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Second Editorial: Why talk to India?
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has gone to the NAM Summit at Sharm al-Sheikh saying he will meet his Indian counterpart Mr Manmohan Singh with an open mind and that if Pakistan and India dont join hands the advantage will go to the third party, the terrorists. He is hopeful that the meeting on top of the foreign secretaries no-ground-given meeting earlier will break the ice, and India and Pakistan can get back to the composite dialogue abandoned after November 2008 when non-state actors attacked Mumbai.
Why is Pakistan so keen on talking to India? Is it a reflex developed out of the practice of past years when both sides try to come back to a dialogue after a period of tension or is it the yearning for peace in South Asia without which this region cannot survive? There is an argument that Pakistan needs peace more than India; that India has reached the status of a regional power in the eyes of many countries in the world without being at peace with Pakistan. Hence, why should India want to talk to Pakistan unless it can get something good out of it?
The fact is that while India has shown good economic indicators and has generally been courted by the West over the last few years, all its efforts can go awry without being at peace with Pakistan. Non-state actors can pull the two sides to war and while such a conflict would be deadly for Pakistan, any victory would be more than pyrrhic for India. At the least it would set India back many decades. That was the result of a war game played by the two sides in Washington last year. The game was overseen by American experts and it left everyone chastened.
Corollary: both countries need peace. Caveat: they cant move forward without respecting each others sensitivities. The time for oneupmanship is over.
http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk
---------- Post added at 12:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 PM ----------
Making of sideshow artists By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 16 Jul, 2009
One day Pakistan and India would declare to each other - and to the rest of the world - that their peace process is irreversible come what may. The next day their envoys would be seeking the first available agony aunt to offload their all-too-familiar problems to.
NEWS headlines in both countries are shamelessly self-absorbed: leaders of India and Pakistan will meet in Egypt today where they are to attend the Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) summit. In the recent past the two sides have met at other foreign venues.
After last November’s terror assault on Mumbai, India’s prime minister and Pakistan’s president met in Russia after considerable global nudging though without any obvious signs of success. Before that, following last July’s suicide attack on Delhi’s embassy in Kabul and a cluster of terror attacks across major Indian cities, when their ties were yet again strained, the prime ministers met in Colombo. This is ridiculous, more so because at least India claims that bilateral disputes, which include the Kashmir issue, should not be internationalised.
By carrying their laundry bags to regional and international summits, albeit to meet on the so-called sidelines, the two countries come across as churlish, immature neighbours. This is not an encouraging attribute for the nuclear-weapons states they both have gate-crashed their way to become. One day they declare to each other — and thereby to the rest of the world — that their peace process is irreversible come what may. The next day their envoys would be seeking the first available agony aunt to offload their all-too-familiar travails to, be it about life-threatening terrorism or life-giving water resources among their other unresolved bilateral topics.
They almost seem to have been better off during the Cold War. One was militarily anchored to the West with extensive strategic tie-ups in the Middle East, the other ideologically tethered to the Third World. They were not the best of friends, but they were geopolitical adults. In fact, on one occasion when for a brief moment India found itself on the same page of the global divide with Pakistan in 1977, it was greeted by Islamabad with a big (some said embarrassing) hug: the Indian prime minister was decorated with the neighbour’s highest civilian honour.
On other occasions if their rivalries delivered a lacerating blow both would bear with candour and not wince or howl in pain. They knew how to get even but they did so discreetly. India, though, mostly had the upper hand right up to the Simla Accord and beyond.
Take 1983. Indira Gandhi became host of the NAM summit in Delhi by default. It was Saddam Hussein’s turn to take over from Fidel Castro, but since Iraq was engaged in a brutal war with Iran, the honour was diverted to the Indian prime minister. She needed the opportunity to refurbish her image after the fiasco of her 1975-77 emergency rule. The Cold War was at its peak when Mrs Gandhi took the gavel from Castro. That year Moscow and Washington were playing cat-and-mouse in Afghanistan and to an extent in Iran.
India and Pakistan were not unencumbered by their global loyalties. Mrs Gandhi had veered close to Moscow in 1971. By 1975 she was accusing her opponents of working for the US and China. Both happened to be Pakistan’s close partners. Analysts have argued that her claim was not entirely inaccurate considering that the pro-America Jan Sangh and pro-China communists led the anti-Indira movement. On the other hand Moscow-backed communists had supported her emergency. It is another matter that they later regretted it, as communists often do.
Gen Ziaul Haq, who represented Pakistan at the 1983 NAM summit in Delhi, looked forlorn and friendless. Mrs Gandhi was the presiding deity while her rival was a pariah having offended senior Third World leaders who had unsuccessfully pleaded for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s life to be spared. They never forgave Zia for his cruelty to one of their icons. I vividly remember the general smiling bravely to himself as other NAM leaders seated with him were riveted to the Indian military pageantry Mrs Gandhi had especially organised for the occasion.
The general’s smile may have masked his reverie. Here was Mrs Gandhi putting up an impressive show before the world, but only he knew how seriously she was singed by the raging insurgency in Punjab, which was looking menacing with each passing day. Her Sikh bodyguards assassinated Mrs Gandhi the following year. Benazir Bhutto was to later admit to Pakistan’s culpability in India’s Punjab tragedy. It did not require a great sleuth to see the link from London to Washington and Ottawa. The fingerprints in the Punjab upheaval were there for all to see. And yet did we hear any war drums? On the contrary, the next few years raised the most promising hopes for peace between India and Pakistan. Check this out in the details of the Rajiv Gandhi-Benazir Bhutto talks. It was a different era altogether.
I am not sure if Mrs Gandhi and Gen Zia met again after 1983. Whatever their serious differences they never took their confrontation to this or that world capital. Though they came from opposite ideological corners, both countries were signatories to NAM resolutions. Some of these agreements may have been loftier than the capacity of their sponsors to translate them into practice — i.e. declaration of the Indian Ocean as a nuclear-free zone, support for PLO, Swapo and goodness knows how many other burning and usually legitimate issues of the time. The war between Iran and Iraq became the most important of these. Those were the days when India was perceived as a credible voice from the developing world and Pakistan was secure in its role as a frontline state in the Cold War. They were not the sideshow artists they were to become at any available venue abroad.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has gone to the NAM Summit at Sharm al-Sheikh saying he will meet his Indian counterpart Mr Manmohan Singh with an open mind and that if Pakistan and India dont join hands the advantage will go to the third party, the terrorists. He is hopeful that the meeting on top of the foreign secretaries no-ground-given meeting earlier will break the ice, and India and Pakistan can get back to the composite dialogue abandoned after November 2008 when non-state actors attacked Mumbai.
Why is Pakistan so keen on talking to India? Is it a reflex developed out of the practice of past years when both sides try to come back to a dialogue after a period of tension or is it the yearning for peace in South Asia without which this region cannot survive? There is an argument that Pakistan needs peace more than India; that India has reached the status of a regional power in the eyes of many countries in the world without being at peace with Pakistan. Hence, why should India want to talk to Pakistan unless it can get something good out of it?
The fact is that while India has shown good economic indicators and has generally been courted by the West over the last few years, all its efforts can go awry without being at peace with Pakistan. Non-state actors can pull the two sides to war and while such a conflict would be deadly for Pakistan, any victory would be more than pyrrhic for India. At the least it would set India back many decades. That was the result of a war game played by the two sides in Washington last year. The game was overseen by American experts and it left everyone chastened.
Corollary: both countries need peace. Caveat: they cant move forward without respecting each others sensitivities. The time for oneupmanship is over.
http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk
---------- Post added at 12:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 PM ----------
Making of sideshow artists By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 16 Jul, 2009
One day Pakistan and India would declare to each other - and to the rest of the world - that their peace process is irreversible come what may. The next day their envoys would be seeking the first available agony aunt to offload their all-too-familiar problems to.
NEWS headlines in both countries are shamelessly self-absorbed: leaders of India and Pakistan will meet in Egypt today where they are to attend the Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) summit. In the recent past the two sides have met at other foreign venues.
After last November’s terror assault on Mumbai, India’s prime minister and Pakistan’s president met in Russia after considerable global nudging though without any obvious signs of success. Before that, following last July’s suicide attack on Delhi’s embassy in Kabul and a cluster of terror attacks across major Indian cities, when their ties were yet again strained, the prime ministers met in Colombo. This is ridiculous, more so because at least India claims that bilateral disputes, which include the Kashmir issue, should not be internationalised.
By carrying their laundry bags to regional and international summits, albeit to meet on the so-called sidelines, the two countries come across as churlish, immature neighbours. This is not an encouraging attribute for the nuclear-weapons states they both have gate-crashed their way to become. One day they declare to each other — and thereby to the rest of the world — that their peace process is irreversible come what may. The next day their envoys would be seeking the first available agony aunt to offload their all-too-familiar travails to, be it about life-threatening terrorism or life-giving water resources among their other unresolved bilateral topics.
They almost seem to have been better off during the Cold War. One was militarily anchored to the West with extensive strategic tie-ups in the Middle East, the other ideologically tethered to the Third World. They were not the best of friends, but they were geopolitical adults. In fact, on one occasion when for a brief moment India found itself on the same page of the global divide with Pakistan in 1977, it was greeted by Islamabad with a big (some said embarrassing) hug: the Indian prime minister was decorated with the neighbour’s highest civilian honour.
On other occasions if their rivalries delivered a lacerating blow both would bear with candour and not wince or howl in pain. They knew how to get even but they did so discreetly. India, though, mostly had the upper hand right up to the Simla Accord and beyond.
Take 1983. Indira Gandhi became host of the NAM summit in Delhi by default. It was Saddam Hussein’s turn to take over from Fidel Castro, but since Iraq was engaged in a brutal war with Iran, the honour was diverted to the Indian prime minister. She needed the opportunity to refurbish her image after the fiasco of her 1975-77 emergency rule. The Cold War was at its peak when Mrs Gandhi took the gavel from Castro. That year Moscow and Washington were playing cat-and-mouse in Afghanistan and to an extent in Iran.
India and Pakistan were not unencumbered by their global loyalties. Mrs Gandhi had veered close to Moscow in 1971. By 1975 she was accusing her opponents of working for the US and China. Both happened to be Pakistan’s close partners. Analysts have argued that her claim was not entirely inaccurate considering that the pro-America Jan Sangh and pro-China communists led the anti-Indira movement. On the other hand Moscow-backed communists had supported her emergency. It is another matter that they later regretted it, as communists often do.
Gen Ziaul Haq, who represented Pakistan at the 1983 NAM summit in Delhi, looked forlorn and friendless. Mrs Gandhi was the presiding deity while her rival was a pariah having offended senior Third World leaders who had unsuccessfully pleaded for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s life to be spared. They never forgave Zia for his cruelty to one of their icons. I vividly remember the general smiling bravely to himself as other NAM leaders seated with him were riveted to the Indian military pageantry Mrs Gandhi had especially organised for the occasion.
The general’s smile may have masked his reverie. Here was Mrs Gandhi putting up an impressive show before the world, but only he knew how seriously she was singed by the raging insurgency in Punjab, which was looking menacing with each passing day. Her Sikh bodyguards assassinated Mrs Gandhi the following year. Benazir Bhutto was to later admit to Pakistan’s culpability in India’s Punjab tragedy. It did not require a great sleuth to see the link from London to Washington and Ottawa. The fingerprints in the Punjab upheaval were there for all to see. And yet did we hear any war drums? On the contrary, the next few years raised the most promising hopes for peace between India and Pakistan. Check this out in the details of the Rajiv Gandhi-Benazir Bhutto talks. It was a different era altogether.
I am not sure if Mrs Gandhi and Gen Zia met again after 1983. Whatever their serious differences they never took their confrontation to this or that world capital. Though they came from opposite ideological corners, both countries were signatories to NAM resolutions. Some of these agreements may have been loftier than the capacity of their sponsors to translate them into practice — i.e. declaration of the Indian Ocean as a nuclear-free zone, support for PLO, Swapo and goodness knows how many other burning and usually legitimate issues of the time. The war between Iran and Iraq became the most important of these. Those were the days when India was perceived as a credible voice from the developing world and Pakistan was secure in its role as a frontline state in the Cold War. They were not the sideshow artists they were to become at any available venue abroad.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
