This is an excellent article on Pakistan. I have cut and pasted in full for maximum readership. Most people would agree to Mr. Naqvi’s views.
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People to be the priority
M B Naqvi
The writer is a well-known
journalist and freelance columnist
PLAIN WORDS
A paradigm change in Pakistan’s foreign policy has to be anchored in national purposes. Hitherto the main national purpose was to wrest Kashmir from Indian control. Reflecting national priorities the budget structure gave overarching priority to somehow pay for the military that was required to wrest Kashmir from India. India’s larger resources have ensured Pakistan’s growing inferiority in conventional military strength. By 1971 everyone could see – and Islamabad tacitly admitted – that another conventional war would mean defeat.
Post-1971 situation in 1972 demanded a new way of tackling the Kashmir problem. It was required to accept that Pakistan could not snatch Kashmir. Or Kashmir problem could only be solved by non-military means. At any rate, Pakistan’s imperialistic design of acquiring the entire Kashmir State was unrealistic. What could still work was to let Kashmiris struggle to shape their own future or Azadi. Main struggle was to be then between Indians and Kashmiris, with Pakistan having no active role.
That did not happen. Z A Bhutto stuck to old concepts and purposes. Pakistan tried to compensate for its inferiority in armaments by secretly developing nuclear capability. Formally, by signing the Simla Agreement he had effectively shelved the Kashmir problem. Pakistan stayed quiet for 18 years. Perhaps the Indians got wind of Pakistan’s nuclear programme from Americans and carried out their first nuclear test in 1974. Pakistanis swallowed it, exhibiting no particular alarm. Pakistan announced a breakthrough in 1984 and tension with India mounted. India warned Pakistan through the Brass Tacks exercise. Pakistanis thought India will invade. In the winter of 1986-87 Pakistan threatened to use its Bomb if the Indians crossed into Pakistan.
For a decade Pakistan succeeded in neutralising India’s conventional superiority. They became gung ho about nuclear weapons. The Indians did pipe down and remained quiet till 2002, when they threatened war against Pakistan’s abetting of Jihadis. Confident behind the nuclear shield, Pakistan started a proxy war to help Kashmiris’ struggle by arming and training them. Pakistan’s precise aims could be inferred. At first the idea was to tire out the Indian Army by a constant haemorrhage in Kashmir and Pakistan Army would then inflict a coup de grace. Later it shifted to just keeping the Indian Army pinned down – thereby making Pakistan secure.
Indian Army disregarded its own and Kashmiris losses. It was clear by 1998 that India resigned to a long proxy war and did not mind the price. It cost over the 1990s’ decade 60,000 to 70,000 Kashmiri lives. And it was Pakistanis who felt the resource crunch: they had to run two arms races: conventional and nuclear. The nuclear race, once mutual deterrence is achieved, requires an expensive command and control system, constant technological updating of all equipment and a whole new conventional arms race. Pakistan went bankrupt by Dec’98. Reeling under western sanctions, only the sequel to 9/11 has buoyed up the economy by cash injections and debt rescheduling. It is a temporary relief.
Matters came to a head in 2002. India threatened war if Pakistan does not stop the “cross border terrorism”, with all major powers echoing it. President Musharraf blinked and in his June speech agreed to the demand. Although the Jihad has not ended, both Indians and foreigners have realised that there are limits to what Musharraf can do; there are other powerful forces that can defy him and have. Hence the withdrawal of Indian Army October last year.
Two conclusions emerge: the Jihadist Kashmir policy has failed and has imperilled Pakistan. Kashmiris are as far from Azadi as ever and Indian hold on Kashmir is as firm as ever. Kashmiris realise Pakistan cannot go on sustaining Jihad and time has come to wind it down. Pakistanis had bankrupted themselves for a policy that eventually forced Pakistan to choose between a pointless proxy war and fighting a nuclear war that neither side will win. It is not a sane choice. The Kashmir policy is senseless.
This policy was the logical culmination of policies based on inherited assumptions and attitudes – the characteristics of Muslim separatism – that were about identity and self-image. Historically the majority of Muslims, originally low-caste Hindus, affected a superiority complex, especially in Northern India. They feared being falling down into the vast assimilative sea of Hindudom surrounding them wherein they will be at the bottom of social heap. May be they would be punished for former uppishness and for real or imagined wrongs. That explained their demonstrative adherence to Islam, which is what distinguished them from Hindus. Their religious exhibitionism and a superiority complex led to emphases on differences with Hindus and regarding themselves as rulers’ kith and kin deserving privileges and safeguards – the leitmotif of pre-independence Indian Muslim politics.
Others’ refusal to accept Muslims demands, calculated to preserve imagined privileges, angered them and an adversarial attitude vis-a-vis Hindus developed. Muslims thus demanded weightage – actually equality of treatment with Hindus – reservations and separate electorate. These came from, and strengthened, two traits: first, not to accept democracy’s implications, especially the equality with Hindus. The second was to depend on a ruling or hegemonic power to get them their due. Pakistan politics has actually reflected these traits: democracy soon collapsed and a new ruling elite, civil and military bureaucracy, continues to usurp power. The second trait of depending on the US to keeping India (Hindus) in check gave an illusion of equality. This dependency syndrome that produced the ever readiness to hitch Pakistan’s wagon to the American star survives.
Last October’s election and this January’s bye-elections have damaged the Pakistan-American relations. Americans too have taken note that MMA’s rise is directly related to their own unpopularity, especially in NWFP and Balochistan. It is growing elsewhere too. Pakistan has thus to somehow work out a new and more equation with US, without forgetting the existing vulnerabilities.
Pakistanis have to cut the umbilical chord with the Indians and start behaving as a separate and independent nation by treating India as another country. Remember there are no free lunches. Other nation states, including the US, have no obligation toward Pakistan vis-a-vis India and see India as a rising power and an attractive market thanks to its size and state of development. It can also be a useful strategic partner to great powers. No power will prefer Pakistan at the expense of India. Pakistan can never run an arms race with India with others’ aid.
Pakistan can do something about India’s attractiveness: to develop itself. That is blocked by military’s control over politics. In a military-run Pakistan cannot make on development, especially human development, the top priority. It will never understand that national strength cannot be borrowed; it has to be developed. Only the people can make Pakistan strong, not the Army. Defence preparedness, not backed by domestic economic strength, is sure to be inadequate and brittle.
Other policies follow. Kashmir is for Kashmiris and they have to make their destiny themselves; Pakistan has no locus standi. That releases Pakistan from illusions. Let Pakistanis forget the pre-natal quarrels with the Hindu-domination and work out a new normal relationship with India. Pakistanis and Indians should be cooperative friends. Both can profit from free trade, economic cooperation, cultural exchanges and a regional framework of economic development that Saarc could become but is not. An eventual (political) entente should be the aim.
Things will become easier for all if only they can counteract the mischief that nuclear weapons by their very presence do. So long as Pakistani nukes exist no Indian government can trust Pakistan and similarly the Indian Bomb’s presence automatically negates India’s good intentions. Pakistani Bomb has not helped Pakistanis get either Kashmir or security; Indians were threatening to wipe out Pakistan no matter what its capability. The Bomb has not enhanced India’s stature; no one respects it as much as in Nehru’s days. Both are finally deadlocked with only one exit.
Nuclear Restraint and Nuclear Safe South Asia are vacuous schemes, mostly hot air; there have no relevance to India and Pakistan, with their present mental baggage. Peaceful ties require basic trust in each other’s intentions, which is absent. The only way out is through simultaneous and mutually verifiable nuclear disarmament. Only a Nuclear Weapons Free South Asia makes sense.
If free of Jihad commitment, Pakistan can give India MFN status, open up, start implementing SAPTA and SAFTA agreements, sign a non-aggression pact, engage in cultural exchanges, restore communications, dramatically relax visa restrictions and make Saarc a vital and vigorously growing reality. With these the stature of both will dramatically rise and others will show a different visage.