A coterie of vested interests is up in arms against Asif Zardari for his policy statement on Pakistan-India relations and Kashmir given to an Indian channel. The chorus of protest springs from diminishing militant groups in Kashmir and Pakistan who have tried to resolve the Kashmir dispute by force and failed to do so for sixty years, in the process militarising Pakistan as a failing National Security State, losing half the country, and suing embarrassingly for peace in Tashkent in 1965 and Kargil in 1999. Even some high profile Jihadi-Taliban supporters in the media, like the provocative host of a talk-show in the capitol who once edited a fiercely pro-jihad newspaper, have jumped the gun and tried to haul Mr Zardari over the coals. So what did Mr Zardari say that has provoked them to accuse him of “a great betrayal”?
Mr Zardari said that if his party came to power good relations with India would not be held hostage to the Kashmir issue and the two countries would wait for future generations to resolve the issue in an atmosphere of trust. He did not agree with the notion that the Kashmir issue could best be sorted out while the army was in power in Pakistan. He insisted that people-to-people contacts and inter-dependence in trade could help negate the “fear factor” in both countries and lead them on the path of conflict resolution.
Actually, this is a realistic summing up of the situation. It reflects the spirit of accumulated wisdom in the wake of a failed foreign policy via a vis India for sixty years. Significantly, however, it is not a unique or unprecedented position taken by a national political leader in Pakistan.
Ms Benazir Bhutto came to this conclusion in 1989 when she parleyed with the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in Islamabad. But remnants of the Zia-ist military establishment accused her of being a “national security risk” and she was ousted from power by the “midnight jackals”, some of whom are among the great spokesmen of the democracy movement today. Later, the jihad in Kashmir was intensified by the military establishment.
The force of the argument and the failure of the jihadi policy to wrest Kashmir from India by force, however, compelled Nawaz Sharif to adopt the same pragmatic position in 1999 when he invited the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to a prime ministerial summit in Lahore. Three formal communiqués were issued. However, not one mentioned Kashmir as the “core dispute” or the UN Resolutions. But Mr Sharif’s peace initiative with India was sabotaged by General Pervez Musharraf’s military misadventure in Kargil in May. Following the debacle, differences cropped up between the two and Mr Sharif was ousted in a coup in October 1999. In interviews shortly after he became chief executive, General Musharraf castigated Mr Sharif for “abandoning the cause of Kashmir” and pledged to maintain hostilities with India until the “core dispute of Kashmir” was resolved to the satisfaction of Pakistan as per the UN Resolutions. So in 2001 General Musharraf went to Agra to discuss the core dispute of Kashmir with India. But when India countered with its version of the core dispute with Pakistan – export of terrorism from Pakistan to Indian-held Kashmir – he left in a huff, with a coterie of hawkish Pakistani journalists in tow.
However, power brings responsibility with it. In 2002, after the militants attacked the parliament in Srinagar and then the one in New Delhi, compelling India to move its army to the border with Pakistan and threaten hot pursuit and even war, General Musharraf formally pledged not to allow Pakistani territory to be used for the export of terrorism. By 2003, he was ready to extend the olive branch to Mr Vajpayee in pursuit of “building trust”; by 2004 he was ready to put the lid on the militants in Pakistan; by 2005 he had closed down their training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and by 2006 he was reiterating the most flexible and creative “out-of-the-box-solutions” to a resolution of the Kashmir dispute which had nothing to do with the “outdated” UN Resolutions. Indeed, the more popular he became among ordinary people in Indian-held Kashmir for his realistic peace policies enabling them to rebuild their shattered lives, the more unpopular he became with the militant organizations and their sympathizers and supporters in the Pakistani media. The terrorist attacks on General Musharraf from 2003 onwards, as well as the ones on Benazir Bhutto and her PPP, all have the footprints of the military’s erstwhile friends and allies.
Like Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and General Musharraf on the issue of relations with India, the wisdom of the age has fortunately dawned on Mr Zardari as he prepares to don the mantle of power. More than anything else, we Pakistanis need to quickly heal the wounds within and without and rebuild our lives and our polity. Creating relations of peaceful co-existence, trust and trade unconditionally with our neighbours is no less critical than cobbling coalition governments with former foes at home in the national interest. Mr Asif Zardari should be applauded for his pragmatism instead of being castigated for it.