CBMs:
Indians Not Happy with Pakistani Response
By
Atul Cowshish
THE
PAKISTANI response to the set of 12 confidence building measures
suggested by India on October 22 is neither 'robust' nor 'positive',
as was promised by the acerbic spokesman of the Pakistani foreign
ministry.
But
when it comes to Pakistan, to expect the usual diplomatic niceties
or grace in communicating with India would be foolhardy. Islamabad
is a practical example of an apocryphal story about an Indian
farmer who would bear all the beatings from his adversary and
swallow basketful of onions after losing the wager but will not
give up his pursuits that looked doomed from the outset.
In
that land of the 'pure' everything begins and ends with Kashmir.
Pakistan has accepted only a few of the Indian proposals without
any pre-conditions: resumption of sporting ties (cricket in particular)
and allowing senior citizens to cross the Wagah border on foot.
Resuming sporting ties-cricket to be more specific-has always
been the Pakistani priority because over the years it has perfected
the art of converting the cricket field into the venue for an
Indo-Pak dual. No visiting Indian team can ever hope to play in
Pakistan without a large section of the patriotic spectators constantly
shouting abuses at India. The volume increases if the Pakistani
team faces defeat. Pakistani players are obsessed with the desire
to defeat India because it gives them some vicarious pleasure
of getting the better of heathens. The government of the day bestows
riches on them for defeating India.
Pakistan has also agreed with India
to ease the problems faced by fishermen of the two countries.
But its response to the rest of the measures is tied to conditions
that Islamabad knows well will not be acceptable to India. Obviously,
Pakistan thinks this would help it achieve what it wants most:
going to international fora with more anti-Indian ammunition.
Indeed, some of the counter-proposals
from Pakistan are designed to provoke India. In response to the
Indian offer of free treatment for 20 Pakistani children in India,
Pakistan has offered free hospital treatment for `victims' of
Indian security forces operations in Kashmir.
It is ridiculous for Pakistan to
seek intervention by international human rights bodies in selecting
the Kashmiri `victims' for treatment in Pakistan. Does Pakistan
accept all the reports of these global busybodies who have been
as critical of Pakistan as they have been of India? Besides, will
the human rights bodies agree, as the Pakistani suggestion would
imply, that they have an important political agenda to serve behind
their critical reports on India?
Before asking the human rights organisation
to pitch their tents in the war zone in India created by it, Pakistan
should also agree to use the services of these bodies to identify
the bodies of all the Pakistani `freedom fighters', known in the
rest of the world as terrorists, who are regularly sent to India
to seek the path to `heaven' by spreading death and mayhem and
then getting killed by Indian security forces.
Pakistan will accept the Indian proposal
to start a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in Pakistani
occupied Kashmir provided the passengers travel on UN documents
and UN personnel man the checkpoints on either side of the line
of control. Before making that absurd proposal has Pakistan made
sure that the UN is willing to enter the muddy waters of Kashmir
further by taking policing and customs duties?
Pakistan is hazy on the Indian proposals
on boosting travel links that include resumption of air service
and re-opening of the long forgotten Sind-Rajasthan land route
and the Mumbai-Karachi ferry service. It will not do anything
to take up these measures unless India gives a guarantee that
it will not refuse in future and under any circumstances permission
to Pakistani aircraft to over-fly Indian territory. The Pakistani
delusion is now reaching the stage when it thinks it can not only
tell India how to `resolve' the Kashmir tangle but also how India
should shape its civil aviation and transport policies! But if
Pakistan shows eagerness to resume train service it is because
with the masses of travelling genuine passengers it can regularly
smuggle in its army of spies and saboteurs, not to speak of its
`freedom fighters' under different garbs.
Among the decisions taken by a furious
India just after the Pakistani terrorists' attack on Parliament
in December 2001, the one that hurt Islamabad most was perhaps
the drastic reduction in its 110-member mission in Delhi. It is
common knowledge in India that the larger the size of the Pakistani
mission in India, the more the number of ISI operatives who position
themselves officially on Indian soil to guide and monitor their
nefarious activities.
It is Pakistani humbug to say that
a large staff is required in India to clear the flood of visa
applications. A large sized Pakistani staff in India never helped
reduce the wait for visas. In any case, even at the best of times,
the Pakistanis are quite prone to turn down visa requests from
Indians.
It is obvious that the week that
Islamabad took to mull over the Indian initiatives was spent only
in devising a reply that will be strong on propaganda value but
low in substance. An outright rejection of the Indian peace proposals
would have been impossible for Islamabad for fear of infuriating
Uncle Sam, the all-pervasive benefactor and patron of Pakistan,
and indeed much of the international community. The Pakistani
response was announced by no less a person than the Pakistani
Foreign Secretary, Riaz Khokhar, who had duly won his spurs by
vilifying India-in India itself as the infamous High Commissioner
of his country.
Setting aside the provocation built
into the 'robust' Pakistani response, it would look very clear
that Islamabad simply could not find ways to match Indian gestures
which are clearly aimed at improving people-to-people contacts.
That is because the Pakistani establishment- the military, the
bureaucracy, the mullahs and politicians who Koa-tow to the military-overwhelmingly
opposes any encouragement to large-scale people-to-people contacts
between the two countries.
No matter what the Pakistanis say,
the fact remains that the so-called 'core' issue Kashmir can never
be solved unless relations between the people of the two countries
are marked by mutual trust and friendship. Any real Indo-Pak thaw
can begin only at the people-to-people level-and not at summit
meetings, as the Pakistanis are fond of declaring.
The establishment in Islamabad draws
power-and privileges from constantly keeping an imaginary Indian
bogey alive and has never done anything more than pay lip service
to the cause of peace in the sub-continent. The Pakistani establishment
has lit an eternal hate-India flame, which discourages any popular
expression in that country of views that seek to genuinely improve
bilateral relations.
But having said all that the fact
remains that India will be equally unwise to adopt the Pakistani
style of course diplomacy. As stated in the beginning, Pakistan
cannot expected to respond with any reasonableness or decency
to Indian moves because its fragile sense of national pride and
definition of its nationhood. So even if Pakistan is willing to
implement only a handful Indian proposals it should be viewed
as some gain.
The
bottom line is that in the given state Indo-Pak relations nothing
can be expected to kick-start the real peace process. It has to
be a very slow and tortuous process that requires a lot of patience.
India should be willing to show that kind of indulgence even if
Pakistan continues to live up to its boorish diplomatic behavior-until
one day Uncle Sam turns the heat on it.-Courtesy Samachar
