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Darkness at noon

The Government of Pakistan (GOP) has been engaged in a diplomatic exercise of some magnitude for the past few months to focus international public opinion on Kashmir. This is in keeping with PM Ms Benazir Bhutto’s penchant for following the route of exposing the Human Rights situation inside Indian-occupied Kashmir to the attention of the western governments, particularly the US of A, so that diplomatic pressure could be brought on India to settle the long, festering dispute. By opting to go the route of the UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva, Pakistan’s tactics was well suited to the liberal climate at the White House that takes a high moral ground with respect to violation of human rights. It also underscored Pakistan’s determination to avoid an armed conflict over the issue in preference to diplomatic initiatives. To that end, after a round of hectic diplomatic forays in various capitals to ascertain and obtain support, GOP tabled Kashmir Resolution L-40 at the UNHRC. To cap this PM Benazir Bhutto made an impassioned appeal in person in early February at the forum in Geneva. A well orchestrated propaganda campaign was built up that gave us reason to believe that this initiative would form the basis of the campaign whereby India would be eventually forced to give substantial concessions on Kashmir. An excellent set-piece strategy in theory, in actual practice it depends too much on not only on the world’s conscience but India’s susceptibility to this aspect. This strategy also pre-supposes that Pakistan’s traditional friends would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us in our most critical area of concern, very much like we have stood up for them over the years.

In the event, finding support for Kashmir Resolution L-40 eroding by the hour, Pakistan was faced with the embarrassment of actually losing the vote. On the “persuasion” of friends like Iran and China, Pakistan invoked article 62 para b of the Rules of Procedure of ECOSOC which calls for no action on the proposed Resolution but ensures it becomes part of the Commission’s proceedings to be submitted to the ECOSOC. Technically it is a face-saving means for withdrawing, it means deferment. Having done this, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Sardar Assef Ali, a man gifted with a gift of the gab, claimed victory very much like the US general faced with the morass in Vietnam who advised that the US should declare “victory” and go home. If the sponsored media and the public figures trotted out to support GOP’s stance are to be believed, Pakistan has won a great moral victory and succeeded in focussing world public opinion on Kashmir. If the Opposition is to be believed, then it has been a catastrophic defeat, a foreign policy disaster of unimaginable magnitude that sets back the Kashmir issue many years and exposes Pakistan’s isolation in the world community. For once, the Opposition and Indian leaders seem to be in agreement though the respective intents are quite different. India welcomed back its delegation to the UNHRC by profusely garlanding the individual leaders like conquering heroes. Atal Behari Vajpayee of the staunchly anti-Pakistan BJP and the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Salman Khursheed also promptly debunked Pakistani claims that India had agreed to allow envoys from Muslim nations into Kashmir on a fact finding mission in exchange for dropping the Resolution. Indian stance has more or less been echoed by the international media (including the widely heard BBC) who clearly labelled this as an Indian triumph of great importance in the sense that except for some propaganda points, Pakistan failed in its primary objective i.e. to get the Resolution passed. Even Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, appointed by the Ms Benazir Regime as Chairman of the Parliamentary Kashmir Committee, embarrassed GOP by his gut-reaction in asking for the resignation of Sardar Assef Ali and the Foreign Ministry officials responsible for this debacle. The reaction among Kashmiris living within Indian-occupied Kashmir and Azad Kashmir has been one of great despondency, it has been a demoralizing blow. As far as the masses of Pakistan are concerned, their hopes had been so raised by the rhetoric of the PPP Government that the failure to see the Resolution through to its stated objective has been similarly devastating for morale. Ms Benazir’s Regime has become a victim of its own propaganda.

For the record, even if one accepts present GOP’s claim that it has succeeded in arousing world opinion, this success has been primarily achieved not by GOP’s rhetoric or diplomacy but is based on the blood of the Kashmiri freedom fighters. There is a reality on the ground that India cannot ignore, by following the route of negotiations and appeasement and failing at it, GOP has lost in the drawing rooms what has been gained on the battlefield through endless sacrifice. This has been a great setback to the Kashmiri cause. There is no doubt that Ms Benazir is potentially a most eloquent exponent of any cause in world forums but this pre-supposes that the world has a conscience. As one has seen in Bosnia, that is not a surmise one can count on. The world accepts that Serbians are in aggression and are committing atrocities but does not allow the Bosnians even the right to acquire arms to defend themselves. The US can stand fast on their principles on human rights if even one dissident in China is taken into custody for a few hours but finds itself unable to come to term with blatant Indian atrocities inside Kashmir leading to many dead and injured on a daily basis. There is a varying yardstick for application in different regions depending upon one’s core national interests. As Prof Tommy Goh stated in Davos, communists have been replaced by Muslims and people of Chinese origin as the possible “enemies” of the developed world.

Four years ago, in April 1990, this scribe wrote that a moment comes in the life of a nation when logic fail at the altar of emotions. Who was it who once said, to be logical is not to be always right? Logic is the precursor of statesmanship, normally an excellent attribute, statesmanship can degenerate into hypocrisy if it plays with the evolving feelings of the masses without doing anything substantial. The brutal bloodletting by Indian occupation forces in Held Kashmir should have more than tested the patience and frustration of even the most cold-blooded of leaders, even if their priorities are primarily devoted to amassing wealth and additional power. The valley of Kashmir is aflame, brutally described by the endless casualty figures routinely being inflicted with sadistic glee, can our conscience ever accept that our reply is going to be confined to glib rhetoric? Such a ploy is simply unforgivable falsehood, sheer hypocrisy, the stretching of credibility beyond skeptical parameters. The period for liberal debate is past, lip-service is for the birds, it is time now to openly discuss one’s options and get on with taking some sort of action. Being the head of a political Government Ms Bhutto has to give broad policy decisions and directives and to act positively. If this was true in 1990, it becomes such more acute in 1994. No leader can afford to sit back and react to the evolving situation, entrapped in a vortex of Indian creation of a one-side destructive scenario. That is not the Benazir-way, come to think of it, that was not the way of late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto either.

The people of Kashmir had risen en-masse in late 1989 for the first time after four decades, the Indians had become so complacent in suppressing them they were not prepared for the uprising and thus failed to recognise that the Kashmiris have a right as much as any other people to aspire to freedom. Paradoxically it seems that the essence of so-called democracy in the world’s largest example is to have different definitions of democracy in different regions, suited to the genius of the people in the area. As the protests multiply, the statistics of dead and injured increases directly proportional to the Indian violence, the Kashmiris are fighting back inflicting severe losses on the Indians. If the Sikh revolt had not been crushed, the Indians would have been in serious straits within the valley. As it is, the suppression of the Sikhs has allowed them to deploy more troop in held Kashmir. As the crackdown intensifies, the level of violence has escalated, the cycle of blood has taken a life (and death) of its own. The level of brutality may be able to suppress temporarily the revolt in a welter of blood, the Indians cannot eradicate the uprising.

The first option, call it option A, is to go down the route of a negotiated approach, in the face of continuing Indian obduracy. This option suits the “Peace at any Cost” brigade, every time Ms Benazir comes to power, they seem to succeed. Basically this involves bilateral negotiations or one through mutually acceptable international intermediaries. This argument pre-supposes that India agrees that Kashmir is a dispute requiring settlement between Pakistan and India, amicably through dialogue, it pre-supposes that India will enter into discussions, ready for some compromise to their basic position in the interest of peace and harmony for their peoples and the region, indeed for the world. This is a futile posture in the face of the known Indian stance, that Kashmir is not a subject of dispute between Pakistan and India. This is a posture adopted by those who have been compromised by the Indians in some manner. There is of course the little matter of an UN monitored Plebiscite that India agreed to but has now consigned to history. There is also the small fact of millions of Kashmiri refugees living in Pakistan and using Pakistani passports for international travel. What cannot be disputed is that Kashmir is not a part of India and never was. Option A is basically appeasement of many sorts, mostly as a sop to international opinion. As Munich has shown appeasement has never satisfied international predator nations. In South Asia, India accurately fits this description, in fact in the whole of the world there is no country except India (and now Serbia) that covets the territories of its neighbours or seeks to dominate them by force. While Indian propaganda belies this notion, every country of South Asia has felt the Indian teeth.

OPTION B is to support the Kashmir freedom fighters inside Kashmir (1) directly and/or (2) indirectly, (a) covertly and/or (b) openly, i.e. a number of possibilities enshrined within ONE broad-based option. This may lead to war as any of the permutations or combinations of the aforesaid will not be taken kindly by Indians who are already shouting themselves hoarse even before we have even begin to think about it. That is an eventuality with which we have to live (and maybe die) with. A low-level covert support from various private sources for the Kashmiris inside the Held Territory has been going on for the last 40 years (as evidenced by US Assistant Security State Robin Raphael to the US Congress), but this type of support is neither here nor there as it does not take into account the present emerging realities, brute military force being applied at will on a civilian population with meagre means available to the Kashmiris to defend themselves against this cruel repression. One has a number of credible alternative choices, the most potent being a combination of a covert direct and an open direct support. The covert direct support could be in the form of a constant inflow of money, arms and other related supplies while the open direct support would entail training of volunteers to go across the line of Actual Control and sustain this movement by conducting guerilla warfare in both the urban and rural areas. We must recognize that the immediate support of the Iranians in word and deed is not with us anymore, thanks to the visit of the PM’s spouse to Iraq, albeit for a good cause. We badly needed Iranian moral and material support, after their open hearted material and moral support they must be astonished at this ill-advised visit. As one well knows, the Hinduja family is well established in Iran and have exploited the Zardari visit to upset the Iranians. Similarly the Chinese are upset at our human rights stance as well as Ms Benazir’s proposal for forming an “Association of Democratic Nations”, a notion that they took as a slap on their faces. The Turks have been estranged due to the PM’s visit to Cyprus during the Commonwealth Conference (which seemed to give tacit support to the Greek Cypriots) as well as the cancellation of the Bayinder Motorway contract, all this despite the special chemistry between Ms Benazir and Turkish PM, Ms Tansu Ciller. We now have a definite logistics problem whereas the suppression of the Sikhs has freed the Indians from their own logistics nightmare.

The last option or OPTION C is to prepare for war. One has to compare the enemy’s capability to wage war against ours in terms of men and material and the willingness/motivation to fight. India has an overall 3 to 1 men and material decided advantage over us, a favourable attack ratio. Our strength lies in the fact that we do not have to initiate offensive action, in the event of escalating circumstances we may have to defend ourselves against an all-out Indian attack across the international borders to relieve the internal pressure on Kashmir. The whole point is that the war clock has started ticking, as the situation in Kashmir worsens (with or without our help), India will perforce have to force war on us, both to ride out its domestic compulsions and international pressure, the aim being to muddy the real issues. In this Geneva has been a milestone victory for them. Because we have to give support to our Kashmiri brethren both by covert and open direct and indirect means, we are locked into a situation with the issues rapidly developing a life of its own. The nation must be readied for war psychologically, morally and materially. Our economy must be put on a war footing in the shortest possible time, our defence forces should get out of the peacetime syndrome and gear up for war, the time has come to put all the years of training to the acid test. Many uniformed personnel have shown great ability in various disciplines during peacetime, their willingness to approach war with determination and purpose will evoke their true worth, action speaks much better than promises, the sound of a bullet fired in anger is a great equalizer.

Any political government worth its salt would probably go for a combination of all three options, recoursing to any one option in the absence of consecutive or simultaneous actions on the other choices will spell disaster for Pakistan, Ms Benazir is too avid a student of history not to adhere to its lessons. While the best solution is always to have a negotiated peace, Indian intransigence on this issue is too well known to hope otherwise. As regards helping the Kashmiris, given our inherent duty to our brethren, anyone having qualms should be given short shrift. War will be forced upon us whether we like it or not, those who think otherwise are either dangerously gullible or should have their heads examined, there is no way that when push comes to shove the Indians will not gamble on war as a means to settle the issues, already their propaganda machine is laying the groundwork by blaming us for all sorts of imagined machinations in Kashmir. Their Geneva success will give them added heart. Our leaders across the broad political system need to get over their private ego trips so that a determined “national” government can get on with the business of exercising the options aforestated. The ball is in the court of our politicians, while it is the elected government that has to carry the ball, the Opposition have to show mature responsibility in not pushing the government into a corner publicly and vice versa, party politics at this stage is counter-productive to the national aims and objectives.

As such, while Geneva has been an unmitigated disaster, it is time for our leaders to exercise restraint in the national interest. Certainly those who have been responsible for Geneva must be held accountable but these considerations are petty compared to the cause of liberating Kashmir. One always thought of Sardar Assef Ali as a man of honour, by not resigning he belies this perception. However, his resignation or otherwise should not detract from the primary mission, the freedom of Kashmir. To save her government from being overwhelmed by this debacle, Ms Benazir must act firmly with the causes of failure, not resort to what is basically the false propaganda of “success”, that is insulting the intelligence of the people of Pakistan, adding to the injury suffered by them. In this manner, she erodes her own credibility. Unless the world feels the depth of our commitment, we will get a short shrift from their so-called conscience. This can only be achieved through unity of purpose. For the moment, one can say that on balance the UNHRC debacle has brought darkness at noon for Pakistan, a near total eclipse of our bankrupt foreign policy. The only way to come out of this disaster is for our leaders to come together in a common cause.

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