Author:
Publication: News Insight
Date:
URL: http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=1248
A dangerous libertinism has crept in into
our dealings with Pakistan.
Like all societies, the Pakistani society
must be looked at various levels. There are the poor, as poor as they are
in India, if not worse, and it is a feat if they can live through the day.
Politics means nothing to them, the history of the India-Pakistan dispute
is very far removed, Jammu and Kashmir is a place for the very poor boys to
die violently in return for some small compensation to their families, which
is then propagated as a great jihadi act. The Pakistani middle class is probably
like the Indian middle class, which wants no disruption in its daily comforts,
and answers to political questions as and when the need arises. If it looks
good to mount venom against India on Kashmir, then so be it, and if by way
of people-to-people contacts, trips can be made to India, their children operated
upon for heart and other ailments, the alternate being expensive treatment
in the West, then that is fine too. Besides, for the fashionable among the
Pakistani upper class, India is a great place to shop. For Pakistani businessmen,
it is good business, good relations with India. Indians goods which have to
be, say, expensively routed through Dubai come much cheaper across the border,
everything from pan to Benaras sarees, and it is less riskier than smuggling,
although perhaps a little less lucrative. For the jihadis, the existence of
India is a bane and a shame, like the existence of Israel for Hamas, and the
Lashkar-e-Toiba revealed itself when it attacked the garrison in Red Fort
some years ago. The Pakistani jihadis are not just fighting for J and K, they
consider the entire country as rightfully theirs. The hatred of the Pakistani
military establishment for India we all know, beginning with the denial of
J and K that lead to the tribal raid, then the wars in 1965, 1971 and the
Kargil attack. 1971 was the only time the Indian political and military leadership
acted decisively, to break away East Pakistan to create Bangladesh. To staunch
the blow, Indira Gandhi returned all the POWs, walked out of territories captured
in West Pakistan, and decently awaited for Zulfikar Bhutto to return to his
country and announce the conversion of the Line of Control as the international
border, as he had informally agreed to do with her in Shimla. Not only did
he go back on his word, he threatened to launch a thousand-year war against
India, took the Shah of Iran's money to commence the nuclear weapons' programme,
and to revenge the 1971 loss of Bangladesh, the Pakistan army turned to low-intensity
warfare in J and K at the first provided opportunity, in 1987, and it has
fully blown to terrorism since. Pakistani schoolbooks are filled with hate
for India, Hindus and Hinduism, the Pakistan army and ISI have over the years
systematised jihadi training as an alternative to education and employment
for youth, and its impact is all too known to us, and yet, we never learn.
The Pakistani establishment survives by hating us, and we make no attempt
to understand Pakistan at the various levels it operates. We believe that
people-to-people level contacts will somehow moderate the Pakistani military
and jihadi establishment, but it does the opposite, which is logical too,
it increases their loathing for us, and it usually leads to more violence
in J and K and the rest of India. And still, the liberal crowd in this country,
the Left parties supporting the UPA government, the Punjabiyat lobby which
reckons "balle-balle" will melt the most hardened Pakistani hearts,
some retired military officers who should frankly know better, and assorted
peaceniks all believe in the miracle of Indo-Pak amity in the immediate future.
Great hype surrounded the Delhi-Lahore bus service, but nobody wants to talk
about it now. The earthquake in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and J and K stopped
the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus connection, but it has lost its political salability
anyway. Now, in the midst of the tragic earthquake disaster, the Indian Army
tried to score some publicity points, by not disputing press reports that
some of its soldiers had repaired a Pakistani bunker across the LoC. The peaceniks
loaded everything on this, until the Pakistani military issued an expansive
but strong denial. From the way it looks, both the armies are lying. The Indian
Army's amended position is that it went across and gave shovels and axes to
the Pakistanis, who then used them to repair their bunker and to retrieve
their buried weapons. When the Indian and Pakistani armies have not stood
down, this is a perilous thing to do, and the Indian commander who authorised
this would have lost his command if the Pakistanis had turned around and fired
and killed the Indian soldiers. Equally, the Pakistani army is lying, because
General Parvez Musharraf would have a hard time selling to the jihadis and
the rest of the country which has grown to hate India that "hateful"
India did all these nice things. So as it looks, the Indian Army rebuilt the
bunker, which they now have to deny, because you don't go around building
the enemy's bunker, much less publicise it. And the Pakistani military has
been made to look so silly and helpless that the brusque denial had to be
made. Which begs the question, why did the Indian Army take leave of its senses
to do such a thing as build the enemy's bunker? If assistance had to be given,
as happens informally, why not restrict it to a non-military effort, like
retrieving the injured, if there were injured, or send in food, heating fuel,
and so on? The army says it was the PM and defence minister's standing orders
to help in the humanitarian effort across the LoC, but when does rebuilding
bunkers become humanitarian effort? A dangerous libertinism is infecting us
vis-à-vis Pakistan, and this needs to be swiftly eradicated. As a fighting
force, the army must not be drawn into the peace effort, unless it is required
to be consulted on a ceasefire or another military contingency. A military
that loses its fighting edge becomes worse than home guards. For the rest
of the peace effort, there must be no confusion about the various stratifications
of Pakistani society. It should be clear to all though it is not. Nothing
that we do to impress the impressionable Pakistanis, the poor among them or
the middle class, will impact on the military and jihadi mindset against India.
Indeed, the more successes we gain with changing ordinary decent Pakistanis,
people like you and me, the more we will provoke the jihadis and jihadi generals
to anger. We need to be intelligent, wary and prepared in our peace engagement
with Pakistan, not emotional. And we need to keep the armed forces insulated
from all this.
