Author: Wilson John
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 30, 2001
The irony of choosing May 23 to
invite General Pervez Musharraf for peace talks seems to have been lost
on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Exactly three years ago, this day,
Musharraf and his men were busy capturing Indian territories in Kargil
and killing Indian soldiers. At that time and subsequently, the Prime Minister
bellowed at Pakistan's treachery and vowed never to talk to Musharraf and
his company till they stop sending terrorists to Kashmir to kill Indians.
Operation Vijay, just for the sake
of recollection, had begun on May 26, 1999. The Prime Minister and his
men would do well to look beyond the international applaud their peace
initiative might be bringing and look up the Obituary columns in the newspapers.
Today, there is one about Major Mariappan Saravnan of 1 Bihar who died
leading a daring attack on Point 4268. There would be many more in the
days to come as the Indian establishment prepares for the July visit of
General Musharraf. After all, 500-odd men and officers had sacrificed their
lives for the Noble Prize ambitions of their political masters.
Forget Kargil. It is history. No
high road to peace can be attained if one were to listen to the voices
of past. So let us look even closer. Merely 48 hours before the Prime Minister
decided to call off cease-fire and invite General Musharraf, his top three
ministers, Home Minister LK Advani, Defence and External Affairs Minister
Jaswant Singh and Finance Minister Yaswant Sinha, had released a task force
report calling for reforms in the national security system. This is what
the report had to say about Pakistan.
"Pakistan will continue to pose
a threat to India's security in the future also. Its traditional hostility
and single-minded aim of destablising India, is not focussed just on Kashmir
but on a search for parity. This arises out of the two-nation theory, coupled
with a desire to exact revenge for the 1971 humiliation over the separation
of Bangladesh.
... Pakistan has been waging a proxy
war against India since the 1980s. Since the Kargil War and the military
coup of October 12, 1999, Pakistan's support to cross-border terrorism
has intensified and is expected to continue in the future. The rapid growth
of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan is also of serious concern to India.
As a result of Pakistan's political and economic instability, its military
regime may act irrationally, particularly in view of its propensity to
function through terrorist outfits."
The report was prepared under the
chairmanship of Home Minister LK Advani who, nine months ago (August 9,2000),
had this to say about Pakistan's involvement in destabilising India on
the floor of the House: "Pakistan`s determination to sabotage the talks
became known with deadly clarity when extremists trained and armed on its
soil created a mayhem of massacres in J&K on August 1 & 2 leaving
over 100 innocent persons dead. It is not difficult to know why Pakistan
struck terror on such an unprecedented scale and soon thereafter sabotaged
our initiative for talks with some representatives of our own people. The
rulers of Pakistan are terrorised by the prospect of peace in J&K.
They were similarly terrorised by the prospect of friendship with India
following Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's historic peace initiative
in Lahore. Kargil War was the result of their fear of peace in 1999. The
brutal killing of the Amarnath yatris and other innocent people is the
result of their fear of peace in 2000. Just as India could not be frightened
by the war inflicted by Pakistan in Kargil, we shall not be frightened
by the intensification of proxy war by Islamabad now."
Since forget and forgive is the
cornerstone of our diplomacy, it is no surprise that the Vajpayee government,
overnight, decided to turn the tables against itself, invite the 'Very
General' responsible for Kargil, responsible for hundreds and thousands
of deaths in the Kashmir Valley, giving him in turn a legitimacy, making
him a hero, allowing him a respectability back home where he is jammed
against a growing Islamic fundamentalism, some of which has been his own
creation, and a resentful, helpless public. Nothing would have prevented
the General's hasty exit than the Indian government's red carpet welcome
to talk peace.
Beneath the crisp military fatigue
and a chest full of medals, there lurks a mind committed to ride the twin
horses of Islamic fundamentalism and military power to history. Musharraf,
58, makes no bones about his ambition to be the President of Pakistan.
His actions prove the meticulous manner in which he is going about achieving
his objective. In the past three months, he has engineered promotions and
appointments in the Army in such a manner that all his favourites now hold
key positions within the three services and in the civilian establishment.
Those not favourable to his dispensation have either been dumped along
the road to anonymity or threatened with prosecution on charges of corruption.
His National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is a perfect weapon for such blackmail.
Either retired or serving officers from the Army or the ISI are now manning
almost all the top civilian positions. He justifies his actions on the
plea that military officers are less corrupt than the civilians, a plea
that has gone down well with the civilians but is far from the truth.
But what should worry India the
most is Musharraf's open dalliance with forces of Islamic fundamentalism
and terrorism. In a recent interview to The New York Times magazine, the
General sought to justify his support for jehad on these lines: "There
is no question that terrorism and jehad are absolutely different. You in
the West are allergic to term jehad but jehad is a tolerant concept." Harkat-ul-Mujaheedin
is one such group that is waging a jehad against India. The organisation
has training camps in Afghanistan but its leader Fazlur Rahman maintains
an office in Rawalpindi, not far from General Musharraf's house. He of
course has no ban on moving about freely in Pakistan, collecting donations
and recruiting men for his training camps. General Musharraf says: "These
people are not terrorists. They are fighting a jehad."
General Musharraf's role in the
hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC814 is not a secret either. There
are enough clues to reveal the not-so-hidden Pakistan hand in the hijacking.
Of the five hijackers, four were from Pakistan. These hijackers were constantly
in touch with the Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. For this purpose,
Pakistan intelligence officers in Kathmandu gave them a satellite phone.
In fact, the ISI and Army officers in Kathmandu planned the entire operation.
Finally, India's public humiliation of succumbing to terrorism helped none
else but Musharraf, a Mohajir General, in tightening his grip over Pakistan
which he had taken over in a bloodless coup only two months ago.
Musharraf, since then, has not only
allowed various terrorist organisations to set up their offices in different
parts of Pakistan but also promoted establishment of madrasas which are
increasingly becoming centres of fundamentalism. In 1971, there were 900
such madrasas in Pakistan; today these institutions of sectarian learning
exceed 9500. Unregistered madrasas number close to 50000. Musharraf's plan
is to synergise the madrasas, run by fundamentalists, with mujaheedin groups
to unleash a network of subversion and terror to blackmail the global community
in supporting Pakistan economically and strategically.
