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Volume 3, No. 3 - August 2003 << Back to formatted version

The 'Peace' Carnival

Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

From despair to euphoria to despair has been the classical cycle in India's 'search for peace' in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). It has been the season for euphoria again since Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's April 18, 2003, speech at Srinagar, where he once again offered 'a hand of friendship' to Pakistan. Since then, there has been a rising crescendo of symbolism culminating in the current and extraordinary jamboree at Lahore, where a delegation of more than 30 Indian Members of Parliament (MPs), with a veritable media circus in tow, are presently grabbing headlines.

To much international applause - within the limited circles in which these developments are noticed - various 'confidence building' measures have been initiated over the past months, and others are proclaimed, including the resumption of the infamous bus to Lahore that had ferried the Indian Prime Minister to his first deluded engagement with Pakistan - which culminated in the Kargil War in 1999. Taking advantage of the resumption of road links between the two countries, a number of Pakistani children with severe cardiac disorders have come to India and have (with one sad exception) been successfully operated on, once again, to the immense applause of the media. A young Pakistani boy who strayed across the border into Indian territory in the State of Rajasthan is currently in Delhi, preparing to be returned to his home in a 'goodwill gesture', even as both countries announce the imminent release of several hundred 'fishermen' in their custody for straying into hostile territory - traditional hostages to competitive South Asian cussedness. Official delegations have also met to discuss improved trade relations between the countries.

Shortly after Vajpayee's April 18 speech, a small delegation of Pakistani MPs had visited India, taking advantage of the absence of visa requirements for Members of Parliament from member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), though they received relatively little attention - and no one of note in Government met them.

However, when Maulana Fazlur Rahman - the leader of the six party fundamentalist combine, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), and Chief of the Jamaat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) Pakistan; the mentor of the
Taliban and of a succession of terrorist groups, including the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HUJI); a 'personal friend and advisor' to both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden; and a notorious US baiter - came to India in mid-July, he was feted by all who mattered and welcomed and embraced by the Prime Minister himself. The Maulana has, with India's Laloo Prasad Yadav - the former Chief Minister of the Eastern State of Bihar, notorious for the anarchy into which he has led his State, for the corruption charges as a result of which he was forced to demit office, and for his inveterate clowning for the media - been among the most prominent attractions at the Lahore jamboree as well.

Rahman has become something of a poster-boy of the new 'peace process', and it is interesting to examine the logic of his unexpected transformation from a leading architect of terrorism to eminent peacenik. At both Delhi and Lahore, Rahman articulated his reasons clearly: US 'hegemony' was the more immediate threat, and a rapprochement with India was necessary to create the breathing space necessary to ensure that the 'unilateral action against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq' was not repeated against Pakistan. There is, in this tactical shift, no indication that the Maulana's strategic agenda and commitment to 'jihad' has undergone any radical transformation. The incurable optimist would do well to note that, even as he preaches a new 'tolerance' for 'Hindu India', Rahman's MMA has sought to impose a Talibanised Sharia code on the people of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) through its legislature; it is from this province that a regrouped Taliban has been organizing attacks into Afghanistan against troops loyal to the Hamid Karzai regime at Kabul, and against American Special Forces hunting the
Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants in the border areas; and it is, again, in Quetta in the MMA dominated province of Baluchistan, that the Taliban is reported to be openly operating. It is significant, moreover, that when he was asked by the media in Delhi whether he considered bin Laden a terrorist, he responded evasively, "Why are you raising this issue… We have come here for a different purpose. We are talking of peace and you are raising irrelevant issues."

The point, then, is that, despite the unrestrained enthusiasm of the current 'peace process' - as was the case with past 'peace processes' between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue - there is little room for optimism, and the ground situation in J&K is the evidence that needs to be examined more carefully than the media posturing of dubious political bandwagonners.

Each cycle of the 'peace process' in J&K has ordinarily been accompanied by escalating violence, and the present phase has been no exception. Despite an exceptionally harsh winter this year, the total fatalities due to terrorism in the first seven months of the current year, at 1,438, have been only marginally lower than they were in 2002 (1,694). More significantly, the trends show a sharp increase since April 2003, and in June, total fatalities this year (235) substantially exceeded last year's figure (170). There has been a succession of high profile terrorist attacks after the Prime Minister's speech, and these include the fidayeen attack on the Border Security Force sector headquarters at Madar in the Bandipore area of Baramulla district on April 25; the April 26 fidayeen attack on the All India Radio station at Srinagar; the beheading of four women and two children at village Chowkian in the Kot Dhara area of Rajouri district on May 19; the fidayeen attack at the Dogra Regiment camp in Sunjwan on the outskirts of Jammu city, in which twelve Army soldiers were killed on June 28; and the July 22 fidayeen attack at the Army camp at Bangti on the Tanda Road in Akhnoor district, in which eight soldiers, including a Brigadier, were killed, and 12 others, including four top Generals, were injured. The terrorist enterprise in J&K is manifestly alive and well.

At the same time, a number of Pakistani propagandists, including President and General Pervez Musharraf himself, have been arguing that 'peace talks' do not have to wait till the killing ends (those who follow the discourse on West Asia and Palestinian terrorism will note a familiar ring in this), and India appears now to have accepted this logic, despite the Prime Minister's earlier stand that 'cross border terrorism' and Pakistan's 'proxy war' in J&K must first end before any meaningful dialogue could commence between the two countries. Once again, Pakistan appears to have secured concessions even while it makes none - at a time when it is under enormous international pressure to shut down the terrorist infrastructure on its soil, and when it desperately needs breathing space to consolidate its increasing dominance along its Northwestern borders with Afghanistan.

A prominent Indian commentator notes that "India is the only known country in modern history to have repeatedly cried betrayal, not by friends, but by adversaries in whom it had reposed trust." The present regime has already led itself up the garden path on at least two occasions, and it appears that it is now setting the country up for another and greater deception.

Courtesy: South Asia Terrorism Portal

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