Indian Defence Review

There is speculation that his (Zia) death in the air crash was actually a planned assassination, arranged by those who were in reality opposed to the policy of reconciliation with India.

There was a major effort during Zia’s years of power to break out of this psyche. Towards the closing part of his rule, it had dawned on Zia that a policy of continuous hostility with India required very heavy expenditure, reducing the budget for social, economic and infrastructural development and the real sufferers in the process were the vast numbers of people of Pakistan. A new confrontation had developed between India and Pakistan in the early 1980s in the glacial wastelands of Siachin, placing new burdens on the economy, which perhaps prompted the new direction of thinking by Zia in whose person the offices of the President of Pakistan and Chief of Army Staff were combined. He was thus in a position to ensure a unanimous policy initiative.

Barbara Crossette, correspondent of New York Times in New Delhi in the early 1990s, following an interview with Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, quoted him as saying that in Zia’s time India and Pakistan could have solved all their major problems and “were close to finishing agreement on Kashmir. We had the maps and everything ready to sign.” These initiatives ultimately collapsed when Zia was killed in a mysterious air crash in August 1988. There is speculation that his death in the air crash was actually a planned assassination, arranged by those who were in reality opposed to the policy of reconciliation with India. After his death, the generals who had consented to the new approach while he was alive and their leader apparently withdrew their consent. The new Zia line was never consummated.

The military incursion in Kargil in 1999 as a climax of the low intensity proxy war in J&K was the latest manifestation of a rigid and frigid mind set, conditioned by years of belief in the two-nation theory.

There is reason to believe that Nawaz Sharif had also come to the conclusion that unattainable goals should be given up and that in the interests of the people of Pakistan, ways should be found to get rid of Indo-Pak problems. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Lahore bus Yatra in February 1999 appears to have been part of such diplomacy. But the military brass of Pakistan did not see eye to eye with Sharif. Kargil more than proves it.

CBMs: A Futile Exercise

In this context, the Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), so assiduously being pursued by enlightened groups on both sides of the border, seem to have little future for India and Pakistan at this moment. To be successful, CBMs have to be backed by political will and steadfastness. Since the 1980s a number of CBMs have been put in place in military and other fields but the absence of these two ingredients on the part of Pakistan have kept the core questions stalled.

The Lahore Declaration of 1999, signed during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore, established a number of CBMs in the nuclear area but the confidence and trust generated thereby were rudely shattered by Pakistan’s clandestine manoeuvres and sneak attack in Kargil. This is proof, if proof is needed, that even the danger of a nuclear inferno in the subcontinent is inadequate to promote the objectives of CBMs.

The real leaders of Pakistan i.e. the military brass have viewed CBMs as of merely cosmetic value. They are the ones who put roadblocks to developing even a mutually beneficial economic relationship between the two countries. The Chinese support to the nuclear and missile programme in Pakistan invests the latter leadership with a sense of self assurance that provides the backdrop to the absence of a desire to improve relations with India despite many adverse domestic circumstances in Pakistan.

ISI Activities a True Indicator

More than anything else, the nature of operations of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in India spells out the designs, which have been chalked out against India. After having tried to foment militancy in Punjab and Kashmir, the ISI is now working on a much more ambitious programme. It is seeking to encircle India from North and North East through a web of insurgency by coordinating with ULFA of Assam, NSCN of Nagas and PLA of Manipur. It is building an axis between Kashmir Mujahideen and the Jehadi forces, which operated so successfully against the Soviets in Afghanistan, to divert them towards Kashmir. It has started targeting the rest of India also for stoking the fires of Islamic fundamentalism.

The Chinese support to the nuclear and missile programme in Pakistan invests the latter leadership with a sense of self assurance that provides the backdrop to the absence of a desire to improve relations with India despite many adverse domestic circumstances in Pakistan.

The Jehadi groups, which took root in Pakistan during the Afghan campaign, are its collaborators for training and brainwashing volunteers for operations in Kashmir and India. Recruitment is open to any Muslim from any part of the world as it was when the theatre was Afghanistan. Links with Islamic fundamentalist organisations, found among different countries, give the effort a pan Islamic character. The Jamait-I-Islami (JI) units in neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh provide support to operations from these countries.

The principal Jehadi organisations, collaborating in Pakistan, are the Markaz-e-Oawah-ul-Irshad (MOI), whose field arm is Lashkar-e-Toiba; Hizbul Mujahideen, a front of the JI; and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, sponsored by Jamait-ul-Ullema. All of these organisations believe in a puritan form of Islam, as embodied in Sunni orthodoxy, and consider Jehad a legitimate activity to achieve this goal. Their volunteers are taking on suicide assignments. As a result, many recent episodes have displayed a great deal of dare-devilry on their part. The organisations are funded and equipped by the ISI with weapons like AK 47, machine guns, anti aircraft machine guns, rocket launchers, ROX, etc., to which only a government can have access.

Speaking on November 17, 2000 the MDI chief Mohammed Saeed indicated that the Mujahideen had already chalked out a plan to carry out lethal attacks in the interior of India and would penetrate deep into India for its disintegration.6 This is not an empty boast because already some cells have been identified and neutralised in India. There are bound to be many more.

The moot question is whether the army, which is the lord and master of ISI, can ever call off such operations particularly since all the leading countries of the world, including Pakistans friend China, are condemning terrorism.

When General Parvez Musharraf recently said that Jehad was the religious duty of every Muslim, he was echoing the philosophy of these organisations and thereby encouraging them.

The moot question is whether the army, which is the lord and master of ISI, can ever call off such operations particularly since all the leading countries of the world, including Pakistan’s friend China, are condemning terrorism. It seems Pakistan’s situation has become somewhat like that of a man riding a tiger. Dismounting has the potential of some risks. Speaking in the context of current efforts to find a formula to establish a durable peace along the Line of Actual Control in Kashmir, the JI chief Qazi Hossain Ahmed has already expressed dissatisfaction and accused General Musharraf of working against national interests. He has gone to the extent of appealing to the Generals in Pakistan to replace Musharraf.7

Obviously, the initiative’ has passed out of the hands of the Government agencies where, it seems in some crucial areas of policy, the ISI has been reduced to playing a second fiddle to militant organisations. The scene is somewhat reminiscent of the Taliban who rode into power in Afghanistan on the strength of their Islamic fundamentalist credentials. The Taliban also believe in Jehad in Kashmir and elsewhere. The portents in Pakistan are certainly not encouraging for India.

The politics of two-nation theory have now evolved into the politics of terrorism and Jehad, which can spiral out of control. While the two-nation theory was an issue between those who wanted Pakistan and those who wanted India to remain undivided, foreigners are being given a toehold in the equation between the two countries which remains as irresolvable today as it was in 1947, thanks to this two-nation theory.