India-Pakistan relations and Kashmir
By INAYATULLAH November 29, 2008 The stunning terrorist attacks in Mumbai are bound to have serious and far-reaching repercussions. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's reaction has been rash and impulsive. He not only pointed an accusing finger at Pakistan but also administered a veiled threat to a neighbouring country. Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi who is in India, these days holding talks with his counterpart Pranab Mukharji while expressing grief at the horrendous tragedy rightly cautioned India not to "jump to the conclusion" and avoid "knee-jerk" articulations. He cited the Samjhota Express case when too Pakistan was accused while the recent disclosure has revealed the involvement in the carnage of a serving officer of the Indian Army Lt Colonel P.S. Prohet.
The line taken by Shah Mahmood needs to be followed resolutely by the government of Pakistan. Messers Zardari and Gilani will be well advised to press for an international probe into the incident if New Delhi persists in heaping the blame on Islamabad.
Zardari, of late, has been going out of the way to please India. Somewhat ineptly, he is reported to have remarked that "India has never been a threat to Pakistan" that Kashmiris struggling for their right of self-determination and freedom were "terrorists" (later sought to be clarified by a foreign office spokesman that it was a misquotation). Most recently surprisingly enough, he glibly proposed the alteration of a part of our nuclear doctrine about its "first use". (When Prime Minister Gilani was asked by an anchor of a private TV channel in his show that whether Zardari had consulted him before making this important statement while talking to an Indian audience, Gilani hummed and hawed, failing to provide a straight answer.)
Again at Zardari's bidding, it appears, all three routes into Pakistan in Sindh, Punjab and even the Northern Areas (Kargil to Skardu) have been declared open to traffic from India. He further is talking about an unhindered trade regime with India and is in favour of South Asia economic union without even a ritualistic reference to Kashmir. In other words, he is willing to concede and present on a platter all that India has been asking for, for the last many years.
Much will be said and written about the culprits who perpetrated the horrible attacks in Mumbai, in the days to come. Three factors, inter alia may be considered relevant. One, the rising resentment amongst Indian Muslims for the way they (and the Kashmiris) have been and are being treated by the government and extremist Hindus. The demolition of the Babri Mosque and the slaughter of the Muslim community in Gujarat are examples of the insane and provocative behaviour of the majority community. Also one has only to read Justice Rajinder Sachar's Report to see how the Muslims as a whole have been marginalised and deprived of their legitimate share in the government services and other spheres, literally reducing them to the level of Dalits and the destitute. They also have been suffering grievously at the hands of the Indian intelligence agencies and the police.
The 'second factor' relates to Kashmir where more than a million Indian troops aided by the police have let loose a reign of state terror for the last two decades. There is hardly a house in the Srinagar valley which has not been a victim of the state repression. Almost 100000 Kashmiris have lost their lives.
Thousands of women have been raped and tens of thousands of young men have "disappeared". For years fake elections have been held and human rights blatantly violated. The recent peaceful upsurge with lakhs of Kahmiris coming out to protest peacefully against the government has proved to the hilt, as admitted by some of the leading civil society activists and writers, that a vast majority of Kashmiris are totally alienated and unwilling to live under the Indian occupation.
Mention in particular may be made of the internationally renowned Indian writer Arundhati Rai who has denounced India's military hold on Kashmir and has clearly asked New Delhi to seriously review its untenable position and let Kashmiris have the freedom they have been struggling for. One wonders how the Indian administration has managed to stage a large turnout at the elections with so much of the security forces marching up and down the towns and villages and with curfew clamped, most of the time, at most of the places.
Although recent protests have been peaceful, terroristic activities as a desperate resort by the oppressed Kashmiris just cannot be ruled out. The 'third factor' could be the jihadi elements who have suffered at the hands of the Americans and the British in Afghanistan and FATA and who are angry at the Indian involvement with these foreign forces (and also deeply resent Indian atrocities in Kashmir).
It is noteworthy, in fact odd that the Pakistan government has taken little notice of the attention recently paid to the Kashmir question internationally. Out of the blue, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general during his recent visit to India, referred to the Kashmir dispute and highlighted the need for resolving it. Hardly a word was heard from the Prime Minister of Pakistan or the foreign office about this welcome development.
President-elect Obama too, during his election campaign, underscored the urgent need for settling the Kashmir issue. He has rightly identified Kashmir as the cause of friction and conflict between India and Pakistan. His logic: once the Kashmir dispute is resolved, Pakistan's relations with India could be normalised enabling Islamabad to concentrate on the terrorists in FATA and thus help US/NATO forces to pursue the War On Terror effectively.
Whatever be the thinking of the American president-elect, Islamabad needs to take advantage of this revival of interest in the Kashmir issue by the superpower and make the best of this sudden turn of circumstances. The former Pakistan Chief of the Army Staff, General (retd) Jehangir Karamat speaking at a seminar organised at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, in London the other day, rightly emphasised that the whole problem between Indian and Pakistan and the resultant regional security dimension has everything to do with the Kashmir dispute.
He pointed out that the elections held in the Indian Occupied Kashmir had not been able to end dissatisfaction of the Kashmiris. The indigenous movement for the right of self-determination had been strengthened with the passage of time. The urgency for the two countries, according to him, now is "to find a common solution to the terrorism issue by settling bilateral issues including Kashmir as it would lead them to cooperate rather than confront and would contribute massively to the region."
The question is if the PPP led by Zardari has let the Kashmiris down and is reluctant to avail of the opportunity provided by the UN secretary general and the American president-elect in resolving the decades old dispute, why is the PML-N led by Nawaz Sharif so negligent of taking up the issue nationally and internationally? Why not call for an all parties' conference on Kashmir, develop a multi-faceted strategy to mobilise public opinion and trigger an initiative at the international level. The persisting flagrant violation of human rights and the recent escalation of repression in the occupied valley-with Hurriat leaders locked up in their houses (and some of them thrown in to jails) calls for starting an international movement to effectively highlight the Indian inhuman and unacceptable behaviour.
Let Nawaz Sharif lead a mission of the top leaders of the political parties to Washington and New York to meet Obama and Ban Ki-moon to strengthen their resolve to help finally settle the fifty one years old internationally recognised dispute.
The writer is an ex-federal secretary and ambassador
E-mail: pacade@brain.net.pk