Opinion This bilateral meanness

Pakistan denied any such operation had taken place. Since then,the Indian army has shelled the Pakistani areas lying close to the LoC,giving rise to casualties. This in turn has caused the Pakistani side to shell a number of Indian posts. The bilateral meanness that haunts the LoC — which was “made safe” through a ceasefire agreement in 2003 — is back again. Barring a few sane voices on both sides,nationalism is tilting into battle-cries once again. Both states wear the warpaint anyway in August,because they won their independence in this month and immediately went to war in 1947 in Kashmir.

India saw protest demonstrations from people outraged by the “ambush”,not all of them spontaneous. The media squared off on both sides. Greenhorn anchors in Pakistan’s proliferating TV news channels vomited platitudes about the “baniya” wickedness of India; and politicians tilted into shameless populism on both sides. Senior Pakistan politician and leader of the Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam),Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain,began his statement well by saying he smelled “milli bhagat” (collusion) between the two armies,but quickly recanted his rather innovative comment by adding that he would never accept the “supremacy” of India.

This year has seen a lot of bilateral meanness between the two nuclear-armed nations. In January,India accused the Pakistan army of sending killers across the LoC who beheaded Indian troops. The incident coincided with the powerful Defence of Pakistan Council (comprising non-state actors) demonstrations on the roads in Pakistan,shouting defiance of the PPP government’s intention of awarding India the most favoured nation status. Then,India hanged a mid-level Kashmiri leader in May; Pakistan pleaded innocence when some “patriotic” prisoners retaliated by killing an Indian spy languishing in a Pakistani jail,supposedly secure,on death row. Indian prisoners did the same to a Pakistani prisoner on the other side.

It is difficult to say which side is meaner. But some variation in assessment can be seen in what the world believes. Internationally,Pakistan is seen as the revisionist power unrealistically trying to force the hand of the much stronger status quo state that is India. The 2008 attack in Mumbai by Pakistani non-state actors — one of whom was actually caught — damaged Pakistan’s reputation further,painting it as a defiant country that refused to dig itself out of its military-induced jingoism. Most of the terrorists killing innocent Pakistanis and rendering Pakistan a failed state today are the old instruments of the army’s “asymmetrical” war against India. Because their patron hopes to use them in some future time,they are surviving and have become powerful enough to break the state’s “monopoly of violence”,killing its police personnel like flies.

The Indian outrage is “original”,after the event. As the lesser protagonist with the more intense “nationalism of the weaker state”,Pakistan reacts to this outrage through denial of the event. In India,the media influences the state. In Pakistan,the media aligns itself with the response of the revisionist state. The Pakistani media outrage is “reactive”,therefore “derivative”. Since the “event” has not taken place in Pakistan,the media must create a “cause”,and for that it goes back to the national narrative,buried at times under initiatives taken by popularly elected leaders to normalise relations with India. What is the national narrative?

The cardinal tenet of the Pakistani narrative is that India never accepted the formation of Pakistan and is currently involved in destroying it: the very existence of Pakistan is somehow a negation of India. Indian prime ministers,from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh,may come swearing acceptance of Pakistan,they can’t budge the narrative. All Pakistani media embraces the view — so far without credible proof — that India is interfering in Balochistan to an extent that should arouse international concern. More outrageously,police officials and semi-literate TV anchors claim that the Taliban who kill Pakistanis are funded and trained by India.

After the latest flare-up,Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will have to tone down his rhetoric of normalising ties with India through free trade and connectivity. A comment from his interior minister,Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan,who is known to interface with the army,is deprecating enough about India to be accepted as a switch of signal. Before the “alleged” Poonch ambush,a retired senior air force officer was explaining on TV why he was opposed to free trade with India. He thought Pakistan was too embroiled in terrorism to trade successfully with its neighbour. His simplistic mind,of a piece with most retired khaki analysts and apparently civilian think tanks in Islamabad,erected a self-defeating “trading principle” that may apply equally to China,the US and EU.

The theorem in Pakistan is absurdly posited like this: don’t move towards normalisation because border incidents make normalisation look like capitulation. What it rejects is the universal principle that conflict which cannot be resolved should be tackled through normalisation: Poonch should not derail trade breakthrough; trade breakthrough should prevent Poonch. The theorem presumes the possession of some kind of trump card that India is dying to defuse. Pakistan doesn’t hold any trump cards,unless more conflict is one. One of the latest analyses says once the Americans leave,the Pakistan army will demob from the western border and concentrate again on the eastern one to face up to its more permanent challenges.

Looking at the bright side in this LoC confrontation,both sides want to move to “peace talks”,which keep getting bogged down. But here,too,“peace talks” in Pakistan are mostly interpreted to mean getting India to decide all the bilateral disputes in favour of Pakistan. In India,“peace talks” mean moving on from the perennial bilateral stalemate to “normal” conduct through free trade,investment and a liberal visa regime. (The world agrees with the latter position,which has,over time,convinced two elected Pakistani governments in succession since 2008.)

The media war between India and Pakistan ends up hurting the governments in power by curtailing their efforts to pry their policies out of the rut of the national narrative. The Pakistani media war against India destabilises Pakistan by modifying the categories of “friends” and “enemies” inside the country. After the 2008 Mumbai attack,the PPP was tagged as enemy because President Zardari had tried to disarm India by forgoing Pakistan’s doctrine of nuclear first-use. In 2013,Prime Minister Sharif runs the risk of attracting the same kind of aspersion. In consequence,Pakistan will end up damaging India much less than it damages itself.

There was,however,one special moment in Pakistan. On August 6,TV anchor Hamid Mir got French and German ambassadors to talk about how two sworn enemies finally became normally-behaving states. The French ambassador said: “France and Germany fought two wars due to their different thinking and ideas. But they have learnt a good lesson from their bitter past. The youth of France and Germany have played a vital role to bridge the gaps between the two countries. Both countries exchanged six million youth,who got education in each other’s country. The Elysee Treaty of 1963 brought the two rivals closer for progress and prosperity.”

The writer is a consulting editor with ‘Newsweek Pakistan’

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