De-escalate right now!
Musharaf's Landmark Speech
Praful Bidwai
India-syndicate.com, 18 January 2002
By criticising militant political Islam quite boldly, Musharraf has exhibited a willingness to reverse Pakistan's political orientation of the last decade, writes Praful Bidwai. India must reciprocate and begin bilateral talks on Kashmir. Anything less will only help the US, giving them greater leverage to get involved as mediators.
General Pervez Musharraf has done something heads of states don’t do. He has subverted the ideological foundation which has sustained Pakistani politics for two decades. He has begun a major surgical operation on militant political Islam and launched an ambitious reform of society. South Asia has never seen anything like this.
Gen Musharraf’s January 12 address will be a landmark - even as a catalogue of Pakistan’s many ills and a list of intentions. But it is likely to be more than that thanks to Pakistan’s biggest-ever crackdown on terrorists. Already, 2,000 suspects have been rounded up, five organisations including Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed banned, and 300 offices closed down.
Gen Musharraf’s address was not a public relations exercise aimed at appeasing Western powers. More than two-thirds of it was devoted to diagnosing Pakistan’s pathology and outlining an agenda for internal reform. Concessions on "external" issues like India’s demand to surrender 20 terrorists were secondary. Gen Musharraf plans to put Pakistan on the road to modernisation and secularisation by severing links between political Islam and the state, between the military and the mullahs, and between Kashmir and terrorist violence. These links have had disastrous consequences for Pakistan.
Whether the General succeeds or not, his plan represents the most ambitious reform undertaken outside Turkey to deal with the issue of religion and politics. This reform represents a complete reversal of the Islamisation project launched by Zia-ul-Haq to acquire a figleaf of legitimacy for himself and change Pakistan’s character. Zia’s project unfolded in its most developed form through the Taliban, through Pakistan’s attempt to strategically annex Afghanistan, and through promotion of a variety of militant groups, especially in Kashmir.
Gen Musharraf has started cutting the umbilical cord between the state and jehadi terrorism. This prolonged process could eventually mean purging the army, even cleansing the ISI. It is by no means certain that Gen Musharraf will succeed. His agenda will antagonise some of his own colleagues as well as bigoted mullahs. Jehadi militants, inflamed by the Taliban’s defeat, are only waiting, sharpening their claws. Gen Musharraf has embarked on a bold and risky mission - perhaps under pressure, even compulsion. But that should not detract from his purpose. Far-reaching changes sometimes happen because "soft" options vanish, and there is compulsion to change. It would be sheer nitpicking to fault Gen Musharraf for omitting to mention the "Lahore process" or "Shimla agreement". What matters is he unconditionally condemned all forms of terrorism and extremism’s "Kalashnikov culture". Equally significant was his insistence that Pakistani groups must not mess around in other countries.
Gen Musharraf’s agenda involves strict regulation of madrassas and mosques, and redefinition of jehad as a fight against poverty, illiteracy and backwardness. His agenda can potentially transform Pakistan into a modern, forward-looking, society no longer obsessed with intolerant interpretations of religion. He has clearly posed the choice between this future, and a grim fate if Pakistan chooses to be a closed, religion-obsessed, backward society. Gen Musharraf asserts that Kashmir "runs through our blood". But he is careful to decouple Kashmir’s "freedom struggle" from terrorist militancy and emphasise a negotiated solution.
India must reciprocate this in good faith. It just won’t do to accept - as New Delhi does - that Kashmir is a bilateral issue, and then refuse a bilateral dialogue. Failure to discuss Kashmir bilaterally could invite external intervention, with unpalatable consequences. The US is in a uniquely powerful position. It is courted by both New Delhi and Islamabad. It has been the mediator in India’s post-December 13 brinkmanship. Having allowed America a pivotal role, India cannot easily resist its friendly (or not-so-friendly) involvement in Kashmir - if bilateralism fails. Bilateralism must be made to work. Equally important, India must immediately de-escalate its military build-up. It would be ill-advised to wait for Pakistan to "surrender" some of the 20 terrorists. Gen Musharraf cannot be easily pressurised into handing over any Pakistani nationals to Interpol, leave alone India. Equally unlikely is the surrender of Dawood Ibrahim or Chota Shakeel, who in any case are gangsters rather than terrorists. India could have some former Khalistanis handed over. But that would be a minor consolation after the big gain from Gen Musharraf’s outlawing of JeM and LeT.
It would be unwise and unrealistic for India to cast itself in the mould of a superpower by demanding that Pakistan surrender the 20 suspects, or else ... India has not established convincing links between them and the Parliament attack; it has mostly raked up old cases. The US was itself wrong, as this Column has argued, to use military force in Afghanistan. It has ended up killing at least 3,700 innocent Afghans-500 more people than were killed in New York’s Twin Towers. India cannot bend its near-strategic equal Pakistan to its will, as the US could in Afghanistan. It is in New Delhi’s own interest to de-escalate the current eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. Today’s build-up is the largest-ever, with seven lakh men mobilised. Anything can go wrong: a terrorist attack inspired by an agency out to sabotage Gen Musharraf’s plans, an overzealous local commander getting ideas, or a plain South Asia-style goof-up. The consequences will become increasingly disastrous the longer India waits.
Today, the Vajpayee government can draw some satisfaction from the fact that Gen Musharraf has delivered "anti-terrorist" action - although not entirely under India’s muscle-flexing. Gen Colin Powell has delivered a message in favour of dialogue and de-escalation. If the NDA government acts on its own, rather than under US goading, it might even claim a minor "victory" and hope that this will help the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Mr Vajpayee must draw the line here. Instead of indulging in more brinkmanship, he should work on a solution to the Kashmir problem. He can widen the political opening provided by the Taliban’s defeat and Gen Musharraf’s new anti-jehadi turn. But first, de-escalate.
Copyright 2002 India-syndicate.com
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