The facts speak for themselves.
The Indo-Pak border is getting hot. Cross firing, soldiers killed, bunkers destroyed. On both sides, troop movements. Upwards of 3000 Kashmiri ‘refugees’ in Azad Kashmir. All desperate to acquire arms and military training. Determined to go back, join the ‘jehad’. ‘Liberate’ Kashmir. Bombs going off in Muzzafarabad, Lahore, Jhang, with Moharram round the corner. Unidentified ‘killers’ spraying bullets in Karachi, Hyderabad. ‘Thousands’ of ‘Indian saboteurs in Sindh’. Everything primed to explode.
Stop. Think cooly.
What do these facts suggest: that the Indians are going to sit back and do nothing? Allow Kashmir to secede? Spare 100 million Muslims in India?
We don’t care, some of us say, if it comes to war, so be it, let’s be done with it, this is the chance of a lifetime.
All right, we say. Go ahead. Open training camps, arm the refugees, send them back to ‘liberate’ Kashmir. Then wait for it. Stage one: more bombs, in Liberty Market, Anarkali, Mall Road, Empress Market, Defence, Clifton, Brandreth Road, Landa, Tariq Road. Body count? Irrelevant. MQM! shouts one, PSF! cries the other. Stage two: massacres in Karachi, Hyderabad, Nawabshah. Untold dead. Stage three: War.
A bloody nightmare which will make 1965 and 1971 look like a kids’ brawl.
Then, inevitably, a ceasefire. Or, God forbid, a nuclear holocaust.
No winners, all losers. Back to square minus one?
Wrong? We’ll take Kashmir? Give nothing in return? Will Kashmir be part of Pakistan? Or an independent state, including Azad Kashmir and our Northern Areas, reducing Pakistan to a ‘moth-eaten’ proportion?
The facts speak for themselves.
Mr Altaf Hussain on hunger strike. Till death do us part. APMSO, PSF burying their dead, cocking their guns, digging in to even scores. Spectre of Beirut now staring us in the face. Pakistan held to ransom. So that the killers on one side can be released from prison while those on the other are bunged in? So that murderers become heroes, victims become martyrs? So that the MQM presides over Karachi and Hyderabad, while Sindh becomes India’s fifth column to neutralise Pakistan over Kashmir?
War. War between ‘mohajirs’ and ‘Sindhis’. War between Kashmiris and India. War between India and Pakistan. Disintegration. To make room for Kashmir and Mohajiristan?
No, nothing makes sense any more. Neither war with India, nor Altaf Bhai’s hunger strike. Both are acts of desperation. Both will unleash havoc, chaos. And solve nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So, how do we defuse these ticking bombs?
Take Kashmir. There should be no training camps in Muzaffarabad. No guns for the ‘refugees’. No Jamaati infiltra-tions behind the lines. No tie-ups with the Afghan Mujahidin. No trucking with the likes of Sh Rashid. Instead, we should stick to Simla: no intervention across the border; plebiscite under the UN. Internationalise the issue, pressurise India to halt its repression. Nothing more, nothing less.
Take Altaf Bhai. He’s a desperate man, determined to starve himself to death unless … And it won’t be an unprecedented act. Remember the IRA in The Maze.
Altaf Hussain won’t make the first move. Only the PM can open a dialogue, and keep it going. Publicly. Calm him down. Give him space to retreat, save face. Meanwhile, restrain the PSF. And don’t say stupid things like: “this is a provincial matter”. Or: “he’s blackmailing everyone, we won’t give in to terrorists, let him starve”.
Such sentiments make matters worse. They pave the way for the army to move in. And that’s a full-stop.