A great editorial in Dawn today on the Mumbai issue etc.
DAWN.COM | Editorial | PostMumbai-ties-with-India
A FEW years ago a peace process between Pakistan and India was begun. Representatives of the two countries would meet periodically to discuss their disputes. Their agenda being inclusive, the process was called a composite dialogue.
It went through five rounds and then India suspended it following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai on Nov 26, 2008. The Indian government and people believed that the perpetrators had lived in Pakistan and launched their operation from its soil. Pakistans own investigators confirmed this. The culprits, it appeared, had been sponsored, trained, and directed by certain militant organisations (notably Jamaatud Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba) located in Pakistan.
Under intense Indian and international pressure, the Pakistan government agreed to go after these organisations, arrested and detained scores of their activists. It undertook to interrogate them and prosecute those against whom evidence of complicity in terrorist acts would be found. Remand was obtained to extend the detention of some of these suspects for further questioning. The government investigators announced plans to prosecute them.
Interrogations continued but no court cases have yet been filed. Officials said they had to have answers to some 30 questions they had addressed to Indian authorities to be able to proceed further with their investigations. This would suggest that the evidence which their interrogations had produced against the suspects was not enough to take them to court. Questions in the dossier handed over to the Indian authorities did not seem to have obvious relevance to the doings of the militants in Pakistani custody, They include for instance, questions relating to DNA tests done on the bodies of the nine terrorists killed in their encounter with the Indian security personnel, the guns they had used, testimony of the man who had witnessed the killing of the chief of the anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai, persons who had blasted the Samjhota Express, Hindu militant organisations and their killings of Indian Muslims.
The matters to which these questions related would seem to be Indias domestic concerns, and it is hard to see why Pakistanis investigating the anti-Indian militant organisations in their own country wanted the information they were demanding. One may wonder what exactly they were investigating. It was said at times that they were probing the Mumbai attacks. The event in question took place on Indian soil. One may say that normally it should have been Indias business to investigate this event. It is not at all clear why Pakistani authorities concluded that it was their business as well.
An explanation comes to mind. Pakistani officials may have wanted to cast doubt on the credibility of Indias version of the Mumbai event, to suggest that it was one-sided, biased, and partial. It is, however, not clear how this would have benefited Pakistan. Another possibility is that they wanted to find reasons to indefinitely postpone or altogether bury the project of prosecuting the militants who were said to have been involved in terrorist acts in India. Recently, India sent Pakistan answers to the questions. It is probable that Pakistani officials will find these answers to be unhelpful.
American and Indian officials have an interpretation that may be noted. Mr Richard Holbrooke, President Obamas special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, suspects that certain officers in this countrys military and the Inter-Services Intelligence are not serious about fighting terrorism.
The Indian foreign minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, has indicated that some officials, if not the state of Pakistan, have been sponsoring anti-India terrorist operations. If these allegations are even partially correct, one cannot rule out the possibility that some of the militants, if taken to court, will say that they did what they did with the concurrence and support of Pakistani authorities. That is a chance the officials concerned will not want to take. It is then not unlikely that the stage of prosecuting those involved in the Mumbai carnage will never arrive.
If this is the way things are to go, tension between Pakistan and India will not subside. Nearly four months after Mumbai India is still feeling angry. Its officials say they have waited patiently for a satisfactory Pakistani response but their patience will exhaust some day and they will then hit back. They are not contemplating war, for that would be unacceptably destructive on both sides.
Secure in the belief that India does not have the option of going to war, Pakistani strategists do not consider it necessary to appease India and redress its grievance. Apparently they are not taking cognisance of the possibility that India may take measures short of war that may cause Pakistan a great deal of suffering. It can, for instance, interfere with the flow of water into Pakistans rivers, which originate in territories under Indias control, and thus ruin Pakistani agriculture and food production. Its secret agents can intervene in Pakistans unceasing internal turmoil to further disrupt its politics and society.
Many political observers in Pakistan believe that India has been a sworn enemy of this country from the day of its establishment as an independent state, wants to undo the partition or, failing that, it wants to destroy Pakistan.
There are doubtless certain militant Hindu groups in India that harbour such thoughts. But the same is probably not true of Indian officials, mainstream political parties and opinion makers. They see Pakistan as too troublesome a place to take over. They are reconciled to its separate existence.
It is my impression that the dominant elites in India are willing to have Pakistan as a stable neighbour at peace within itself and with the outside world. It wants Pakistan as a good neighbour, meaning one that accepts its position as a relatively small power, does not insist on being Indias equal and rival, and does not oppose its drive to the role and status of a world power. It wants peace and amity and close cooperative relations with Pakistan, albeit, on these terms. One doubts that these terms will commend themselves to the powers that be in Pakistan in the foreseeable future. It may then be said that relations between these two neighbours are likely to remain under some degree of stress.