Dangerous times and national disunity

Islamabad diary

In their joint press conference in Delhi, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke almost the same language, equating the situation in Held Kashmir to terrorism and saying that both countries had the same approach to it. 

“I briefed Secretary Kerry on the continuing problem of cross-border terrorism that India and the larger region face from Pakistan”, said Sushma Swaraj. Kerry chimed in with the same tune: “We cannot and will not distinguish between good and bad terrorists…US stands with India on all matters of terrorism, no matter where it comes from. It’s crystal clear we are on (sic) the same view over it.”

Read the press conference and you would be forgiven for thinking that what’s happening in Held Kashmir is a result of cross-border terrorism and not Kashmiri anger boiling over against Indian rule. When it serves American interests there is no one more eloquent than them over real or supposed violations of human rights. When they talk to the Russians or the Chinese they always read them a lecture on human rights. Mention of the Dalai Lama and Tibet makes them emotional. But during Kerry’s visit there was not a word of Indian atrocities in the Kashmir Valley.

The US does what suits it. And its take on human rights is not in the abstract; it is subordinate to its foreign policy compulsions. But what is robbing the Pakistan government of the use of its tongue? Shouldn’t there have been a response to the denunciation of Pakistan at the press conference? Shouldn’t this be an occasion for the PM’s office and the Foreign Office to point out forcefully that what is happening in Held Kashmir is not cross-border terrorism but an indigenous uprising?

World media, even if very reluctantly in some quarters, is waking up the reality of India’s brutal methods to suppress the Kashmiri freedom movement, especially the use of pellet guns which have blinded hundreds of protesters. Secretary Kerry had his reasons to suffer a loss of memory on this score. The cosying up of the US and India we are seeing precludes such criticism. But what about our own government? Where’s the sharp riposte this joint press conference should have elicited?

The Indian PM can speak of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. That’s his prerogative because India is facing a tough situation in Held Kashmir and anything will do to distract attention from it. But at this critical moment when those countries wishing Pakistan ill are ganging up against it, the keepers of the national conscience are strangely silent. They are either too incompetent to speak up in which case their inertness is forgivable. Or they are silent deliberately, for expedient reasons of their own. This would be unforgivable.

Are the Kashmiris defying curfew and gunfire in Srinagar and other towns cross-border terrorists, sent by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad? Srinagar hospitals are unable to cope with the huge numbers of those suffering gunshot wounds to the eyes. Did the ISI send these protesters? Is the ISI behind the anti-Indian slogans and the cries for freedom, and the slogans in favour of Pakistan?

Kashmiri nationalism as symbolised by the Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah was overwhelmingly pro-Congress and anti-Muslim League. If Kashmiri sentiment today is overwhelmingly anti-India, is the ISI responsible for this turnaround?

There are half-a-million Indian troops in Held Kashmir. During the course of the present unrest, more akin to an uprising, has anyone from Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Muhammad been caught? Is Hafiz Muhammad Saeed or Maulana Masood Azhar behind this unrest? India is raising the bogey of cross-border terrorism to befool world opinion. How else does it explain this tumult? We should be exposing this bogey for what it is. But to do so effectively the Nawaz Sharif government has to get out of its comfort zone and give up its soft approach to India.

This would not be provocation or belligerence but the need of the hour. India is practising systematic, cold-blooded brutality in Held Kashmir. Do the Shimla or Tashkent agreements stop Pakistan from calling the world’s attention to this situation? Pakistan can take up the slow march to rapprochement when Kashmiri wounds heal…and the pellet guns stop firing.

The main thing is bloodshed in Kashmir and our focus should be on that. Altaf Hussain is a sideshow and should be treated as such. For too long he was coddled and flattered. Now he is receiving his just deserts. Democracy’s champions have their own standards for judging things and expect them not to say a good word about what the Rangers have done in Karachi. But it’s the Rangers who have turned around the situation in Pakistan’s premier city and who with their sustained operation have defanged the MQM…and caused the caudillo to squeal.

Let them carry on their work, until the demons of violence and terror from Karachi are completely exorcised, no matter how long this takes.  

But Pakistan also has to do other things to set its house in order. Where the country needs clarity and unity of purpose we are witnessing confusion and disunity. The army has one way of looking at India, the civilian government another. There was a time when the army could be accused of nurturing jingoism. But the present tension with India is because of Held Kashmir, a situation manufactured neither by the army nor any Pakistan-based ‘militant’ organisation.

The Kashmir uprising is a response to Indian repression. Pakistan has a moral duty to speak out, even to the point of telling our American friends that they are failing the human rights test in Kashmir.

Nawaz Sharif has his qualms and they are not hard to understand. The soft corner for India is one thing but with it stands the memory of the Musharraf coup which has branded the psyche of the N-League leadership, not letting it overcome its animus towards the military arm. The moment, however, calls for statesmanship and for erasing the dark memories of the past. It is the army which is holding Pakistan together. Let’s not forget this. Narendra Modi and the RSS/BJP are not going to defend Pakistan. The PML-N needs a basic tutorial on this subject.

As a mark of our national confusion, here’s an editorial from a leading English paper: “Yet, it is also true that Pakistan’s fight against militancy has not extended to anti-Afghan and anti-India militant groups operating from its soil. That duality, whether implicit or officially unacknowledged, is problematic because these groups predate and post a bigger challenge to regional stability than anti-Pakistan militants…”

Reading this you would think the problem was Hafiz Saeed, Maulana Azhar et al and not Indian repression in Held Kashmir. This was the exact line taken by Sushma Swaraj and John Kerry in their press conference.

Trouble is that sections of the Pakistani liberati are still living in the mujahideen and jihad-infested past. The army’s change of course over the last two years – the Fata offensive and the Karachi operation – holds little meaning for them. It is this infatuation with the past which ensures that nothing can be ‘liberal’ or ‘enlightened’ unless a swipe is taken at the army. 

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com