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COMMENT: So, there... Shahzad Chaudhry
Pakistan has had to reposition some of its troops to take on operations on the western border; India found some space to show its relative strength and ended up trading fire across the LoC, which hitherto was peaceful under an unwritten understanding to observe a total ceasefire on both sides
There have been four different spins to the IPL episode. Preity Zinta and Ness Wadias heading one of the franchises of the BCCIs cricketing circus perhaps was the most diplomatic: availability and visa facilitation of the Pakistani participants was uncertain and hence involved some risk in hiring the Pakistanis in the money-spinning tamasha that has the tacit support of the International Cricket Conference (ICC), the headquarters of the cricketing nations that controls and runs international cricket.
Following the26/11 Mumbai tragedy, both nations, India and Pakistan, thought it wise to keep the Pakistani cricketers away from the second edition of the IPL in 2009, giving time for inflamed passions to cool. But for the third edition, the one under discussion, the Indian foreign office, or whoever decides in India to clear visitors to travel to India, not only cleared the Pakistanis inclusion, it also issued them visas under no uncertain urgency, enabling their presence in India for necessary coordination with the IPL management. So, despite the owner duo being what they are, their diplomatese is as consistent as diplomacy is known to be with severely tarnished truth.
The other Modi, Lalit, CEO of sorts of the IPL tamasha, had that unquestioned look of audacity that one wears when required to state a straight-faced lie: So many more were not chosen along with the Pakistanis; so, what is the fuss about? Great as a statement, but not consistent with the nature of choices and their star-appeal; the Pakistanis are the reigning World Twenty20 champions; Sohail Tanvir was the declared top bowler of the tournament who along with Kamran Akmal gave Rajasthan Royals their Championship trophy in the first IPL edition. The options included Shahid Afridi, in great current form, and possibly the most exciting player in the format, and Umar Akmal and Mohammad Amir, the two youngest and most exciting finds in world cricket today. Sorry, Mr Modi, your slip is showing.
S M Krishna, the most deliberate Foreign Minister to have ever adorned the office in India, provided his most well rehearsed line after a few false starts: The government of India has no control over the IPL delivered in about one full precious minute of torturous extraction. Irony of ironies: he fell back on the dreaded non-state actors that continue to hold Indo-Pak relations to ransom. In Mumbai, it was the terrorists, Pakistans non-state actors; a year down the line, it is the IPL. In effect and consequence, both share the same mantle. It is another thing that the media was agog with rumours of a very subtle advice by the government of India to the IPL to avoid selection of the Pakistanis.
The spokesperson of Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), however, got it dead right: Pakistan needs to introspect as to why it may have undergone the humiliation and snub of rejection of her players by the IPL coterie.
Consider.
The rising refrain from India after 26/11 was for Pakistan to punish, no less, the perpetrators of the Mumbai tragedy and their cohorts; and all those who as per the Indian lists were known to have been the source of hurting Indias pride in Kashmir, and may once have harboured ill-will or are likely to harbour ill-will at a future time. India gradually began calling the package of actions, some of which Pakistan agreed to pursue as a sign of immediate support and succour to India in their difficult times and to assuage some of Indias hurt pride, as the deliverables; a la the USs do more.
Pakistan started on a positive note but soon got embroiled in the dossier saga. The more India touted for the deliverables, the more Pakistan felt being taken for granted; seemingly, strategic equilibrium and nuclear parity, and the stunted possibility of conventional military application thence made no sense. Despite giving due space to Indias predicament, tragedy and sensitivity to an event that of all probabilities seemed to have taken off from Pakistani shores, the momentum to push Pakistan was under use to the hilt. Parthasarathy, a retired senior diplomat, and a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, said as much when commenting on the infamous Sharm El-Sheikh Declaration: It is for the first time in 60 years that India has had Pakistan under its thumb (because of Mumbai), and we let it go at Sharm El-Sheikh. If ever a proof was needed in what drove Indias mindset, Mr Parthasarathy spilled the beans.
Following the return of Congress in the 2009 elections, it became pretty obvious to the returned government that the deliverables policy had borne no fruit. Sharm El-Sheikh was such an indicator for a need to change tack, but then that greatest killjoy public opinion and some handy political opportunism in India along with the entrenched civil-military bureaucratic mindset forced a reversal of the declared Indian position of renewing dialogue and resumption of normalisation. The obdurate won again. It has since been a faux pas in a continuum. Deepak Kapoor, the Indian army chief, spoke not only out of turn but utter nonsense. While he lost credibility, he pushed relations back by miles in popular perception where it matters most and where most work had gone in recent years to seek a slow but sure evolution of consensus amongst the people on the need to revisit entrenched views.
Pakistan has had to reposition some of its troops to take on operations on the western border; India found some space to show its relative strength and ended up trading fire across the LoC, which hitherto was peaceful under an unwritten understanding to observe a total ceasefire on both sides. An important Confidence Building Measure (CBM) was shattered. Deepak Kapoors new-found bravado is a reflection of that space. As of Parthasarathy, here is another rejuvenated Indian. How they both punish the people, the ordinary people including their own, is beyond their pale of sensitivity. Each of these incidents, including the rejection of the Pakistani cricketers, would have been taken in the usual stride of the subcontinent; however, their occurrence in succession propounds a sense of a degrading environment. Frustration on a lack of response by Pakistan on a very public Indian stance to force Pakistan to submit to the Indian dictate to act on deliverables has pushed both countries into a blind alley where despite belated realisation by India of the folly, there is neither an escape nor recourse to better sense.
Ill-considered and ill-advised policy has beset the region with yet another predicament. How quickly we descend to the level of juveniles in our mutual interaction is as sordid as embarrassing at any plane. Two nations with claims to a place in the exclusive club of nations do not have the maturity to co-exist; they remain captives of their history rather than be guided by the compulsions of geography. The future of the South Asian landmass and its inhabitants depends on how India and Pakistan deal with the emerging challenges of environmental and climatic deviations that will create newer paradigms in water, food and energy deficiencies. Poverty will multiply rather than diminish despite the ongoing brilliant spike in economic prosperity, which is unlikely to sustain under evolving challenges, forcing mass migrations that will not recognise borders, creating such structural destabilisation that will put to question the existing notion of nation states. Only cooperation and consultative deliberation can help them survive the coming onslaught of entirely another kind, far more dangerous than the wave of terrorism that besets their combined destiny today. If anything, recourse to armed challenge to state structures will increase when desperation gets accentuated under such a degrading socio-economic environment.
What do we get in return? AK Antony, the Indian Defence Minister, announces after meeting Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defence, that another Mumbai-like incident will push India to let go of any restraint; Robert Gates parroted the same in his remarks. Sans vision, sans wisdom, sans statesmanship, the region hurtles down dangerous territory to unintended consequences.
(So, there... is the usual suffix to the relentless altercation between two squabbling children who each wants to have the last word in a pretentiously victorious end to their petty verbal duel. Alas!)
Shahzad Chaudhry is a retired air vice marshal and a former ambassador
Pakistan has had to reposition some of its troops to take on operations on the western border; India found some space to show its relative strength and ended up trading fire across the LoC, which hitherto was peaceful under an unwritten understanding to observe a total ceasefire on both sides
There have been four different spins to the IPL episode. Preity Zinta and Ness Wadias heading one of the franchises of the BCCIs cricketing circus perhaps was the most diplomatic: availability and visa facilitation of the Pakistani participants was uncertain and hence involved some risk in hiring the Pakistanis in the money-spinning tamasha that has the tacit support of the International Cricket Conference (ICC), the headquarters of the cricketing nations that controls and runs international cricket.
Following the26/11 Mumbai tragedy, both nations, India and Pakistan, thought it wise to keep the Pakistani cricketers away from the second edition of the IPL in 2009, giving time for inflamed passions to cool. But for the third edition, the one under discussion, the Indian foreign office, or whoever decides in India to clear visitors to travel to India, not only cleared the Pakistanis inclusion, it also issued them visas under no uncertain urgency, enabling their presence in India for necessary coordination with the IPL management. So, despite the owner duo being what they are, their diplomatese is as consistent as diplomacy is known to be with severely tarnished truth.
The other Modi, Lalit, CEO of sorts of the IPL tamasha, had that unquestioned look of audacity that one wears when required to state a straight-faced lie: So many more were not chosen along with the Pakistanis; so, what is the fuss about? Great as a statement, but not consistent with the nature of choices and their star-appeal; the Pakistanis are the reigning World Twenty20 champions; Sohail Tanvir was the declared top bowler of the tournament who along with Kamran Akmal gave Rajasthan Royals their Championship trophy in the first IPL edition. The options included Shahid Afridi, in great current form, and possibly the most exciting player in the format, and Umar Akmal and Mohammad Amir, the two youngest and most exciting finds in world cricket today. Sorry, Mr Modi, your slip is showing.
S M Krishna, the most deliberate Foreign Minister to have ever adorned the office in India, provided his most well rehearsed line after a few false starts: The government of India has no control over the IPL delivered in about one full precious minute of torturous extraction. Irony of ironies: he fell back on the dreaded non-state actors that continue to hold Indo-Pak relations to ransom. In Mumbai, it was the terrorists, Pakistans non-state actors; a year down the line, it is the IPL. In effect and consequence, both share the same mantle. It is another thing that the media was agog with rumours of a very subtle advice by the government of India to the IPL to avoid selection of the Pakistanis.
The spokesperson of Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), however, got it dead right: Pakistan needs to introspect as to why it may have undergone the humiliation and snub of rejection of her players by the IPL coterie.
Consider.
The rising refrain from India after 26/11 was for Pakistan to punish, no less, the perpetrators of the Mumbai tragedy and their cohorts; and all those who as per the Indian lists were known to have been the source of hurting Indias pride in Kashmir, and may once have harboured ill-will or are likely to harbour ill-will at a future time. India gradually began calling the package of actions, some of which Pakistan agreed to pursue as a sign of immediate support and succour to India in their difficult times and to assuage some of Indias hurt pride, as the deliverables; a la the USs do more.
Pakistan started on a positive note but soon got embroiled in the dossier saga. The more India touted for the deliverables, the more Pakistan felt being taken for granted; seemingly, strategic equilibrium and nuclear parity, and the stunted possibility of conventional military application thence made no sense. Despite giving due space to Indias predicament, tragedy and sensitivity to an event that of all probabilities seemed to have taken off from Pakistani shores, the momentum to push Pakistan was under use to the hilt. Parthasarathy, a retired senior diplomat, and a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, said as much when commenting on the infamous Sharm El-Sheikh Declaration: It is for the first time in 60 years that India has had Pakistan under its thumb (because of Mumbai), and we let it go at Sharm El-Sheikh. If ever a proof was needed in what drove Indias mindset, Mr Parthasarathy spilled the beans.
Following the return of Congress in the 2009 elections, it became pretty obvious to the returned government that the deliverables policy had borne no fruit. Sharm El-Sheikh was such an indicator for a need to change tack, but then that greatest killjoy public opinion and some handy political opportunism in India along with the entrenched civil-military bureaucratic mindset forced a reversal of the declared Indian position of renewing dialogue and resumption of normalisation. The obdurate won again. It has since been a faux pas in a continuum. Deepak Kapoor, the Indian army chief, spoke not only out of turn but utter nonsense. While he lost credibility, he pushed relations back by miles in popular perception where it matters most and where most work had gone in recent years to seek a slow but sure evolution of consensus amongst the people on the need to revisit entrenched views.
Pakistan has had to reposition some of its troops to take on operations on the western border; India found some space to show its relative strength and ended up trading fire across the LoC, which hitherto was peaceful under an unwritten understanding to observe a total ceasefire on both sides. An important Confidence Building Measure (CBM) was shattered. Deepak Kapoors new-found bravado is a reflection of that space. As of Parthasarathy, here is another rejuvenated Indian. How they both punish the people, the ordinary people including their own, is beyond their pale of sensitivity. Each of these incidents, including the rejection of the Pakistani cricketers, would have been taken in the usual stride of the subcontinent; however, their occurrence in succession propounds a sense of a degrading environment. Frustration on a lack of response by Pakistan on a very public Indian stance to force Pakistan to submit to the Indian dictate to act on deliverables has pushed both countries into a blind alley where despite belated realisation by India of the folly, there is neither an escape nor recourse to better sense.
Ill-considered and ill-advised policy has beset the region with yet another predicament. How quickly we descend to the level of juveniles in our mutual interaction is as sordid as embarrassing at any plane. Two nations with claims to a place in the exclusive club of nations do not have the maturity to co-exist; they remain captives of their history rather than be guided by the compulsions of geography. The future of the South Asian landmass and its inhabitants depends on how India and Pakistan deal with the emerging challenges of environmental and climatic deviations that will create newer paradigms in water, food and energy deficiencies. Poverty will multiply rather than diminish despite the ongoing brilliant spike in economic prosperity, which is unlikely to sustain under evolving challenges, forcing mass migrations that will not recognise borders, creating such structural destabilisation that will put to question the existing notion of nation states. Only cooperation and consultative deliberation can help them survive the coming onslaught of entirely another kind, far more dangerous than the wave of terrorism that besets their combined destiny today. If anything, recourse to armed challenge to state structures will increase when desperation gets accentuated under such a degrading socio-economic environment.
What do we get in return? AK Antony, the Indian Defence Minister, announces after meeting Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defence, that another Mumbai-like incident will push India to let go of any restraint; Robert Gates parroted the same in his remarks. Sans vision, sans wisdom, sans statesmanship, the region hurtles down dangerous territory to unintended consequences.
(So, there... is the usual suffix to the relentless altercation between two squabbling children who each wants to have the last word in a pretentiously victorious end to their petty verbal duel. Alas!)
Shahzad Chaudhry is a retired air vice marshal and a former ambassador
