The 'Peace' Carnival
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management
From despair to
euphoria to despair has been the classical cycle in India's 'search for
peace' in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). It has been the season for euphoria
again since Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's April 18, 2003, speech
at Srinagar, where he once again offered 'a hand of friendship' to
Pakistan. Since then, there has been a rising crescendo of symbolism
culminating in the current and extraordinary jamboree at Lahore, where a
delegation of more than 30 Indian Members of Parliament (MPs), with a
veritable media circus in tow, are presently grabbing headlines.
To much international applause - within the limited circles in which
these developments are noticed - various 'confidence building' measures
have been initiated over the past months, and others are proclaimed,
including the resumption of the infamous bus to Lahore that had ferried
the Indian Prime Minister to his first deluded engagement with Pakistan
- which culminated in the Kargil War in 1999. Taking advantage of the
resumption of road links between the two countries, a number of
Pakistani children with severe cardiac disorders have come to India and
have (with one sad exception) been successfully operated on, once again,
to the immense applause of the media. A young Pakistani boy who strayed
across the border into Indian territory in the State of Rajasthan is
currently in Delhi, preparing to be returned to his home in a 'goodwill
gesture', even as both countries announce the imminent release of
several hundred 'fishermen' in their custody for straying into hostile
territory - traditional hostages to competitive South Asian cussedness.
Official delegations have also met to discuss improved trade relations
between the countries.
Shortly after Vajpayee's April 18 speech, a small delegation of
Pakistani MPs had visited India, taking advantage of the absence of visa
requirements for Members of Parliament from member countries of the
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), though they
received relatively little attention - and no one of note in Government
met them.
However, when Maulana Fazlur Rahman - the leader of the six party
fundamentalist combine, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), and Chief of
the Jamaat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) Pakistan; the mentor of the
Taliban
and of a succession of terrorist groups, including the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA),
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM)
and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HUJI);
a 'personal friend and
advisor' to both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden; and a notorious US
baiter - came to India in mid-July, he was feted by all who mattered and
welcomed and embraced by the Prime Minister himself. The Maulana has,
with India's Laloo Prasad Yadav - the former Chief Minister of the
Eastern State of Bihar, notorious for the anarchy into which he has led
his State, for the corruption charges as a result of which he was forced
to demit office, and for his inveterate clowning for the media - been
among the most prominent attractions at the Lahore jamboree as well.
Rahman has become something of a poster-boy of the new 'peace process',
and it is interesting to examine the logic of his unexpected
transformation from a leading architect of terrorism to eminent
peacenik. At both Delhi and Lahore, Rahman articulated his reasons
clearly: US 'hegemony' was the more immediate threat, and a
rapprochement with India was necessary to create the breathing space
necessary to ensure that the 'unilateral action against the people of
Afghanistan and Iraq' was not repeated against Pakistan. There is, in
this tactical shift, no indication that the Maulana's strategic agenda
and commitment to 'jihad' has undergone any radical
transformation. The incurable optimist would do well to note that, even
as he preaches a new 'tolerance' for 'Hindu India', Rahman's MMA has
sought to impose a Talibanised Sharia code on the people of the North
West Frontier Province (NWFP) through its legislature; it is from this
province that a regrouped Taliban has been organizing attacks into
Afghanistan against troops loyal to the Hamid Karzai regime at Kabul,
and against American Special Forces hunting the
Al Qaeda
and Taliban remnants in the border areas; and it is, again, in Quetta in
the MMA dominated province of Baluchistan, that the Taliban is reported
to be openly operating. It is significant, moreover, that when he was
asked by the media in Delhi whether he considered bin Laden a terrorist,
he responded evasively, "Why are you raising this issue… We have come
here for a different purpose. We are talking of peace and you are
raising irrelevant issues."
The point, then, is that, despite the unrestrained enthusiasm of the
current 'peace process' - as was the case with past 'peace processes'
between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue - there is little room
for optimism, and the ground situation in J&K is the evidence that needs
to be examined more carefully than the media posturing of dubious
political bandwagonners.
Each cycle of the 'peace process' in J&K has ordinarily been accompanied
by escalating violence, and the present phase has been no exception.
Despite an exceptionally harsh winter this year, the total fatalities
due to terrorism in the first seven months of the current year, at
1,438, have been only marginally lower than they were in 2002 (1,694).
More significantly, the trends show a sharp increase since April 2003,
and in June, total fatalities this year (235) substantially exceeded
last year's figure (170). There has been a succession of high profile
terrorist attacks after the Prime Minister's speech, and these include
the fidayeen attack on the Border Security Force sector
headquarters at Madar in the Bandipore area of Baramulla district on
April 25; the April 26 fidayeen attack on the All India Radio
station at Srinagar; the beheading of four women and two children at
village Chowkian in the Kot Dhara area of Rajouri district on May 19;
the fidayeen attack at the Dogra Regiment camp in Sunjwan on the
outskirts of Jammu city, in which twelve Army soldiers were killed on
June 28; and the July 22 fidayeen attack at the Army camp at Bangti on
the Tanda Road in Akhnoor district, in which eight soldiers, including a
Brigadier, were killed, and 12 others, including four top Generals, were
injured. The terrorist enterprise in J&K is manifestly alive and well.
At the same time, a number of Pakistani propagandists, including
President and General Pervez Musharraf himself, have been arguing that
'peace talks' do not have to wait till the killing ends (those who
follow the discourse on West Asia and Palestinian terrorism will note a
familiar ring in this), and India appears now to have accepted this
logic, despite the Prime Minister's earlier stand that 'cross border
terrorism' and Pakistan's 'proxy war' in J&K must first end before any
meaningful dialogue could commence between the two countries. Once
again, Pakistan appears to have secured concessions even while it makes
none - at a time when it is under enormous international pressure to
shut down the terrorist infrastructure on its soil, and when it
desperately needs breathing space to consolidate its increasing
dominance along its Northwestern borders with Afghanistan.
A prominent Indian commentator notes that "India is the only known
country in modern history to have repeatedly cried betrayal, not by
friends, but by adversaries in whom it had reposed trust." The present
regime has already led itself up the garden path on at least two
occasions, and it appears that it is now setting the country up for
another and greater deception.
Courtesy:
South Asia Terrorism Portal |
