Eyes wide shut in the West

• Their immediate interest, not interest in that ‘‘never-never land of unrealised tendency’’, the long run.

• Their immediate interest as perceived by them, not as pictured by our arguments.

• Their immediate interest as perceived by half a dozen of them — look at their ingress into Iraq today.

• Their immediate interest as perceived by that half a dozen at that moment — those half a dozen may change their view tomorrow, but the step would have been taken, a step that will make the alternate course less likely.

The immediate problems that confront Americans are to manage Iraq, to manage Afghanistan, and to hunt down some conspicuous Islamic terrorists. For these objectives, they regard Pakistan as indispensable. After all, has Pakistan been able to deflect attention from its proliferation activities only by the proficiency of its PR machinery? Is it not the case that US, etc., have been desperate to believe Pakistani denials? Nor is it just the US Government that shut its eyes to what surfaced about A Q Khan & Co. The US media moved over to other issues just as swiftly.

Consider a single, recent example — a matter, the consequences of which visit us every other week in some part of India or the other. After 9/11, open, daily, shrill calls for jihad became an embarrassment. Musharraf made a speech about the inappropriateness of jihad. He declared that he would not allow Pakistani territory or territory under its control to be used for waging terrorist attacks against any country. But as far as organisations waging war against India were concerned, all that the Pakistan Government did was to persuade them to change their name-plates. Here is a representative item from The Daily Times of Pakistan:

Jihad takes on new ‘benign’ look

The Daily Times, Lahore, 2004-02-25, Amir Rana

Muttahida Jihad Council (MJC), an alliance of Kashmiri jihadi organisations has been restructured, with six smaller alliances within it representing various groups that will no longer use the words jihad, lashkar, jaish or mujahideen with their names so that they appear more political than militant. These semi-alliances are the Kashmir Resistance Forum (KRF) 1, 2 and 3 and Kashmir Freedom Forum (KRF) 1 and 2, while only Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) is allowed to use its original name, sources in the MJC told Daily Times.

‘‘We have been told that these names are damaging Pakistan’s image abroad as well as the Kashmiri freedom movement,’’ a jihadi leader said. Asked why HM was allowed to use its original name, he replied ‘‘HM also holds the chairmanship of the jihad alliance and quarters abroad consider it representative of the Kashmiri freedom movement alone.’’

Sources said this decision was taken in October 2003, implemented in January 2004. KRF 1 represents the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LT), Brigade 313 (a Harkatul Jihad-e-Islami faction led by Commander Illya Kashmiri), Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) and Al-Bader Mujahideen, while KRF 2 is an alliance of Al-Jihad, Al-Fateh, Hizb Ullah and Muslim Janbaz Force (MJF). KRF 3 consists of Harkatul Jihad-e-Islami (Maulana Muzaffar group), Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JM) and Jamiat-ul-Ansa (JA), while KFF 1 is an alliance of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JM) and Al-Umar Mujahideen, and KFF 2 includes Islamic Front, Jamaat-ul-Furqan (JF), Tehrik-e-Jihad (TJ), Al-Barq and Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen (TM).

This new ‘‘adjustment’’ is called ‘‘Muwakhaat’’ and sources said this would also reduce the jihadi groups’ internal differences. ‘‘These organisations’ new identities will improve their image, making them look like the political groups,’’ sources said. The MJC earlier consisted of 15 organisations: HM, TM, JM, Al-Barq, Hizb Ullah, Al-Jihad, Al-Fateh, HJI (Muzaffar group), IF, LI, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, Al-Umar, JA, TJ, and all of these were Kashmir based.

Five Pakistan-based organisations LT, JM, Brigade 313, Al-Badr Mujahideen and JF were not the part of MJC but they have been included in the new structure. ‘‘The MJC constitution barred Pakistan-based organisations from the alliance but circumstances have changed. We need unity and no one can deny their role in jihad,’’ a jihadi leader said. Sources also claimed Syed Salahuddin will remain the Chairman of MJC for five more years, being acceptable to all concerned. Sources said the Pakistan-based groups had asked to join the MJC, and claimed this wasn’t the first time that the MJC was being restructured.

In January 2002, a formula for a merger was adopted but small and Pakistan-based organisations refused to accept it. They wanted to maintain their independent identity and most jihadi leaders were not prepared to be subordinate to small Kashmiri organisations, sources claimed, adding, ‘‘This structure is an extension of 2002’s formula and now leaders of these organisations will not share responsibilities with others.’’ Sources said these smaller alliances would launch operations against Indian forces in Kashmir, but after permission from MJC leaders.

Such information is available in the open, it is available from Pakistani newspapers. Yet the West, beholden to Pakistan for the assistance the latter is providing on matters that interest the West, has shut its eyes.

It would be foolish, therefore, for us to proceed on the assumption that the Americans will attend to our problem rather than secure Pakistan’s help — and, as a price, let it do what it will vis-a-vis India: after all, that is a price that we, rather than Americans, will have to bear. Indeed, there will be many American strategists who will see merit in the Pakistani argument that it must channel the terrorists into Kashmir, and ensure them some victories so as to pacify those in Pakistan who oppose assistance to the US in what these elements, the Pakistani authorities will say, are projecting to the people as the US’ ‘‘war against Islam’’.

Even if we disregard all this, and, with tunnel vision, focus only on ‘‘the peace process’’, we should bear in mind the operating principle of US policy when dealing with two hostile, or potentially hostile neighbours. As successive National Security Advisors — Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski — and others have explained, the objective of US policy-makers in such situations is to ensure that the US is closer to each of the two countries — separately, naturally — than they can be or are likely to be to each other. This operational maxim alone will preclude them from putting on Pakistan the kind of pressures that our security concerns would require.

And then there is the goad of and material help from Pakistan’s ‘‘long and trusted friend’’, China, there is the encouragement from a relationship that has been described by the Chinese as that between lips and teeth. An opportunity if only we would use it.

Instead of relying on a ‘‘changed heart’’, therefore, the sorts of things that we should watch out for are:

• Is the locus of power shifting in Pakistan out of the hands of persons and organisations whose muscle and lucre depend on hostility towards India?

• Is Pakistan’s society getting less Talibanised?

• Has there been any change in the madrasas?

• Have the text-books that are being drilled into children in ‘‘normal’’ schools changed?

• Have the Zia-laws and Ordinances been diluted or scrapped?

• Have the Islam-pasand and jihadi organisations been actually circumscribed?

• Are there signs that Pakistan is acquiring a new sense of identity? Is it, for instance, getting interested in growth?

In the meanwhile, we should:

• Not be too alarmed at the prospect that Pakistan may become even more ‘‘Islamic’’ in the coming years. The prospect that Pakistan will become increasingly Islamic, will force others to sit up — especially those who are concerned about its nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Indeed, there is much to be said for joining Islamic ideologues in taunting Pakistan that it is still dragging its feet in regard to Islamisation — of the economy, for instance. For fifty years the Islam-pasand have been urging that riba be abolished, that in all spheres the divinely ordained shariah be enforced. Instead of being anxious about such demands, we should wish them Allah-speed. Nothing we could do would do to Pakistan what such ‘‘reforms’’ will.

• Simultaneously we should give opportunities to journalists, legislators, judges, academics of Pakistan to come and see India for themselves. That will by itself give the lie to what they have been fed, to what the ideology of Pakistan, and even more so what the version of Islam that pervades Pakistan proclaims to be the case.

• Improve governance in Jammu & Kashmir.

And acquire the capacity ‘‘to do a Kashmir to Pakistan’’. Till the US felt the need to get Pakistan to assist in driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan and in chasing down the conspicuous terrorists, Pakistan was being written off as ‘‘a failed State’’. Those analyses from ‘‘independent’’ media and think-tanks suddenly disappeared the moment the US needed the help of Pakistani rulers!

But the faultlines remain. In PoK, in Gilgit-Baltistan there are strong groups that are fed-up with the way the Pakistani establishment has treated the people of those regions, and, therefore, advocate breaking away from Pakistan. The Pashtuns see how they have been used. They also see the victory of President Karzai as a Pashtun phenomenon. The Saraiki remain disaffected. Action in Afghanistan has triggered a deep reaction in Waziristan, and the rest of FATA.

In Balochistan memories of the brutal suppression in Zulfikar Bhutto’s time remain fresh. And they are determined not to repeat the mistake of that encounter — when by concentrating forces on a few towns, Bhutto could crush the movement. This time the insurgency-like movement is widely dispersed throughout that vast area. So unsettled have the Western and Northwestern parts of the country become that, as I write, Pakistan has had to withdraw very substantial numbers of troops from the borders with India and deploy them in that region.

In Sindh, to the traditional and deep resentments arising from the neglect of and discrimination against the people has been added the looming ecological disaster: the salination of vast tracts because of excessive exploitation of Indus waters upstream, the ingress of the sea, the acute shortage of water. This is an issue waiting to explode. And not just in Sindh. How would Pakistan have viewed such developments if they had been in India? Indeed, how does it today use the stresses it locates in India?

Concluded.

Extracted from Will the Iron Fence Save a Tree Hollowed by Termites? — Arun Shourie’s new book that is being published this month