Author: Manoj Joshi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 15, 2002
The massacre in Jammu on Saturday
night is a clear signal that Pakistan is not yet ready to abandon terrorism
as an instrument of its foreign policy A little over a month after Pakistan
president Pervez Musharraf pledged to end infiltration across the Line
of Control (LoC), Indian officials say that the situation remains unsatisfactory
According to an official, "Infiltration
has come down in the past month or so, but some disturbing questions remain."
First, says the official, is the extent of infiltration that continues,
and second is the retention by Pakistan of the infrastructure of the launch
and training camps" across the LoC. "Wireless traffic came down for a while,
but it is back to normal- yet another pointer to the fact that Pakistan
retains the capacity to restore infiltration to its former levels."
On Saturday, external affairs minister
Yashwant Sinha confirmed this and said that the decline that took place
last month "had actually evaporated and fresh incursions were noted". He
said that Pakistan had not taken any concrete steps to dismantle the infrastructure
supporting terrorism.
Just how this seems to work became
apparent in the last week of June when, following one of Gen Musharraf's
particularly virulent speeches, infiltration suddenly displayed a marked
upswing, notes the official. The speech in question was the one delivered
on June 22 when in an interview to the BBC Gen Musharraf rejected India's
de-escalatory measures, saying India was not doing Pakistan a favour by
taking these steps. He also repeated his familiar theme of "teaching India
a lesson".
The strategy being followed by Islamabad
is to use the infiltration tap to extract more concessions out of Washington
and New Delhi. This is the reason why Gen Musharraf is so dismissive of
the de-escalation steps India has taken until now. Islamabad will insist
on an Indian commitment to resume dialogue before it takes other demonstrable
steps, and even then it will not really end support to terrorists in Kashmir.
"Gen Musharraf has been so weakened within that he feels that giving concessions
on the so-called Kashmir struggle will be suicidal," says one Indian intelligence
analyst.
Indian intelligence officials say
that their assessments of Pakistani activity are not being challenged by
their western counterparts, even though official spokespersons are giving
a different gloss to the situation. One official says that the west is
itself in a quandary as to how it ought to deal with Gen Musharraf.
This is the reason why US secretary
of state Colin Powell is planning to visit the region at the end of the
month. "The west found our build-up more than useful, since Indian pressure
helped Islamabad and Washington divert attention from the unprecedented
level of US and British military activity in the federally administered
tribal areas and the access provided to the FBI to operate across Pakistan,"
one official said.
Indian and American diplomacy is
likely to be severely tested in the coming days. There are so many variables
affecting the situation that it is impossible to predict the outcome of
the most carefully laid out plans. To compound these problems, Pakistan,
or elements in Pakistan, seem, determined to foil the American game-plan
in Afghanistan as well. This seems to be the message from the recent assassination
of Afghan vice-president Haji Abdul Qadir.