It is as well that in his meeting with the Pakistan Prime Minister’s special emissary, VP Singh contented himself with the expression of India’s concern over Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist activities in Kashmir and Punjab. He should have done no more at this stage.
Some correspondents have read a warning in the Prime Minister’s reported observation to Abdul Sattar that “such things become difficult to manage if allowed to grow”. This apparently involves a flight of imagination. The observation is a statement of an obvious truth and nothing more should be read into it.
India faces a grave threat to its integrity. It needs a Prime Minister with a cool head and steady nerves. It cannot afford a Prime Minister who begins his ‘dialogue’ with a difficult neighbour with a warning, even if an implied one, which he may find difficult to implement. I hope VP Singh belongs to the first category and not the second.
It does not follow that I expect the Pakistani ruling establishment to be more ‘helpful’ in relation to the present government than it was to the previous one. But it does follow that we need to make careful calculations about Pakistan and use such diplomatic means as are available to us, and so long as they are available to us, to deal with Islamabad.
To begin with, we should, in my opinion, try to establish the purpose of Sattar’s mission. It is far from clear either why Benazir Bhutto thought it useful to send a special emissary to New Delhi in the context of greatly stepped up Pakistan-backed terrorist activities in Kashmir, or why she chose Sattar, who is known to have been a hardliner in his approach to us, for the mission. The mystery cannot but deepen if we note that Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, the US-endorsed representative of the military-bureaucratic elite in the Benazir government, is to follow Sattar for talks with VP Singh, his ministers and officials.
Conventional wisdom would have it that Benazir is in no position to end Pakistan’s support for Sikh and Kashmiri terrorists even if she were so inclined which itself must be open to question since any programme of bleeding India in Punjab and Kashmir must command wide support in Pakistan. To be candid, I too have shared and advocated this view. But in the new context when the post-war world, as we have known it, is dissolving rapidly, it may be advisable to be willing to re-examine old assumptions. For all we know, these assumptions may still be valid. But there is just a chance that something may have changed, or may be in the process of changing, or may possibly change.
The international scene is too fluid to admit of a clear and firm assessment. We are just in no position to engage in such an exercise. We shall have to wait for quite some time before the new power equations come anywhere close to becoming stable and we are able to formulate a general foreign-defence policy approach with any degree of confidence that it would not soon become infructuous. It follows that we just cannot work out a reasonably viable Pakistan policy for quite some time. For Pakistan has to be fitted into an overall framework.
Even so, a couple of tentative observations can perhaps be made in this regard. I underscore the adjective ‘tentative’ because the international situation is uncertain to the point of incomprehension. One cannot be too cautious in one’s observations. But since the alternative is silence, I proceed to make my points.
I attach considerable importance to the fact of the stalemate between the Soviet-backed Najib set-up in Kabul and US-Pakistan-Saudi-supported Mujahideen, and the aggravation of the conflict among the seven Mujahideen groups based in Peshawar to the point where it has come to take precedence over the common struggle against Kabul. I do not quite see how any possible deal between the United States and the Soviet Union can bring peace to Afghanistan. The Soviets may agree to end military supplies to Najib in return for a similar US decision in respect of the Mujahideen. But it does not necessarily follow that Najib would fall quickly. And what if he does fall? The PDPA set-up in Kabul could still survive. An alternative power grouping capable of replacing it does not exist. King Zahir Shah is certainly in no position to fill the vacuum the withdrawal of Soviet and US support to their clients would create.
There has been a lot of talk of convening a loi jirga (great assembly) to produce an interim government in Afghanistan which would in turn organise a general election. This is easier said than done. No one, literally no one, is in a position to organise a loi jirga worthy of the name. A general election in Afghanistan is a fantasy. The road to any kind of solution in Afghanistan is almost certain to be paved with a lot of blood.
Obviously I am in no position even to speculate how close are Washington and Moscow to a deal on Afghanistan. But I can say with same degree of confidence that such a deal can unleash a wave of anti-Americanism among sections of the Mujahideen, if not among sections of the Pakistani military establishment and that this can create serious problems for Islamabad.
These are tentative observations in a wholly unfamiliar and utterly fluid international situation. I would wish to repeat that I am not trying to make an assessment. Even so I find the Pakistan army chief, Aslam Beg’s talk of the Pakistanis and the Afghans being one people (with two states) and of Afghanistan (and Iran) providing depth to Pakistan in a future war with India beyond comprehension. I, therefore, wonder whether his extraordinarily bellicose statements on the occasion of the recent military exercise named Zarb-i-Momin (assault of the faithful) are essentially part of a jockeying for power in Pakistan not wholly visible and intelligible to us.
If my observations have any validity, some conclusions follow. First, we should not break the ‘dialogue’ with the Pakistanis, however grave the provocations from their side. Second, we must engage in intensive discussions with the Americans and the Russians. In this connection, it should not be necessary for me to emphasise that these discussions must be free from old shibboleths and appeals for, and expectations of, help by either. We need above all to explore their thinking so that we can formulate more clearly the options open to us.
If the United States has not been a good friend, it has not been an enemy either. Its military assistance to Pakistan between 1954 and 1965 was essentially a product of its perception of the Soviet threat and from 1980 onwards of the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. At the very least, Moscow has given up the competition with Washington. I am, therefore, doubtful that the Americans can have much interest in using Pakistan and Afghanistan as launching pads for moves aimed at detaching the predominantly Muslim Central Asia from the Soviet Union. The consequent accretion of strength to militant Islam can make life difficult for the West as a whole.
The US is already committed to provide military assistance to Pakistan in coming years. It is not likely to renege on this commitment. But as its interest in Pakistan (and South Asia as a whole) declines as a result of the end of the Soviet threat to it, it would, rationally, not wish to see the region plunged into chaos. It would, on its own, be opposed to a war between India and Pakistan and therefore to the stepping up of Pakistani support for the Sikh and Kashmiri terrorists, not to mention any move by Islamabad to unleash the Mujahideen into the valley.
Surprising though it may appear, I am inclined to take a similar view about the Chinese. I do not think they would encourage Pakistan to aggravate tensions with India. Engaged as they are in the well nigh impossible task of trying to preserve the communist political order in their country without going back on the policy of opening up the economy to private enterprise and foreign investment, they should, on logical grounds, advise caution in Islamabad.
For years 1 have believed and I continue to believe that the talk of friendship with Pakistan is not only so much hogwash but also irresponsible and dangerous, For, it further disarms our already disarmed people in the great battle of ideas and ideals which the very existence of Pakistan imposes on us and encourages the Pakistanis to believe that we are naive enough to be taken for a ride. The best that we can hope for is uneasy coexistence with Pakistan. The necessary precondition for such co-existence is military preparedness. When it comes to the crunch, that is the only guarantee of India’s integrity, as in 1947-48 and 1965 in respect of Kashmir.
The nature of the threat today is, however, clearly different from what it was in 1965. In 1965 there was no terrorism in either Punjab or Kashmir, the Pakistanis in fact could not even think in terms of infiltration into Punjab; they had to send their own armed men into the valley; and even then the expectation that the people there would rise in revolt against India did not materialise. Today they can operate from behind the safety of their own frontiers and promote terrorism and secessionism. There are enough locals to do the job for them. In that sense the situation is far more dangerous. But by the same token, it is both possible and desirable to concentrate, at least right now, on the domestic aspect of the threat.
To say this, however, is also to realise how inadequate has been, and remains, our leadership, both governmental and intellectual, for undertaking this task. The responsibility for the present situation must, of course, rest primarily with the previous set-up headed by Rajiv Gandhi. The administration in Jammu and Kashmir reached its nadir when he was Prime Minister and his party has been and remains a coalition partner of the National Conference in Srinagar.
His nominee, Sidhartha Shankar Ray, certified as governor of Punjab that the state was peaceful enough to go through elections to the Lok Sabha and thereby contributed directly and enormously to the cause of the terrorists. Indeed, even the awesome experience of the results of the Lok Sabha poll at gunpoint did not prevent Ray from recommending early elections to the state Vidhan Sabha as well. It is difficult to imagine a more irresponsible and dangerous move on the part of a man in so important an office. What is even worse, I for one have little doubt that Ray was acting at the behest of someone in Rajiv Gandhi’s entourage.
I refer to ‘Rajiv Gandhi’s entourage’ for two reasons. For one thing, I doubt that he had the patience and the stamina to go into the details of the situation in Punjab and, for another, I have heard a key Rajiv Gandhi adviser proclaim at an extremely important forum the desirability of direct negotiations with the “boys”. It will involve infraction of some accepted rules if I were to name the individual or the forum. But the more pertinent point, in any case, is that I find it difficult to dismiss the possibility that the ‘elections’ in Punjab were ordered in order to produce ‘leaders’ who could ‘legitimately’ speak in the name of the Sikh community and ‘negotiate’ on its behalf.
I am by no means certain that this was in fact the consensus among Rajiv Gandhi’s aides and I am even less sure that he would have sought to negotiate with Simranjeet Singh Mann, in the face of the impossible conditions Mann has been laying down, if he had been returned to office. I am only arguing that the previous government cannot bury its own follies under a flood of its present self-serving rhetoric.
But the malaise runs deeper and for that a number of individuals, prominent in the present government, and intellectuals are to no small extent responsible. The malaise goes by the name of a ‘political solution’.
One needs to be utterly innocent of developments in Punjab since 1982, especially since the murder of Sant Longowal in 1985, to believe that any Akali leader or group can survive an agreement with the government, so long as the terrorists have not been convincingly defeated. Bhindranwale and his armed gang kept Longowal and other Akali leaders suitably terrorised in the Golden Temple; even in the wake of ‘Operation Bluestar’ and other tragedies, including the murder of Indira Gandhi and the anti-Sikh riots, Badal and Tohra regarded it wise to keep away from the Rajiv-Longowal accord; one-third of the Akali MLAs found it expedient to dissociate themselves from Chief Minister Barnala when he ordered the police to enter the Golden Temple following the proclamation of Khalistan from there by a group of Pakistan-sponsored terrorists; Barnala himself agreed to clean shoes in various gurdwaras in expiation of the ‘sin’; Badal chose to side with the militants, apparently against his better judgement, because he did not want to risk getting killed; and, to cut a long story short, it is fully evident by now that Mann will not enter a meaningful dialogue with the government. For all practical purposes, it does not really matter whether his statements reflect his own thinking or whether he also lives in fear of his life.
And yet the talk of a political solution goes on. Too many of such men are now ranged behind VP Singh for comfort; it hurts me to have to point out that a key VP Singh aide in respect of Punjab not long ago re-educated the readers of a self-proclaimed embodiment of the free and fearless press into the old communist theory that India was not one nation but a collection of nationalities. Harsh realities are, of course, great teachers. Some of the advocates of ‘concessions’ are showing signs of coming to terms with the harsh truth. But the damage is done and their place is soon taken up by other suitably emasculated minds.
Sunday Mail, 14 January 1990