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India-Pakistan

Who really benefits from terror?

2013-08-09

[Dawn] THE Indo-Pak whodunit has been getting clichéd, so much so that you can almost predict the pattern of events before they play out. Take two examples. The then foreign minister of Pakistain was visiting Delhi in November 2008 when the Mumbai terror attack was staged. Now it turns out the Indian and Pak prime ministers were preparing to meet in New York next month when a mysterious incident occurred on the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmire on Monday. Not for the first time Indian soldiers were reported to have been killed in a bizarre attack that, relying only on Indian headlines, throws up a familiar, overdone narrative. It is not unusual for terror attacks to come at a moment when mutual bonhomie looks nigh in South Asia. Is Pakistain's deep state the only beneficiary of these disruptions? Or is there someone rejoicing in the Indian establishment too when militarism, buoyed by terrorism, is accorded the front row in our daily lives regardless of the prohibitive costs? It is of course a given that Pakistain's army has a stake in keeping several quarries off balance. These may include the Americans and the Indians, but they do not exclude the civilian rulers at home. The deep state, as the army and its intelligence apparatus is often called in Pakistain, is self-confessedly anti-Indian. That is the nature of the beast. Therefore, it is plausible that the men from whichever Islamist bad turban outfit are said to have attacked the Indian patrol this week, were not hindered by the security establishment. One likely trigger for the LoC incident could be that the country's civilian commanders are more ready to give India a greater role in Afghanistan than the generals may be willing to grant. In an interview to Voice of America, Pakistain's foreign policy adviser Sartaj Aziz uncharacteristically stressed and also welcomed India's role in Afghanistan's future reconstruction. Is that what was shot down, or was sought to be derailed, on the LoC? Or, as some news reports suggest, the killing of five Indian soldiers may be linked to a recent incident in which a clutch of Pakistain-based bully boyz were ambushed by Indian forces as they tried to sneak into Indian Kashmire. In the big picture too the Pak security establishment gains from any windfall of tensions with India, but increasingly this has less to do with its traditional interests in reheating the Kashmire issue. Its current drive is tethered to the elusive "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, if Afghans will permit such a concept. Who are the Indians that benefit from, say, a Mumbai-like attack or from the latest LoC incident? I think at the current count, perverse though it may sound, there are more political beneficiaries in India from any incident involving Pakistain than Pakistain can ever have. As of now, to the best of my knowledge, there is hardly a political group in Pakistain -- from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... 's party to the PPP, from Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree... 's group to the MQM -- to benefit from whipping up anti-India sentiments. In India, on the other hand, even the leftist parties are often seen following right-wing jingoists in the nationalist pursuit. Take Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh with his unflinching support of Indian Moslems. He rarely spares an opportunity to berate Pakistain. As a former defence minister he may have other constituencies to look after too. The fact that harmless-looking Rahul Gandhi can readily recall, apropos of little electoral gain, how his grandmother, the late Indira Gandhi, broke Pakistain into two, reflects his eagerness to keep pace with the holy cow called the national interest. The other day he was applauding the paramilitary forces for keeping democracy alive in India, insisting it was they that crushed the Sikh militancy in Punjab. The communist-led Left Front on its part has been so badly trounced in recent village-level elections by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerji, the lady who has pulled the Moslem vote from under the Left's feet, that the Marxists seem to have surrendered their traditional tempered tone on Pakistain. Count it as an erroneous attempt to compensate for the electoral losses. The irony is that the best chance that peace ever had with Pakistain came from the Hindutva banner of India's Bharatiya Janata Party. True to form though, it was Hindutva's recklessness that was equally eager to start a dangerous war with Pakistain in May 2002. Atal Behari Vajpayee sought peace but he also nearly led us to a nuclear exchange. The wide spectrum of political support that India thus offers to unbridled jingoism is matched by its largely opaque intelligence set-up. This aspect of India's own 'deep state' is just getting to be somewhat discussed in the newspapers. Still, very few Indians see their external or internal spy agencies, much less the military, as a source of concern. The Congress party, led by then head of the opposition Manmohan Singh, had asked some searching questions of the Hindutva rulers when parliament was mysteriously attacked in December 2001. But the party chose to remain silent when the war drums came on. Today the Congress' defence minister is on the mat for suggesting that the men who attacked the Indian soldiers on the LoC may have been Islamist bully boyz in army fatigues. The BJP wants his head for not directly naming the Pakistain Army. The truth is that, with the nod of the intelligence set-up, the BJP is trying to nip any peace talks with Pakistain before the coming elections. The prime ministers of India and Pakistain plan to meet in New York to discuss many issues. Do they have the courage to take on their respective deep states though? At least then we can know the real truth about terrorism and its strange beneficiaries.

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India-Pakistan

A Hindu backlash hits Sonia Gandhi

2007-12-26

By M.D. NALAPAT Since the advent of the rule of the Mughals a millenium ago, central policy in India has discriminated against the Hindu majority within the country. The Mughals favored those of Turko-Iranian origin, followed by those who converted to Islam. The British, during two centuries of rule, implemented policies that deprived all except those of European origin of basic human rights. Much has been made in Indian history texts of the cruelty of the 1857 mutineers against colonial rule, who killed around 300 individuals of European descent during a brief spasm of violence. But little mention is made of the retribution that followed, in which an estimated 65,000 natives were killed, some from the mouths of cannon. Several "rebel" villages were torched, usually together with their inhabitants. Neither has there been much reflection on the manner in which British rule reduced India to poverty. From around one-fourth of global output at the start of the 19th century, the share of the subcontinent fell to one-tenth of that by the time the British flag was lowered in New Delhi in 1947. Independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had been educated from boyhood in Britain. He was so insecure after the British left that he requested the last viceroy of India, Louis Mounbatten, to remain as "free" India's first governor-general and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. British control over the Indian army helped to prevent the full takeover of Kashmir by India in 1948, creating in the process a sore that has festered ever since. Nehru also relied on British economist Nicholas Kaldor to fashion tax policies that punished the very merchant class that had funded the Congress Party's decades-long struggle against the British. Ironically, the new government was as hostile to Indian entrepreneurship as the colonial power had been, and the country's economy was soon straitjacketed by a "socialist pattern of society." While laws were passed that overrode Hindu customs ( including, it must be said, retrogressive ones such as caste), Nehru took care to exclude the Muslims and other minority groups from such legislation, thus retaining the separatist mindset which had resulted in the creation of the "Muslim" state of Pakistan out of "Hindu" India. As a consequence of carrying forward policies that saw the Hindus as a threat and therefore sought to place them on a level below those of the minorities in India, while Hindu temples are subject to state control, churches, mosques and other minority houses of worship remain free. Several ancient temples are now administered by atheists or other non-Hindus in states across the country, and the donations that pour into them from Hindu devotees are sequestered by the state. In education, while Hindu managements face severe restrictions and controls, managements that are Christian or Muslim escape almost all such state-mandated limitations on their freedom. Since Sonia Gandhi took over the governance of India in 2004 and appointed a prime minister from a minority faith, there has been an explicit bias in policy favoring minority groups at the expense of the Hindu majority, and a conscious effort to sideline officials seen as "practicing Hindus" -- those who regularly visit temples -- on the grounds that they are "Hindu fanatics." By contrast, almost none of the numerous bomb explosions that have taken place in Congress-ruled cities across India -- such as Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad -- have been traced to the perpetrators, because of an informal prohibition against "stereotyping" that prevents the police from intensive investigations in the mainly Muslim localities where the perpetrators are believed to be sheltering. Such "partial" secularism, in which only Hindus are expected to be secular while Muslims and other minorities remain free to practice exclusionary practices, has led to a Hindu backlash across India. This found its first major expression in the Dec. 23 verdict of the electorate of Gujarat state, who re-elected the state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, despite a well-funded rebellion within the ranks of his own party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, as well as the enmity of almost the entire television and print media. The media correctly see him as posing a possibly fatal challenge to the Nehruvian policies that were embraced by the first BJP prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was as deferential toward Sonia Gandhi's interests as members of her own Congress Party had been in the past. Modi thus challenges not only Sonia Gandhi but the Vajpayee cohort in his own party, who have for decades enjoyed a cozy and lucrative relationship with the Nehrus. Despite occasional public posturing, in practice, the present crop of BJP leaders has been content to share in the spoils of the present Nehruvian state system. All, that is, except Narendra Modi, who defied his party leadership in making Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh -- both of whom, being Christian and Sikh respectively, belong to minority groups -- the target of his verbal barbs, despite strictures from the Sonia-friendly Election Commission. Wresting Gujarat from this potent challenger was crucial to the continued salience of Nehruism, but the strength of the Hindu backlash against policies that penalize the majority community ensured a handsome win. The results have led to apprehension throughout the Nehruvian establishment, including almost the whole of the English-language media, that "Moditva" may spread to other states. It may even within the next five years lead to a takeover of the central government by the Gujarat chief minister, who comes from near the bottom of the Hindu caste ladder, but who has emerged as the favorite of tens of millions of Hindus irrespective of caste, who seek parity with the minorities in running their houses of worship or educational and other institutions. As Malaysia has shown, the advent of globalization and the demonstrated ability of Hindus to compete with the rest of the world have led to a renewal of confidence in a community of 840 million that has been kept at the margins for more than a millennium. The message of Gujarat is that the cry for parity by the Hindu community in India has become a political wave that could upset the Nehruvian system of partial secularism that has prevailed in India since 1947. Dec. 23, 2007 is a genuine turning point in the politics of the world's largest democracy. Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.

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India-Pakistan

Kashmir ceasefire: remembering failure

2007-10-14

Early this morning, Zafar Bhat prayed at the unmarked graves of two Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who had been killed by the Central Reserve Police Force in Srinagar before dawn. On Eid-ul-Fitr tomorrow (depending of course on the sighting of the moon) , Mr. Bhat says, he intends to visit Shamima Badroo, the wife of the top Hizb ul-Mujahideen commander who led the terror group into a short-lived ceasefire in 2000-2001. Dr. Badroo, a well-respected medical practitioner was shot eight times by a Lashkar-e-Taiba hit squad last year, leaving her paralysed from the neck down. Strange? “There’s no point harbouring resentments against the dead,” Bhat says. Six years ago, Bhat was among a core group of Pakistan-based Hizb ul-Mujahideen commanders who led the organisation’s efforts to initiate a dialogue with India. In December 2000, on the eve of the month of Ramzan, Hizb ul-Mujahideen commander Mohammad Yusuf Shah declared a ceasefire. Although Shah withdrew the ceasefire eight days later, the Government of India terminated offensive operations for five months. But fatalities mounted as anti-ceasefire terror groups like the Lashkar escalated hostilities to undermine the peace process. Although Dr. Badroo’s husband, Hizb deputy chief Abdul Majid Dar, struggled to revive the peace process of which the ceasefire was a part, he was eventually assassinated by hardliners within his own organisation. The bitter experience of the Ramzan ceasefire haunts the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir. Lessons learned “I think we all made mistakes,” he says. “India’s government,” he argues, “allowed politics to override the peace process. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee first said the negotiations would be held within the framework of insaniyat, human values, not the Constitution. But soon afterwards, both Deputy Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Defence Minister George Fernandes said Kashmir was an inalienable part of India, which weakened the pro-dialogue forces.” Pakistan and Kashmiri secessionists, Bhat believes, also made mistakes. “When hardliners criticised the government for going along with the ceasefire,” he says, “President Pervez Musharraf backed off. And some All-Parties Hurriyat Conference leaders in Kashmir became worried we, rather than them them, would be the eventual beneficiaries of a dialogue. So they set about sabotaging the dialogue process.” “The end result was that thousands of people have died since, for nothing,” Bhat says. “What saddens me the most about the failure of the Ramzan ceasefire,” he says, “is that a lot of hard work and lives went to waste. There were secret meetings at the highest levels for months before the decision. I met all the APHC leaders, and consulted with Syed Ali Shah Geelani no less than three times. We’d all agreed it was the best way forward.” “I’m very happy,” Bhat says, “that the United Jihad Council has declared a ceasefire now. It would have been wiser to proceed down this road in 2001, because the Hizb ul-Mujahideen was militarily much stronger, and the political position of the freedom movement in Kashmir was also better. But it’s never too late to talk peace. We all have no choice.” From war to peace After the ceasefire collapsed, Bhat stayed on in Jammu and Kashmir and turned to politics. He founded the Kashmir Salvation Movement, a group of one-time terrorists determined to use democratic means to press for the independence of the state. Closely allied to All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, the KSM has been a favoured target of hardline terrorists: fifteen of its cadre have been killed since 2005. The person costs, too, have been enormous. Bhat’s brother, social activist Haji Abdul Gani Bhat, was assassinated by terrorists in 2005. Seven people were injured when a ceremony to mourn his death was also bombed. The ironies aren’t lost on the KSM leader. “I have lost seven members of my family in the violence in Jammu and Kashmir,” he says, “five at the hands of Indian forces.” Bhat joined the Hizb ul-Mujahideen in 1989, abandoning his job at the Soura Institute of Medical Sciences. A long standing supporter of the Jamaat-e-Islami, he participated in Hizb chief Shah’s unsuccessful attempt to be elected to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in 1987. Like thousands of other activists of the Muslim United Front, Bhat was jailed for protesting against electoral fraud, and eventually turned to violence. After a brief stint in the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which despite its stated secular leanings trained and equipped hundreds of Jamaat-e-Islami cadre, Bhat joined Shah at a Hizb ul-Mujahideen camp in Pakistan. Strangely enough, his mentors there included Abdullah Bangroo — the terrorist who eventually assassinated Mirwaiz Farooq’s father, Maulvi Mohammad Farooq on suspicion of preparing for talks with New Delhi. “Time takes you down some strange roads,” he says, “but like I said, there’s no point harbouring resentments. I think we should look to the future instead.”

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India-Pakistan

Time to draw the line with China

2006-06-30

By Brahma Chellaney For 25 continuous years, India has been seeking to settle by negotiation with China the disputed Indo-Tibetan frontier. These border talks are the longest between any two nations in modern world history. Yet, not only have the negotiations yielded no concrete progress on a settlement, but they also have failed so far to remove even the ambiguities plaguing the long line of control. Beijing has been so loath to clearly define the 4,057-kilometre frontline, that it suspended the exchange of maps with India several years ago. Consequently, India and China remain the only countries in the world not separated by a mutually defined frontline. In contrast, the Indo-Pakistan frontier is an international border, excepting in Jammu and Kashmir, where there is a line of control that has been both clearly defined and delineated. Only in the 110-kilometre northernmost tip of the Indo-Pakistan frontier at Saltoro Ridge, encompassing the disputed Siachen Glacier, is the frontline ill-defined. The latest round of Sino-Indian border negotiations ended in Xian this week in predictable fashion — with warm handshakes and a promise to meet again. But after a quarter century of unrewarding negotiations with Beijing, India ought to face up to the reality that it is being taken round and round the mulberry bush by an adversarial state that has little stake in an early border resolution. An Indian reappraisal of the present process has to begin with greater transparency at home in order to promote a meaningful public debate. Official candour on the background and present focus of the talks can help build a public opinion that is more informed and alert about the intentions and tactics of China. Conversely, a domestic public opinion lulled into a false sense of complacency through official obfuscation and a speciously positive pitch can hardly be conducive to India’s own interest, particularly at a time when China’s accumulating power and growing assertiveness are beginning to constrict Indian strategic space. In that light, why misinform the Indian public by stating that this was “the eighth round of talks,” as if the border negotiations began with the 2003 appointment of “special representatives”? In 2003, merely a new label was put on the talks, but nothing else changed. Why bury the fact that the border talks have been going on ever since they were initiated by Indira Gandhi in 1981? The number of rounds of talks should be counted from 1981, not from a label change. For the first seven years, the negotiations were labelled “senior-level talks.” In order to contrive a “breakthrough” when two different Indian Prime Ministers visited Beijing, the tag was changed in 1988 to “joint working group” and then to “special representatives’ talks” in 2003. What was touted at the last label change as an upgraded dialogue at the “political” level has turned out to be an exercise merely in window dressing: while the Chinese team has been led since 1981 by a career diplomat with the title of a vice foreign minister, India switched in 2003 from a serving bureaucrat (the foreign secretary) to an ex-bureaucrat serving as the national security adviser. This despite the fact that the national security adviser is senior in protocol to China’s “special representative,” Dai Bingguo, the first of eight vice foreign ministers. In fact, India has had a new “special representative” every year since 2003. The 2005 appointee, M.K. Narayanan, has to last out 2006 to break away from that spell. The more the talks have dragged on, the less Beijing has appeared interested in resolving the border disputes other than on its terms. In the period since 1981, China has realised a tectonic shift in its favour by rapidly building up its economic and military power. While keeping India engaged in sterile border talks, China has strengthened its negotiating leverage through its illicit nuclear and missile transfers to Pakistan and strategic penetration of Burma. Today, Beijing gives the impression that an unresolved, partially indistinct border fits well with its interests. Indeed, it sees a strategic benefit in keeping hundreds of thousands of Indian troops pinned down along the Himalayas, ensuring in the process that they would not be available against China’s “all-weather ally,” Pakistan. This is the “third party whose interests China cannot disregard,” as a Chinese official divulged at a Track II dialogue in Beijing that this writer had co-organised a few years ago. An unsettled border also endows China with the option to activate military heat along the now-quiet frontier if India played the Tibet card or entered into a military alliance with the United States. More importantly, China is sitting pretty on the upper Himalayan heights, having got what it wanted — by furtive encroachment or by conquest. It definitely sees no reason to strategically assist a potential peer competitor by lifting pressure on the borders through an amicable settlement. Given these realities, India’s top priority from 1981 to 2002 was to get the line of control fully clarified while remaining open to any Chinese proposal for a complete border settlement. The accompanying confidence-building measures were premised on the elimination of frontline ambiguities to help stabilise the military situation on the ground. But the process of adopting CBMs has advanced much faster than the parallel process of defining and delineating the frontline, farcically called “the line of actual control.” In 1996, the two countries, for example, signed a CBM prohibiting specific military activities at precise distances from a still-blurry frontline. That accord requires the two countries, among other things, not to fly combat aircraft “within 10 kilometres of the line of actual control” (Article V.2) and not to “conduct blast operations within two kilometres of the line” (Article VI), when the reality is that there is no agreed frontline on maps, let alone on the ground. It took two full decades of border talks before China agreed to exchange maps with India of even one border sector. In 2001, the Chinese and Indian sides exchanged maps showing each other’s military positions in the least-controversial middle sector. China then committed itself to an exchange of maps of the western sector in 2002 and the eastern sector in early 2003. The completion of an exchange of maps showing each other’s presently held military positions was intended, without prejudice to rival territorial claims, to define where actual control lay. Through such clarification of the frontline, the two sides intended to proceed towards mutual delineation on maps and perhaps even demarcation on the ground, pending a final settlement. After the first exchange in 2001, however, China went back on its commitment, creating an impasse in the talks. Having broken its word, Beijing insisted that the two sides abandon years of laborious efforts to define the frontline and focus instead on finding an overall border settlement. That move clearly appeared to be a dilatory tactic intended to disguise its breach of promise. Ask yourself: if Beijing is not willing to take an elementary step — clarifying the frontline — why would it be willing to take far-bigger action to resolve the festering border problem through a package settlement? A final border settlement would be a complex process involving not only a full resolution of the claims that involve large chunks of territory but also the drawing of a clear-cut frontier. The idea of a “package” settlement is not new. China began peddling that even before its 1962 invasion, as a red herring to divert attention from its aggressive designs. Since 1981, it has raised the same idea from time to time. But till date it has not once put forward a concrete proposal for consideration. If anything, the border talks have revealed that Beijing is not willing to settle on the basis of the status quo. This is manifest from its laughable claim to India’s Tawang region — as an extension of its annexation of Tibet. Yet, as Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee sought to propitiate China during his 2003 Beijing visit on two separate fronts: he formally recognised Tibet as “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China,” completing the process begun by Jawaharlal Nehru of India sacrificing its northern buffer; and he gave in to the Chinese demand to switch the focus of the border talks from frontline clarification to the elusive search for a package settlement. His concession to the hosts not only stalled the process of clarifying the frontline, but it also has taken India back to square one — to discussing the “principles” and “basic framework” of a potential settlement. The two negotiating teams are now engaged in giving meaning to and implementing the six abstract principles that were trumpeted as yet another “breakthrough” in April 2005 during the New Delhi visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. The focus of the talks now, as admitted by both sides, is on applying the principles to devise a “basic framework” for negotiations. In other words, the two sides are still not close to actually discussing any package-settlement idea. India needs to reflect on the wisdom of the course it has pursued. It not only rewarded Beijing in 2003 for an act of bad faith, but also has played into its hands by switching from the practical task of clarifying the frontline to a conceptual enunciation of vacuous principles and a new framework for talks. A well-known strength of Chinese diplomacy is to discuss and lay out principles, and then interpret them to suit Beijing’s convenience, as India found out bitterly after signing the 1954 Panchsheel agreement. It is inexplicable why India should join hands with China to camouflage the lack of progress in the border talks. Re-labelling ingenuity and a number of high-level visits and joint statements cannot epitomise progress. Is it in India’s interest to cover up China’s evident lack of sincerity? There is little new that the so-called special representatives are discussing. After 25 years of talks, any two sides will run out of new ideas, principles or proposals to discuss. Indeed, the way the talks are continuing, China and India can only consolidate the record they hold for the longest, most-barren negotiations. If New Delhi really believes in the maxim that good fences make good neighbours, it is time for it to draw the line, at least in the negotiations. But first it needs to re-evaluate the very utility of staying absorbed in a never-ending process that jibes well with Beijing’s India policy of engagement with containment.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Pakistan violated Kashmir bus agreement

2005-06-22

NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Pakistan on Tuesday of violating a bilateral travel agreement on the newly launched trans-Kashmir bus service. Singh said Pakistan breached the pact earlier this month by allowing Kashmiri separatists to travel beyond Pakistan-administered Kashmir to Islamabad where they held talks with President Pervez Musharraf. People who travel on the bus service which started April 7 can only visit the divided zones of Kashmir under the agreement between the nuclear-armed rivals that was seen as a major achievement of their slow-moving peace process. Pakistan's decision to "invite them to visit Islamabad and other cities in Pakistan violated an understanding on the procedures reached between the two countries for running the bus service," Singh said. You didn't think they'd follow the rules, did you? He made the comments in a letter to former premier Atal Behari Vajpayee who criticised the government's policy on the separatists' visit. "It would not be, therefore, correct to state that the authorities on our side (had) mishandled the visit of the Hurriyat," Singh said. The separatists, most of whom belonged to the separatist alliance, Hurriyat, said on their return in mid-June that they hoped their visit would help them become a formal part of the peace process between the South Asian neighbours. On Monday, New Delhi rejected a demand by Hurriyat to be included in the dialogue process but said it could give its suggestions for solving the Kashmir issue. "There is no question of involving Hurriyat in the India-Pakistan talks" but it can give its suggestions for settling the Kashmir issue, junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India. Singh also rejected a proposal by Musharraf that the international community be made a "guarantor" of a resolution of the dispute over Kashmir. "We have ruled out any role for a third party -- either through intervention or as guarantor or as mediators -- in any form," he said. Send in the mighty Uruguayans!

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Musharraf bans key militant groups

2002-01-13

An olive branch in one hand and a sword in the other, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf cracked down yesterday on militants and told India it was time to talk, but said his troops were ready to fight to the last drop of their blood. Eager not to appear to be bowing to Indian demands yet still trying to defuse tensions, Musharraf banned five militant groups in an address to the nation, saying they were stirring sectarian hatred at home. The banned groups included the two pro-Kashmiri organizations accused by India of the attack last month on its parliament. With a million men poised for war on both sides of the Pakistan-India border, he said that India must not dare to cross the line and his people must not interfere in the business of other countries. "Pakistan's armed forces are fully deployed and prepared to face every challenge. We will shed the last drop of our blood for the defense of the country," he said in a speech laced with a mix of saber rattling and peace-making. "Do not attempt to cross the border in any area because we will retaliate with full force," the military ruler said. "Let there be no misunderstanding." There was no immediate comment from Indian officials. The United States was quick to welcome Musharraf's speech that outlined a vision for a modern Islamic Pakistan, with a State Department official saying the strategy provided "a basis for both sides to ratchet down the tension". Police were ordered to seal all the offices in Sindh province of the five religious and sectarian groups. "A ban is after all a ban and police have been asked to seal all their offices ... if they are still operative," Sindh's Home Secretary Brig. Mukhtar Sheikh told AFP. The law would take its course if someone tried to resist or violate the ban, he said. "The writ of the government would be enforced and no one would be allowed to break the law as laid down by the president," he said. Newly-banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba was one of the first to express defiance, vowing its jihad, or holy war, would continue in Indian-administered Kashmir. "The government of Pakistan has no right to ban us as we are a Kashmir-based group fighting against the Indian forces and we will continue our jihad (holy war)," Lashkar spokesman Abdullah Sayyaf said. India's political establishment gave a cautious welcome to the speech. But the Indian government said it would react officially today after it had studied the text of the address "very closely". The Hindu extremist party, which leads the ruling coalition in Delhi, said it would welcome steps to curb militancy announced by Pakistan only if they halted "Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir and the rest of India." The Bharatiya Janata Party said it wanted more than words from the Pakistani leader. "That will be the benchmark. He has to be judged by his actions," BJP spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra told reporters. The US State Department official said Musharraf's speech "marks a clear break with the violence of the past in Kashmir and Pakistani society as a whole." Musharraf stressed that the issue of disputed Kashmir that has soured ties with India ever since independence in 1947 must be solved through negotiation, words unlikely to find favor with India that claims the whole Himalayan region as its own. "Kashmir runs in our blood. No Pakistani can break links with Kashmir. The whole world knows this, all Pakistanis know this," he said, but said the dispute should not be used as a pretext by extremists. "No organization will be permitted to engage in terrorism under cover of Kashmir cause," he said in measured remarks unlikely to assuage Indian anger but likely to find favor in the international community. Musharraf's speech came at the end of a day that saw the arrests of about 250 activists detained in police raids on religious schools, or madrassas, belonging to radical groups in the volatile southern port city of Karachi. He told his people he was banning Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, two of the groups of militants battling security forces in Indian-ruled Kashmir that are at the root of the military standoff between the nuclear neighbors that has brought them to the brink of the fourth war. "Militancy, intolerance, extremism ... are to be brought to an end," he said without linking the ban to Indian demands. He said he was ready to talk to India in the spirit of New Delhi's own requests and sent a message to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. "I would like to quote what you yourself said only a few days ago, and I quote: 'Mindsets will have to be altered, and historical baggage will have to be jettisoned'. I take you up on this offer. Let us start talking in this very spirit."

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Afghanistan/South Asia

BJP defeated in Indian elections

2004-05-14

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee resigned on Thursday as the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party was voted out of power in India’s general elections in an unexpected electoral verdict, which paved the way for the return of the Congress-led alliance after eight years. After daylong deliberations and a meeting with his cabinet, Prime Minister Vajpayee drove to President’s House and handed in his resignation to President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Vajpayee’s resignation ended six years of BJP rule which had such diverse highlights as the Kargil conflict, a virtual war with Pakistan, and peace initiatives in Lahore, Islamabad and Agra. The results, which sent the NDA tumbling to 183 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament (down from 299 in the last elections) not only surprised the ruling alliance but also the media and pollsters. The BJP got 140 seats, 41 less than last time while the Congress bagged 147, a gain of 33 seats. The Left Front managed its best showing of 57 seats, becoming an important crutch for the Congress to reach the crucial figure of 272 to stake its claim to power. The inclusion of the Left Front in the power structure will signify many changes in India’s economic and foreign policies. Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader M Salim told Daily Times that a common minimum programme (CMP) would be evolved and economic reforms will be given a human face. He said the Front will also force the new government to dump a “pro-America” policy to a mature “pro-India” and non-aligned foreign policy. Conceding that it had lost the people’s mandate, the NDA said it would sit in the opposition. NDA Convener George Fernandes told reporters that the leader of opposition would be decided by the newly-elected MPs. However, insiders told Daily Times that Mr Vajpayee was reluctant to wear the cap of opposition leader and wanted to leave for a quiet life. They said his party’s leaders spent the whole day on Thursday urging him to continue as their leader. The Congress combine virtually wiped out the ruling NDA in several states, including Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh and made major inroads in the BJP bastion of Gujarat and Delhi. The ultra-Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh blamed the BJP’s “dilution” of the Hindutva agenda for its drubbing and said the core ideology should take centre stage for the party to make a comeback.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Pakistan neither knows nor cares where Binny is

2004-05-02

Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali has said that Pakistan doesn’t know or care where fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is hiding, but is willing to help find him. “We don’t know. We have no idea and no clue about it. We are not interested,” Mr Jamali told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday. “I think people who tried to look towards him in the first instance, they are the ones who should be worried about it.” If we have a joint goal of capturing him or killing him, you'd think the Paks would have an interest in where he is. But today seems to be a day for stoopid remarks... Mr Jamali said that Pakistan and archrival India had finally overcome more than five decades of animosity and said that he wished his Indian counterpart Atal Behari Vajpayee success in the ongoing national elections so that the recent peace initiatives could flourish. Mr Jamali was speaking at the end of a two-day trip to Thailand that has been overshadowed by the killing of 108 alleged Islamic militants by the Thai police in the country’s Muslim-dominated south. Mr Jamali said the killings, while regrettable, were an internal matter, and he appeared to back the Thai government’s crackdown. “The death of Muslims is sad, but rule of the law must prevail in the country,” said the Pakistani prime minister. “Pakistan itself has suffered terrorism,” he said, citing two attempts on the life of President General Pervez Musharraf last year. Actually, I wouldn't put the hit attempts on Perv into the category of terrorism, though admittedly they were carried out by terrorist organizations. Bumping off the head of state is an old tradition in failed states worldwide. Shooting up crowds of civilians because of their religion or ethnic background is more in the pure terrorism category, though, and Pakland certainly has enough of that.

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Afghanistan/South Asia

25 hurt in Kashmir grenade attack, rebel killed ahead of Vajpayee visit

2004-04-14

Around 25 people were injured in a grenade attack on an election rally in Kashmir on Wednesday by suspected Islamic rebels ahead of a visit to the restive region by India’s prime minister, police said. People were gathering at the rally site, in Indian Kashmir’s Banihal town, when the grenade attack took place. The rally was to be addressed by senior leader of India’s main opposition Congress party Lal Singh, who is also Indian Kashmir’s health minister. Banihal is about 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of the region’s winter capital Jammu, where Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was due to hold an election rally later Wednesday. The attack came just hours after Indian troops shot dead a senior rebel commander of a hardline group they claimed was behind a string of recent attacks on election rallies in the divided state. The killed rebel commander, meanwhile, was named by Indian army brigadier A.K. Choudhary as Pakistani national Abu Kasha. Choudhary said Kasha, a senior member of pro-Pakistan Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, was killed in a gunfight with troops on the outskirts of the Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar early Wednesday. He said Kasha has been operating from Jammu and had recently been sent to the Kashmir valley to target important political leaders and disrupt election rallies. I'm sorry, but I read that and immediately slipped languages, translating "Kasha" from Russian. I now think of the deceased as "Pappy Buckwheat"...

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Pakistan and India, best of friends

2004-03-26

Peace with Pakistan is permanent and the South Asian rivals are unlikely ever to fight again, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Friday in a bid to capitalize on a thaw in ties ahead of elections. Vajpayee was speaking at an election rally in Amritsar, after his deputy, Lal Krishna Advani, swept into the Sikh holy city at the end of the first leg of a nationwide campaign tour. "I don’t think we will fight ever again. This peace will be permanent, the friendship will last. There is no other way out for neighbors but to live peacefully," Vajpayee told a crowd of more than 5,000 people. "Had anyone imagined that we would have such good ties with our neighbor and play cricket with them?" Vajpayee asked, referring to an ongoing cricket series between India and Pakistan, the first between the rivals in 14 years. Hey, it’s good that they’re talking this way but... mark me down as skeptical.

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India-Pakistan

Commanders back peace moves

2004-01-16

The top military leadership on Thursday declared that Pakistan would not allow its soil to be used for any terrorist activities. The Corps Commanders' meeting, presided over by President General Pervez Musharraf held at GHQ on Thursday , discussed Pakistan's efforts to root out extremism and all kinds of terrorism from country's soil. Perv's got the excuse now. But I still don't think he's serious in this latest crackdown... The Corps Commanders' meeting was the first after a meeting of top Pakistani and Indian leadership on the sidelines of Saarc summit. The President reportedly briefed the commanders about his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The participants of the meeting endorsed the government's efforts for peace with India. The President reportedly told the participants that Pakistan stood for peace in the region and a peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues with India, including the core issue of Kashmir through a meaningful dialogue based on sovereign equality. The meeting was attended by all the Corps Commanders and Principal Staff Officers of the General Headquarters. The meeting also considered the post ceasefire situation along the Line of Control. Briefing the participants of the meeting about the prevailing international and regional environment, President Gen Musharraf said that Pakistan would continue to strive for rooting out terrorism from the country as it had damaged the country's image in the world and had become a stumbling block in the prosperity of the country. I'd point out that the Paks' love of shariah is the root of its problems, but every time you say "secular state" their turbans unravel... The official sources said the president also briefed the participants about what had been discussed in his meeting with Indian Prime Minister and how the issuance of a joint statement was made possible.

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India-Pakistan

SAARC a ‘failed’ organisation: Hizb

2004-01-06

Syed Salahuddin, the head of Hizb-ul Mujahedeen, said the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) had “assumed the shape of a failed organisation” because it failed to deal with Kashmir’s reality. “The reason for this failure is that the SAARC wants to create an unrealistically optimistic environment by pushing the realities of history and those on the ground into the background,” said Mr Salahuddin in a written statement from Muzaffarabad. The Hizb-ul Mujahedeen is the largest of about a dozen Islamic militant groups in Kashmir. The summit has brought together Pakistani and Indian leaders and raised hopes for peace on both sides of the divided Kashmir region, a Himalayan region that has been the source of two of the three wars between the two countries. And it's raised feelings of dismay among the jihadis... “President Pervez Musharraf and Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee met on Monday and discussed all issues,” said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. The meeting between Musharraf and Mr Vajpayee was the first since their talks in India in 2001. And they were none too comfortable...

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