WAITING FOR MUSHARRAF
by B.Raman
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the self-styled Chief Executive
of Pakistan, is as good a communicator as the late Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, but
with a difference. Whereas Zia effectively concealed his ambitions
and arrogance behind a veneer of humility, Gen.Musharraf makes no effort
to conceal his personal ambitions and his perception of himself as
Pakistan's man and General of the hour to whom the nation has turned for
its salvation in the hour of its greatest crisis and who owes it to the
nation to fulfill his mission of making Pakistan a re-invigorated
political, economic and military power, capable of holding its own against
India.
Since seizing power on October 12,1999, he has been
projecting himself as a rational thinker uninfluenced in his policies and
actions by religious considerations, but having been closely associated
with Osama bin Laden and the various Afghan Mujahideen groups before 1996
and with the medieval Taliban thereafter, he understands the power of
religion and its utility for achieving the strategic designs of Pakistan
vis-à-vis India.
Though he often stresses the need to forget the past in
Pakistan's relations with India and to look to the future, his actions,
like those of other Corps Commanders of the Pakistan Army, are strongly
motivated by a desire to avenge what they look upon as Pakistan's
humiliation at the hands of India in 1971 in the then East Pakistan and
again in 1984 in Siachen .
He doesn't deny his role in clandestinely mounting the
Kargil operation in 1999, but projects it as a justified riposte for
"Siachen-1984". Similarly, he doesn't deny that he often
resorts to craft and deception in national interest in dealing with India,
but justifies it as the only way of dealing with what he looks upon as the
crafty and devious India.
The attitude of the Pakistan Army towards India has
always been governed by a curious amalgam of feelings of psychological
insecurity and professional over-confidence. Their feelings of
insecurity arise from what they consider as India's military superiority
in terms of numbers and the quality of equipment and its typical (in their
eyes) Hindu cunning and their professional over-confidence from their
conviction that a Hindu soldier is no match for a Muslim and lacks the
will to succeed in the battle field without which all its acquired
military equipment would be of no avail.
While they feel confident that they can , any day, in
any terrain, hold their own against the Indian Army, they feel diffident
about their ability to detect and counter what they fear as the typical
Hindu cunning. The Pakistan Army has a greater respect for and fear
of the Indian political class than it has for Pakistan's. They think
that in Kargil a set-back on the ground for the Indian Army was converted
into a strategic political victory by the Indian Prime Minister, Shri
A.B.Vajpayee, through his deft handling and look upon their political
leadership as no match for India's.
Its Generals are not prepared to admit that they
suffered a decisive military defeat at the hands of the Indian Army in
East Pakistan in 1971 due to professional inadequacies. They believe that
the 1971 defeat was brought about not by the superior skills of the Indian
Army, but by the incompetence of their own political leadership and the
consequent unfavourable circumstances on the ground in East Pakistan.
Gen. Musharraf looks upon Afghanistan as his and the
Pakistan Army's greatest success story since 1947 and, like other
Generals, has convinced himself that this success can be repeated in Jammu
& Kashmir. He and his Corps Commanders interpret the sudden turn
around in the attitude of India towards him and the initiative of India in
inviting him to New Delhi as indicators of the onset of battle fatigue in
the Indian security forces, but they are not certain whether there has
been a simultaneous weakening of the will of the Indian political
leadership to retain Jammu & Kashmir.
They look upon the present situation vis-à-vis J &
K as similar to the situation in Afghanistan in 1987-88, when, in their
view, a battle-fatigued Soviet Army started pressing its political
leadership to look for ways of an honourable exit from Afghanistan and Zia
provided them such an exit without a loss of face for Moscow through the
proximity talks in Geneva. They feel they succeeded because Moscow
had at that time a political leadership without strong ideological and
nationalist convictions.
They realise that the 2001 ruling Indian political
leadership cannot be compared to the 1987-88 one in Moscow. In their
eyes, the present political leadership in New Delhi has very strong
ideological and nationalist convictions and will not bend as Moscow's did
in 1987-88. Their memories of what they see as Pakistan's political
defeat in Kargil in 1999 continue to trouble them and they are wary of
Kargil repeating itself in the political and diplomatic arena in the
months to come.
Gen.Musharraf thinks that any perception in Pakistan
that he threw away at the table in New Delhi what the jehadis had achieved
through their blood on the ground in J & K could mark the beginning of
the end of the present phase of the Army's political ascendancy in
Pakistan.
He and his kitchen Cabinet of Lt.Gen. (retd) Moinudeen
Haider, the Interior Minister, Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, the Director-General
of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, the
recently-designated Deputy Chief of the Army Staff, and Lt.Gen.Mohammed
Yousef Khan, the Chief of the General Staff, realise the importance of
economic strength as a core component of national security. They
also realise that religious fanaticism-jehad is a double-edged sword or a
boomerang. While they are able to use it against India today, it
could turn against Pakistan itself tomorrow.
They are not convinced that normal trade relations with
India constitute the answer to their economic problems. They are
deterred by the experience of Bangladesh, which, they think, has become a
captive market for India's cheap and poor quality goods. They would
rather become a captive market of China than of India.
At the same time, they see in the proposed
Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline a part solution to their economic
problems-- in the form of an annual transit fee of US $ 600 million from
Teheran and concessional oil supplies to meet Pakistan's growing needs.
Hence, their desire to treat the pipeline as a stand-alone issue without
linking it to normal trade relations.
One should not, however, underestimate Pakistan's
willingness and ability to undergo hardships if considered necessary in
national interests. Its economic difficulties originated with the
1990 sanctions under the Pressler Amendment. Despite this, they have
refused to bend to outside pressure on the nuclear issue.
Similarly, despite strong criticism of their support to
the jehadis in J & K and to the Taliban from the US and other
countries, they have not moderated their policy. They feel that for
the first time since 1971, they have an opportunity of changing the status
quo in J & K, thanks to the jehadis, and that if they let go this
opportunity, they would not get another like it again. They,
therefore, seem determined to continue their support to the jehadis even
if it meant continued diplomatic isolation and economic hardships.
India should not nurse the illusion that the forthcoming summit or the
economic pressure on it by the other countries could make Islamabad change
its policy.
How to continue to use the jehadis against India till
they achieve their objective in J & K without their becoming a
Frankenstein for Pakistan? This question is being intensely debated in the
GHQ without any answer being found.
Despite the military leadership's harping on the theme
of a nuclear flashpoint, it feels confident of its ability to prevent any
irrational or accidental use of its nuclear capability. It feels confident
of India's ability too in that regard. As a result, the subject of
nuclear confidence building measures does not enjoy the same priority in
the debate in Pakistan (outside the seminar circuit) as it does in New
Delhi. Nonetheless, India has a vital interest in progress on this
issue, keeping in view the increase in the jehadi hordes in Pakistan.
How to avoid an euphoria over and a romanticisation of
the forthcoming summit? How to keep the summit businesslike without unwise
exuberance and ecstasy? How to douse undue expectations? How to keep the
bilateral dialogue sustained at various levels without getting caught in a
quagmire over J & K? How to provide greater focus to the nuclear
confidence-building issue? How to benefit from the Iranian gas without
adding to the resources of Pakistan which could be diverted to the jehad?
How to disabuse the General of any false impression that India is looking
for an honourable exit from J & K? How to ensure that India's
realpolitik of dealing with a military dictator does not damage the cause
of democracy in Pakistan?
These are the questions which should engage the
attention of our policy-makers between now and the visit of the
self-styled Chief Executive.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
