Britain’s foreign secretary, Mr Jack Straw, has come and gone. But he didn’t divulge what transpired in his meeting with the Pakistani minister of state for foreign affairs, Mr Inamul Haq. However, it was duly noted that a meeting with General Pervez Musharraf didn’t take place, fueling speculation that the Pakistani snub was delivered because he seems to have become too pro-India and anti-Pakistan to be called an honest broker. While in India, Mr Straw had said that Pakistani was expected to do more to plug all the holes facilitating cross-border infiltration. The fact that Mr Straw seems to be taking a tougher line with Pakistan than even Mr Colin Powell, the American secretary of state, is remarkable, considering that the UK has kept out of South Asia’s overheated politics for far too long to be able to make a quick and smooth comeback. So it transpires that you can’t lean on Mr Straw too much if you want the lurching bandwagon of Indo-Pakistan relations to move forward.
The US and the UK clearly see what they want done in South Asia. But the political horizon in this region is murky. It is true that Pakistan has been less popular with the world than India for some time past, and has had to change its spots rather quickly after September 11. Thus the G-8 summit of last month expressed itself in terms that clearly demand more from Pakistan than India. In this context, the biggest negative factor weighing against Pakistan is the rise of the jehadi militias which Pakistan’s national security establishment has acknowledged only grudgingly after September 11. Now the war against some of these militias is on inside Pakistan. Hundreds have been hauled up. In return, one group tried to assassinate General Musharraf last April. And if some of the more militant religious parties and groups could help it he would disappear on the wings of a prayer.
Unfortunately, General Musharraf has mishandled the mainstream political parties. They are now so alienated from him that they have few qualms of hoisting themselves on to this anti-Musharraf bandwagon. The rigged referendum and the aggressively self-serving constitutional amendment package have lost him many former supporters and sympathizers too. Also, the state of the economy isn’t winning him any kudos with ordinary folks at home. The tariff hikes are killing, with oil, gas and power rates halving middle incomes already under siege by diminishing savings rate on fixed income accounts.
If General Musharraf no longer looks like a messiah who rescued Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif, how can he backtrack too much and too overtly on Kashmir without any discernable quid pro quo from India? But on the Indian side, too, the kaleidoscope has been thoroughly shaken by the BJP extremists. A party brought to power by the anti- Muslim passions aroused by the Babri Mosque affair is now wilting under the Gujarat communal pogrom. Its governments are falling in the provinces like ninepins and its coalition allies are attacking it in the Lok Sabha from right and left. This has compelled party fanatics to clutch at a hard line on Pakistan because that is where the rare Lok Sabha consensus is located. Thus the only strategy it can adopt is an opportunistic, anti-Pakistan one, and mix it with sound and fury about the war against terrorism that goes down well with the international community. Now it is seeking to improve its prospects by winning big time in the Kashmir elections next October on which it has international support despite Pakistan’s protestations.
But that’s not all. Having sniffed the global winds, the Hurriyet Conference chairman, Mr Abdul Ghani Bhatt, is becoming ambivalent over boycotting the election. Also, the son of the recently assassinated Kashmiri leader, Abdul Ghani Lone, who now occupies his father’s seat in the Hurriyet executive committee, wants the Hurriyet to talk to New Delhi without Pakistan. This suggests that Mr Straw couldn’t have gotten much out of New Delhi in the shape of a pledge to start talking to Pakistan before the Kashmir elections. Under the circumstances, General Musharraf may soon have to worry about more than just the backlash to his constitutional proposals.
It also appears that the US and the UK don’t clearly see how they are going to advance their anti-terrorist agenda. Both want to attack Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein but no one agrees with them. Father Bush fought the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein with the entire world behind him, but son Bush wants to attack him while the world is disapproving. This means that his special allies in the war against terrorism are soon going to come under pressure from their own publics. That is why it will probably suit India to keep its troops amassed on the border with Pakistan, which in turn will make it easy for India to “stage” the Kashmir elections. But by the same token, it may no longer suit Pakistan to make serious efforts to plug the LoC holes as demanded by Mr Straw.
We are looking at renewed tensions and war clouds in South Asia ahead. The fear is that elections in Pakistan may be washed out if it starts to pour.