By Ejaz Haider
Mr Zardari must realise that he needs to position himself and become acceptable to Pakistan and the outside world on the basis of what he can substantively do rather than delivering shibboleths acceptable to mainstream Washington
Did President Asif Ali Zardari call the militant Islamist groups operating in Kashmir terrorists while speaking with the US newspaper The Wall Street Journal?
We dont have a direct quote from Mr Zardari on the issue. This is how the report puts it:
He speaks of the militant Islamic groups operating in Kashmir as terrorists former President Musharraf would more likely have called them freedom fighters...
Mr Zardari has been castigated in Pakistan for putting it thus but what did he actually say and what was the context? We dont know. Did Bret Stephens, the interviewer, ask him Mr President, do you think the groups fighting India in Kashmir are terrorists? Did Stephens differentiate between this and that group? Does he even know the nuances and complexities of the situation in Kashmir which even eludes analysts in New Delhi, let alone be understood in Washington?
This is not nitpicking, but genuine questions. Please note the surprise among pundits in Delhi when Srinagar exploded. But that needs another article.
The tone of the Journal interview makes clear that Stephens comes to his job with entrenched ideas about the world. Not surprising for an American.
Of the four high actors on the American political stage, Senator Joe Biden, is supposed to be some kind of foreign policy expert. He thinks Pakistan has deployed nuclear weapons, Pakistani missiles can reach Israel and the Mediterranean and therefore Pakistan is as dangerous as Iran all in a single breath. Good work, Senator!
Given this, to think Stephens knows what is going on in Kashmir, though he may write Global View, the Journals foreign-affairs column, would stretch the limits of optimism.
Lets assume, however, that Mr Zardari did put it like this. His spin doctors have defended him so its safe to make that assumption. What should we make of it?
It could mean two things: that while he may have become the president, the propriety of that being another issue, he still has to learn to act as one and understand that his every word will now be scrutinised that there is greater merit in not opening ones mouth unnecessarily; or, and this is worse, he is trying hard to sell himself, carry as he does much baggage.
Note how the Journal interview describes him: But Mr Zardari is also known as Mr Ten Percent, a moniker he acquired thanks to his legendary reputation for graft. At one time or another, he and his late wife were suspected of profiting (or seeking to profit) from corrupt schemes involving everything from the purchase of Polish tractors and French jets to the import of gold bullion. In 2006, he even produced a diagnosis of dementia from two New York psychiatrists as part of an effort to defend himself in a corruption case in Britain.
Not exactly a t-shirt slogan this, especially if fate and clever manoeuvring have placed someone where Mr Zardari is.
There is a bit of a problem with such product positioning, though. We know what sells in Washington. But if one goes by that, one is likely to get more of the same and, frankly, more of the same is neither good for the United States nor the rest of the world.
As for how seriously one might take Mr Zardari or his ability at nuance, heres an example from the interview: I need your help, he says more than once. If we fall, if we cant do it, you cant do it.
Okay. And what does he say about India. Here goes: ...he has no objection to the India-US nuclear cooperation pact, so long as Pakistan is treated at par.
Really? First, he raises the danger of Pakistan likely to fail and asks for international help and then he turns around and wants the world (read: the US) to treat Pakistan at par with India. If this is a joke, I am not amused.
Can Mr Zardari be taken seriously on what he might or mightnt have said about Kashmir and Kashmiris and the groups fighting there; or the youth that is now up and protesting and facing the might of India, this last development being no doing of Pakistan but indicative, if such proof were ever needed, of the original sin committed by India?
No. To think that knowledge of such subtleties was ever part of Mr Zardaris 53 years in this world would have got Dorothy Parker, were she still around, to say: It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.
The problem is, and it is a big one, such a statement hurts the Kashmiris, pitted as they are against Indias might, forget Pakistan. It also gives space to militant elements, irrelevant to the equation now, to come on line and try and appropriate the Kashmiris struggle.
Heres a suggestion. Mr Zardari needs to get a Regional 101 on Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations. He must understand that much before he arrived on the scene, India and Pakistan were dealing with each other, testing approaches and vacillating between the conflictual and the cooperative.
Since January 2004 they are interacting in and through a dialogue framework. They are not friends yet but neither are they enemies in a zero-sum mode, though that paradigm, in its dying throes, still lingers on in some sections on both sides.
The most important development is that friction in one area does not lead to overall deterioration in relations. Mr Musharraf, now much reviled for sins other than this, has left a good legacy on India-Pakistan relations and even changed the paradigm on how to resolve Kashmir. Indeed, it is now Indias turn to reciprocate and Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs speech at the UNGA shows he is alive to it.
Finally, Mr Zardari must realise that he needs to position himself and become acceptable to Pakistan and the outside world on the basis of what he can substantively do rather than delivering shibboleths acceptable to mainstream Washington, and by extension, America. Specifically on Kashmir, revisiting the past, pegged as it was for India and Pakistan on a different paradigm, does not help in moving forward.
He needs to get his sense of where things stand right. A tall order, that?
The writer is Op-Ed Editor Daily Times and Consulting Editor The Friday Times. This is an unabridged version of the article originally published in the Indian Express
