side's early warning system might not
easily be able to distinguish this response from
a nuclear attack. Is our faith in the
infallibility of technology and human judgment so
strong that we are willing to risk such a
catastrophe?
It is these considerations that persuade us that
early warning systems in South Asia have no
significant utility. Rather, they increase the
danger of inadvertent nuclear war. India and
Pakistan would do well to agree to abandon the
pursuit of such systems.
(The authors are all physicists - Zia Mian is at
Princeton University, U.S.; R. Rajaraman at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; and M. V.
Ramana at the Centre for Interdisciplinary
Studies in Environment and Development,
Bangalore.)
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