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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (15174)	12/31/2001 9:15:51 AM
From: arun gera	Respond to of 281500

>Presumably, the added stability to the economy is not just an incentive to his government, but to the Pakistani people, as well, as it should benefit businesses and people there. It matters not what it's called - incentive, agreement or bribe - it's a quid pro quo and it adds to his power to make further decisions in the interests of his nation.> You mean further decisions in the interest of Pakistani Military. Remember that Musharraf is a representative of the military and not of the Pakistani people, and their interests are not equivalent. The Pakistani military is doing Pakistan a great disservice. Musharraf may seem like he is staving off popular discontent from Islamists. The truth is that the Islamic parties have never done well in elections in Pakistan or India or the British India. The Muslim League was the party that wanted a separate Pakistan based on a dubious "two nation theory". Do you know that when the British were in power they carved up Muslim-dominated districts in India at the insistence of the Muslim League? The Muslim League had an abysmal election record in Muslim-dominated districts. The secular Congress party used to win big in muslim-dominated districts. Only in 1946 did the Muslim League win big. That one election was the basis for the formation of Pakistan. And don't fall for this Musharraf is nice guy syndrome. He may well be, but his interest is in power for himself and power for the Pakistani military elite. Isn't he now the President? Pakistan's history is full of Generals taking over in the interests of the country and then becoming Presidents. First there was Ayub Khan. I don't know if Yahya Khan became president. Then there was Zia-ul-Haq. And now it is Musharraf. And everyone of them was going to save Pakistan from corrupt governments.

To: SirRealist who wrote (15174)	12/31/2001 2:03:54 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A Pakistani Journalist's Viewpoint National honour is not on the line dawn.com By Ayaz Amir AT times such as these cliches come in handy. Faced with threats from India we should sink our differences, close ranks and rally round the flag and the commander-in-chief. There will be time enough to indulge the luxury of scepticism when the crisis passes. Precisely such an attitude took us into the folly of the 1965 war and the great tragedy of 1971 when half the country (or was it more than half?) just stood up and (and with no little Indian help) walked away. Patriotism is fine but any false notion of it should be no excuse for pulling down the shutters and refusing to think. What is the nature of the present heightened state of tension with India? We are faced with no Indian diktat regarding any aspect of national sovereignty. India, considering the circumstances propitious, is putting pressure on us to close down the 'jihadi' outfits which have been waging war (or whatever) in occupied Kashmir. For close on seven or eight years - that is, since 1994-95 when the Kashmir insurgency started being dominated by outside fighters - we could sustain this policy and get away with it. After September 11, and after our turnaround on the Taliban, it was for us to realize that the era of outside 'jihad' in Kashmir was over. What we failed to do on our own, we are being forced to do by the pressure of circumstances. National honour is not on the line. Only an aspect of national adventurism is being called into question. What sensible nations cannot sustain, they discard. When Britain could no longer afford to keep its empire it made a graceful exit from its colonies. France held on to its colonies long after it had the strength or ability to do so. The result was defeat in Vietnam (Dien Bien Phu) and rivers of blood in Algeria. The analogy doe not quite fit but the conclusion is clear. Clinging to a prize that is slipping from one's grasp is no sign of cleverness. What does 'Pakistan first' - the slogan raised by the Musharraf government in the first flush of its turnaround on Afghanistan - mean? If anything, it means that we should look to our own house and eschew foreign adventures. If this piece of priceless wisdom was relevant to Afghanistan, why not to Kashmir? We have been involved in occupied Kashmir for long. The world has come to know this in part because we blew our own disguise. Organizations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mushammad had a free run of the entire country, holding rallies and easily collecting funds and recruits. India has not invented the substance of the charges against the Lashkar or Jaish. It has merely used and exploited the evidence we ourselves had accumulated. After all, since when were covert wars allowed to have an overt face? But since the great policy-masters of Pakistan - stretching from GHQ to ISI - allowed this to happen, they are the authors of their own misfortune. Nor was this simply a question of our cover being blown. Our forward policy in Kashmir was already becoming unsustainable. After September 11 we should have done some fast thinking and clamped down on the 'jihadi' outfits ourselves without waiting for circumstances to catch up with us. But we let the moment pass and so, after Afghanistan, another turnaround is being forced on us. Thank God for US help here too. By outlawing the Lashkar and Jaish it has made it easier for us to take action against these two organisations. From the US we can take anything. But from India nothing. And why should we? The only problem is we keep putting ourselves in untenable positions - as in 1965, in 1971 and as indeed during the Kargil affair in 1999. We say India is the great enemy. But if enmity be measured by injuries inflicted, we have harmed ourselves more than anything India could have done. Maybe India is the incarnation of evil and harbours malevolent designs against us. But the answer to that is not to constantly decry its motives or intentions (Pakistan Television's favourite pastime) but to improve national performance to such an extent that we are beyond the effect of its evil eye. As for the present crisis, how strangely flat-footed in it we have been. We failed to appreciate the gravity of the attack on the Lok Sabha and the outrage it triggered in India. Some of the initial statements made by some of our officials could have been avoided. And what occasion for President Musharraf to say that India was being "arrogant" in recalling its high commissioner from Islamabad? Strong words ill-suited to the situation. Now the pressure is all from the Indian side while we are at the receiving end. Washington is trying to calm subcontinental nerves but it is being quite unambiguous in telling Pakistan to close down the machinery of Kashmiri 'jihad'. Once again it is we who are twisting in the wind. But this is one twisting that should be seen as necessary penance for past folly. The most difficult operation in war is a graceful retreat. This in peacetime is what we are being called upon to execute: a graceful exit from our unsustainable posture in Kashmir. First Afghanistan, now Kashmir. Such are the hard lessons we are having to learn. The talons we had spread in all directions we are being called upon to draw in. A good thing that this is taking place under the strategic umbrella of the US or else the pain would have been excruciating. But if this physical withdrawal is to mean anything it has to be accompanied by an ideological retraction in the army command and the intelligence agencies operating under its wings. The days of external adventurism are over. Time to look inwards at our domestic plate. On top of any domestic agenda must come the re-education of the ISI. It must look to its essential task of gathering intelligence and countering foreign espionage and abandon politics and foreign policy, the two fields it has completely messed up. This is a tall order but one which must be fulfilled if the moves in Kashmir and Afghanistan are to make any sense. Secondly, the army has to redefine its role in national life. Will it rule the roost and intervene at will in political matters or will it allow the political process to find its bearings over a period of time? True, politicians have made their mistakes and paid dearly for them. But it is the overbearing presence of the military which has retarded and distorted the political process. Today we find ourselves in a bizarre situation. The military cannot effectively manage national affairs on its own, all military strongmen having been disasters in one form or another. But repeated military interventions have turned politicians into pygmies, depriving them of the ability and confidence to shoulder national responsibilities. More than the waterlogging and salinity to hit our croplands, it is this desertification of politics which is our biggest problem. These are funny priorities, you will say. On the horizon the danger of war threatens while here I am speaking of a political restoration. But the two are inter-linked. It is the death of the political process, now and previously, which has led to the militarization of Pakistan's foreign policy and the repeated reverses we have suffered over the years. India's advantage lies not so much in numbers or size as in its democracy, and the consultative process that goes with it. We must overcome this advantage, not by raising further monuments to unrepresentative rule but by recognizing the separateness of the military and political spheres. Unless we get this right, we'll keep losing our way. It is not with any pleasure that a Pakistani recounts his nation's follies. Driving him is an overpowering sense of anger at the repeated spectacle of tiny coteries hijacking the nation's fortune. For their blunders the nation as a whole has then to pay the price. There is nothing wrong with the soil or air of Pakistan. Or indeed with its people, who, apart from a tendency to suffer fools in high places, have their eyes in the right direction. It is simply a problem of leadership which has cast shadows over a land that could easily be happy and prosperous.