True to his reputation Richard Holbrooke is proving to be an insightful interlocutor. Other diplomats and commanders might have said it in passing but he is the first one to categorically say that India is part of the ‘AfPak’ problem, or puzzle, and also holds the key to its solution.
Terrorism, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has its roots in religious extremism and authoritarian tradition. Pakistan, for the better part of its existence, has been ruled by dictators, Afghanistan almost always.
The tribal part of their societies, where the writ even of authoritarian governments doesn’t hold, provides the foot soldiers for jihad. The fast-proliferating madressahs indoctrinate them to kill and get killed for the glory of Islam. It is easy to say that terrorists have no religion. But a suicide bomber loudly glorifies Allah before exploding himself in the midst of a mosque congregation or an unwary crowd in a marketplace.
And the men publicly whipping a young, allegedly adulterous, woman draw strength both from our laws and tribal traditions. India, no doubt, has its own share of religious fanatics and tribal insurgents but it is also the world’s biggest democracy. Holbrooke has been perceptive in pointing out that India’s participation in the search for a solution is necessary because its national security interest is as much at stake as is that of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the face of a common challenge and common enemy.
India’s secularism, notwithstanding its scourges in the person of Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi, will surely help fight the forces that defy the ideological coaxing of Islamic or authoritarian dispensations. Being of help in neutralising terrorists would not only be in keeping with India’s democratic culture but also with the cordial relations it has historically enjoyed with successive regimes in Afghanistan and does even now.
On the other hand, seething or open hostility has all along marked Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan. A common religion and common tribes straddling the long but unmarked frontier have been a source of friction rather than friendliness. Such was the beginning: Afghanistan was the only country to have opposed Pakistan’s admission to the UN and still lays claim to the loyalty of its tribes and access to its ports.
On its part, Pakistan mostly holds India responsible, and not without justification, for its strained relations with Afghanistan. That is a legacy of the partition of the subcontinent which one can see fading away as the Kashmir problem gets out of the way.
Many an accusation lies at the door of Gen Musharraf but credit must be given to him for blazing a new path to the resolution of the Kashmir dispute that cuts through the rigid stands of ‘nothing but a plebiscite’ and the ‘state is an inseparable part of India’.
Musharraf’s formula for a semi-sovereign Kashmir in which the inhabitants of the two parts of the state have the right of free movement and trade across the Line of Control was all but endorsed by a large voter turnout in a free poll. And Omar Abdullah’s aspiration for azadi also signifies a similar status. The hurdle to the resumption of dialogue leading to a settlement is the Indian allegation, not unfounded, that the terrorist attack on Mumbai was planned in Pakistan.
If India and Pakistan agree with Mr Holbrooke that the threat and enemy are common to both, Mumbai can be put behind. The onus now lies chiefly on Pakistan to show that the probe is expeditious and shields no man or agency.
Pakistan’s stake in a satisfactory conclusion to the Mumbai episode is much bigger than India’s. Besides bringing a settlement of Kashmir in sight, India might feel persuaded to encourage the Karzai government to lend support to Pakistan in checking the movement of terrorists across the hazy frontier instead of accusing it of sheltering them.
But, above all, Pakistan will be drawn into the democratic ethos of South Asia where besides India, Sri Lanka has resolutely stuck to the democratic course despite a long-ranging insurgency; Nepal has overthrown a hereditary kingship; Bangladesh has staged a forceful return to democracy, so have the Maldives — and the king of tranquil Bhutan insists on transferring many of his powers to an elected council ignoring the protestations of fealty by his subjects.
Pakistan was intended to be a nation-state, not a religious one and much less a bastion of Islam. In the words of its founder and philosopher (he had no peer, nor forerunner) the state was ‘always to be guided by the principles of justice and fair play — and I am sure that with your support and cooperation, I can look forward to Pakistan becoming one of the greatest nations of the world’.
That ideal has long been lost in the abstractions of Liaquat Ali Khan’s Objectives Resolution, Ayub’s basic democracies, Bhutto’s delimitation of the bounds of Islam and Ziaul Haq’s Hudood laws. The violent extremism issuing forth from all these actions has instead made it, in the world view, a ‘centre of world terror’.
Present-day ideologues must explain how Pakistan could be an Islamic state if it were originally meant to have a Muslim population only marginally more than other faiths.
That was to be the Pakistan for which Jinnah had struggled. It was the last-minute hard choice of ‘take it or leave it’ that resulted in the partition of Bengal, Punjab and Assam making Pakistan an overwhelmingly Muslim state. Jinnah took it with a heavy heart for he knew he had not long to live.
That is regretful. What our political leaders, and religious divines too, fail to realise is that in a taboo-ridden society, as Pakistan is, the law of Sharia would be interpreted and enforced by the likes of Sufi Mohammad, Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Omar and not elected legislative councils.
Even the divines of politics like Qazi Hussain Ahmad or haranguers on TV like Ghamidi are irrelevant. People must thank their lucky stars that a few dogged senators in 1998 blocked Nawaz Sharif’s 15th amendment bill which was to make Sharia Pakistan’s supreme law.
Had that happened the whole country would have been a vast Swat with its angry floggers but without its decent folk. Islamic values can flourish only in a secular environment. The proof of it is to be found in the mayhem and hypocrisy of the era of mere rituals that was inaugurated by Ziaul Haq.
Dawn (Pakistan)