A tale of two fronts

THE terrorist attack on Mumbai created a two-fold crisis for Pakistan. It provoked India into belligerency and also increased Pakistan’s difficulties in dealing with the terrorist challenge in its northern part. The situation on both fronts is grim.

Professional warmongers were able to turn the Indian people’s shock at the nature and scale of the raid on Mumbai into unprecedented hostility towards Pakistan. Their call to arms has so far gone unheeded and they have lost the first round to peace activists who also have appeared on both sides in greater strength than ever.

However, the jingoists are unwilling to quit the ring. On both sides arguments are being cobbled together to keep the fires of conflict raging. Their immediate target is to prevent a resumption of the composite dialogue on which hopes of a durable and fruitful peace in South Asia had come to rest. These arguments cannot be put out of the way by routine appeals to one another’s good sense; they can only be overcome through a well-considered strategy to fight the scourge of terrorism.

A large number of people in both India and Pakistan will concede that the principles of good neighbourliness and common interests demand that the two states should always be able to talk to each other without any reservations. Yet they find it extremely hard to resume their dialogue and this at a time when the only alternative to negotiations is apocalyptic disaster.

The dominant Indian opinion, as far as one could gather from brief exchanges with a cross-section of Delhi civil society, rules out official-level talks with Pakistan on the basis of its interpretation of the Mumbai carnage, its reservations about the change of regime in Pakistan, its expectations of US success in twisting Pakistan’s arm, and its lack of faith in civil society (particularly of Pakistan) initiatives.

These assumptions can be better addressed in the reverse order.

The Indian elite’s loss of faith in civil society’s capacity to catalyse a positive change shows it has not taken account of the fact that the peace constituency in both India and Pakistan has become much larger than ever. The size and spontaneity of anti-war demonstrations held after Nov 26 were not witnessed during previous confrontations.

The signs of despair in warmongers’ ranks, as evident in their moving further and further away from reason, confirm civil society’s accession to strength. Its progress cannot be as quick and dramatic as the state’s adventures simply because it lacks the latter’s capacity to legitimise any abuse of authority. In any case, one is astounded to see civil society denigrated in our subcontinent, home to one of the world’s most outstanding civil society movements — better known as the unarmed people’s struggle for freedom from the greatest imperialist power in history.

Some of the hawks who make a living by confounding their audience with their arbitrary analyses argue that India should not talk to Pakistan because that will undermine US efforts to force the latter to behave. This reflects a degree of confidence in the effectiveness of the US anti-terror strategy no independent observer is prepared to endorse. At the moment the US policy is raising more terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal belt than Nato forces can kill. Any increase in the terrorists’ threat to Pakistan’s stability cannot be in India’s interest. Fortunately, saner elements in Delhi are conscious of this and are therefore wary of firing at Pakistan over American shoulders.

The Indian observers’ poor opinion of Pakistan’s latest experiment in democratic governance comes out when they are asked to consider the possibility that the perpetrators of the Mumbai outrage wanted to rock the Zardari-led government. Quite a few of them have not been able to get over the end of their romance with Gen Musharraf. Many Pakistanis will agree with their Indian friends that the present dispensation is a pale version of a representative government. However, what the Indian critics choose to ignore is the fact that their jingoist rhetoric is tilting the balance against Pakistan’s civilian authority.

The strongest Indian argument against talking formally to Pakistan is that while they do not wish to hold the Pakistan government directly responsible for the Mumbai affair the level of organisation and expertise evident in the operation could not have been possible without the backing or complicity of some privileged groups. Besides, according to them, their claim that the raiders belonged to Pakistan has not been effectively rebutted. Thus, Nov 26 was to India what 9/11 was to the US and the sequential developments could not be any different.

It is possible to question this line of argument, particularly the attempt to legitimise the US invasion of Afghanistan. One may only look at the havoc wrought by the Bush team of hawks. They have certainly punished the Afghan people with a vengeance, the innocent Afghans more than the Taliban, but they have also made the quasi-religious militants almost invincible. No US expert, civilian or military, entertains hopes of victory in Afghanistan and attempts have already been made to find a way to share power with the Taliban. Did India want this scenario re-enacted on a broader scale? One may believe the Indians when they reply in the negative.

That leaves the question of Pakistan’s meeting Indian demands for “costs” for Mumbai and the surrender of suspects which are said to be essential for defusing the situation.As has been argued by many people, for Islamabad the threat from terrorists is far more serious than India’s ultimatums. Pakistan’s very survival in its present form depends on eliminating the terrorists’ challenge. The Indian pressure for its satisfaction only adds to the urgency of this task. It is obvious that a series of steps will have to be taken to ensure peace along the country’s southern border.

To begin with, more teeth need to be put into the hitherto tepid crackdown on organisations known for fomenting militancy. The trial of leaders of cross-border forays should begin expeditiously. Pakistan’s bona fides will be strengthened if these trials are fair and transparent. The possibility of inviting jurists from the region is worth exploring. These measures should help Pakistan regain the international community’s vitally needed confidence and support. It may not be necessary for the prime minister to think of a new law to punish Pakistanis for serious crimes abroad. Section 125 of the Penal Code already provides for life imprisonment for anyone who “wages war against the government of any Asiatic power in alliance or at peace with Pakistan or attempts to wage such war, or abets the waging of such war.”

Unfortunately, however, the Indian demands have given some political groups in Pakistan one more reason to oppose government moves against the militants. Islamabad is being accused of cowardly yielding to pressure from across the border. They don’t see the militants doing anything wrong in Fata or Swat or anywhere else. Among other things, this means that the southern frontier cannot be secured in peace without achieving peace along the northern border.

There the problem is not only the drone raids but the whole US-Nato strategy. So long as this strategy is followed Pakistan will not be out of the danger zone. Thus, instead of quarrelling over a single act of terrorism, Pakistan and India should join hands and seek other regional collaborators’ help in bringing the US and Nato operations under regional or UN control to settle Afghanistan’s future.

Protesting hypocrites

The moribund civil society has sprung into action, expressing clamorous solidarity with the people of Palestine.

The modest turnouts at the demonstrations is a reflection of the penetration of the electronic medium – the organisers relied on Facebook, mass e-mailing and sms messages to gather support.

Human rights activists, political party and trade union leaders, lawyers, doctors, journalists, show-business personalities, students and teachers of both genders and all age groups are out carrying Palestinian flags and banners.

Of late, Pakistanis have shown a tremendous spirit for exhibiting a global conscience, and exposing double standards which is the flipside of international diplomacy. However, it is in the denial of their own glaring double-standards that they manifest a hitherto unknown spirit. A catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude is unfolding in Gaza, but the atrocities being perpetuated in Pakistan’s north-west, particularly in Swat, don’t seem to prick the conscience of our concerned gentry.

Swat appears to have been consciously expunged from their memory. It figures in op-ed pieces, but has vanished completely from their drawing-room discourse, barring a digression on those rare occasions when wall graffiti threatening Talibanisation are spotted. Swat does not even have a functioning online petition on the famous website of the same name.

I leave to the more learned the utility of protesting against Israeli, but why do these protestors remain unperturbed by the atrocities committed in our own backyard? While Kashmir was up in arms and street protests routine, there was merely a sound from these self-proclaimed practitioners of universal rights.

They protest because protests are going on the world over. It fits into their philosophy of jumping on the bandwagon of popular dissent.

Another case in point, which highlights the hypocrisy of our civil society, was the readiness of students of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan’s premier humanities university, to join the protesting lawyers. However, Swat and the scenic Malam Jabba valley, visited twice annually by LUMS students, did not elicit a word of protest from them. Despite having a much stronger link with the north-west, visited in hordes by these students, all ties were forgotten once it was in the clutches of obscurantism.

No groups – from among students or the civil society – have stepped forward with ideas or policies that would in some way ameliorate the plight of the nearly one-third of the 1.5 million of Swat who are now homeless. No suggestions have been made for setting up of refugee camps and girls’ schools, nearly 200 of which have been forced to close down.

Let alone present any creative or practical solution for the miserable residents of Swat, our civil society cannot even streamline its effort – even when it would further its own cause.

Separated by a couple of days from the protest against Israel of the self-proclaimed silent and intellectually endowed civil society was another protest. Students associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami also expressed solidarity with Palestinians. While reluctance on the part of the two groups to synergise their efforts is understandable, the similarity in the two groups’ protests shows that that difference in civil society groups is pretence.

The intensity of anger, the sloganeering, the haphazard nature of the procession, the clubbing together of Israel and the United States, blaming it all on a Zionist agenda, leaves one with a feeling of déjà vu. The burning of the Israeli flag proved beyond doubt that no matter how different the social, economic and educational backgrounds, when it comes to venting anger against their favourite punching bag, we are all the same.

Contextualising this behaviour in a literary context, Big Brother of Orwellian fame appears to be watching; pulling the strings of earthly minions – civil society included. However, there is another similarly sombre view of the totalitarian nature of modern reality espoused by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. While Orwell feared that modes of information and knowledge will be controlled and stifled, leaving the masses in ignorance, Huxley predicted that there will be such a glut of information that people will fail to discern the relevant from the frivolous; that the level of mass information will reach such a level that the real issues will be buried in the mass of trivialities.

Protests against Israeli aggression escalate across Pakistan, while Swat, the north-west, Balochistan, Kashmir and other issues that plague our society lie forgotten or are placed on the back-burner. Huxley stands vindicated. The age of mass information lays bare the superficial expression of concern of the civil gentry, if not their hypocrisy.