As India surges to greater heights, the Pakistani flag flies on a smoking rubble heap of failure, "green" with envy. One of the challenges the oracle faces is to remain objective and desist from taking sadistic delight in the great predicament of our mortal enemy ... and sometimes it is a losing battle. While China, which has strung together an alliance of dictators and threatens the subcontinent with an explosion of lethal energy, Pakistan is imploding... in the pervasive nuclear rhetoric in this part of the world, the danger from China is that of fusion while the danger in Pakistan is one of fission. This week, we take a point by point look at the many contradictory forces that threaten to tear apart India's estranged (and by now, hardly recognizable) cousin. Before we start, let us take a moment to absorb a metaphor for terrorism:"Hindu legends tell of the Rakshasa (demon) called Raktabeej; he had a boon that every time an enemy spilled his blood on the ground, another demon would stand up to assist him. Such is the inevitable paradox of Islamic fundamentalism: unless we attack them they will take over the world and each time we strike a blow, they become stronger"
"Behead those who call Islam a violent religion."- The Fundamentalist Forces
This cartoon alongside, along with eleven others, published in the innocuous Jyllands-Posten began a sequence of events in September 2005 that led to the death of more than one hundred people. When we are dealing with such frightening levels of intolerance, it behooves us to be proceed with extreme caution. Pakistan is NOT a victim of terrorism: in the Islamic World, fundamentalist forces do not manifest themselves as terrorism in the traditional sense; they are a part of a bloody power struggle along the lines of a civil war. There is no reason to assume that Musharraf does not make as many false promises to the fundamentalists as he makes to the Americans. A case in point is the recent admission of the Pakistani government that they had, in fact, inked a deal with "tribal chieftains" on the Pak-Afghan border. Last heard, neither side was keeping its end of the deal. It is important, however, to note that the mullahs and the military see each other as adversaries.The Pakistani military
The Pakistani military retains its ability to act as a first-rate strike force. Although Musharraf retains his stranglehold on the military, it is easy to see why he was so reluctant to give way, howsoever little, on this issue and shed his uniform . As mentioned before, the Pakistani military is the main combatant in the civil war against the fundamentalist elements.The good news about the Pakistan army is that the United States owns them, body and soul. This means that, despite all the sabre-rattling and angry shaking of fists, there is no real prospect of them having a go at India, except in a worldwide doomsday scenario.
The bad news is that Pakistan has acquired nuclear weapons; which means that both India and the United States need to keep tabs on the progress of events in Pakistan.
There is very little that India can accomplish, diplomatically. Despite all the confidence building measures (CBM's), both sides in the civil war have an all-consuming hatred of India and therefore any Indian initiative, no matter how well intended is bound to be misconstrued to our detriment. Our only realistic chance is to exercise influence through Washington. Given that the interests of both India and the US in this part of the world differ only in minute details and not in broad outline, this is a very achievable goal. A peaceful Pakistan is so highly improbable that India must settle for the next best thing: A Pakistan so absorbed in internal conflict that it is not in a position to disrupt the workings of the civilized world, either in overt or in covert ways. Though unpalatable to us, we must stomach the fact that without American aid to the Pakistani army, the balance might tilt in favour of the Taliban. In its own weird way, Pakistan's nuclear capability works to our advantage, since their army sees the nukes as a permanent guarantee against Indian invasion, they can focus on their unending internal strife.
The Kashmir issue
Of late, the Kashmir issue has receded too far into the background, as the battle of wills between India and Pakistan has become just another front in the standoff between the Islamic and the Democratic world... it is interesting to see how the spirit of the times moves along... who would have guessed a decade ago, that in an article on India - Pakistan relations; Kashmir would have become an afterthought!The dream of retrieving Kashmir in its entirety and splendour might strike a cord. But we need to ponder: do we really stand to gain by pushing the Kashmir issue any further? How much are we willing to risk for a barren piece of land swarming with terrorists? Will it really help to recreate an Israel-Palestine style conflict zone a few hundred miles from our capital? Is it not simply better to move on and scale new heights of international prestige rather than spill blood on the Himalayas?
In summary, the Oracle maintains that, in the 21st Century, Pakistan should be viewed as a distracting detail and not the object of our foreign policy.
2 comments:
Apart from the nuances of internal political upheavals, there is probably an important fundamental reason behind the status of Pakistan as a chronically ill nation state, which has been very rightly pointed out by KPS Gill. That is the problem of identity. Pakistan (Land of Pure) was created ostensibly as an ideological Islamic state, a refuge for the Muslims of the subcontinent from their “suppression” in a Hindu-majority India. However, the actual truth lay elsewhere; possibly in the towering political ambitions of an ousted Muslim elite (who rightly saw little political prospect in a secular democratic India), fomented and abetted by the British raj. It is in the light of this subtext that one can give logical explanation to the persecution and ultimate segregation of East Bengal, the unending regional strife in the grossly reduced (and again, purportedly homogeneous) post-1971 Pakistan .... it stands exemplified by the fact that a matter of foreign policy like Kashmir has become a defining political idea of Pakistan, indicative of the prevailing ideological bankruptcy. The Pakistani society finds itself doomed to a state of perpetual confusion, a profound crisis of identity. The whole question as to why it exists, what is its defining identity as a nation, is perhaps one with no answer. May be this is the malaise at the heart of all of Pakistan's political problems ... attempts at “rescuing” Pakistan from its troubles is perhaps not merely flogging a dead horse, but in fact flogging a horse that never existed in the first place. In this light, Pakistan may not be a mere “failed state”, but actually a “failed idea”.
I agree that this might well be the crux of the problem. Though, Bangladesh has now degenerated into confusion, not exactly dissimilar from Pakistan, the separation initially did come about because of socialist-secular leanings in the East. Perhaps hatred for India is all they could find to define themselves; something that was not altogether impossible in the paranoid cold war atmosphere. I wonder if the crisis has, therefore, been deepened by the post cold war friendship between India and the US and peace initiatives by India. Perhaps one can smell despair in the way the miltary acted in Kargil in the days following Vajpayee's historic trip to Lahore.
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