Author: M B Naqvi in Karachi
Publication: Deccan Herald
Date: May 31, 2001
Success in talks will inevitably
require give and take on both sides. Would Musharraf be in a position to
give anything at all - and sell it to his hard Right?
For General Parvez Musharraf to
travel to Delhi to resume the Lahore Peace Process that Indian Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee started in February 1999 is a high-risk activity.
Along the way he has to face two separate threats: one is what might be
described as the Kargil syndrome; some hardline force or faction can term
the effort as a betrayal of the Kashmiris and or Jehadis and proceed to
do what the Kargil planners intended politically to do. The second is what
awaits him in Delhi. To appreciate this uncertainty one has to have some
idea of what lies behind the sudden decision of Mr Vajpayee to invite Gen
Musharraf whom he had sort of ostracised.
Dealing with India is no longer
a simple foreign policy matter here. Thanks to unrestrained and unthinking
Islamic rhetoric - in which both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have played
a part of active accessory - any government of the day runs the risk of
falling foul of powerful vested interests. The latter are primarily the
over a dozen Jehadi outfits like Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,
the Jaish-e- Muhammad and several others among major groups. Thanks to
extremist rhetoric they gain popularity among the gullible, funds flow
in, acquisition of modern small arms enhances their sense of power and
makes them a nuisance that has cumulatively become a political force.
Some call it a shackle that the
rulers have devised it for their own feet. How would Jehadi organisations
react is now a major constraint for Islamabad's policy makers. Army's role
in encouraging the Jehadis has not been inconsiderable. These could do
what the Army itself could not do. It also used them as a lever on the
government of the day from the time Gen Mirza Aslam Beg was the Chief of
Army Staff and he decided to make the Kashmir's basically non-violent and
spontaneous protest movement of 1989 into an armed insurgency. The strategy
was based on his assessment that with the acquisition of nuclear capability,
India can do nothing while Pakistan can twist the Indian lion's tail in
Kashmir. A collateral benefit of the Kashmir Jehad is the creation of a
strong lobby that can be used against the government if it adopts policies
that the Army does not like. Now of course this interest group has grown
so rich and powerful that it can, on its own, act as a check on the government's
ability to move in a direction it does not approve.
It has another facet to it. The
Jehadis' long association with the Army has infected the latter with what
Gen Zia's persistent efforts to Islamise the Army achieved and its own
orchestration of heavy Islamic propaganda through its linkages with the
Urdu press has done. Indeed the whole Right wing has been radicalised with
mixing up of the notion of opposing India's misguided anti-democratic policies
and with the one of opposing the Hindu India as such; to all educated brainwashed
and paid Jehadis the Jehad is against Hindu India rather than any fine
discrimination among policies. The fear is that some parts of the Army
might have come to believe the notion of Jehad being waged is against Hindu
India as such. At any rate, this fear, genuine enough, has strengthened
the clout of vested interest no end.
Gen Musharraf's first instructions
after receiving Vajpayee's letter was to begin intensive lobbying with
the Jehadi outfits. He has good reasons to fear that the Kargil syndrome
might not visit his sojourn in Delhi. One does not mean that another Kargil-like
fighting will break out. It is about its politics: Nawaz Sharif's perceived
tilt towards India was denounced by Jamaat-i-Islami (read its Jehadi outfit
Hizbul Mujahideen) and similar other parties. In the planning of Kargil
operation this politics is commonly believed to have been the motivating
factor.
Now that this is the turn of Gen
Musharraf to go to India to try to do a deal on Kashmir, it is natural
that the power of this lobby will be seen as a force that cannot be trifled
with - not by a military regime that has only a narrow constituency of
senior Army officers and which can be accused of a sellout so much more
easily if the trend of events shows that Musharraf is conceding too much.
It is obvious that Pakistan's strongman is not going to Delhi as a victor.
For a possible deal he cannot expect Pakistan's maximum demands to be met.
Success in talks will inevitably require give and take on both sides. Would
Musharraf be in a position to give anything at all - and sell it to his
hard (and armed) Right?
That is a question that will hover
over the conference table in Delhi. A democratic leader with a large constituency
reaches the top after acquiring an ability and a stature that enable him
or her to sell virtually any concession he or she has to make. Not so a
military strongman who has a narrow constituency which is also narrow minded.
Well, Pakistanis have to live with this built-in defect or weakness. This
may not apply if the military man-turned-politician can somehow persuade
the other side to a win-win formula in which neither side is seen to lose.
Does Musharraf have anything of the kind in his briefcase?
Even so no one knows the reason
why Mr Vajpayee reversed the gear and what precisely his political design
is. This is the most important determinant of the outcome of Musharraf
visit.
