01-15-2004, 10:36 PM
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/2004...10421-1045r.htm
India File: At Islamabad, India blinked
By MANI SHANKAR AIYAR
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
NEW DELHI, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- With the world applauding the India-Pakistan joint communiqué issued Jan. 7 in Islamabad, it does seem a bit churlish for an Indian as committed as I am to a sensible relationship between the two countries to start "if-ing" and "but-ing." Yes, I hail the new dawn but regret the needless night into which we have been led these past five barren years. The same Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who for all these years has been excoriated as the butcher of Kargil in India is now regarded as the indispensable bulwark of better India-Pakistan relations. The same military dictatorship that has been repeatedly denounced as the main obstacle to progress is now being trusted as the guarantor of agreements once made being kept. And the same Pakistan that has been doggedly portrayed as an incorrigible promoter of terrorism and Talibanization is now being wooed as our partner in peace.
Good. But can we have some consistency please? If General Musharraf, as chief of army staff, was the chief conspirator to undermine the Lahore summit in February 1999 of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Vajpayee by launching the armed incursion across the line of control, the de facto border, in the Kargil sector of Jammu and Kashmir, how has he now emerged as India's favoured interlocutor? The answer given officially in India is that Kargil is behind us and Musharraf has now offered to end terrorism emanating from his country's soil.
The fact is Kargil has been behind us all these five years. And Musharraf's sweet words on terrorism are exactly what he said in his celebrated speech of Jan. 12, 2002. Far from believing him then, the Vajpayee government went into overdrive over the armed attack on the Indian Parliament a month earlier, Dec. 13, 2001. Instead of giving him any credence, the India side insisted - with little proof - that as the attackers - all of who were killed - were Pakistani citizens, it was clearly the Pakistan government that was behind this heinous assault on the citadel of our democracy. The country went along with the government in its assertion this was an officially sponsored Pakistani assault. As a people, we had no alternative. We assumed the government knew a great deal we did not know, accepting the "need-to-know" principle in regard to national security.
Therefore, few questioned the deliberation with which the government of India after Dec. 13 hacked away at one after the other of the links which had been so assiduously put together over decades to keep people-to-people contacts going whatever our doubts or derision about the Pakistan establishment. It was India, not Pakistan, that banned overflights. It was India, not Pakistan, that stopped the train service. It was India, not Pakistan, that snapped the bus service. It was India, not Pakistan, that withdrew its high commissioner. It was India, not Pakistan, that asked the Pakistan high commissioner to leave, then expelled the charge d'affaires. It was India, not Pakistan, that slashed its diplomatic staff strength and compelled the other to do the same. It was India, not Pakistan, that mobilized the bulk of its armed forces to go to the frontline and wait there for 10 long months on full alert twiddling their thumbs. And thus started the vicious spiral of tension-stoking between two nuclear-armed neighbours, bringing in the world to twist both our arms. The progress made these last few months has been no more than the undoing of the unilateral decisions of our own government. Is this statesmanship?
And through these five years, the Indian government has endlessly repeated its mantra, "No dialogue till cross-border terrorism is ended and the infrastructure of terrorism dismantled." To save face, the Vajpayee government is now fooling itself, fooling the country and fooling the world into believing that some great breakthrough on terrorism was achieved at Islamabad.
The fact is that it is India that, on bended knees, has accepted the Pakistani formulation, not the other way round. Back at the Lahore, Pakistan, summit of February 1999, the Lahore Declaration pledged both countries to eschewing terrorism of any kind. That did not stop either the Kargil attack or the unceasing infiltration over the past five years of thousands of well-armed, well-trained, highly motivated and richly remunerated terrorists from Pakistan into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and, indeed, into other parts of India. When the perpetrator of Kargil, Musharraf, came to power a few months later through a military coup, the Indian government started making a fetish of the expression "cross-border terrorism", insisting no other form of referring to terrorism was adequate, and Pakistan must accept that it is guilty of "cross-border" terrorism. When it was pointed out to Vajpayee that the expression "cross-border terrorism" did not appear in the Lahore declaration, he made the absurd response that cross-border terrorism had started at Kargil after Lahore. Ridiculous, because Pakistan's first act of cross-border terrorism was arming, commanding and despatching across the Jammu and Kashmir border their Pashtun "raiders" in October 1947. The next round was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Operation Gibraltar in August 1965, which ignited the war of September 1965. The third round began in December 1989 with Pakistan's relentless stoking of its proxy war in the Kashmir Valley, which continues till now. There has be no reduction in infiltration other than the usual winter climb-down when snow makes the infiltration routes impassable. There has been no acceptance by Pakistan of its role in sending in running a well-oiled terrorist training infrastructure over the past 15 years. And there has been no credible guarantee that cross-border terrorism has finally ended. Indeed, according to the Pakistanis, it never even began! It is just that Vajpayee and his team plain forgot to bring in the expression "cross-border terrorism" at Lahore.
Then came the Agra summit of July 2001 between Vajpayee and Musharraf. Everything was going swimmingly well, the two foreign ministers having agreed to the entire wording and punctuation of the draft agreement when the summit was broken against the rock of those two tiny words "cross-border terrorism." Musharraf refused to accept the expression arguing (quite correctly) this was well-understood code for Pakistan's malfeasance; Vajpayee refused to sign the document till "cross-border terrorism" was put in. And thus began a 1,000 days of sometimes truly alarming military brinkmanship between the two neighbours.
Now at Islamabad, Musharraf has had his way. "Terrorism" certainly figures, as it figured at Lahore and Agra, but of "cross-border terrorism" there is no mention in the joint communiqué. Musharraf baulked and India blinked. Now five years of barren reiteration of the expression "cross-border terrorism" is being covered up. Our preconditions for dialogue were always wholly impractical. Cross-border terrorism will be ended when the dialogue reaches a fruitful conclusion. We have been making the desired outcome the pre-condition.
A dialogue is now promised but there is no recognition in the communiqué of the need for a structured dialogue, so structured as to keep the dialogue going, uninterrupted and uninterruptible, till both sides discover the modus vivendi that will enable India and Pakistan and, therefore, South Asia, to live in peace and work together toward prosperity. With India going to the polls in a few months, it is electoral compulsions, not sincerity, that has determined the phony peace at Islamabad.
-0-
Mani Shankar Aiyar is a member of Parliament for the Congress Party. His column appears weekly.
India File: At Islamabad, India blinked
By MANI SHANKAR AIYAR
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
NEW DELHI, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- With the world applauding the India-Pakistan joint communiqué issued Jan. 7 in Islamabad, it does seem a bit churlish for an Indian as committed as I am to a sensible relationship between the two countries to start "if-ing" and "but-ing." Yes, I hail the new dawn but regret the needless night into which we have been led these past five barren years. The same Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who for all these years has been excoriated as the butcher of Kargil in India is now regarded as the indispensable bulwark of better India-Pakistan relations. The same military dictatorship that has been repeatedly denounced as the main obstacle to progress is now being trusted as the guarantor of agreements once made being kept. And the same Pakistan that has been doggedly portrayed as an incorrigible promoter of terrorism and Talibanization is now being wooed as our partner in peace.
Good. But can we have some consistency please? If General Musharraf, as chief of army staff, was the chief conspirator to undermine the Lahore summit in February 1999 of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Vajpayee by launching the armed incursion across the line of control, the de facto border, in the Kargil sector of Jammu and Kashmir, how has he now emerged as India's favoured interlocutor? The answer given officially in India is that Kargil is behind us and Musharraf has now offered to end terrorism emanating from his country's soil.
The fact is Kargil has been behind us all these five years. And Musharraf's sweet words on terrorism are exactly what he said in his celebrated speech of Jan. 12, 2002. Far from believing him then, the Vajpayee government went into overdrive over the armed attack on the Indian Parliament a month earlier, Dec. 13, 2001. Instead of giving him any credence, the India side insisted - with little proof - that as the attackers - all of who were killed - were Pakistani citizens, it was clearly the Pakistan government that was behind this heinous assault on the citadel of our democracy. The country went along with the government in its assertion this was an officially sponsored Pakistani assault. As a people, we had no alternative. We assumed the government knew a great deal we did not know, accepting the "need-to-know" principle in regard to national security.
Therefore, few questioned the deliberation with which the government of India after Dec. 13 hacked away at one after the other of the links which had been so assiduously put together over decades to keep people-to-people contacts going whatever our doubts or derision about the Pakistan establishment. It was India, not Pakistan, that banned overflights. It was India, not Pakistan, that stopped the train service. It was India, not Pakistan, that snapped the bus service. It was India, not Pakistan, that withdrew its high commissioner. It was India, not Pakistan, that asked the Pakistan high commissioner to leave, then expelled the charge d'affaires. It was India, not Pakistan, that slashed its diplomatic staff strength and compelled the other to do the same. It was India, not Pakistan, that mobilized the bulk of its armed forces to go to the frontline and wait there for 10 long months on full alert twiddling their thumbs. And thus started the vicious spiral of tension-stoking between two nuclear-armed neighbours, bringing in the world to twist both our arms. The progress made these last few months has been no more than the undoing of the unilateral decisions of our own government. Is this statesmanship?
And through these five years, the Indian government has endlessly repeated its mantra, "No dialogue till cross-border terrorism is ended and the infrastructure of terrorism dismantled." To save face, the Vajpayee government is now fooling itself, fooling the country and fooling the world into believing that some great breakthrough on terrorism was achieved at Islamabad.
The fact is that it is India that, on bended knees, has accepted the Pakistani formulation, not the other way round. Back at the Lahore, Pakistan, summit of February 1999, the Lahore Declaration pledged both countries to eschewing terrorism of any kind. That did not stop either the Kargil attack or the unceasing infiltration over the past five years of thousands of well-armed, well-trained, highly motivated and richly remunerated terrorists from Pakistan into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and, indeed, into other parts of India. When the perpetrator of Kargil, Musharraf, came to power a few months later through a military coup, the Indian government started making a fetish of the expression "cross-border terrorism", insisting no other form of referring to terrorism was adequate, and Pakistan must accept that it is guilty of "cross-border" terrorism. When it was pointed out to Vajpayee that the expression "cross-border terrorism" did not appear in the Lahore declaration, he made the absurd response that cross-border terrorism had started at Kargil after Lahore. Ridiculous, because Pakistan's first act of cross-border terrorism was arming, commanding and despatching across the Jammu and Kashmir border their Pashtun "raiders" in October 1947. The next round was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Operation Gibraltar in August 1965, which ignited the war of September 1965. The third round began in December 1989 with Pakistan's relentless stoking of its proxy war in the Kashmir Valley, which continues till now. There has be no reduction in infiltration other than the usual winter climb-down when snow makes the infiltration routes impassable. There has been no acceptance by Pakistan of its role in sending in running a well-oiled terrorist training infrastructure over the past 15 years. And there has been no credible guarantee that cross-border terrorism has finally ended. Indeed, according to the Pakistanis, it never even began! It is just that Vajpayee and his team plain forgot to bring in the expression "cross-border terrorism" at Lahore.
Then came the Agra summit of July 2001 between Vajpayee and Musharraf. Everything was going swimmingly well, the two foreign ministers having agreed to the entire wording and punctuation of the draft agreement when the summit was broken against the rock of those two tiny words "cross-border terrorism." Musharraf refused to accept the expression arguing (quite correctly) this was well-understood code for Pakistan's malfeasance; Vajpayee refused to sign the document till "cross-border terrorism" was put in. And thus began a 1,000 days of sometimes truly alarming military brinkmanship between the two neighbours.
Now at Islamabad, Musharraf has had his way. "Terrorism" certainly figures, as it figured at Lahore and Agra, but of "cross-border terrorism" there is no mention in the joint communiqué. Musharraf baulked and India blinked. Now five years of barren reiteration of the expression "cross-border terrorism" is being covered up. Our preconditions for dialogue were always wholly impractical. Cross-border terrorism will be ended when the dialogue reaches a fruitful conclusion. We have been making the desired outcome the pre-condition.
A dialogue is now promised but there is no recognition in the communiqué of the need for a structured dialogue, so structured as to keep the dialogue going, uninterrupted and uninterruptible, till both sides discover the modus vivendi that will enable India and Pakistan and, therefore, South Asia, to live in peace and work together toward prosperity. With India going to the polls in a few months, it is electoral compulsions, not sincerity, that has determined the phony peace at Islamabad.
-0-
Mani Shankar Aiyar is a member of Parliament for the Congress Party. His column appears weekly.