Snake in the backyard
Pakistan’s peace cheque is post-dated and issued on a bank in dubious health. It is buying time by pretending to seek better relations with India.
Pakistan is going through troubled times. Opposition is mounting in the United States Congress to proposals by the Obama Administration for military and economic assistance to a country labelled as a ‘major non-NATO ally’ but recently characterised as nurturing a “snake in its backyard”. Americans increasingly allude to Pakistan as an ‘enemy’ rather than as a ‘friend’. An enterprising American journalist humorously describes Pakistan as a “frenemy” of the US.
Turkey has for decades cultivated Pakistan, even at the expense of its relations with India. But, just on the eve of the Istanbul Summit on Afghanistan, the influential Turkish daily Hurriet, reflecting the views of its Government, warned: “Treating Afghanistan as its own backyard and waging proxy war will be to the detriment of Pakistan’s own interest. Pakistan needs to change course and stop relying on its nuisance value”. At the Maldives SAARC Summit an infuriated Afghan President Hamid Karzai directly alluded to Pakistani support and safe havens for the Taliban, asserting: “We believe we should talk to Pakistan (and not the Taliban). We cannot keep talking to suicide-bombers till we have the address, telephone number and a door to knock at.”
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s reaction to accusations of supporting terrorism has been based on the adage that offence is the best form of defence. Rather than hanging his head in shame after Osama bin Laden was found hidden by the military at Abbottabad, Gen Kayani aroused public passions by converting the whole issue into one involving an American breach of Pakistan’s sacred ‘sovereignty’. A cornered and weak civilian Government was left with little choice but to join Gen Kayani in fanning the flames of anti-Americanism.
Gen Kayani’s propaganda focussed on how 30,000 Pakistani lives had been sacrificed as “victims of terrorism”. The Pakistanis conveniently glossed over the fact that the bulk of those who died had been killed in conflict with terrorists who had been earlier trained and armed by the ISI. While the usual suspects in the American media and academia tried to bend backwards to empathise with the Pakiastani Army, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made some soothing noises, Pakistan now faces the reality that duplicity on terrorism is making it an international pariah.
Pakistan’s propaganda offensive against India on terrorism has, however, left New Delhi confused and defensive, thanks to some inept handling by South Block. At Sharm el-Sheikh, Pakistan succeeded in de-linking terrorism from the composite dialogue process. Our diplomats tried to be too-clever-by-half by pretending, contrary to facts, that all that we had resumed was a dialogue and not the ‘composite dialogue,’ which was commenced pursuant to a categorical assurance by Pakistan that “territory under its control would not be used for terrorism against India”.
The net result has been that the salience of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, which is today the primary source of international and Indian concern, has been thoroughly eroded in the dialogue process. Worse still, Pakistan is now getting away with the propaganda that what happened in Mumbai is no different from the deaths caused by ‘Hindu terrorists’ in the Samjhauta Express bombing. Pakistan points a finger at India for allegedly failing to prosecute the perpetrators of the Samjhauta Express bombing and uses this to explain its inaction in bringing the perpetrators of 26/11 to book.
Pakistan knows from its past experience that Indian diplomacy lacks the resilience and resolve to stand firm on terrorist outrages it perpetrates. Dawood Ibrahim, the perpetrator of the Mumbai serial bombings in 1993 when more than 250 innocent people lost their lives, resides in resplendent splendour in a mansion in the elite Defence Housing Society in Karachi. This attack did not prevent New Delhi from bending backwards to start the composite dialogue process, where terrorism was bracketed with drug-smuggling, in 1999.
The commencement of this dialogue process was followed by the Kargil conflict and the attack on the Red Fort in Delhi by the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, with Hafiz Mohammed Saeed publicly and proudly proclaiming that he had “unfurled the green flag of Islam on the ramparts of the Red Fort”. We, in turn, issued an invitation for a Summit with General Pervez Musharraf with no proper preparations. Shortly after the failed Summit, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose leader we had released during the hijacking of IC 814, attacked our Parliament House.
In order to justify the decision to de-link the resumption of the composite dialogue process from terrorism, we are also now witnessing the strange phenomenon of the spin doctors of South Block making it appear that Pakistan is doing a great favour by extending the Most Favoured Nation status to us. As a London-based Pakistani analyst, Mr Haider Shah, representing the Rationalist Society of Pakistan, notes: “Normal, non-discriminatory trade relations are the cornerstone of the international trade system under the World Trade Organisation as MFN is the first article of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, second article of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and the fourth article of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. This means that the prohibitive tariff of yesteryears amounts to pushing the country back into the Stone Age, as all other countries have moved ahead of the second stage and are entering the third phase of Free Trade Agreements.”
Moreover, despite the agreement between Commerce Secretaries, it remains to be seen if Pakistan will fulfil its commitments on trade liberalisation to be undertaken by November 2012, as Prime Minister Gilani has averred that no final decision has been taken on granting MFN status to India.
An astute Indian analyst recently observed: “Pakistan’s peace cheque is post-dated, and issued on a bank in dubious health.” Pakistan is obviously buying time by pretending to seek a better relationship with India, even while retaining its jihadi assets to strike again when its present isolation ends and it is able to move more forces from the Durand Line to its eastern border. We should, therefore, ensure that Pakistan does not succeed in installing its jihadi proxies in Kabul, while making it clear that we are not prepared to forget or forgive the perpetrators of the 26/11 outrage, even if we courteously use terms like “man of peace,” or a “breath of fresh air” to flatter their impeccably attired leaders in the salubrious climes of the Attu Island resort in Maldives.
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