Author: Claude Arpi
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: October 20, 2001
During the last presidential campaign
in the United States, George W Bush, Jr, is reported to have been asked
by an interviewer the names of three prime ministers of Asian nations.
The would-be-president knew none, but he told the journalist that as president
of the United States he did not need to know these things personally; his
advisers would know. Two of these countries were India and Pakistan.
One can presume that after the tragic
events of September 11, the President's advisers would have briefed him
on the names of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf. But one detail
has been left out from his aides' briefing: they have restricted 'terrorism'
to one man [Osama bin Laden] and one nation [Afghanistan].
India has been suffering from terrorism
for too many years to remain quiet. Nobody should forget that the number
of innocent people killed in the state of Jammu & Kashmir in the last
12 years is greater than the number of people who died during the fateful
crash of the twin towers. One cannot minimise this inhuman act, but it
would be criminal to brush aside the deaths of all these innocent Kashmiris,
particularly Kashmiri Pandits.
Of course, President Musharraf will
say that in Kashmir, we only witness the struggle of a people for freedom,
while the strike on America was pure terrorism. On October 8, a communiqué
issued from Islamabad stated: "The Pakistan President today once again
described the situation in Kashmir as a 'freedom struggle' and said it
was not related to what had been happening in Afghanistan."
One can understand that the American
president has inherited from his predecessors the habit of seeing events
in black or white. In all good American Western movies, there is a good
guy and a bad one. In more sophisticated scripts, you can have the good,
the bad and the ugly. During the Gulf War, the good one was the American
and the bad one was Saddam Hussein. In today's scenario, the good one is
the same, but we now have an ugly one named Osama bin Laden.
The problem is that real life is
sometimes more complicated than a Hollywood script. There are countless
subtleties, intricacies, knots within knots, especially in an area, which,
in the 19th century, was the playground for the 'Great Game'. Even if the
US president's advisers seem sometimes unaware that the new Afghan scenario
is not a movie script, the American press is becoming more and more conscious
of the complexity of the situation.
This perhaps explains the delayed
action against the bad guys. We can even assume that within the US administration,
there are discordant voices. The mere fact that it took four weeks for
America and its allies to decide to bomb the strategic Taleban positions
shows that, for the first time, the administration has taken time to try
to analyse the situation and learn from experience.
Nevertheless, it appears that for
some time, they will stick to the script of 'one enemy only' and agree
with Musharraf that on the right, there is 'terrorism' and on the left,
a 'freedom struggle'.
But how long can the US and its
allies close their eyes and act like ostriches? On October 3, the Pakistani
press reported that a massive rally was organised by one of the factions
of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-i-Islam in Quetta the previous day. "There was no
mistake about the 'anti-American sentiment' among those who turned up,"
wrote an Indian daily.
That day, the leaders of the Council
for the Defence of Afghanistan, representing major religious parties in
Pakistan, decided to cancel their proposed trip to Kandahar to meet the
Taleban chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar. One of these leaders was Qazi Hussain
Ahmed, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, who refused to be part of the delegation
of the ulema to persuade the Taleban leadership to hand over Laden.
The fact that more 'moderate' religious
leaders finally went to Kandahar, accompanied by the director general of
the ISI, and eventually pledged their support to the Taleban shows the
extent of resentment, even amongst so-called moderate clerics in Pakistan,
against the US putting a brake on Islamic jihads.
In this context, it is interesting
to look at an interview of the same Jamaat chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who
once was adviser to General Zia-ul-Haq. It was published in February 1999
in a monthly Baluchi magazine Jamhooria Islamia.
The interview begins with the rights
of women. The qazi makes it clear that once in power, the JI will abolish
the voting rights of women and minorities who will be forced to become
Muslims "either by monetary or psychological factors". Wanting to establish
a khalifa with mullahs (plus three or four generals) at its head, the qazi
states: "We are keenly watching the progress of the Taleban and learning
from it. We are impressed with the Taleban on the women issue, minorities
issue and law-and-order issue."
The interviewer comments that Mullah
Omar is a great friend of the qazi. "Omar had visited his house many times.
In the tentative talks, they had decided to form a union of Pakistan and
Afghanistan once the right conditions are set in Pakistan."
The qazi's interview continues:
"Our motto is constant jihad. The idea is to keep Pakistan in a constant
state of jihad all the time." His vision is that "Pakistan will be the
centre of the new Islamic empire that stretches from Burma to Afghanistan
and from Sri Lanka to Tajikistan, including Kashmir. Towards that end,
the Jamaat will use all tactics from terrorism in the kafir-controlled
areas to negotiations in the Muslim-controlled areas."
The discussion/interview goes on
in a similar tone. We will quote one last answer from the qazi. When the
interviewer tells him that "it looks like the entire India policy of Jamaat
revolves around Kashmir", he answers: "Yes that is true. But that is for
a very good reason. See, Kashmir is like a keystone that sits on top of
the arch. It is true that the arch holds the entire weight of the keystone.
But if you remove the keystone, the whole arch falls down. Kashmir is the
keystone for India. Once you remove that, India can no longer be secular
and it will not be a united country, all the bricks will fall down."
Ahmed admits that it was on his
advice that General Zia had started 'Operation Topac'. But he makes it
clear that "Operation Topac's idea is not to get Kashmir for Pakistan as
thought of by Indian analysts. Operation Topac is much more. The ultimate
aim of Operation Topac is to break India into a million pieces so that
it is easy for Pakistan to swallow India one piece at a time."
One general departed and ten years
later another entered. The same obsession of Kashmir being the 'cornerstone'
remained. A new plan was drawn up by the new 'commando' general to conquer
Kashmir. The first step was to take over the Srinagar-Leh link and cut
Ladakh off from the rest of the state. The plan did not work as planned,
but the general did not forget his objectives and 'diplomatically' tried
his chance in Agra. Again it did not work, but the general continued to
believe in his good star.
Since the day he managed to land
safely in Karachi and snatch power from Nawaz Sharief, Musharraf believes
his god is protecting him; that is perhaps why he decided to continue to
stretch his luck and play on two tables at the same time. Therefore, on
one side, he has become the best ally of the US [which has lifted all sanctions
against him] and on the other, he continues to be the chief protector of
the Qazi Hussain Ahmeds, the Masood Azhars (who master-minded the hijacking
of the Indian Airlines plane in December 1999) and so many other so-called
freedom fighters. In a Western movie scenario, he could have been the poker
player. But does he know that the life of a poker-player, even with an
American Colt, is dangerous?
It appears that American intelligence
agencies have now found that there were at least four Laden lookalikes
moving around in fake convoys from Kandahar to Jalalabad or Kabul to fool
their satellites. But are the same agencies aware that there are plenty
of other Ladens in the madrassas of Pakistan? That they are as powerful
and resourceful as their Kandahar clone? Qazi Hussain Ahmed is one of them,
but there are so many others. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-i-Islam,
declared at a recent meeting in Quetta that more than 44 outfits in the
US alone have been involved in terrorist activities. He bragged that no
action had ever been taken against them.
In the meantime, one can hope that
Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser 'Condo' Rice,
who themselves are from a minority community, will have more sensitivity
and will be able to advise the president that 'enough is enough', as the
emotional chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir told the assembly after
the cruel bomb attack on the Srinagar legislature building. He added, "If
the US could not wait for a day after Black Tuesday, are not 12 years too
much for testing our patience?" Later, he requested the Indian government
to wage a war on Pakistan to dismantle the training camps there and root
out all 'terrorism'.
If the US president's advisers can
explain to George Bush the situation as it is in this region, there is
no reason why, with determined political and economic pressure, a war cannot
be avoided. It is true that the problem perhaps lies in the West having
too many economic interests interlinked with certain Arab countries, which
are today defending Pakistan in the fear of becoming US targets themselves.
What is needed from the US president
is courage and some sacrifice, at least economic. If he really decides
to eradicate 'terrorism' [and not only 'selected terrorism'], it should
not be too difficult to cut off the huge financial and other resources
[particularly arm supplies] to all terrorist groups, starting with the
ones based in Pakistan.
Some sacrifice will be required;
economic sacrifice, with perhaps a risk of further recession. But it can
certainly be done and without human loss. Today, it is in the long-term
interests of the US and its allies to go deep into the issue, find out
the sources of financing and arming of these terrorist outfits and cut
off the flow of their resources.
And perhaps, as Colonel (retd) Anil
Athale titled one of his books, there will be a chance to 'let the Jhelum
smile again'.
While reading the qazi's interview,
something else came to mind: "Why is this happening to Kashmir?" I could
not find an answer, but I suddenly remembered that when I had been looking
for a cover for my book on Tibet where I had wanted to show the close cultural
links between India and the Roof of the World, I came across some of the
most exquisite paintings discovered by the great scholar Tucci in western
Tibet. These frescoes of bodhisattvas, very similar in style to the cave
paintings of Ajanta, had been painted by Kashmiri artistes who had fled
to Tibet after the invasion of their state in the 11th and 12th centuries.
For centuries and centuries, Kashmir
has been a land of culture, of beauty, for many a paradise upon earth.
Is it impossible to hope that one day this multifaceted culture will flourish
again?
PS: There was an interesting remark
by the young Minister for Civil Aviation Shahnawaz Hussain when he replied
to a journalist asking what he thought of the Congress asking for his resignation
after the flop of the mock hijack of an Alliance Air flight. He said the
Congress is only a resignation-seeking party, and had they been in politics
in the United States, they would have asked for Bush's resignation after
September 11. We can only comment that in Pakistan, mentalities are different
from our side of the border. Musharraf not only triggered the Kargil war,
he lost it. Not only did he lose it, he asked for the resignation of his
prime minister. Of course, nobody dared to tell him anything. The Congress
should perhaps open a branch in Islamabad.
Claude Arpi is author of The Fate
of Tibet (Har Anand), which has also been translated into French.
