Pakistan’s Lame Lawmakers’ Resolution on Kashmir a Challenge for India

Sushant Sareen 

(Senior Fellow, VIF)

The highly provocative, extremely offensive, and utterly reprehensible resolution passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan condemning Indian ‘state sponsored brutalities’ and demanding the handing over the body of executed terrorist Afzal Guru to his family, allowing people to freely practise their religion (this coming from a state where an open season has been declared on Shias, Hindu girls are abducted and forcibly converted and Christians are subjected to the worst sort of Islamofascism), pulling out of security forces from Kashmir and repealing all ‘black laws’ in the Indian state, release of all ‘political prisoners’, implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions, and promising political, moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiris, has predictably enough raised the hackles in India.

While on the one hand the resolution has given an indication of the direction in which things are likely to move as far as Pakistan's export of terrorism in Kashmir is concerned, on the other hand it has exposed all the manufactured bonhomie and double-talk being indulged by the Pakistani politicians who tried to beguile Indian policy makers into believing that there was a political consensus in Pakistan in favour of normalisation of relations with India. Since around 1997, India has been sold the nonsense that neither Kashmir nor India is any longer an issue in Pakistani elections. The real reason why India and Kashmir didn’t figure as an election issue was that there was a broad based political consensus in Pakistan in favour of exporting jihad and delivering a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ to India. Since no one opposed this policy there was no gain to be made by raking this issue at the hustings.

Over the last few years, however, an impression had gained ground that the political consensus inside Pakistan in favour of export of jihad was breaking down. Not surprisingly, some political players smelled an opportunity to agitate on this issue to increase their vote bank. But the moment one player tries to exploit this issue, all others start falling over each other to swear their commitment to snatching Kashmir from India. The unanimous passage of this resolution bears out that no one in Pakistan is willing to question, much less stand up against, the Jihadist policy of the State. What this does to the policy of appeasement towards Pakistan being followed by the Manmohan Singh government and to the expressed desire of the Indian Prime Minister who had declared that he would think he had done his job well if he managed to normalise relations with Pakistan can well be imagined.

Apologists for Pakistan in India will of course argue that too much should not be read into this resolution which has been made for purely political reasons by legislators who are about to go in for fresh elections. After all, notwithstanding all the hyperbole of this National Assembly having made the ‘historic achievement’ of completing it term, the fact remains that in many ways it was an effete and powerless collection of people whose resolutions were not worth the paper they were written on because these resolutions were observed more in their violation. What is more, these ‘elected representatives’ of the people of Pakistan are perhaps the meekest and weakest part of the Pakistani state and are treated with contempt by the overbearing judiciary, meddling military and self-righteous media. And yet, this is a resolution that cannot and should not be ignored, both because it reflects the unremitting hostility towards India of the political class in Pakistan, as well as for what this resolution portends in terms of another upsurge in export of jihadi terrorism to India.

To the extent that this resolution is a mea culpa on part of the Pakistani state for its involvement in the dastardly attack on the Indian Parliament, it needs to be welcomed. Pakistan, it seems, has finally officially taken ownership of Afzal Guru and his terrorist action and accepted that he was a Pakistani agent working at the behest of his Pakistani masters to attack the Indian Parliament. The resolution is a tacit acknowledgement of Guru’s links with the Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the terrorist outfits involved in the Parliament attack. The mover of the resolution, Maulana Fazlur Rehman (better known as Maulana Diesel for his involvement in Diesel smuggling) is a Deobandi cleric who shares fraternal links with Deobandi terror groups like the JeM, Harkatul Mujahideen, Sipah-e-Sahaba, not to mention the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Rehman also happens to be the Chairman of the Kashmir Committee of the Pakistani Parliament, which is basically an organisation for providing foreign junkets to Pakistani politicians at the expense of the bankrupt government of Pakistan.

The Maulana, who also happens to be leading an effort to effect a rapprochement between the Pakistani authorities and the TTP, probably intends to use this resolution not only to cement his credentials as a dyed-in-wool jihadist who stands firm on the so-called ‘Kashmir cause’, but also to appease terror groups like TTP which have been threatening retaliation against India for the hanging of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru. The same Maulana had in 2001-02 issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Americans and the notoriety as well as popularity he gained catapulted him to the position of Leader of Opposition (he was actually more of a lap dog of the Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf) in the National Assembly that came into existence after the 2002 elections. The Maulana’s party, Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-F) also formed governments in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, which were used to promote Talibanisation in both these provinces.

Perhaps, a similar game is once again being played by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, only this time it isn’t the US but India which is being targeted. In the process, the Maulana, who has been a frequent visitor to India where he has tried to convince his Indian interlocutors of his bonafides and his intense and sincere desire to play a role in improving Indo-Pak relations, has more or less burnt his bridges with India. He is unlikely to be welcome anymore in this country. He has only proved his detractors, who pointed to the undesirable company he kept and his links with extremist and terrorist groups, right. For the sake of playing to the gallery back home in the hope of winning some brownie points and perhaps a few extra votes, he has effectively become a persona non grata in India.

But if people like Fazlur Rehman are becoming an anathema for India, their acceptability is growing among the Americans. If anything, the Americans seem to have given a free hand to Pakistani Islamists as part of their plan to exit from the region. Just recently, the US Ambassador to Islamabad held a meeting with Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Subsequently, the US envoy told the Pakistani media that the situation in Terror Central (North Waziristan) was something that Pakistan had to sort out domestically, thereby indicating that the US was willing to turn a blind eye to a terrorist safe haven in return for Maulana Fazlur Rehman using his influence and contacts to push forward with the ‘reconciliation process’ in Afghanistan. Worse, with two utterly clueless apologists for Pakistan now at the helm of affairs at the State Department and Pentagon, the US policy on Islamist terrorism is likely to undergo a major transformation with appeasement of Pakistan and turning a blind eye to its use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy becoming the order of the day as a quid pro quo for safe passage out of Afghanistan for Western troops. The result is an emboldening of Pakistan, and its natural corollary is the political and military adventurism that is being seen on Kashmir and the recent acts of terrorism in other parts of India.

India cannot afford to let this challenge to go unanswered. Not only does India need to disabuse the Pakistanis and the Americans of the notion that they can trifle with India for their own ends, but more importantly, the political class in India, especially the Manmohanistas need to disabuse themselves of the notion that Pakistan is genuinely interested in normalisation of relations with India. Instead of formulating policy on the basis of the sweet-talk coming from Pakistani politicians who neither control any wing of the ISI nor command a single division of the Pakistan army (comprising of jihadis, some in uniform, others in mufti), India would be better served by seeing action on the ground by the Pakistanis to prove their bonafides. The unanimous resolution passed by the Lok Sabha is the first right step in this direction. This needs to be followed up by setting metrics on the basis of which Pakistan’s intentions will be judged. Equally important, India needs to stop giving the unnecessary and unwarranted importance to the mythical Pakistani civil society which is nothing more than a powerless, if also vocal, fringe group comprising around 500 (and if you want to be very charitable, 5000) people. Most of all, India needs to stop depending on the US for pulling its chestnuts out of the fire. The US will do what is in its interest and if this means sacrificing India’s interests, then so be it. India, therefore, needs to prepare itself for the coming wave of terrorism and develop capabilities to counter this scourge as well as pay back the adversary in more than equal measure.

Pakistanitis Bug Bites Yet Again

Sushant Sareen

For over six decades now, there is one issue on which successive Indian Prime Ministers have insisted on committing the same mistake again and again, refusing to learn anything from the bitter experiences of their predecessors. This peculiar Indian syndrome is called ‘Pakistanitis’. It is essentially an ailment which involves an inexplicable desire on the part of every Indian Prime Minister to be the one to settle all problems and disputes with Pakistan and usher in an era of peace, stability, friendship and prosperity in the region. The quest for this chimerical peace deal is always in utter disregard of the ground realities and flies in the face of information and intelligence inputs which militate against the possibility of any major breakthrough in relations with Pakistan.

Some Indian Prime Ministers have reached out to Pakistan after losing a war and under pressure from Pakistan's Western patrons (Jawaharlal Nehru after the 1962 debacle); others after winning wars and then frittering away the gains on the negotiating table in the fond hope of achieving lasting peace (Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent after 1965 war, Atal Behari Vajpayee in 1999 after the Kargil war when he invited Gen Pervez Musharraf to Agra and again when he entered into a peace process in 2004 following the military stand-off after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, and even Indira Gandhi at Shimla after the 1971 war); still others who not only succumb to the delusion of Pakistan's changed attitude towards India, but are also influenced by the utterly false notion sold to them by some aides, analysts and officials (people whose analysis and opinions always change according to what the man they seek to ingratiate desires) that the time was ripe to enter into a ‘Grand Bargain’ (read appeasement) to sort out issues with the hostile neighbouring country (Morarji Desai in the late 1970s, Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, IK Gujral with his ‘Gujral Doctrine’ in the 1990s and now Manmohan Singh since 2004 and even more since the 26/11 attacks in 2008). Needless to say, they have all had to bite the dust with nothing to really show for their labours. And yet, this obsession – actually more of a psychological ailment – persists with no cure in sight.

It is not just Indian Prime Ministers who tend to go overboard on the issue of Pakistan; the Indian public as well as the intellectual class, think-tankers, media personnel and what have you, is not much better. There are some common fallacies and fantasies that invariably guide the Indian public’s thinking process on Pakistan. These are as follows:

a) Personal friendships and relationships are often extrapolated to the political and the national level and it is imagined that the two states can share a relationship similar to that between individuals.

b) Social courtesies and overwhelming hospitality extended by Pakistanis (more a cultural characteristic rather than a sign of a desire for good relations) is often misinterpreted as a genuine change of heart.

c) A tendency to take things at face value. For instance, some senior Pakistani official (serving or retired) will always be quoted to buttress the case for reaching out to Pakistan. That the Pakistani interlocutor being quoted might not be telling the truth or may be telling a half-truth is something that is blithely ignored. Despite deception being one of the oldest tricks in the book, the Indians refuse to believe that they are being led up the garden path.

d) Greater value seems to be attached to words and optics rather than to actions on the ground that would actually prove the genuineness of the words.

e) Policy analysis and recommendations are made not on the basis of reality on the ground as it is but as it is imagined to be. Worse, these recommendations are based on interactions with the ‘usual suspects’ (many of them very decent, upright and genuine people who are nothing more than a fringe group, or if you will, an endangered species). What is more, Pakistan's window to the world is a bunch of around 500 extremely articulate people who interface with the rest of the world and are reasonableness personified. In the process, the grim, and often ugly reality, of what Pakistan is really up to tends to get brushed under the carpet.

f) Finally, there is the old and by now done-to-death ‘saviour complex’ suffered by Indians who are always ready to try and save Pakistan from itself. The way this works is that sometimes the threat of a military takeover and at other times the threat of a mullah takeover is waved frantically to present a case for making concessions to Pakistan. It is argued that India needs to seize the opportunity (short-hand for a compromise by India) to reach out to a beleaguered Pakistani regime (and/or Pakistani state) which in turn will eagerly and gratefully accept the Indian gesture and pave the way for ‘peace for all times’. It is of course quite another matter that every time India has done this, it has ended with the worst of both worlds: it has conceded ground to Pakistan without being able to save the regime for whose sake the concessions were made in the first place.

All these elements have once again come into play. India is being told that Pakistan has realised the folly of its ways and was now genuinely interested in peace and normalisation of relations with its eastern neighbour. The economic crunch coupled with the threat of Talibanisation and the deterioration of relations with the West have left Pakistan with no choice but to seek a peace deal with India, which should seize the moment. In order to strengthen the hands of the beleaguered Pakistani regime and convince the Pakistani public of the efficacy of the dialogue process, India should ‘pluck the low hanging fruit’ i.e. settle the Siachen and Sir Creek issues, which will give a fillip to the peace process. Interactions with Pakistani interlocutors, especially retired military officials, on the track-II circuit are offered as evidence of the changed mindset in Pakistan. The clincher is that India must strengthen the hands of moderate forces in Pakistan to isolate the radical Islamists who could otherwise takeover the Pakistani state.

There is however complete silence – both from within the Indian establishment and without – on the question of what Pakistan has done in tangible terms to convince India that a paradigm shift has been affected in Pakistan's strategic perception of India. Indeed, none of the metrics – to name just a few, stopping the export of terrorism and dismantling the infrastructure of terror directed against India, ending the inimical actions against India in Afghanistan, giving up their irredentist claims over the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, altering the school curriculum that portrays Hindus as Untermensch, stopping hostile propaganda (including the ISI-sponsored Difa-e-Pakistan Council which is whipping up anti-India sentiment and inciting people to violence against India) – that would conclusively indicate that the changes in Pakistan’s attitude towards India are not merely a tactical adjustment aimed at keeping the Eastern border settled at a time when the economy is tanking, tumultuous developments are unfolding on the Western front, and relations with the NATO/ISAF countries are on the downswing, are anywhere to be seen. The only thing on offer is the forward movement on the trade front – Pakistan has shifted from a positive list to a negative list of trading items pending grant of MFN status to India by the end of the 2012 – which is being sold as a huge concession on the part of Pakistan.

Bluntly put, liberalising the trading regime with India would have been a concession only if one side (India) stood to gain from it. The fact, however, is that Pakistan hopes to benefit as much from trade with India as India expects to profit from it and as such normalising trade relations cannot be called a concession on the part of Pakistan. True, opening trade with India would not have been possible for the civilian government in Pakistan without the concurrence of the top military brass. But this is less out of a change of heart and more out of economic compulsions and the need to protect the corporate interests of the Pakistan military. In any case, while normalisation of trade between India and Pakistan needs to be celebrated for its intrinsic value, it would be a delusional to treat trade as some sort of a magic bullet or a game-changer which will develop such strong vested interests in both countries making conflict and hostility a thing of the past. Quite simply, the level of mutual interdependence that could bring about such a state of affairs is years, if not decades, away. And even then, there is no guarantee that burgeoning trading relations will drastically reduce tensions between the two countries and help in resolving outstanding issues between them – remember the 1965 war when despite sharing close economic relationship and enjoying a very healthy trade surplus, Pakistan imposed war on India?

With the move by Pakistan towards granting MFN status to India being falsely projected as a big concession, the turn-the-other-cheek liberals in India have now started mounting pressure on the government to return the ‘favour’ by settling the Siachen and Sir Creek disputes more or less on Pakistani terms. Quite asides the fact that there is an astounding amount of ignorance about the nature of these disputes and the correctness of the Indian position, there is also a cavalier disregard for the strategic and tactical implications of settling these disputes on Pakistan's terms. Unfortunately, this attitude is also to be found in sections of the government who are very keen to push forward with the peace process with Pakistan regardless of the costs it entails. So much so that some top government officials (close to retirement and desperately eyeing a cushy post-retirement job) are stoutly defending the proposal to export 5000 mw of electricity to Pakistan as a goodwill gesture despite large parts of India is reeling under massive power shortages!

Notwithstanding the breakthrough of sorts on the trade front, the inherent limitations of what the revived peace process can achieve should be staring India in the face. Even though President Asif Zardari has always been interested in normalising relations with India, and in the first few months of his government he did try to break the logjam, his efforts were effectively stymied by the military establishment. Today, the limits of how far he can go in resolving issues with India is circumscribed not just by the Pakistan army but also by his own dwindling political capital. With Pakistan practically in an election mode, Zardari is hardly in a position to deliver anything tangible on any of India’s important metrics. If anything, he will be seeking to extract something substantial from India which he could then capitalise on to improve his party’s political prospects. Unfortunately for him, even if India did give him something, it won’t be of much help to him at the hustings. The problem is also that the weak and increasingly unpopular government of Dr Manmohan Singh is today in no position to make the grand gesture that Zardari might be seeking. Neither the Congress party, nor the opposition, is likely to support such a measure by the Manmohan Singh government.

Chances are, therefore, that while both India and Pakistan will for the foreseeable future continue with the process of engagement, no big breakthrough can be expected. The relationship will remain transactional with perhaps some incremental progress on the issues that are on the table. Come to think of it, until and unless the ‘mother of all problems’ between India and Pakistan is addressed – Pakistan’s pernicious Islamofascist ideology that renders it incapable of living in peace with India – it is practically impossible to have normal, let alone friendly, relations between the two countries.

Tail-piece: There is a lot of talk that the Zardari visit was part of a ‘Made in China’ peace process. If so, then all the more reason for scepticism because the odds are that like most Chinese made products, this peace process won’t be very durable!

Author is Senior Fellow in Vivekananda International Foundation