India Retold

A month and a half back, India's new Foreign Minister SM Krishna had given as clear an indication as he could that Mumbai 26/11 had been placed in the archives, like numerous previous terror attacks had been, and that India was ready yet again to offer the other cheek to Pakistan, even though it was still bleeding as a result of the many slaps given by the latter earlier. "Never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate". These were the little understood words of John Kennedy that Krishna used to justify what was clearly going to be a climb down of humiliating proportions.

Anticipating where Krishna and the officials at the Foreign Office were preparing to take India, this is what I had written then: We are getting back to square one, tail between legs, the empty bark beginning to sound like a pleading yelp. And all this without even the dignity of a face-saving concession by Pakistan, however tiny. Kiyani and gang must be laughing their guts out, after spitting contemptuously in India's face, yet again. The "buzdili", cowardice, that defines India's response to Pakistan's open and unrelenting efforts to hurt it through covert use of force, and spotted long back by former ISI chief Hamid Gul, is only getting worse.

I must admit that I was wrong. The capitulation Krishna and the officials in his office were planning for India was actually far worse and far more damaging. I can only imagine that they were able to sell their dumb and defeatist ideas to Dr Manmohan Singh by covering them with the lofty but empty and divorced-from-reality Nehruvian idealism and magnanimity that has repeatedly seen India give but not get. That failed and disastrous mindset was clearly responsible for making the PM say that India will not be a great country without engaging Pakistan.

A country does not become great by engaging other countries on their terms, particularly when those countries are waging against it. By doing so, quite the reverse happens, and over time a great country is weakened and then defeated by a determined enemy. But who will teach that to our career diplomats and politicians?

During his visit to Pakistan in 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee tried to illuminate Pakistanis by saying, "One can change friends, not geography, not neighbours". He was greeted with Kargil a few months later. Ten years later, Manmohan Singh, after the terror attack in Mumbai, still said: "we cannot choose our neighbours...an alert and pluralist society like ours is the best defence against terrorist onslaughts". He was greeted in Sharm el-Sheikh by an even more aggressive Pakistan that got him to agree to a joint statement that has shocked and angered a lot of Indians.

The whole world has known since the dawn of civilisation that you cannot change your neighbours. And ever since then, there has been a never ending struggle to ensure that your neighbour remains friendly to you and does not engage in acts that are hostile to your interest. Whenever that equilibrium is disturbed, the matter is more often than not settled through use of force or, better still, the threat of it. For the bigger nation, diplomacy is merely an instrument to convey to your neighbour the minimum that you expect of him, and to tell him that failing which he must be prepared to face unacceptable consequences. And to make such a warning credible, you have to consciously develop the means that can deliver that message effectively without him being able to respond and hurt you in turn beyond a point.

Unfortunately in India, diplomacy - mere words - has become an end in itself. Negotiations and talks based on fear and cowardly morality have become the prime vehicles by which a huge nation of more than a billion people wants to interact with and influence its neighbours who are in its strategic sphere of influence. This sorry state of affairs is partly because of politicians who have no understanding of national security and strategy and partly because career diplomats and other departments of the government work in water tight compartments and are busy building their own dysfunctional bureaucratic empires.

Pakistan also knows that it cannot change it neighbours. But it is not willing to accept the existence of its neighbour in the east in its present form and wants to change the dynamics to suit its own view of history based solely on religion. So, ever since its birth, it has unsuccessfully used various means to bring about that change. The present and ongoing zero cost, zero risk method of using terror or low intensity conflict is one that it has employed for over two decades now, with no reaction from India despite the heavy cost it has been paying to fight it. To those who have their eyes and minds open, it is evident that Pakistan is not going to give it up till it is forced to.

The only guys who manifestly cannot see fundamental fact this are politicians and officials making a career out of writing notes in the Foreign Office, NSA, MHA and MoD. That is why the PM says that India will only passively keep defending itself against this proxy war with the help of "an alert and pluralistic society". That is why a Foreign Minister misquotes JFK to begin talking with Pakistan once again to mask his helplessness. And that is why India agrees to a joint statement that no self-respecting country will even consider, just eight months after the worst ever terror attack on its soil and despite Pakistan having done nothing to show that it will not allow its territory to be used against India.

Who would have even dreamt that India would agree to a statement which says: "Action of terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed". Worse, how could India ever agree to the inclusion of "threats in Baluchistan and other areas" of Pakistan, because their very mention implies that Pakistan is accusing India of supporting terrorism in the whole of Pakistan? And that too after losing thousands of her sons in fighting terrorists in Kashmir and with Pakistan not only not accepting its active involvement in the war there, but also openly threatening that peace is not possible till Kashmir is resolved?

The PM may have said after the Joint Statement was issued that the composite dialogue process cannot resume till the perpetrators of 26/11 are brought to book. That means little given what has been accepted by India in writing. This virtual surrender that has also opened up endless future possibilities for Pakistan to accuse India of supporting terrorism in Pakistan, shows that Pakistanis remain, as always, one step ahead of India. That is simply because they know what their objective is and they know how to deny it too by lying through all their pores, without giving a damn whether India believes them or not.

Once again, India has let Pakistan get away with a blatant act of war. Once again, India has told Pakistan that it can keep shooting at India and keep killing its sons and daughters. India will not react; it cannot because its politico-bureaucratic set up is convinced that India can stop those bullets and beat Pakistan solely with the help of poorly drafted statements and an "alert pluralistic society", forgetting completely that it is this very pluralism that Pakistan cannot live with and wants to alter by all means at its disposal. The bullets from Pakistan will not stop if India does not change the way it thinks and responds. And that cannot happen till it keeps trying to mount the moral horse at the slightest pretext to claim a hollow 'victory', beyond which its bureaucrats do not want to see for obvious reasons.

When the Prime Minister of a country says in full glare of the international media at Sharm el-Sheikh "dialogue ke siwaye koi chaaraa nahin hai" he immediately makes one billion people of the country look like helpless cowards who have no choice but to surrender before someone who is holding a gun to their heads. And he all but legitimises the use of that gun by the enemy. Dr Manmohan Singh is an honourable man. But he is an economist by training, not a strategist. Unfortunately, it is evident that officials in the Foreign Office and in the NSA who have his ear are also equally ignorant and ill equipped to understand and deal with a mindset called Pakistan, a mindset honed and controlled by its generals.

Eloquence is no substitute for real understanding of an obdurate and offensive military mindset. Without that understanding, an appropriate response that Pakistan will understand and react to in a manner that we want, will not be forthcoming. And India will be forced to take hit after hit like a helpless duck. We have to force Pakistan to stop shooting. Talking like defensive dimwits is not going to make it put the gun down. It is time for India to get fresh, knowledgeable and focused minds into controlling positions in the security and diplomatic apparatus of the country. The sooner we do it the better. Till we do, the bullets will keep coming and all we will do is talk like zombies who have lost their way in a self-made labyrinth.
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Picture source: Gulf News

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The no-holds barred battle for the dalits of Uttar Pradesh between Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minister Mayawati has, not surprisingly, descended to new lows. And this time it is yet another woman, UP Congress President Rita Bahuguna Joshi who, in a fit of anger, has ignited political passions by ridiculing Mayawati for the low compensation of Rs 25,000 being given to rape victims and offering her a crore if she gets raped.

This derogatory remark, made even worse because Mayawati is a dalit, has given just the opportunity that Mayawati was looking for to tell her dalit followers that she alone can empower them and that all the efforts of the Congress to woo them are nothing but natakbazi. Joshi has been put behind bars under the SC and ST(Prevention of Atrocities) Act, her house in Lucknow has been set on fire by goons and an apology has been sought by Mayawati from Sonia Gandhi. There has been the usual uproar in Parliament today and worn out blame games have begun along party lines. Maneka Gandhi, whose son Varun was locked up under the NSA by Mayawati, has, quite naturally, demanded that President's Rule should be imposed in UP.

It seems that Mayawati has clean forgotten what she herself had said about compensation to rape victims when Mulayam Yadav was Chief Monister. Then, she had spoken of the poor compensation of Rs 200,000 paid to some Muslim rape victims and had said that Muslims would happily pay Rs 400,000 if the daughter of Mulayam Yadav or his relatives was raped instead.

Rape has become a very serious issue in the country. Activists, many of them politicians, are stridently demanding death sentence for the heinous crime, in addition to enhanced monetary compensation for rape victims. Noble thoughts indeed.

But, seeing the same sickening, mind numbing, petty games being played by politicians over and over again, to protect or poach voters, one cannot but feel that they are all collectively raping Mother India. This gang rape has been going on for decades. And the shameless rapists are, tragically, those children of India who have been democratically chosen by her other children to protect her and them. They are the ones who need to be punished most severely for defiling their mother, for giving unbearable pain to her, for remorselessly exploiting her to satisfy their limitless lust for power and pelf.

But how can they punish each other for a crime they are all guilty of? So, they will all talk of giving more compensation than the next politician only for a rape victim who presses a button on a voting machine. And since Mother India suffers their assaults in silence and will not take sides in their political fights, they think they have every right to repeatedly do to her what they are doing, and sing Vande Matram with a straight face afterwords.

For Her, there is no compensation.
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Picture source: 1 Word A Day

• In the first week of July, he reached an outline agreement with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. As per that "joint understanding" signed in Moscow, the strength of deployed nuclear warheads of both countries will be reduced to below 1,700 within seven years of signing a new treaty.
• He has also announced that he would seek ratification of the CTBT which the US has signed but not yet ratified.
• The US, along with other nuclear weapon states among the G8 members, has also decreed a moratorium on production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices and is working towards a treaty that bans it. G8 members have also called upon all states to declare and uphold a moratorium on production of such material.

• Naval commandos who were among the first to engage terrorists in Taj Hotel recovered a rucksack left behind by them. The contents of this rucksack were shown by many TV channels and included, among other things, cash and seven credit cards including those of top Indian banks like the ICICI, HSBC, HDFC, Axis and CITI bank. Fake Indian identity cards were also found on the person of all terrorists. Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive, was carrying a fake ID card of Arunodaya Degree College of Hyderabad, in the name of Naresh Verma. Who got these cards made in India for the terrorists?
• The terrorists were completely familiar with the layout of the hotels and moved around the buildings with practiced ease. Their knowledge of the layout was first brought out by the Naval commandos and later confirmed by Ratan Tata himself. "There seems to be no doubt that they knew their way around the hotel," he said, "They seemed to know it in the night, or in the daytime. They seemed to have planned their moves quite well, and there seem to have been a lot of pre-planning in terms of what they did and how they managed to carry on for three days and sustain themselves during that time." Was it possible for them to acquire such familiarity only on the basis of blueprints, as claimed by Gafoor?
• The way they were able to sustain themselves for three days without running out of ammunition and explosives suggests that much more of the lethal stuff than they carried in their rucksacks had been smuggled into the hotel prior to the attack and placed at locations precisely marked during previous reconnaissance missions. Who placed them there?
• The terrorists were supposed to sink the boat they used to land in Mumbai, but had planned to get away safely after completing their operations. It means that they would have known the safe location to where they were to go to they to go, before evetually making their way back to Pakistan by a different route. Could such a get away have been possible without serious logistic support on Indian soil?

A stunning admission like this, made not long after victory has been achieved but when the danger is still potent and life-threatening, takes a lot of courage. That too by the President of a country that has for decades employed terror as a means of achieving "strategic" national objectives. This is not the first time that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has spoken out against terrorists. But never before has any Pakistani head of government, or even senior politician, gone this far to admit the role of the state in actively promoting terrorism.

"Let us be truthful to ourselves and make a candid admission...militancy and extremism emerged on the national scene...because they were deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve some short term tactical objectives." This is what Zardari openly said a couple of days ago.

These words would have undoubtedly created huge tremors in sections of the Pakistani establishment that still are on the old path, ongoing military operations against the Talban notwithstanding. At any rate, these words have raised hopes of a new dawn in Pakistan and indeed the whole of South Asia. But is such optimism justified? Or is there more to it than meets the eye in Zardari's continuing offensive against Islamic extremism and terrorism?

In an interview given to NBC on May 07, 2009, Zardari had said that the ISI and the CIA had together created the Taliban. In a similar vein, in his keynote address at the Socialist International Congress at Athens in Greece on July 01, 2009, he had blamed the US for exploiting Pakistan "as a tool of Cold War intrigue" and abandoning it after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, "to the forces of extremism and fanaticism". It may be recalled that almost a year back, he had warned that the Taliban should be banned because Pakistan faced a grave danger from it, and had alleged that President Musharraf was taking their side while pretending to fight with the US against them. Then, in an interview to the Wall Street Journal in October 2008, he had gone to the extent of calling militant groups operating in Kashmir "terrorists" - something he later denied after there was a predictable uproar in Pakistan - and declared that India was not a threat to his country.

If we analyse all these statements together, it becomes clear that the wily Zardari is carefully laying the blame for all the fundamentalist mess that Pakistan finds itself in today at the feet of the military establishment without saying as much. And he is not resorting to any falsehoods to do that: it is the military that has been calling the shots always, even when civilian governments have been in power.

Examine the following facts:

• Zardari's latest and most startling admission was made in an address to senior bureaucrats where he made it clear that terrorists have challenged the state not "because the civil bureaucracy was weakened and demoralised" but because of the policy to use them to achieve short term tactical objectives. Who laid down the policy? General Zia-ul-Haq. And objectives? Other leaders, primarily military.
• What is the ISI that Zardari has blamed for creating the Taliban? It is a powerful intelligence outfit that is a part of the Pakistani military establishment. Army Chief Kiyani was, in fact, heading it before he took over his present assignment.
• Who first decided to send terrorists to Indian Kashmir to meet "tactical objectives"? The military again, under Zia-ul-Haq. That is why Zardari called them terrorists.
• The "heroes of yesteryears until 9/11" are the terrorists of today who have begun to haunt Pakistan, says Zardari. Evidently, as far as he is concerned, there are no "good" terrorists or "freedom fighters"; all of them, including those fighting the Indians in Kashmir, are now haunting Pakistan, and need to be eliminated.
• As far as the influential role of the army is concerned, Zardari says that he is in control of everything in the country, including the military, and that the Parliament has the final say. That is what Zardari wants. As everyone knows, it is the Army Chief who is the last word in Pakistan; he is the one every civilian President has to be wary of.

Had such encouraging statements which virtually echo what India has been saying for decades been made by a military ruler of Pakistan, one could have safely concluded that they reflect radically new thinking in that country and could well lead to a new dawn in the relations between India and Pakistan based on mutual self-respect and peaceful co-existence with zero tolerance for religious extremism and violence. But when a civilian President, and that too Zardari, once famous as Mr Ten Percent for the bribes he took when his wife Benazir Bhutto was PM, makes them, there has to be a sub-plot.

Zardari's admissions are best seen in the context of the power struggle that has been going on between the military and the civilian government that came to power last year. Initially, Nawaz Sharif and Zardari got together and got rid of President Musharraf. But after that, Zardari deviously made himself the President and left Sharif nursing his wounds. Sharif got one back later in forcing Zardari to reinstate the Supreme Court judges dismissed by Musharraf etc, and Zardari has not been able to recover lost ground since then. General Kiyani is keen to clip Zardari's wings even further and turn him into an irrelevant puppet while he pursues the military's agenda for Pakistan from behind the scenes. If he cannot be reigned in, Kiyani will want to replace him by a pliant individual or even himself, in keeping with the glorious traditions of some of his predecessors.

Zardari knows all this too well. So, what better insurance to safeguard his own position than speaking the anti-Taliban, anti-madrassa and anti-terror line that is soothing music to the ears of the the US and the rest of the moderate world, and putting Kiyani on the defensive by publicly all but blaming the dominance of the military for the mess that the country is in today?

May be Zardari is aiming even higher to ensure that the Army does not take over in future again and accepts the supremacy of the civilian leadership finally. He may even succeed, given the way things are beginning to shape, and the fact that Barack Obama is in the White House. But till he or any other civilian leader can fully demonstrate that it is his writ that runs in Pakistan and that the military has finally succumbed to the democratic will of the people, such admissions, no matter how dramatic, must be seen only in the context of the internal struggle that Pakistan is going through and not as a fundamental change in its basic outlook or attitudinal orientation towards its immediate neighbours.

A new dawn is not yet on the horizon.
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2. Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror
3. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin
4. India and Pakistan are not victims of the same terror
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