No-War Pact Idea

 A NO-WAR pact between India and Pakistan is a good idea and Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif is very earnest about it. On Dec 11 he told a TV channel in Pakistan, “We should sign a no-war pact for peace.”

Around the same time he said in an interview to Harinder Baweja of Tehelka, “I would say that there should be a no-first-attack pact, a no-war pact between the two countries and this includes both conventional and nuclear (weapons).”

It bears recalling that he had made this very offer on Sept 22, 1997 when he addressed the UN General Assembly as prime minister of Pakistan. “I offer today from this rostrum to open negotiations on a treaty of no-aggression between Pakistan and India.” As it happens ‘aggression’ has a wider connotation than ‘war’. It includes acts short of troops crossing boundaries; methods direct and indirect. He had initiated the peace process that year and the Islamabad joint statement of June 23, 1997 defined the structure of a composite dialogue which is still in place today.

Nawaz Sharif sought to put a seal on that process with a no-war pact. Such offers always have a purpose. When Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru handed to Pakistan’s high commissioner M. Ismail the draft of a no-war pact on Dec 22, 1949, he sought to freeze the status quo in Kashmir. Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan accepted the draft almost verbatim but stipulated an undertaking to “resort to arbitration on all points of difference”. Nehru pointed out that Kashmir was a political question which is non-justiciable.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a different notion. Reporting to the National Assembly on July 17, 1963 on his talks on Kashmir with Swaran Singh, he said that the pact would enable India to contend that “now that a no-war pact exists, Pakistan has accepted the ceasefire line”. Even at Tashkent in January 1966 he rejected such a pact. Also at Simla in July 1972.

The UN’s charter has an explicit provision enjoining members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” The Simla Agreement and the Tashkent Declaration have similar injunctions.

Where, then, is the need for a bilateral pact? The answer is that crimes continue to be committed despite the penal code. But if two feuding neighbours solemnly sign an agreement, in or out of court, not to harm each other, it helps to create mutual confidence.

In 1981 it was Pakistan’s turn to make the offer. But it did so in a statement on Sept 15, 1981 announcing its “formal acceptance of the US package” of military aid to Pakistan. It proposed “mutual guarantees of non-aggression and non-use of force in the spirit of the Simla Agreement”. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi stipulated two conditions — bilateralism and no bases to or alliances with a foreign power. In May 1984 at Murree, representatives of the two countries nearly resolved the issue. The Simla Agreement helped on the first and NAM formulations on the second.

A communication gap prevented accord. The parleys continued till 1987 only to fizzle out. Agha Shahi, minister of state for foreign affairs, and one of the most accomplished diplomats South Asia has produced, categorically said on Jan 28, 1982 “the proposed no-war pact applies to Kashmir and war is ruled out. Only peaceful means would be employed for solution of this problem”. The methods used to resolve Kashmir from 1989 onwards were not exactly an example of peaceful methods.

It is one of those might-have-beens of history as to how events would have shaped if India had accepted the offer in 1984 and also settled Siachen under the June 1989 accord when Benazir Bhutto was prime minister.

Dare one hope that both countries are wiser for the two wasted decades? Mr Nawaz Sharif’s offer today in 2008 also has a purpose; a very good one, indeed. It is to instil confidence which is all but non-existent today. It is however, an integral part of his advice on the TV interview on Dec 11: “Pakistan should seriously engage India. We should invite them and we should go to India to take a look at the evidence (in the Mumbai’s blasts). We should do whatever is possible to help India and combat terrorism jointly. The blame game is not in favour of Pakistan and India”. Without that engagement and a successful one too the no-war pact will have no takers even though neither country desires war.

There is another aspect to the offer of a non-aggression pact. Will it impose a duty on each state to prevent a non-state actor on its soil from committing aggression on the other?

In his excellent book India and Pakistan: The Cost of Conflict and the Benefits of Peace, Maj Gen Mahmud Ali Durrani recommended a list of confidence-building measures. One of them was “reduce the role of intelligence agencies acting against each other”. This can be amplified to cover non-state actors; private organisations which are bent on war. He is now national security adviser and had an excellent meeting with his Indian counterpart M.K.Narayanan in New Delhi on Oct 14.

President Zardari has offered to send “a representative” of the ISI. A delegation can come to India to begin a sincere dialogue on the immediate crisis in an effort to resolve it. We must at some point of time talk about a non-aggression pact which reckons with the realities of our times. But that will have to be an icing on a cake which is yet to be baked. Public opinion in India and Pakistan yearns for peace. It will endorse a no-war pact only after the major disputes are resolved.

That is sad. But that is the reality in 2008. Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz came to New Delhi at the height of the Kargil crisis. A senior minister or official can well come to New Delhi for exploratory talks to pave the way for a full-fledged delegation, which would go into the substance of the differences. Meanwhile rhetoric deserves a good holiday. Quiet, secret and sincere diplomacy is the need of the hour.

If the Shoe fits

IF only President George W. Bush had consulted a fairy godmother before he had embarked on his unfortunate final visit to Iraq.

He might have been warned that instead of losing a glass slipper, he would be receiving instead a used, size-10 men’s shoe.

In many respects, the presidency of any country — especially that of the United States of America — contains all the ingredients of a fairy tale. The central figure is supposed to overcome all odds and adversities, to battle on behalf of righteousness, to destroy demons and vanquish ogres, restore order in the world, provide reassurance that nothing untoward will ever happen again (until the next fairy tale, that is), and then to retire and live happily ever after.

That is what Aesop and the Grimm brothers and more recently J.K. Rowling have always led us to believe. We as children and in turn our own children have grown up in a magical world of their making, in which right always prevails over wrong, in which conflicts and wars are justifiable only because they restore social order and a natural equilibrium.

One wonders therefore which bedtime fairy tales Mrs Barbara Bush must have read to her son — the boy who grew up to become President George W. Bush. Whatever those stories may have been, it is obvious that at some time during the night, somewhere in the laboratory of his fermenting mind, the experiment went horribly awry. As a result, today, we, Iraqis and non-Iraqis alike, between the Bosphorus and Indus, are being made to suffer the consequences.

Five years ago, President Bush blundered into Iraq, relying on intelligence that as he now claims was flawed. Unlike President John F. Kennedy who lost his innocence over the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba and then wept for having relied upon his errant military advisers, Bush has not found the time to waste a tear either on his misadventure or over the damage caused by it.

Ordinarily, persons with blood on their hands rarely revisit the scene of crime. Did President Bush seriously imagine that his recent visit to Iraq would be welcomed as a last hurrah, lauded as a final victory lap, an opportunity for an avuncular valedictory address by a victorious Caesar to an audience that had been cowed into grinning submission?

Had he forgotten that the Iraqis had celebrated the fall of Saddam Hussein and the demolition of his statue in Firdos Square by US marines in April 2003 by beating it, once it was safely down, with shoes?

Did he believe that millions of Iraqis would feel grateful that in place of Saddam Hussein and his iron-brained militia, they now have the steel frame of 150,000 US troops underwriting their fledgling democracy?

Had he been deluded by his own propaganda? In April 2003, President Bush told his troops while standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Five years later, he professed the same optimism, with diminished conviction: “The war is not over, but it is decisively on its way to being won.”

Bush could have done worse than to have read Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches before he left for Iraq. He might have understood why many Iraqis find less comfort in his own fading reassurances than they do in the defiant words of Winston Churchill.

Harassed by German onslaughts and a wavering French government, Churchill addressed the Canadian parliament in the winter of 1941. He quoted the advice given to the then French prime minister by his timorous generals, that “in three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken”. Churchill added laconically: “Some chicken; some neck.”

Iraq’s neck has been stretched for over five years already, and may well be elongated for as long a period again. Whatever may be the crucial determinants that hasten the end of war, they are not visible at the moment. Human casualties for sure are not a factor. Over 4,200 American lives have already been lost. No one has the time to calculate how many Iraqis have been misplaced — a hundred thousand? Many hundreds of thousands? A million? More than a million?

The cost of the war is also not the tourniquet. More than $570bn have been spent already, and no one knows when or where that figure will finally stop. With the US economy in a state of recession, the last jobs president-eject Bush and president-elect Obama will want to touch will be those of America’s Military Inc.

That might explain why Obama has chosen to include key components of Bush’s national security team into his own administration. These include Robert Gates as Obama’s defence secretary, and retired Gen Jim Jones, who supported John McCain (Obama’s opponent in the race for the presidency) as his national security adviser. To many — and they are not all necessarily Iraqis — who had hoped to witness with the election of Obama a change in US policies, continuity of the same faces signals instead a linear persistence. Old ammunition is simply being reissued in new casings. They will however be no less lethal. Carnage is a permanent resident in every front page.

For the 170 million surviving here in Pakistan, life has never been a fairy tale. Our frogs do not transform into coachmen, our rodents do not become footmen, and our undersized pumpkins do not balloon into golden coaches. Most importantly, our fairy godmother has changed gender. Our former fairy godfather is paying more attention to our stepsisters than to us.

Living in a world of one’s making is challenge enough; living in a world of some one else’s making is even more difficult. Living in a world of our own make-believe is unforgivable. Gradually, as the juggernaut of the war against terrorism moves inexorably towards and across our frontiers, we need to remind ourselves that fairy tales are the product of peacetime tranquillity. War spawns its own stories, in which the footwear is not a glass slipper, not even a size-10 shoe, but a hobnailed boot.

The Mumbai Enigma

On Nov 26, an enigma began unfolding in Mumbai. It emerged that 12 gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles ransacked Mumbai for three days killing 188 people (unverified), including a few Israelis and other westerners. Security forces suffered 14 casualties. One terrorist, Kasab, who appeared to have been focused by the cameras, was arrested while all others were killed.

Why did the terrorists not carry any shoulder-fired rockets/grenades and explosives to Mumbai? The attackers, if they had no love lost for India, ought to have planned for maximum destruction during the attack. Or was the attack not meant to cause extensive damage?

Three of the 14 personnel killed were those who had proved that a serving Indian Army colonel, in collusion with Hindu militant groups, had actually bombed and burned Pakistanis alive inside the Samjhauta Express in 2007. While the father of Karkare, the senior-most Anti-Terrorist Squad officer, refused to receive condolences on behalf of the State of India and his widow refused to receive any monetary award. Did they conclusively believe that Karkare and his companions were assassinated for absolving Pakistan of complicity in the Samjhauta Express massacre in which 68 Pakistanis lost their lives? If this was somehow true, as it can be because of a very plausible State motive existing, then what was actually happening in Mumbai on 26 November 2008? Was there the linkage between the terrorists and the State forces? Is this why rocket launchers and explosives were not carried by the attackers, in order to contain destruction? Questions like these seek credible answers. The suspicious killing of Karkare and his colleagues has caused a rumpus even in the Indian Parliament.

With every window on each floor of the Taj Hotel being an entry point that was accessible by the fire brigade equipment available in Mumbai, could three terrorists actually hold that 750-room hotel building for three days against the might of India? What we saw happening in Mumbai defies military logic. How could the other nine terrorists also hold out in groups of twos and threes in a number of very accessible and widely dispersed buildings, independent of each other, for three days?

The Islamabad Marriott was destroyed in moments. That was a horrific real-life terrorist attack. The terrorists in Mumbai somehow did not even carry enough explosive to blow up one single room anywhere? Billowing smoke came through the top of the Taj Hotel. Was the smoke there for the cameras of the world electronic media in order to have Mumbai on the television screens of the world for three days to cause an international outcry meant to facilitate the subsequent political moves in the region? Could that objective have been to bring in the entire world against Pakistan, especially the USA, by maligning Pakistan in such a manner that Pakistan’s political and military establishment is cornered and browbeaten into submission?

The road would then obviously lead to measured attempts aimed at denuclearisation of Pakistan’s military potential and also decimating its conventional military potential, including the crippling of the ISI. To people saying its preposterous to imagine that India orchestrated Mumbai it can be said that the price paid by India is nothing at all if the bigger objectives outlined above are even partially achieved. India may not be alone on this. Israeli interest in the denuclearisation of Pakistan is well known and the Israelis are likely to have played a role larger than what is obvious.

The Indian Navy’s Western Command based at Mumbai maintains a hawkish vigil on India’s maritime borders with Pakistan. Yet, it is said that a bunch of ragtag terrorists sailed into Mumbai for the attacks we all witnessed on TV. For a moment let us assume that the terrorists actually came from Pakistan’s maritime borders. Why, then, have the Indian chief of the Naval Staff and the Commander of the Indian Naval Western Command not been held accountable for such a colossal failure?

The Mumbai enigma needs to be conclusively resolved and the best way to do so is through a combined investigation committee of Pakistan and India, as Pakistan has offered.

Pakistan and India are burdened by unemployment, poverty and deprivation. Neither country can boast of internal stability. Both have their share of ethnic and sectarian disorders and are troubled by militancy. Some very strong Hindu militant organisations in India are far beyond State control. Nearly 200 districts in India have some sort of serious disorder or insurgency. Neither country can ever overpower the other militarily. The option of a Pakistan-India war is no longer an option because the cost would be the total destruction of South Asia. Therefore, the only way that Pakistan and India can survive and be viable States is through peaceful and good relations. India has to stop dreaming of ever being able to treat Pakistan as a satellite state.

India must guard against falling prey to any wishful desire to see Pakistan dismembered through an international conspiracy, because the domino effect of disaster will not stop at Pakistan’s borders with India. The many blood borders, within India itself, will all get activated, as in the case of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Let both countries now begin to move towards a European-Union-kind of a South Asia.

If the people of South Asia are to be more than mere pawns in world politics then the only way towards that is for Pakistan and India to bury the hatchet. Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka and the Maldives will become natural partners of Pakistan and India. Other countries like Iran and Afghanistan would then want to be on the South Asian bandwagon of peace, progress and prosperity. Central Asia, China and ASEAN too would be interested in a fruitful partnership. Pakistan and India truly hold the balance between the survival or destruction of South Asia and to a progressive or a retrogressive Asia.

Mumbai and the Media War

The Indian as well as the Pakistani media, particularly the electronic one, has been extremely irresponsible in its coverage of the Mumbai carnage. India and Pakistan have dozens of electronic media channels but they seem, by and large, to lack the responsibility that comes with running such channels at times of crisis.

It was distasteful to see the Indian media and officials implicate Pakistan even before the operation to flush out militants was completed. It was equally distasteful to see the Pakistani electronic media raise emotions against India, rather than showing solidarity at such an hour of crisis.

It seems both India and Pakistan are living in denial of their deeds. India seems to be in denial of its treatment of its minorities, particularly the over 150 million Muslims who live in extreme poverty and deprivation. India also seems to be in denial over its role in suppressing the struggle for independence in Kashmir. As William Dalrymple noted in an article in The Guardian on Nov 30: “If Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is the most emotive issue for Muslims in the Middle East, then India’s treatment of the people of Kashmir plays a similar role among South Asian Muslims.”

Pakistan seems to be in denial that it has become a hotbed of terrorists from all over the world and that terrorist acts all over the world often have links to outfits in Pakistan. Whether it is the July 7, 2005, bombings in London or the attack on commuter trains in Spain, there is always some kind of connection to Pakistani actors and/or groups. The mastermind behind a plane to bomb trans-Atlantic flights through the use of liquid bombs in 2006, Rashid Rauf, was also allegedly killed in a US drone attack a few weeks ago in Bannu. Pakistan seems to have become a safe haven for terrorist who kill innocent people mostly in Pakistan but also in the rest of the world. This grave realisation was completely missing in any analysis by the electronic media in Pakistan.

Sure, the US has a role to play in all of this. Had America not imposed its proxy war on Pakistan from 1979 onwards, Pakistanis and the rest of the world would have been a much safer place now. It was the CIA-financed war, operationalised by the ISI, that created a network of global jihadis and which has now blown back on America, Pakistan and the rest of the world. American imperialism played a definite role in making Pakistan do its dirty job and Zia-ul-Haq’s military government and military top brass was more than willing to receive huge military aid and be an active promoter of jihadi culture that has come to haunt us and the rest of the world today.

But we cannot turn back the clock. We have to deal with the fallout and clear our mess. This cannot be done if both India and Pakistan continue to live in a state of denial and blame each other. Indian security forces have usurped the rights of Kashmiris and have killed them and tortured them mercilessly. Indian groups have burned churches and destroyed mosques and carried out massacres of minority groups – Gujarat 2002 is a case in point. It is a complete failure of the Indian state that something as gruesome as the Gujarat massacre happened, in the first place. It is even a bigger failure that the government of Narendra Modi has not been held accountable for it so far. Having said that, no amount of injustice condones murderous attacks of Mumbai. Violence cannot end violence – it leads to only more violence.

Most of the Pakistani intelligentsia, much like the Indian intelligentsia (barring a few exceptions on both sides), suffers from moral bankruptcy. Watching the coverage of Mumbai attacks, one got the impression that many journalists, opinion-makers, and so-called security and defence “experts” were almost as bad as the Indian hawks and jingoists. Both sides were looking at only the ubiquitous “foreign hand” behind everything, without accepting any responsibility for their own actions – though in the Indians’ case this was more pronounced.

To quote an example from Pakistan, Lt-Gen (retired) Salahuddin Tirmizi openly referred to India as “dushman mulk” – and this was while the tragedy was still unfolding in Mumbai, with militants still in a shootout at the Taj. Is this the way neighbours express solidarity at such a delicate moment of mayhem and crisis? One wonders why such a jingoistic commentator was invited, in the first place.

Unfortunately, Pakistanis cannot watch Indian media; otherwise there would have been far more such examples to quote from the Indian side as well. One gets the sense from media coverage and talking to people that Indian media has been extremely jingoistic as well. Just the way, they have made the whole world believe that militants just came off the boats from Pakistan and launched this unprecedented massive assault on the financial heart of India. How could they reach such a conclusion while investigations are still at primary stage? How could people who have just come off the boats launch such a massive attack without being familiar with the city and its environs? Then this changed and one began to hear that the attackers came to the city at least a month before the attacks and a few may have actually stayed at one of the hotels that was attacked.

Equally irresponsible were the statements by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, as well as a major-general of the Indian Army. All of them directly or indirectly implicated Pakistan while the situation was still developing and it was premature to be sure of the attack’s definite links and causes.

At the end, we also have to come clean on the ISI’s role once and for all. The agency’s political wing has been disbanded but we all know that in the past it has worked closely with jihadi groups, especially as a result of the war against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. It is also not a hidden secret anymore that the agency was involved in the past in helping groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad fight in Kashmir. As a nation, we need to know where the ISI stands in its relationship with jihadi groups now – though we are told time and again that this is now non-existent. If we fail to ascertain that, it would be very hard to refute the label of Pakistan being a haven for terrorists or of it indirectly being behind such attacks.

One can only hope that better sense and sanity will prevail and that the unadulterated blame games and muscle flexing on both sides will give way to restraint. Of course, the Indian media and officials have been more irresponsible because they started the blame game. But that doesn’t mean that the Pakistani media necessarily reply in the same coin. It needs to show sympathy and should not give in to the tendency – in such situations – to reply in the same coin.

Indian 9/11, a new front for Pakistan

The mind boggling terrorist attacks by 11 terrorists in the commercial and cultral hub of India have great repercussions for both India and Pakistan. American 9/11 was the result of Afghan-based Al-Qaeda and in retaliation US attacked Afghanistan and the war of awe and shock is still not a mission accomplished in Afghanistan. Rather it has spilled-over into Pakistan. Now, the terror in Mumbai is linked to Pakistan-based Islamic extremist groups. What implications this terror of Mumbai has for Pakistan is not difficult to grasp. Now, the target seems to be Pakistan, which is not only a big military force in the region, but an atomic power too. It will not certainly produce the desired results, as India and America would like to be. But this terrorist attack,the resultant well-co-ordinated media campaign, frequent meetings and comments of both Indian and US government officials, make the situation a little bit tricky for Pakistan. To put some light on the complixity of the situation, one should discern through the recent reports published in different American newspapers and their implications for Pakistan. In a report published in New York Times, citing a military officer in Pakistan that a super power in collaboration with India is planning to dismantle Pakistan. It was revealed by that officer that Pakistani intelligence agencies have evidence that India in co-operation with a super power is actively supporting the extrimist groups fighting Pakistani military in the Tribal areas. India has also estabished links with some groups in Balochistan and Karachi to over-stretch Pakistani military and police apparatus. A report in New York Times, by Eric Schmitt, published on Nov. 30, 2008 says that an independent commission has concluded that terrorists will most likely carry out an attack with biological, nuclear or other unconventional weapons somewhere in the world in the next five years unless the United States and its allies act urgently to prevent that. The report is not coincidently prepared before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai — which American officials say were most likely carried out by Pakistani militant groups based in Kashmir — the report also singled out Pakistan as a top security priority for the coming Obama administration. The report further says “Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan,” The report calls for a comprehensive approach for dealing with Pakistan. In his press conference while naming his National security team,Mr. Obama said his new team would combat terrorism “wherever it is found,” including aiding the effort to address last week’s attack in India. In its Editorial of November 30, 2008, the New York Times clearly put the blame on Pakistan,Indian and American intelligence officials saw signs pointing to Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist group from the disputed region of Kashmir that is increasingly collaborating with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. What makes that especially frightening is that the group received training and support from Pakistan’s intelligence services, before it was officially banned in 2002. If we look at the problem from another angle, we see that the Mumbai terrorist drama happened at a time when the Foreign Minister of Pakistan was in India and a breakthrough was expected on the issue of Sir Creek. This act of terrorism has de-railed the peace process even back-tracked it for 3 years. One must ponder, as to who is to achieve from such a scenario? Both governements should know it well. Any military confrontation with Pakistan would be hugely costly in human life. And even the threat of war would be hugely damaging to India’s extraordinary economic progress. Another aspect of this mindboggling terror could be the fact that the Indian military and civil establishment along with political hierarchy are concerned about the Obama’s administration interest in resolving the Kashmir issue. This terror attack will give a political leverage to Indian Government in future dialogue over this long standing dispute.. Pakistan know it well that India is an important ally of US not only in areas of economy, trade, commerce, nuclear co-operation, but they share the same views on terrorism and extremism. Both the countries are co-ordinating their efforts on war on terror. How India and America are linked and close could be guaged from the fact that Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon left for Washington today to meet the transition team of President-elect Barack Obama to inform him about the unfolding situation. President Bush also dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to India to express their condolences to the Indian people. There are so many other developments taking place which are not reported to press. Pakistani authorities must carefully study these developments before imbarking on a strategy to counter the hostile campaign orchestrated by India, to tarnish the image of Pakistan? All these reports, statements and editorial are not just a matter of coincidence. These are well orchestrated campaign and needs to be taken seriously. We should be pragmatic in our appraoch and must analyse our mistakes, weaknesses and strengths to tackle the situation. Pakistani government and our military, civil and political establishment always blame Western and American governmnts for not giving her due importance and in many cases Pakistan feel betrayed by western governments, but we never self-analyse our national, military and bureaucratic policy development, management and execution so as to know better the strength and weaknesses of our policies. We have always been bent upon emergency strategies, ad hochism and maintaining status-quo. We do not have a long term strategic policy and plan of action to be pursued irrespective of our political opinion, religious ideology and social status. We have been training and supporting Mujahideen in Afganistan for more than 23 years, on the pretext of achieving a strategic depth and have been hosting more than 3 million refugees for the same period. We were the forebearers of Islam, but after such a long period of time we suddenly realised that we were wrong. We did not take the U-turn due to realisation that policy of supporting the potential extremists was wrong but because our friends like America and Western governments are forcing us to wipe out the Soviet-era so-called Mujahideen (now extremists and terrorists), as they are posing a threat to their national security. The problem is that the civil and military establishment never considered these extremists to be a national security threat to Pakistan and were fighting them half-heartedly until recently, when it dawned upon them that they are a credible threat to our national security. Resultantly, we never made a comprehensive plan to combat this threat. If we had been thinking and working effectively on this menace right from the beginning, then we would have the support of general public now. No body, in Pakistan can support extremists and terrorists who are blowing up themselves on daily basis killing innocent civilians, bent upon shooting ordinary people and destroying cilvilian and government properties. The problem is lack of political will. Our policy planners, must think for a while and make national policy with the consensus of all segments of society to eradicate the threat of extremism and terrorism. If we really think that extremism and terrorism is a threat to our national security, which ofcourse is, then we can definitely gain the support of the public in our war against terrorism. But one thing should be considered formost, and that is, we must have a local policy, a domestic agenda and a domestic strategy, which is not only domestic but must seem to the people to be domestic and must show that it is for our own national security rather than to earn money from foreign powers and work for thier agendas. We must be pregmatic in our approach. We know that in the globalised world, we cannot isolate ourself from the world community. We must co-operate with international community in addressing thier concern.It is a fact that most of their demands are fair. These are the demands that we feel that are in our national interest rather than some individual interests. It is not secret that Our selfish rulers have been persuing the western agenda on the pressure from the West, just to cling up to the power. We should ask a simple question, that what has happend at Bombai, has been and is happening every day in Pakistan since 9/11, then why we could not get sympathisers, allies and friends. Extremism and terrorism has rocked our economy, derailed our political and judicail systems, handicapped our democracy, and torn apart our social fabric. Then why, no body from the world community is interested in saying a two words of sympathy. This is the point to ponder.. Not a single person with a normal level of intelligence can deny the fact that extremism and terrorism is a national security threat to our very existance. Then why not make a coherent domestic policy with domestic agenda, to combat this menace. If we are sincere in our approach then the people will accept our policies and will co-operate with the government apparatus, in our fight against terrorism and extremism . These extremist elements are not fighting for ISLAM but for their personal pitty interests. How can a muslim blow himself up with a bomb killing himself and dozens of innocent people who share the same faith. Islam forbids suicide. Then why we could not convince the general public that the people who are commiting these acts are not muslims. If we succeeded in convincing our nation that the element who are killing innocent people are not fighting for Islam but for some foreign interests and elements, then we have a good chance of combating this threat. For this porpose, a long term holistic appraoch should be adopted rather than piecemeal plans, ad hoc strategies and mismanaged campaings.. First of all awareness through media is very important. We should discredet the terrorists by media campaigns. Muslim scholars support should be mustered to turn the public openion against extremists.

Reflections, not rhetoric

It is time to bring a cool and analytical eye to the blizzard of ill-thought-through rhetoric that, perhaps inevitably, has been generated by the Mumbai terrorist outrage. There have been knee-jerk reactions on a variety of fronts with both Pakistan and India making statements that behoove neither. What was the terrorists’ motive and who funded or directed them? Does this dreadful act mean a necessary downturn in the process of composite dialogue or can maturity and statesmanship prevail and keep things on track? The ‘who and why’ is at this point the most difficult to answer. We still do not know precisely how many of them there were – was the number ten, or twenty-four as some reports suggest? Were they from the town of Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, UK as some reports would have us believe; or Faridkot not far from Multan in southern Punjab? Possibly both. Perhaps from neither but from within India itself. They made no attempt to disguise themselves and were caught on CCTV at various points in their bloody journey. Their faces are clearly imaged and identifiable. Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies probably already have a good idea of the ‘who’ – but the ‘why’ may be more elusive.

We live in a time when self-radicalizing young people, not necessarily affiliated to any particular known or unknown group, are able to mount operations of considerable complexity and devastating outcome. Take the case of the men in the UK who tried to blow up Glasgow airport and a London night-club. They were able to mount a sophisticated operation, funded by themselves, that only failed because of a fault in the trigger mechanism of their IEDs. They were not obviously affiliated to or supported by any known terrorist group and were driven by a sense of inner rage and frustration. Who, at this point, is to say that those who carried out the Mumbai raid were not of similar ilk? There is talk of ‘a military-style operation’. You do not need military training to gun down unarmed and unsuspecting civilians. Neither is it particularly difficult to get hold of guns and hand grenades, nor even to commandeer a boat – pirates do it all the time.

It is also possible that these people are part of the wave of ‘celebrity terrorists’ now operating, self-starters who aim to get themselves – as this group did – their fifteen minutes of fame and notoriety as the global media had their actions in bloody colour within minutes of the raid beginning. To directly quote the Chatham House analyst Paul Cornish…”The character of modern terrorism is widely understood to have been shaped by a mid-19th century idea known as the “propaganda of the deed” – a strategy for political change in which the message or cause is contained within, and expressed by the violent act. In a novel twist, the Mumbai terrorists might have embarked on propaganda of the deed without the propaganda in the confident expectation that the rationalisation for the attack – the narrative – would be provided by politicians, the media and terrorism analysts.” These are people who indulge in acts of terrorism because they can and it is their audience who then go on – as has the Indian media – to construct a rationale for it.

Will this derail the peace process? Not completely as there is too much invested by both sides and neither truly wants war. Should it provoke some soul-searching by the media on both sides of the border as to what is understood by ‘responsible’ reporting and commentary? Indubitably so. Was this the work of rogue elements of our own security apparatus? Almost certainly not – if only because it is so far out of their ’style’. Were Pakistanis involved? Probably, somewhere along the line. Should we cooperate fully with the Indians in clearing the fog? Absolutely, and to do any less would open us to ridicule and suspicion. To conclude, the words of Paul Cornish again, “No matter how corrupt your moral sense, how contorted your view of the world, how vapid and inarticulate your ideas, how talentless you are and how exaggerated your grievance, an obsessive audience will watch your every move and turn you into what you most want to be, just before your death.”

The Prime Minister’s Confusion

Much has already been written and spoken about the Mumbai acts of terror – perhaps to saturation point. Amid all the propaganda and lies coming out of India, what has been even more distressing for the ordinary Pakistani is the confusion and bizarre behaviour of its own leadership. Of course, no one can remain unaffected by the carnage of Mumbai and all sane Pakistanis have expressed disgust at these acts of terror and expressed sympathy and solidarity with the victims of terrorism – a blight that we have also been suffering from, especially in the wake of 9/1 and the advent of US military aggression in our region. But expressing sympathy with the Indian nation is one thing; the Pakistani leadership’s confusion and panic in the early stages of this terrorist saga are another. Nothing reflected the absurdity of the Pakistani leadership more than the very clearly enunciated pronouncement of the prime minister that the Indian PM had requested the DG ISI be sent to India and the Pakistani leadership had agreed and asked the DG ISI to undertake the trip.

As should have been expected, the outrage in Pakistan at this was felt almost immediately, leading the government to backtrack in a most clumsy fashion. First the presidency distanced itself from this decision and then it was given out that India had never made such a demand – despite the Indian media’s declarations that India had summoned the DG ISI to New Delhi – and that the government of Pakistan had never stated it had decided to send the DG ISI to India! Later, there was mumbling about how the whole issue was over sending a “director” of the ISI to India and Minister Bajrani added a new twist in a TV programme with this scribe when he declared that the government of India had sent a letter asking that ISI cooperation may be sought at some point in time.

So what was the prime minister up to when he made the declaration regarding the DG ISI in his press conference in Lahore on Saturday 29th November? Did he deliberately lie and why would he need to do that? This is what happens when statements are made on a whimsy by the leaders with no thought about the fallout or unintended consequences. But was it simply a whimsical decision of the president that Gilani conveyed publicly to the nation or was there something more sinister happening here? After all, given that the DG ISI would have no diplomatic cover, he could have been arrested and/or charge-sheeted in Delhi, where would that have left Pakistan? Such a move was in effect tantamount to an indirect rendition of the head of a national security institution – certainly a new step down the slippery slope of renditions of ordinary Pakistanis to the US by the Musharraf government – the so-called “disappeared” citizens of this country.

In order to understand this, we need to see how the ISI is being targeted presently – in fact ever since it fell out with the CIA – apparently over increasingly untenable CIA demands, including some targeted killings. After all, the CIA intelligence concoctions over Iraq must have weighed heavily with the ISI – hitherto a cooperative partner with the CIA. Since this falling out, the US has sought to destroy the institution of the ISI. The first effort was made with the botched up effort to bring the ISI under the Interior Ministry. In-between a more useful move was to close down the political wing of the ISI – which had been sustained by successive political governments. The whole issue of the sending of the DG ISI to India was yet another attempt by the US to use its NRO-acquired control over the new leadership to target the institution of the ISI. After all, Condi Rice had made the usual call before the prime minister made his fateful declaration. The fact is that this US effort also failed illustrates how little the Americans understand Pakistan!

Undeterred, now Ms Rice has declared that Pakistan must answer all of India’s questions no matter where they may lead – thereby putting Pakistan in the dock before anything substantive in terms of evidence has come forth. And she is coming herself to exert even greater pressure. In the interests of this country, we should excuse ourselves from receiving her at this time but that would require national determination. Even more threatening is the tone Obama has adopted in response to a reminder at a news conference, on 1st November, that during his election campaign he had declared that the US had a right to attack high value targets inside Pakistan given actionable intelligence and with or without the assent of the government of Pakistan. When asked whether India had the same right, Obama declared that India would be within its rights if it took retaliatory action against militants hiding inside Pakistan. So now there should be no doubt over the position of the new US administration vis a vis Pakistan just as the present US administration’s efforts to dictate policy to Pakistan are abundantly clear.

It is with these ground realities that the All Parties’ Conference has been the one sensible and welcome move made by the government. However, it is not just the outcome but the implementation of the outcome resolution of this meeting – if there is one – that will decide the worth. Nevertheless the very principle of seeking national consensus is to be lauded.

Coming back to the Mumbai acts of terror, some facts need to be highlighted. First, that given the high level of surveillance and security surrounding the Mumbai area – especially the coastal area and waters – it is simply not possible for any one or any boat to simply slip into Mumbai. Not only is there heavy patrolling because of the military activities and energy corridors, the off-shore energy facility near Mumbai is provided more protection than nuclear facilities. Which in turn raises the issue of the nuclear facilities themselves around the Mumbai area. How safe are they? Can extremists and terrorists seek control of them as easily as they spread terror through the city itself? Apart from the nuclear power plants to be brought under IAEA safeguards (which are not physical security safeguards in the traditional sense), the unsafeguarded Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) uranium conversion facilities also lie around Mumbai. The international community should now be extremely concerned over the safety of all these nuclear facilities.

Linked to the high level of security and surveillance that is actually present around the Mumbai area, who could have broken through, undetected? Linked to this is the troubling question of who killed the ATC chief, Hemant Karkare and two other officers right at the start of the terrorist actions; and why did his wife refuse to accept compensation for his death from the state government? This was the brave man who uncovered the role of Hindu extremists and Indian army officers, in acts of terrorism such as the Samjhota Express (also initially blamed on extremists from Pakistan!) and the bombing of a Muslim majority area in Malegaon, a small town close to Mumbai.

All in all, India has to do some introspection about the failings within its own society. Accusing Pakistan and seeking to “punish” it may win some parties political mileage but it will not remove the strains of extremism and terrorism within its own society. Certainly both Pakistan and India can cooperate jointly in examining the roots of terrorism endemic in their societies – but this calls for a rational and equitable approach, not finger pointing and threats.

Pakistan also needs to look beyond Mumbai to see the larger picture whereby the carnage that is taking place in Karachi needs to be examined. To deny any linkage between what happened in Mumbai and what followed in Karachi would be too naïve. The linkages are all there and we should be able to understand the agendas at work here, especially in the context of moving another step towards destabilising Pakistan – a goal Indian analysts like Bharat Verma have declared are in India’s inherent interest.

As for the latest demand of handing over certain people, the fact is that no matter how unsavoury such persons may be for Pakistan, one cannot hand them over without due process – which would be required even if an extradition treaty existed between Pakistan and India. Interestingly, can Dawood Ibrahim and Maulana Azhar Masood be in cahoots over the Mumbai acts of terror? Meantime we could also seek the extradition of Colonel Prohit who was involved in the Samjhota Express blast which killed so many innocent Pakistanis. Will such tit for tat resolve the basic problem of terrorism in South Asia? I think not.

Terror in Mumbai

The reaction of the Indian government to the Mumbai terrorist attack, an act of barbarism of enormous magnitude, was understandable, but it showed more anger than reason. However, angry reaction can lead to misjudgement and wrong decisions. It is essential for the leadership of a country to maintain its equilibrium in the face of disaster, or else it could land itself and the country in a bigger mess than that created by the terrorists.

It has become India’s habit to point its finger at Pakistan whenever terrorists strike there. It names the accused first and investigates later. The terrorist attack on Samjhota Express, in which mostly Muslims were killed, was a blatant case of accusations against Pakistan without waiting for the investigation to be completed. The inquiry of this case has revealed that the perpetrator of this attack was a serving colonel of the Indian Army. He had also supplied munitions to an extremist Hindu outfit for systematic killing of Muslims. Pakistan also reacts nearly in the same manner, but with a difference. Whenever there is a terrorist attack in Pakistan, the finger is no more pointed at India but at some unnamed hidden foreign hand.

New Delhi’s misplaced anger has given the Indian media a lead in Pakistan’s denunciation to its heart’s content. The Indian media is now fully engaged in running a virulent propaganda war against Pakistan. According to the Indian media, the five-year old ceasefire at LoC has ended and Indian troops are moving towards the border. If India’s media had its way, Pakistan and India would already be at war.

The Indian media is financially stronger than Pakistan’s. But as far as press freedom is concerned, Pakistan is way ahead of India. The Pakistani media has often endured dreadful periods of military dictators and civilian emergencies, but it has stood up to them unflinchingly. Every unrepresentative ruler slapped draconian laws on the media to silence it, but failed to suppress its defiance and freedom. On the other hand the Indian media was only once tested by the emergency (imposed by Indira Gandhi) and since then it has acquired slavish characteristics. The media the world over is usually. However, the Indian media is prodding its government to attack Pakistan to teach it a lesson.

There has been enough of anti-Pakistan drumbeating by India and its media. It is time for them now to cool down and do some damage-control. The productive efforts of the leaders of both countries for 12 years to normalise bilateral relations are in danger of being wasted. Don’t let that happen because it would take us 50 years to get to this position.

The government has appealed for national unity in face of the Indian threats. People have generally responded positively. But Karachi is ablaze: the death toll has risen to 33. “Muslims are killing Muslims”–this was one of the charges made by Gen Zia against Prime Minister Junejo while dismissing him under 58 (2) (b). Rightly or wrongly a prime minister lost his job for killings in Karachi. But the present deadly riots in Karachi have not resulted in the rolling of heads.

The president and the prime minister have become fond of conducting diplomacy through phone calls. One phone call had led to the folly of announcing that the DG of the ISI would be sent to New Delhi to exchange information on terrorism. Phone calls have been the bane of our government leaders. One call from Washington and President Musharraf took a U-turn on the Taliban. One call from or to Manmohan Singh, and we readily agreed to send our military spymaster to New Delhi. I think we better revert to the old ways of conducting diplomacy. Instant diplomacy by phone is not our cup of tea.

President Zardari by nature is a polite and humble person. These are very good traits. But it should not be extended to addressing others, mostly the foreign newsmen, as “Sir.” He should know that in Pakistan he is the top “Sir.” The others may address him as “Sir,” but he should reserve his “Sir” only for his father.

An advice to Prime Minister Gilani is in order too. Please reduce the number of your speeches and press conferences. You have an army of ministers who could share this burden. Also, reduce your appearance on TV. Too much exposure is not gainful politically. Remember, familiarity breeds contempt.

Mumbai Terror: the challenge for Pakistan

In less than 24 hours of ghastly terror that struck Mumbai senior Indian officials were directly and indirectly blaming Pakistan. This included a serving major general, the prime minister and the foreign minister.

The unnamed Indian intelligence sources gave the Indian media numerous and changing versions of “evidence” implicating Pakistan in the tragic terror attack.

While Pakistan’s foreign minister was in Delhi an Indian official handed over a letter containing a “demarche”–essentially a strong protest–alleging the involvement of Pakistani groups in the Mumbai attack. The Indian prime minister asked the Pakistani prime minister that the director-general of the ISI be sent to India, which was initially wrongly accepted. Subsequently the government decided not to send any ISI official.

Subsequently, the Pakistan High Commission called Delhi and was told that the Indian government is concerned that, as it is convinced, there are non-state actors and the Indian government expects Pakistan to take strict action against them.

The Indian government has taken all these steps and with complete support of its media proliferated nationally and internationally , one what it claims to be ‘facts’ supporting Pakistan’s involvement and two the steps that official India has taken bilaterally and internationally to insist upon Pakistan’s involvement and demand its cooperation in taking action against those who are responsible.

After asking the Pakistani prime minister to send the ISI director general to India the Indian government has now demanded that the Pakistani government hand over 20 people involved in terrorism in India, including Hafiz Saeed, Maulana Azhar and Dawood Ibraheem. These demands are not new, since they have been made intermittently by India. The last time these were raised was on July 13, 2001, when President Pervez Musharraf arrived in Delhi for the Agra Summit. Mr L K Advani, then India’s home minister, came to make a courtesy call on Gen Musharraf and produced a list of “terrorists” India wanted. This was one of the issues that overshadowed the Agra Summit. Pakistan sought evidence against these individuals and also gave a list of its own of Indian terrorists who had been involved in terrorist activities.

Against the backdrop of India’s insistence that Pakistan is involved, Delhi has decided to cast an international net to seek the international community’s support for its demand that these individuals be handed over to India.

Delhi must bank on multiple factors that it believes would help it coax Pakistan into action. These include Delhi’s its own current Mumbai-related propaganda against Pakistan, the US-led international focus on the tribal areas being at the root of growing global terrorism, the Pakistani government’s willingness to hand over Pakistani nationals charged for terrorism by Washington to the US government, the inability of successive Pakistani government’s to effectively deal with the US drone attacks on Pakistani territory and, finally, the events of the nineties when sabotage and covert operations were used by the Indian and Pakistani governments to promote their foreign-policy objectives.

There have been voices within India urging its government to take the matter to the UN Security Council and demand that the international community must “help” Pakistan deal with the terrorist camps, given that Pakistan is unable to wipe them out on its own. Kashmiri leader Farooq Abdullah has been advocating this position vociferously. It is therefore no surprise that Indian foreign secretary Shankar Menon has left for Washington to discuss security matters with the Obama team.

Within this international dimension to Delhi’s post-Mumbai expectations from Pakistan, the US government’s twofold message is important. One, according to the White House spokesperson, as of now there is no hard evidence implicating Pakistan. Two, the US secretary of state has stated that Pakistan “must” cooperate with India in the Mumbai investigations. Numerous calls have been made by US officials beginning from the US including Secretary of State Condolezza Rice to President Asif Zardari and to other officials.

In addition to the US other European governments, including the British, the Italians and the French are also engaged with Pakistan. The message is uniform: Cooperate with India.

Such a message Pakistan does not need to be tutored in. Immediately after the attack, and in accordance with its past practice, Pakistan strongly condemned it and offered all cooperation in the investigations. Repeatedly the Pakistani leadership and other officials have reassured India that all cooperation will be extended to India.

But India seems to seek concrete steps from Pakistan, without credible evidence being found. The trajectory of evidence, as it currently exists, is revealing. It is all there in the Indian media, changing, incredible and contradictory. India still needs to provide credible and convincing evidence on the involvement of any Pakistani group.

Significantly, this is the fourth time in the last decade that the international community is getting mobilised over a near-crisis in Pakistan-India relations. In 1998 after the Indian nuclear tests to stop Pakistan from testing, in 2002 to provide India some assurance from Pakistan that it will “stop cross LOC” attacks when India had brought its troops along the LoC and the international borders, after Pakistani forces occupied the Kargil heights in Indian-occupied Kashmir. In 1998 Pakistan went ahead with the nuclear test, in 2002 Gen Musharraf assured the visiting US assistant secretary of state Richard Armitage that Pakistan would prevent LoC crossings if India was willing to move forward on the Kashmir issue.

India believes it will get a sympathetic hearing from the international community. Its currently crass anti-Pakistan propaganda notwithstanding, for other strategic reasons the international community may support the Indian position.

In this situation what is the best position that Pakistan can take? Advise India from blaming Pakistan; demand credible evidence from India and remind it of its previous misplaced blame game on Samjhota Express, in Chittisinhgpora massacre and in the 2001 parliament attacks and remain committed to supporting Indian investigation if any credible evidence implicates any group in Pakistan.

Without credible evidence India cannot expect Pakistani action, whether on Mumbai or on the individuals whose names have been given to Pakistan. Even if there is incontrovertible evidence against any Pakistani citizens involved in any crime, the government of Pakistan must go by the Constitution of Pakistan in dealing with Pakistani citizens.

Pakistan’s commitment to regional peace is paramount for its own national interest. Confrontation with India must be avoided but a prerequisite to peace is that both countries “play by rules.” There is a decorum for conducting inter-state relations and both countries must abide by it. India has experienced a terrible and ghastly tragedy and in Pakistan we have no doubt that unchecked terrorism can devour South Asia. But to check it effectively India, like Pakistan, must look for its roots both within and outside.

Terrorism cannot be jointly fought in an environment of distrust. Only trust-building between the two state institutions, the governments and the people, can weaken the environment of distrust. But given how a terror-struck Indian government and state institution opted to so crudely “gun for Pakistan” can potentially sow fresh seeds of distrust, rather than weakening the environment of distrust.

Women & Democracy

THE relationship of women with the state in Pakistan appears to depend on three interrelated sets of relationships: (i) the relation between the state and the individual citizen; (ii) the relation between the state and the ethnic or religious group to which a citizen belongs; and (iii) the relation between women and the ethnic or religious group with which they identify.

The extent to which a woman is allowed or denied her fundamental rights granted by the state is mediated by her ethnic or religious group and its relationship with the state.

In a liberal bourgeois democracy these relationships are further complicated by the need to accommodate ethnic and religious parties in coalition arrangements. Elections increasingly deliver ethnically split verdicts in which no single party gets a simple majority and the party with the largest number of seats is forced to rely on others to form its government.

In return for support the smaller parties extract their pound of flesh in the form of ministries, lucrative positions and compromise on certain ideological standpoints. This not only creates large cabinets it also requires backtracking by political parties on clearly enunciated principles. In political bargains the greatest backtracking is invariably witnessed on the issues of women’s rights and equality.

The clearest evidence of such political manoeuvring is the manner in which the PPP inducted two ministers, Israrullah Zehri as minister for postal services and Hazar Khan Bijarani as minister for education. Israrullah Zehri is on record defending the brutal murder of five women (the figure is disputed) who it is alleged were buried alive in Balochistan. Hazar Khan Bijarani is said to have presided over a jirga that ordered that five girls aged two to five be handed over to a rival clan to settle a dispute.

The overriding need to accommodate people from the smaller provinces and minority ethnic groups to ensure their support for the government has negated the fundamental rights to life and security for women. Such political compromise for expediency ignores the manifesto of the party which states: “The Pakistan People’s Party has an unflinching commitment to the cause of gender equality ever since it was founded in 1967” and “The party will take institutional initiatives to prevent crimes against women in the name of tribalism, such as honour killings and forced marriages”. Despite repeated protests by various sections of society this travesty of justice has not been reversed.

Other parties with stated commitments to women’s rights and equality have also exhibited misogynist biases against women by failing to show a modicum of respect for their female colleagues. The remarks about two women being equal to one man by Ishaq Dar of the PML-N, and the subsequent refusal by party members to allow Sherry Rehman to record her protest is an incident reflective of the deeply prejudiced attitudes of our lawmakers.

The bewildering insensitivity was further demonstrated by Chaudhry Nisar Ali’s nomination of Hanif Abbasi as head of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Women’s Affairs despite the presence of a number of worthy women candidates in the parliament. The heartening fact is that the PML-N women parliamentarians themselves protested. The PML-N’s manifesto also promises to “promote participation of women in national development and their social, political and economic empowerment”. One wonders how women’s political empowerment would be possible when even their most basic rights to represent themselves are not acknowledged.

As if all this were not enough there are rumours circulating that the Ministry of Women Development would be given to the JUI-F. Apart from this party’s known aversion to women’s equality and freedom, it is vital to remember that its members had stated that the implementation of the Protection of Women Bill 2006 was like challenging God. One of the demands of the JUI-F for supporting Asif Zardari’s presidential bid was the revocation of parts of the Women Protection Act. Maulana Fazlur Rahman and his associates were seen roaring with laughter over an anti-women song at the maulana’s brother’s valima reception. The song was about marrying four times as one wife was not sufficient.

Patriarchal and misogynist attitudes are deeply ingrained in our social, economic, political and ideological structures. It is too much to hope that those entrusted with making the country’s laws would reflect a morality higher than the rest of the nation’s. However, one can expect the lawmakers to have read the constitution and know that killing citizens, men or women, is murder and that murder is a crime. The country’s law does not allow so-called honour to be invoked as a justification for vile murder. It is also reasonable to expect that lawmakers would not pass statements contrary to the law to justify crimes.

Since one cannot depend on individuals to rise above their ethnic or religious prejudices, one has to rely on systems. The assumption underlying liberal democracy was that over time it would eliminate the pre-modern identities of caste, clan, tribe and sect and create the modern identity of the citizen whose relation to the state would be a direct one and not mediated through local, cultural and customary structures. It was also assumed that broad-based political parties, premised on shared economic issues, would replace narrow sub-nationalist, ethnic, sectarian and fundamentalist outfits.

Instead, politics itself became ethnicised, and sub-national, sectarian and tribal sentiments were articulated in the political arena. The state capitulated to such sentiments in the process itself becoming tribal and sectarian. Multiple legal systems distorted democracy and laws came to be premised on religion and tribal customs.

The Qisas and Diyat law is a major example of a tribal law becoming entrenched in the state’s legal structure. The tribal state allows parliamentarians like Ajmal Khattak, Salim Mazari, Israrullah Zehri and Hazar Bijarani to legitimise the murder and trafficking of women as cultural tradition.

The sectarian state allows violence against women to be condoned through laws made in the name of religion. Political compulsions force parties like the PPP to establish the Sharia in parts of Pakistan like Malakand. With the collusion between the Sharia, tribal and customary law, and Anglo-Saxon legal principles, women’s rights and equality are sacrificed at the altar of political expediency.

If democracy has reinforced rather than weakened tribal, sectarian, fundamentalist and ethnic articulations, it is because Pakistan’s social and economic structures were not transformed significantly to meet the needs of a viable democracy. The most fundamental requirement for democracy is secularism so that the legal system of the country can ensure equality and justice to all citizens irrespective of religion, sex or ethnic belonging. A sngle legal system based on democratic and secular principles would eliminate parallel ones and establish a direct relation between women citizens and the state. Their relation to the state would then not be mediated by the immediate reference group but by their status as equal citizens.