Encounters of the worst kind

Really? Because then it becomes truly impossible to understand why democracy and Islamic nations find it so hard to work together. Out of 45 Islamic countries we see autocrats in charge everywhere except in a couple of shining exceptions.

Pakistan is not among those shining exceptions and the man standing between democracy and the average Pakistani happens to go by the name of Pervez Musharraf. Either the good General has quite forgotten this or he has, quite simply, lost the plot.

Whichever the case, his speech brought back for me that old feeling of hopelessness that usually accompanies all thoughts of our relationship with Pakistan. In recent months so much seemed to have changed that it was beginning to seem as if peace was possible and our benighted sub-continent could finally get on with catching up with the rest of the world.

I have said it before, but it cannot be repeated enough, that few countries in the world look as bad as we do. Few countries in the world treat their citizens with such contempt that the average Indian and Pakistani considers himself lucky if he can live in a one-room hovel that would be considered unfit for use as a public toilet in the developed world.

He considers himself lucky if he can find clean water to drink and a school for his children. This disgraceful state of affairs is largely because we spend our meagre resources on armies and bombs. Neither country has reached anywhere near providing its citizens with anything that could be described as a standard of living but we both have nuclear bombs.

The Dictator from next door made reference to this. He puffed himself up proudly and warned the world that the sub-continent was the most dangerous place because of the possibilities of nuclear conflict.

India, he said almost spitting the word out, had 8216;8216;embarked on a massive build-up of conventional and non-conventional arms8217;8217; and 8216;8216;this will destabilise South Asia and erode strategic deterrence.8217;8217; If the General could take time off from lecturing the world on freedom and religion he might notice that if the sub-continent is in a state of violence and turmoil it is largely because his government8217;s foreign policy has been based on the export of terrorism.

Hamid Karzai made reference to this as well although the General appears to have convinced the Americans that he is no longer interested in disrupting the peace in Afghanistan. What he has never denied, though, is that his government continues to support the 8216;8216;freedom movement8217;8217; in Kashmir even if it involves killing innocent civilians in the streets of Srinagar.

If killing innocent civilians in the streets of Jerusalem is terrorism how does it become a freedom movement in Srinagar? It is clear that the General8217;s way of thinking has not changed even slightly since that long ago summit in Agra. It took place, if you remember, mere months before 9/11 and in those days Musharraf was an even more puffed-up creature and made no effort to conceal his views that violence in Kashmir was justified.

After September 11, he toned the rhetoric down and ditched the Taliban but anyone who paid careful attention to that famous renunciation of violence speech in January last year would have noticed that he used an interesting Islamic reference to justify his change of policy.

Just as the Prophet had retreated once to better fight the Jews, he said, so he was retreating to fight a better fight another day. Was someone in Washington paying attention?

Clearly not or the General and his wife would not have been spending cozy weekends with the Bushes in Camp David. Ah, they say, we know he is a bad man and a dictator but he is important because if he goes, there is every likelihood of a 8216;8216;bearded8217;8217; General taking over and then the Islamic jehad against will be fought by the Pakistani army instead of by shadowy terrorist groups.

Perhaps. But, from an Indian viewpoint we need to recognise that if we want peace with Pakistan we are going to need to find other people to talk to because peace is the last thing Musharraf is interested in.

At the UN he dismissed the changes of the past few months as 8216;8216;some improvement in the atmospherics8217;8217; and went on instantly to charge India with exploiting the 8216;8216;international terrorist sentiment to delegitimise the struggle of Kashmiri people to exercise their right of self-determination8217;8217;.

Sure, but before we go any further could we have some rights of self-determination in Pakistan first? And, while on the subject of 8216;8216;atrocities8217;8217; in Kashmir it would do Musharraf a lot of good if he did some reading on the creation of Bangladesh. India needs no lectures in human rights from a man who has spent a lifetime serving an army that killed 3 million civilians who were asking only for their 8216;8216;right of self-determination8217;8217;.

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