Pakistan has administered a rude shock to India on Kashmir. It has served notice that it shall continue to support terrorism in the valley and agitate the issue at every international forum available to it. Our attention is, therefore, understandably focussed on the Pakistani aspect of the problem. But this approach is clearly lopsided. In my view, by itself it is bound to confuse rather than illuminate the challenge we face. We have to try and grasp the problem from our (Kashmiri) side as well.
This is not an invitation to a fresh and endless repetition of the soft-headed prattle that has become the staple of what passes for political discourse in our country; in any case, the talk of redressing the ‘legitimate’ grievances of the Kashmiri people, of promoting economic ‘development’ so that the ‘educated’ youth can find ‘suitable’ employment and of restoration of ‘popular’ rule will go on. Mine is an appeal for a proper recognition of the stark truth that the rise of terrorism in the valley is threatening to transform the nature of the Kashmir problem and that we cannot now hope to deal with it on the old basis.
The transformation process is still in its early stages and can perhaps be contained if the VP Singh government does not allow itself to be deflected by the kind of talk Jyoti Basu has already initiated. But it cannot be reversed in the sense that terrorism cannot be eliminated from the valley. That would require either a total change of policy on the part of Pakistan or a successful war with it. The first can be ruled out on the ground that Pakistan is neither willing nor able to think in those terms, and the second on the ground that Islamabad, unlike in 1965 and 1971, is not likely to ‘oblige’ us.
Terrorism in the valley is, of course, to a large extent the handiwork of Pakistan. It has trained, armed and financed the terrorists. But it is equally necessary to look at the other side of the sorry development – the presence in the valley of young men who have been willing to be so trained and armed. The number of these young men may still be small. But that does not detract from the inference that a striking change has taken place in the valley.
The Pakistani leaders, political, military and bureaucratic, do not appear to possess the wisdom to recognise the dangers inherent in this development for their own country and can, therefore, be expected to do all in their power to promote it.
They could, however, have continued to do so quietly, as so far, and to disown, as in the case of Punjab, responsibility for terrorism in the valley. Instead, they have chosen not only to go public but to do so in a threatening manner. Sahebzada Yaqub Khan’s radio-TV broadcast last Tuesday provides confirmation for the official Indian statement that he adopted a highly belligerent stance in his discussions with the Minister for External Affairs, Inder Kumar Gujral, last week. To be candid, I am baffled. No explanation readily springs to mind. I have to look for one.
Though I would not wish to rule out the possibility altogether, I am reluctant to accept the proposition that the Pakistan leadership is about to repeat the folly it committed in 1965. The Ayub regime then made two assumptions. First, that India had a weak and indecisive Prime Minister in Lal Bahadur Shastri, and second, that it had only to send a few thousand armed infiltrators into the valley to promote a mass uprising there. By the same token, it can now conclude that VP Singh is incapable of strong and swift action, that terrorist activities in the valley have already acquired the potentiality of a mass uprising and that this potentiality can be realised if only Pakistan comes out openly in their support. But I for one regard it highly unlikely that the Pakistani leadership is so imbecile and ill-informed.
VP Singh and his colleagues may still be dithering in Punjab; they may also have sent a wrong signal in Kashmir when they agreed to the release of five terrorists in return for the Home Minister’s daughter, Rubaiya Sayeed; but since then they have acted with firmness and determination in Kashmir. And as for the terrorists, they can at best (or at worst) be said to have provided only a first significant demonstration of their capacity and resolve; it will obviously be a long time before they acquire, if they do so at all, the kind of power and hold which can possibly persuade Pakistan to take the big jump towards a direct confrontation with India.
In 1965 the United States was, for some reason, prepared to look the other side when Pakistan first tested India’s resolve (or lack of it) in the Rann of Kutch and then sent armed infiltrators into the valley. I doubt whether it will now be similarly tolerant of a major misdemeanour on the part of Pakistan. And even then it cut off military supplies to Pakistan which incidentally were resumed only 15 years later and that too in the context of Soviet military presence in Afghanistan.
It may be relevant to note in this connection not only the State Department official spokesman’s statement, favouring Indo-Pakistan talks on the basis of the Shimla agreement, but also an address by Richard N. Haas, Special Assistant to President Bush on South Asia, to the Asia Society in New York on January 11. He said: “Cooperation against terrorism is another area where both countries (India and Pakistan) can benefit. A firm commitment by governments to work against individuals and groups fomenting separatism and violence in the other would be an important step. So too would be intelligence sharing and joint police-military patrols of relevant border areas.”
The Pakistani rulers cannot also be indifferent either to the stance (helpful to the Soviet Union) that the Bush administration has taken in respect to the secessionist agitation in Azerbaijan, or to the marked improvement in Sino-Indian relations leading, if Subhas Chakrabarty’s report in the Times of India of February 1 is accurate, to a dramatic 50 per cent reduction in the military deployment on the Indo-Tibetan border.
This assessment, however, only complicates our task of finding a viable explanation for Pakistan’s behaviour. Gujral has said that the on-going power struggle in Pakistan (represented by Benazir Bhutto and President Ishaque) accounts for it. That possibility cannot be ruled out, especially if we remember that Yaqub Khan was Zia’s Foreign Minister as well and continues to speak for the military establishment, and if we note that by suddenly raising the ante with India, the military establishment has once again seized the initiative. Benazir may shriek against India but someone in the military headquarters in Islamabad will be calling the shots. It is not an accident that Yaqub Khan, rather than Nusrat Bhutto, addressed the nation on Kashmir. And I hear that Nawaz Sharif, the anti-Bhutto Punjab Chief Minister, is a Kashmiri by descent. But the internal power struggle cannot be the sole, or even the main, explanation for the deliberate decision to take up a hostile to posture towards India. At least so I feel.
A simple explanation is rather seductive. It can well be argued that the Pakistani leaders were taken as much by surprise as the Indians by the sudden explosion of terrorism in the valley and found it both necessary and expedient to be seen to be supporting it. If that was indeed the case, Yaqub Khan could well have had the Pakistani audience in view when he spoke to his Indian counterpart. This possibility is reinforced by the difference in the posture adopted by Benazir Bhutto’s special emissary, Abdul Sattar, who visited New Delhi only a week or so earlier than Yaqub Khan.
But it would be equally plausible to suggest that Sattar came on a preliminary survey of the Indian scene and that his report served as the basis of the brief prepared for Yaqub Khan by the power holders in Islamabad. That would, however, imply that Sattar encouraged them to conclude either that an aggressive posture was justified by the situation in the valley, or that it would help encourage the terrorists and their supporters there. Either way it would imply a return to the 1965 approach which I do not believe the Pakistani leaders are incompetent enough to adopt.
I am also reluctant to accept that they are so clever that with the end of the cold war in sight, they have foreseen the need to emphasise their Islamic platform and have therefore seized the opportunity the Kashmir terrorists have provided them to advertise their ‘Islamic’ credentials and commitment. But I do not rule that out. Pakistan will, in any event, need to lean a great deal more on that platform in the coming years than it did in the past when Soviet-US and Sino-Soviet rivalries worked to its advantage.
This is bound to cause considerable anxiety to our policy makers. But their secularist commitment is not likely to convince many Muslim rulers just as their non-alignment did not persuade many Third World countries to see the justice of our case at the time of the Chinese attack in 1962. India is not besieged as Israel is and need not feel so besieged. But we may be faced with a situation not too dissimilar to Israel’s.
Just as Pakistan needs to play the Islamic card, it also needs to divert the attention of its people from Afghanistan. The so-called interim Afghan government, set up under Islamabad’s auspices, in a shambles; its constituents are as keen to destroy each other as they are to get Najib and his supporters; a year after the withdrawal of Soviet troops they have not been able to capture even the border town of Jalalabad; three million Afghan refugees are still in Pakistan; and they continue to play havoc with the social and economic fabric of Pakistan. The compulsion to distract attention from this sorry mess should be obvious.
It is futile to try and speculate on the likely course of developments in Afghanistan. Even so it is becoming increasingly obvious that finally only the Afghans can find an Afghan solution to their problem and that this will be a prolonged and painful process whatever the level of cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. This is enough to cause anxiety in Islamabad. And that may not be all. For the vital question of the possible basis of Afghan identity has not even featured in the discussions so far.
These observations offer no consolation to us. A Pakistan in trouble is bound to create problems for us. But Pakistan, to begin with, itself was little more than a desperate expedient resorted to in a desperate situation, including by the principal architect of that desperate situation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It could not possibly overcome its essentially transient character and disruptive role and it has not. The military muscle it has acquired, thanks to the US bounty and the Soviet stupidity, has inevitably increased its capacity for mischief but not its ability to define itself in terms of itself.
It is difficult to say whether the Pakistani leaders are overconfident and therefore arrogant, or whether they are nervous and therefore extraordinarily aggressive in their rhetoric. In either case, they are not likely to heed our counsel. Even so, we have to be patient with them. We do not need to respond to their hysteria. Maybe our silence (or muted response) will be more effective than our repeated reiteration of our stand in convincing them that they are playing with fire.
Sunday Mail, 4 February 1990