Push and Pulls of Indo-Pak Strategic Mould By K Gajendra Singh

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Push and Pulls of Indo-Pak Strategic Mould

By K Gajendra Singh

8/29/03

South Asians , specially Indians love rituals, theatre , festivals and tamashas .The two-day track 2 meeting of Indian and Pakistani politicians and media persons in Islamabad from 10 August was no different . And it was the master Indian politician of them all ,Laloo Prasad Yadav ,who stole the show . How ever , it was the purpose and the success achieved by the July visit of maverick Maulana Fazlur Rehman , the leader of the fundamentalist parties in Pakistan , which still remains a mystery . The conference in Islamabad organised by South Asia Free Media Association included in the Indian delegation five dozen Indian MPs and journalists .The prominent members, apart from Bihar politician Laloo Prasad Yadav ,were the Congress MP Mani Shankar Aiyar, Lok Janshakti Party's Ram Vilas Paswan, Rajya Sabha MP Ram Jethmalani and many senior journalists. A message from Indian prime minister Atal Biahri Vajpayee called for "Cooperation rather than confrontation as the answer to our common problems of development and poverty alleviation." Messages were also received from other leaders .Congress president Sonia Gandhi's said ," The Simla Agreement signed by Indira Gandhi and the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto provides the framework within which the two countries can discuss all issues and build a durable friendly relationship." The Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly, Chaudhry Amir Hussain said that the resolution of the Kashmir dispute was vital for peace in South Asia and "we must strive to move in that direction. I hope that a sustained and structured dialogue between Pakistan and India will commence soon." Benazir Bhutto's message said "We believe that although India and Pakistan are key protagonists in the Kashmir dispute, it is imperative to include the Kashmiri people in the consultative process." Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Masood Khan brought down the euphoria of the participants by expressing hope that India would move fast to resume dialogue with Pakistan," Masood added that such "interactions" and conferences could not "be a substitute for negotiations, which necessitate engagement of the two governments through a process of dialogue. "They would be meaningless if there is no mechanism to engage the two governments in talks and hoped the Indian delegates would persuade the BJP-led government in Delhi to come to the negotiating table. President Pervez Musharraf while talking with the Indian delegates on 12 August linked a ceasefire in Kashmir to what he called reciprocity by India. "Reciprocity can be demonstrated by cessation of atrocities in India-occupied Kashmir, reduction in troops level, allowing political activity and the detained people to travel freely around the globe," "Any unilateral attempt (by Pakistan to hold fire) in that direction may not be practicable," he added. Most of the time, it is the Pakistan establishment which constricts the communications between India and Pakistan and there fore such get to-gathers receive widespread media publicity .It is called track 2 diplomacy , a term which was first used by two US State Department officials in a 1982 article on US foreign policy .It was defined as diplomacy through "informal, unofficial interaction between members of adversary groups or nations." Subsequently, others have defined it as unofficial or citizen diplomacy ie diplomacy to avoid or resolve conflicts through the intermediary of persons not forming a member of a State or a Government involved in the conflict. Now we have Track 3 too , about conflict-avoidance or conflict-resolution efforts undertaken by prominent non-governmental personalities, with or without links to the policy-makers, on their own initiative. Track 4 is about creating a congenial atmosphere through people-to-people contacts in order to facilitate conflict avoidance or resolution. The objective of track 4 is not to find a solution, but to lessen or remove the tensions and distrust in the atmosphere, in the hope that this would facilitate a search for an accord through any of the other three tracks. In the writer's nearly 4 decades long diplomatic career ,Pakistani ambassadors , specially from Punjab would advise diplomats not to interact socially with their Indian counterparts ,even at receptions by other countries . Just to create an atmosphere of tension and turmoil which also suited Pakistani allies in the Cold war . The various lines of governmental and non-governmental communications and people-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan have remained badly clogged up since 1994 when Benazir Bhutto Government, suspecting that the violence and disorder in Karachi since 1990 were being orchestrated by Indian intelligence officers posted in the Indian Consulate-General in Karachi ordered it to be closed down .But the violence has instead increased .Of course after the attack on Indian parliament on 13 December , 2001 , an almost total ban was placed on contacts .

Laloo Yadav ,who stole the show is admired even by the bollywood stars for his turn of phrase ,dialogue delivery and hairstyle .His wife ,Rabari Devi now rules Bihar as his proxy. The Pakistan gathering also had the usual suspects from north India .For them track II diplomacy is a good vocation , more so after retirement. Many were born in Pakistan and can visit friends and places of their birth . They do some shopping enjoy Punjabi cuisine of chicken tikka , Dal Makhanni , sarson ka saag and other delicacies .

But the governments and ruling parties and groups in India and Pakistan have their own agendas and aims . Peoples welfare may not necessarily fit into it .More than that it is the puppeteers from outside the subcontinent who have throughout history mostly pulled the strings. But the Pakistani ruling elite has better grasp of strategic matters and suffers less than Indians from the disease of being nice and being liked by outsiders.

There fore so many Indians, politicians, journalists and even diplomats, who should be more hard headed ,tend to suffer from this viral like disease which can be called Herpes Indpakster ( not herpes zoster) which when it flares up brings delusions of going down in history by changing the course of India Pakistan relations. A smile from late Gen Zia ul huq or Nawaz Sharief or Benazir Bhutto ,weakens their immune mechanism and the latent virus gets reactivated . In zoster variety there may be spontaneous recovery in a couple of months, here it takes the form of Pakistan firing , intrusion in Kargil or an attack by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir or on Indian parliament . In olden days a US deep briefing or a leak did the same . However neuralgia may persist for months and even years and can be reactivated by another smile.

But all the patients do very well. Diplomats get out of turn promotions and get good postings others get rewarded and decorated. and become public figures , members of parliament and lions on the Delhi's cocktail circuit .So we have Indo Pak border lamp lighting Kuldip Nayars, senior diplomats who retire with Pak counterparts to calm retreats (in nearby Rajasthan ) to cut the Gordian Knot of Indo- Pak dispute. It makes good copy and sells. There was the story of the negotiators' mother tongue being Punjabi, lingua franca of Pakistan's dominant clique .If it matched in India ; Viola , Eureka.. It was made out that the Punjabi speaking Indian Prime Minister , Inder Kumar Gujaral born in Jhelum ( now in Pakistani Punjab) and Punjabi speaking Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif could resolve the disputes between the two countries because of similar mother tongues . ( Why are then so many disputes between Arabic speaking Muslim states ) Was not there once a Jullunder (in India) born, Delhi educated President General Zia ul Huq, who while courteously escorting the Indian journalists to their cars after giving them a sumptuous chicken curry meal or innocently coming down for Cricket matches in Jaipur, was planning operation "Topaz" and laying the foundations of future insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir.

This kind of a psychological blind spot of these ignorant self seeking Indian gentlemen sometimes succeeds in infecting the body politic. One Indian foreign policy adviser in late 1970s, before the ill advised Russian intervention in Afghanistan had transformed the Western word's pariah Zia-ul-Huq overnight into its darling, had even recommended that Indo-Pakistan relations had been stabilized and India's defence expenditure could be scaled down.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman's Visit to India However an intriguing and more significant event in July was of course the visit to India of Maulana Fazlur Rahman , leader of the combined opposition fundamentalist parties in Pakistan , which did exceptionally well in elections last year .It rules the two strategic and troublesome border provinces of Pakistan and provides opposition to General Musharraf's ruling party in the federal Assembly . Since 10 months the Pakistan president has not been able to deliver his customary address to the parliament with the opposition insisting that he resign from the post of the army chief . It is known that the Maulana helped the Taliban movement and provided ideological impetus to the Deobandi paramilitary organization, Harkat-ul-Ansar (later renamed Harkat-ul-Mujahideen). His anti-American statements and activities are well known and he would not be allowed to visit USA. The very visit itself was quite something .In India Rahman made many declarations which pleased Indian policy makers , specially his utterances on Kashmir that the cease fire line could be a border between India and Pakistan .Were these only red herrings .Do not these fundamentalist outfits believe that the Muslims of Hindustan ( Pakistan and India ) could lead Muslim Ummah as they had done in the past .The ideological and modern inspiration for many Islamic ideas came from Hindustan , during the Islamic and Moghul eras .Later the subcontinent produced many thinkers like Mohammed Iqbal ,Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and others .The Deoband, Barelvi and other Muslim schools originated in Hindustan and form the bed rock of Islamic fundamentalist Jihadi movements in Pakistan . The Islamic opposition to the West in Iran and Iraq is declining and most other Arab regimes are totally subservient to the US power .So the leadership must now comes from south Asia and Pakistan must take up the leadership . So goes this logic and the India-Pakistan conflict must be resolved - the civilizational conflict of Islam is not with India but with the USA . They live on the adreline of history that Hindus were easily defeated and whom they ruled during 2nd millennia AD and there fore are not a serious enemy . Indian defence preparedness in Kargil or Indian reaction after 13 December bombing of the Parliament , only increases their contempt for India . With India's coalition politics , where shameless money making is end all and be all , they feel that they have perhaps little to fear from India .A truce with India is necessary till they have taken care of the US led Crusaders. Unless Pak Nukes are destroyed by Israel ! When Israel had reportedly made such a proposal to Indian prime minister Morarji Desai in late 1970s , he had promptly leaked it out to Pakistan , who in gratitude had awarded him Pakistan's highest decoration Rahman was briefed by ISI and others in Pakistan establishment before coming to India. Indian prime minister Vajpayee met him . In India, the maulana said things contrary to the official Pakistan policy line. In Deoband, he said that Kashmir was not an Islamic issue but a dispute between two governments - just as the Indian Muslims stood by India, the Pakistani Muslims were firmly on the side of their government. He held up the bilateral mechanism of the Simla agreement as the way forward and hinted that if the two governments and the Kashmiris agreed, a settlement might even be possible along the line of control. Oh la la , when Rahman met with his Hindu mirror image ,the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) , he told them that trade and economic links should be used to build confidence between the two countries. The meeting between the maulana and the RSS was quite curiously facilitated by the powers that be in New Delhi. Before departure, the maulana even condemned the instances of militant violence in Katra and the army camp at Tanda. When the maulana went back, nothing happened to him .Even when he was in India, the Pakistani foreign office did not once attempt to rebut the maulana's statements. In fact, the Pakistan high commission officials in New Delhi chaperoned him everywhere and even hosted a lunch in his honour. On return, Rehman even said that the Kashmiri militants should not be expected to be armed for ever and that the people of Kashmir deserved to live in peace. He did not retract any of his statements made in India and no on of any significance criticized him publicly. "What is more, the maulana was invited to the Pakistan prime minister Jamali's house where he briefed him about his Indian visit. This made sense only if the maulana's visit was facilitated by both the Indian and the Pakistani establishments. And perhaps, lurking behind the scenes, were the Americans as well. This is one hypothesis. The visit also tried to open a dialogue with the Hindu hardliners with Vajpayee agreeing to send parliamentarians from the Bharatiya Janata Party to Pakistan. And the RSS did send its members with the Indian delegation to Pakistan . Is there a hope that the extremist elements on both sides might chip away at each other's prejudices and conclude that the future of the subcontinent lies in learning to live together. But has the constituency for peace been broadened and the possibility of peace increased. Did he light a thousand candles for peace along the Indo-Pak border .Is it for real or a feint. Thus did Rahman's visit achieve the aim. AND WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT? Of course there are no permanent enemies . But must we in India trust Pakistan. Has Pakistan reached a stage when it feels that it must make peace with India!

Pakistani Psyche ;

Punjabi Muslims , who form nearly 60% of population and dominate Pakistan cannot see beyond the Indian Punjab ( now forming three Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh,), were considered higher in pecking order than Sikhs and Hindus .Almost right up to the partition of India in 1947, undivided Punjab was opposed to the partition and was ruled by non- Muslim league party governments with same race / caste Hindu Jats like Chhotu Ram and others in preference to "wily Brahmins and Baniyas ". But when Pakistan ( whose creation was opposed even by the Mullahas ) fell into their laps, the Muslim Punjabi Bhumiputras, first shifted the power center to Islamabad in Punjab ( Lahore is too near the border) away from Karachi dominated by the Mohajirs , the Muslims who had migrated from India and were in the forefront of struggle for Pakistan .

But the pretensions of Pakistani Punjabis are most amusing . They believe that they are the descendents of Muslim invaders who came from north and west of Hindustan, when in fact vast majority were converted to Islam .They also have supercilious airs about their fighting prowess , with their psyche and history frozen in medieval time frame if not earlier. As if wars are still fought by swords or on horse drawn chariots or horsebacks. In that case the descendents of Mongol Gengiz Khan and Taimur Lung should still be ruling the world and not confined to Mongolia, till recently under Soviet thumb and Inner Mongolia, still under the Han Chinese heel. The Soviet ruled central Asian Turks had their yokes loosened by the failure of the USSR's economic system in competition against USA. With the rise of Slav nationalism many opposed diversion of scarce fund to Turkic speaking republics and territories .Finally the battle between a naive Gorbachev and the next western favourite Boris Yeltsin , with the latter pulling the rug from under the feet of the Communist leader , unraveled the Soviet Union . The current leadership of central Asian Turkic republics was most unhappy at being orphaned .

It is a legitimate grouse of Russians that Gorbachev sold USSR short to USA .All he got were some royalties for his books and speaking fees in USA .Look how the north Korea leadership is using its even unproved nuclear bombs for negotiating a deal .Finally when the chips are down ,it is sheer power and its terror that decides the issue .Use of Nuclear bombs over Japan and the threat to use them has maintained the supremacy of the nuclear super power that feeds the US arrogance .Sitting on reportedly dozens of nuclear bombs makes Israel so arrogant , brutal and careless of world opinion .And then there is a life line of arms to USA . This is the strategic reality of the world .

Continuing with the Pakistani claims of racial superiority , let us take Turkey . Where , the Turkish blood, if it can be measured, is no more than 15% .Three fourths of Ottoman Grand Viziers were non -Turks and barring the first few, most mothers of the Ottoman Sultans were non-Turks and mostly Christian . When this writer included these fact in an article on the influence of Turkish on Hindustani languages published in Turkey , only the extreme religious media protested but could not refute the facts and figures .During Ottoman times the term Turk was used to describe the village yokel .Only Kemal Ataturk gave the word the dignity it has now . Ironically most of the Turkomen tribes who migrated from Turkmenistan as central Asia was then called and conquered Anatolia , are Alevis -followers of Shiite form of liberal and catholic form of Islam , with elements from shamanism ,Christianity and Buddhism. But now they dare not even declare their sect and are persecuted from time to time by mostly converted original inhabitants of Asia minor , known in history as Hitites , Phyrigians ,Byzantines , Lydians, Cilicians , Cappadoccians ,Armenians and others .

The total population of central Asian Turkic speaking states Kyrghyzstan , Kazakhstan ,Uzbekistan ,Turkmenistan ,Azerbaijan and Xinjiang in China is around 70 million , with Turks of all kinds being not more than 60 million .There was a general increase in population after Soviet plans of diverting Syr and Amu Draya water for wheat cultivation .The population of nomad Turks in medieval times was much smaller than of the flourishing agriculture societies of the subcontinent of Hindustan , Asia Minor and Iran .The total population of the later countries now is nearly 1.5 billion .These were highly populated areas .How many could have come from central Asia . Even in India the number of Aryan migrants from the Eurasian steppes and central Asia , mostly Brahmins , could not be more than a few per cent of Indian population .The rest are original inhabitants , Mediterra-nean type in north India and Dravidians in south India .

So the Pakistani claims that they are descendents of Turks, Afghans and Arabs are spurious. Most of them were converted , mostly by Sufis , even in Afghanistan .Apart from Shamanism and Christianity ,the role of Buddhism in central Asian Sufi Islam including the veneration of holy men like in Buddhism has not been fully studied . Saudi Wahabi Islam is totally against it.

The martial race theory is a British myth, to split the Hindustani society and create loyal cannon fodder for the maintenance and expansion of its empire after the 1857 uprising for freedom from the British. Sikh historian, S. Khuswant Singh, has said that the brave Punjabi Sikhs, certainly braver and courageous than Pakistani Muslims as proved in 1965 and 1971 wars were defeated by the British with better trained modern army composed of Bihari and Oriya soldiers .And so were the rulers of Sindh and other provinces of Pakistan . Many Afghan diplomats in 1990s , some former Mujaheddins against Soviet occupation when talking of Pakistan plans for strategic depth in Afghanistan showed contempt for Pakistan ."They tell us how to fight .They, who have never fought and won a war " .

Indian weakness ; Great speculators in metaphysics and matters of soul, through out history Indians have rarely shown strategic thinking or acumen and the ruthlessness to implement strategic decisions . Some thing goes wrong in the sycophantic climate of Delhi and Hindustan , whether the leaders are Hindus or Muslims. In the history of Hindustan, there have been very few rulers with strategic thought and skills . Say, like Mauryas who had their capital at Pataliputra but kept the crown prince at Ujjain to guard against ingress from the Hindukush and meet the invader on the route chosen ie Sindh- Gujarat or Punjab and the Himalayan foot hills. So were the early Moghuls. Akbar having built his beautiful capital at Fatehpur Sikri spent a decade near Lahore watching Mongols and others invaders across the Hindukush .In modern times we had Indira Gandhi , who instead of mopping around the world against refugee influx from East Pakistan ,took advantage of the situation and broke up Pakistan into two .There were some others like Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Tippu Sultan but their canvas was much smaller .

As a wag has said that except for the legendry King Porus who put up a valiant fight against Alexander the Great ,the area between Panipat and Peshawar has always remained 'porous' for invaders from north West. Survival against all odds is the quality of the people in the region . They are dynamic, hard working, good managing directors but not perspicacious enough to be the chairmen of the board. They have never established a large enough kingdom As Rajiv Gandhi had pointed during the Pakistan supported insurgency in Punjab, the only state in that region was founded by Sikh maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore .

The people dominating Pakistan, though out history have felt envious of the rulers of Hindustan with their capital on Jamuna in Delhi or Agra .The religion was immaterial .They had invited the Moghuls when Afghans were ruling Delhi .Later they invited Pathans and Iranians when Moghuls were ruling in Delhi . For its strategic defence , Hindustan should control Kabul if not Kandhar as was done by early Moghuls .Once Kabul and Kandahar were lost , the Hindustan became a plaything of invaders. And the people joined in the loot and robbed the invader if he did not succeed .The rulers in Pakistan starting with Ayub Khan and outsiders have exploited the same geo-political compulsions . It started with the British , who passed on the torch to the new lords USA .Even China continues to exploit the same geo-political equation .The inhabitants of the region ie Pakistan for their short term gains have allowed the foreigner to dominate their policies , but it has left Pakistan literally in the hands of Jihadis , with its Kalashnikov culture and narcotic cultivation and addiction .It survives on infusions of money from outside .No wonder it has become a state living at the mercy of UK , USA ,China and others. If the Jihadis took over Pakistan, where would the so called liberal beer drinking intelligentsia of Pakistan go . Iranians after the Khomeini revolution migrated to USA and France .Will the Pakistanis be welcome in USA with rising bias against Muslims .Yes ,Saudi Arabia is there ,with the likes of late Idi Amin and Sharif .But the whole area could be in turmoil soon.

The only solution appears to be a common market , even though Pakistan might play a spoiling Trojan horse as does Britain for USA in Europe Union . The alternatives can not be defence treaties or Tashkent or Shimla like Agreements but a well structured free trade zone leading to the formation of a union like Europe Union for the countries of south and central Asia .

Only an economic solution can resolve the political problems of Jammu and Kashmir , Afghanistan and Ferghana and bring lasting peace and prosperity to the people of the region. It may be recalled that the establishment of European community took roots, after the second World War, in 1950s when a European Coal and Steel Authority was created to monitor armament manufacture in Europe, specially in France and Germany (and avoid another war.) Ironically, distrust was the basis of a now expanding and flourishing Europe Union. It was supported by USA .USA and its energy companies are now greatly interested in transporting gas and petroleum from Central Asia to India which is short of hydrocarbons as industrial raw material and for power generation. It may be pointed out that during the first half of 20th century alone millions of Germans, French, British and others were killed by each other in wars and other battles But since the creation of an European Economic Community, disputes have been subsumed into economic rivalry and competition and peace has reigned in west and central Europe. After the formation of European community, even the historic Alsace Lorraine dispute between France and Germany, no less complex than Jammu and Kashmir, with change of hands and an autonomy movement got subsumed into economic collaboration and rivalry. Similarly before the creation of ASEAN in South East Asia in late 1960s there used to be constant quarrels between Indonesia and Malaysia and bilateral and multilateral disputes among others. SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA ARE CREATORS OF MAJOR CIVILISATIONS Culturally, linguistically, ethnically and spiritually no other regions and people have so much in common. It is an area with continuous history and cradle of most civilizations and majority of world's religions, where Indo-Iranian and Ural- Altaic languages mingled with each other and local languages producing such a mosaic of tongues. For example Turkic and Hindustani languages share many thousand common words and have influenced each other's grammar. Many Turks and Mongols were Buddhists before Islam was brought to Central Asia which strengthened the Sufi strands in Islam. Turkish languages have borrowed many Buddhist words, terms and conceptions from Prakit and Sanskrit. Bazaar for market is used from Turkey to Bangladesh and from Astana in Kazakhstan to Bhendi Bazaar in Mumbai. Since 5 millennia civilisations evolved and flourished in desert oasis and river valleys south of the Eurasian steppes, which were dominated first by charioteers and then horse riders from the steppes who shaped the history of Asia, Middle East and Europe. Common Markets in the Past: The region had many incipient though smaller economic communities in the past. The Persian Empire under the Achameneans ruled from Persepolis, stretched from Turkey (Asia Minor) in the West to Uzbekistan and North India. In 517 BC Emperor Darius ordered Scylax, his Greek subject from Caria (Western Turkey) to survey river Indus from Peshawar to its exit into the sea. And for the first time West became acquainted with India. Herodotus's chapters on Indian history were based on records of that exploration and other writings. Under Devputra Kanishka's rule from Peshawar, traders and preachers moved freely and flourished in his empire which covered most of Central Asia, Xinjiang and down to central and east India. During 16th century AD, traders moved freely in the empires of the Moghuls of Hindustan, Uzbek Shaybani Khans of Khawarizm on Aral Sea, Shia Safavids of Iran and Ottomans of Turkey right into central Europe. A hundi (based on hawala system still in use) issued in Delhi bazaar was valid in Istanbul or Bukhara. Apples, pomegranates, melons and other fruits from Bukhara could be bought in Delhi's bazaars during the Moghul days.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).