Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: October 17, 2004
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=46&page=11
Introduction: Pakistan has tried
everything possible to wound India and has nothing to show except abject
failure. Has it learnt its lesson?
It is now fifty-six years since
Pakistani armed forces under the guise of tribesmen attacked Jammu and
Kashmir in the hope of detaching the state from India and failed in their
dishonourable purpose. Since then, Pakistan and India have fought three
wars and suffered countless casualties, both civilian and military. Pakistan
has tried everything possible to wound India and has nothing to show except
abject failure. Has it learnt its lesson? Addressing the United Nations
General Assembly, Gen Musharraf made a significant remark, concerning Jammu
and Kashmir. "We have waited too long and damaged each other too long.
The time to heal the wounds is now," he said, adding: "the faster, the
better. I look forward to a constructive dialogue and more than that, I
look forward to developing an understanding between ourselves." Wise words.
But can one believe this man? Is he the same man who organised Kargil?
Is he the same man who addressing officers of the Pakistan Army said that
he will never give up on Jammu and Kashmir? And is he the same man who
still keeps on saying that he will "not let down the people of Kashmir?".
When did the people of Kashmir call on him to help them? There is more
freedom in Jammu and Kashmir than in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, a truth
that the whole world is aware of. It is clear that President Musharraf
is faced with a grave dilemma. Make peace with India and the Pakistani
army suddenly becomes irrelevant.
He knows, as surely his friends
across the Atlantic know, that India has no territorial ambitions. Once
the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is settled, Musharraf might well scuttle
his Army and spend the money thus saved for some useful purpose. But Musharraf
also knows that many Jehadi elements and fundamentalists have infiltrated
within his Army creating a domestic problem for him of major dimensions.
So even while he wants to face reality, he has also to face an angry Army.
That may explain some of his duplicitous comments, but how does that help
solve the Kashmir problem, if that is what the Pakistani President wants
to achieve? On the one hand he says: "If you follow rigid lines, they never
lead to peace. Both Pakistan and India need to show flexibility and need
to reverse from their maximalist positions." In the same breath he rejects
the notion that peace can be arrived at by making some adjustments along
the Line of Control (LoC). As he clearly put it: "My mind is closed to
that, absolutely. Because the Line of Control has been the dispute, are
you suggesting that the conflict should be the solution? How can that be?
It can't be. That's absolutely ridiculous." If that is not, in the General's
own words, taking a "maximalist position", what else is? So what is it
that the General wants, or is offering by way of a settlement? We do not
know and if anybody knows, they won't tell. In his address to the General
Assembly, Musharraf said: "I am not at all a believer in dialogue and talking
for the sake of talking and wasting time." He was supposed to have a meeting
with Prime Minsiter Manmohan Singh of barely fifteen minutes duration.
But that meeting went on for an hour. Was he wasting his time?
Then again there was a warning in
his utterances that if bilateralism failed, it would be time for multilateralism,
meaning thereby that he would not hesitate to take the Jammu and Kashmir
case to the United Nations if he can't successfully negotiate with India.
And India, he knows, is totally opposed to the United Nations, or even
a third party, coming into the picture. The worst gift that Jawaharlal
Nehru handed over to two generations of Indians was to take the original
dispute to the UN Security Council. India has paid very heavily for that
stupid act. One assessment of the current situation is that Musharraf is
testing both domestic as well as international waters. When he told the
General Assembly that there can be no military solution to the problem,
he surely was also sending a message to his own armed forces as to his
friends in Washington. But he knows that he can't be seen to have given
up totally and lost some mad man in the Pakistan Army organise a coup to
throw him out. That would explain why he doesn't want to give up his uniform.
There have been two attempts on his life already and it is no secret that
some malicious forces in the Army were privy to the attempts. Musharraf,
in the circumstances has to be extremely wary in his public utterances
and stance. But judging from the manner in which he held talks with Dr
Manmohan Singh it would seem that something is going on behind our backs
that bodes well for the future. Have the parleys behind-the-scene between
India's National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit and his Pakistani counterpart
Tariq Aziz resulted in something positive? That could well be the case,
even when Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz loudly proclaims that "we
will never compromise on the Kashmir issue" and that "progress in relations
with India in all other fields should be in tandem with progress on the
issue of Jammu and Kashmir".
If that is a tactical statement
meant to keep the extremists quiet, one can take it. When delicate behind-the-scene
negotiations are going on one doesn't expect either party to spill the
beans. But if there was no positive movement in the on-going talks, would
Musharraf and Manmohan Singh have indulged in pleasantries and taken the
time to present gifts of a highly sentimental nature to each other? It
is well to remember that only last year, at the same place and from the
same platform, Musharraf was pouring venom on India and displaying a kind
of anti-Indian hostility with which the world had come to become familiar.
Now Musharraf is purring like a cat and making encouraging statements,
insisting that use of old cliches and hackneyed phrases are not conducive
to the cause of peace, and that he wants to give up on old animosities.
As he put it: "We are two angry countries. Let's resolve that cause of
anger". Well said, but action must follow words.
Significantly, as Musharraf himself
pointed out, Manmohan Singh was born in what is now Pakistan but became
Prime Minister of India while he, Musharraf, was born in India and has
become President of Pakistan. They should, in the circumstances, understand
each other better. The failure of past talks is not conducive to hope that
the present talks will succeed. One dare not hope for a lasting peace,
given Pakistan's past record of lying and treachery. But then, as the cliche
goes, the darkest hour is before the dawn. If the Berlin wall could be
torn down, if two Vietnams can come together and if a once war-torn Europe
could come together under the European Union umbrella, surely even a Musharraf
can see sense and light up the Wagah border with enduring flames of peace?
Miracles can still happen.
