Author: Ayaz Amir
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 15, 2002
No tears need be shed over the latest
and, hopefully, the last of our great turnarounds: this time over Kashmir.
It was both inescapable and inevitable. The knots of our warrior school
of thought were intertwined, Afghanistan and Kashmir being features of
the same strategy. When we untied the one, we were bound sooner or later
to untie the other.
Only we did not realise it at the
time and even while doing a turnaround on Afghanistan insisted there was
no question of a change, much less a sellout, on Kashmir. Defiant towards
India, we told it to "lay off"- a statement whose irony has multiplied
with the passage of time. Caught between an Indian anvil and an American
pair of forceps applied relentlessly, we have finally bid a farewell to
arms in Kashmir.
To cover its confusion in this trying
hour, Pakistan is reduced to laying out another smokescreen. Louder than
before, it is beating the drum of a meaningful dialogue on Kashmir and
asking the international community to throw its weight behind this idea.
Seen in the light of what has been squeezed out of Pakistan, these are
plaintive noises. If there has been no meaningful dialogue on Kashmir these
last 53 years, is there going to be one now when India rejoices in a triumph
which has been so long in the making? Pakistan's guardians have one standard
answer to these multiple retreats: Pakistan had no choice. This is true
enough. A hand caught between an anvil and a hammer has no choice.
But Pakistan's guardians still do
not say the policies forged in the crucible of jihad' and now abandoned
under pressure were in themselves flawed. By insisting on the no choice
argument they imply there was nothing wrong with those policies. Only the
external environment changed in such a way as to make them untenable. This
is shirking responsibility. Pakistan, rather its guardians, had no business
seeking 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan. They had every right to support
the Kashmir struggle but no business to forge that struggle in Pakistan's
image or sustain a policy which amounted to fighting to the last Kashmiri.
These were our original sins to
which we only lend a false dignity when we harp on the no-choice argument.
If a policy was good, it should not have been abandoned, no matter what
the pressure. If it was flawed from the start, and not worth preserving
in the face of risk, our guardians should have ditched it a long time ago
without waiting for September.
Pakistan has received little thanks
for the unstinted cooperation extended to the US for its war on Afghanistan
and the continuing campaign, much of it within Pakistan, against the fleeing
remnants of Al Qaeda. Instead, it is portrayed as an irresponsible state
harbouring and supporting terrorism while Mr Vajpayee is praised (by our
American friends) for his leadership in this crisis.
What recent events have done is
to show us our worth and standing. Which is no bad thing provided we draw
the appropriate conclusions, the foremost being that we must cut our coat
according to our cloth. What good our huge defence spending when we were
the first to blink? Why is defence spending set to increase this year?
Let me not be misunderstood. I am
making no plea for going to war, only pointing to the contradiction between
a policy of peace, which since September we have assiduously pursued, and
a hike in defence expenditure. And pray, what of our nuclear deterrent?
In our moment of greatest danger it was less an asset than a huge liability.
In happier times our guardians subscribed to the notion that this deterrent
gave us strategic cover to pursue other objectives: namely, our Afghan
and Kashmir policies. Our nuclear deterrent scared the daylights out of
us because we were led to believe that in case of war it would be the first
target to be struck. This is argument enough for banning the use of the
word 'strategic' in Pakistan.
While we are at the task of ideological
restructuring, a thought might be spared for the nuclear and missile monuments
which deface many of our cities. Aesthetic eyesores which only underscore
the national penchant for boastfulness, it is time they were pulled down
and sold for scrap. Let us be rid of the bluster and the false notions
which have plagued our national fife for so long. There is no need to sugarcoat
our several U-turns. The people of Pakistan see them for what they are.
It is the warrior school of thought
that has to look afresh at its priorities. But only if we return first
to the principle of legitimate government. Gen Musharraf is still in a
position to balance personal ambition with the larger good. But only if
he gives up on the dimly-understood ideas of constitutional reform his
coterie of advisers seems obsessed with. Pakistan has gone through enough
experiments. Forward then to the elections and out with half-baked theories
of presidential empowerment. (Dawn)
