Feroz R Khan January 6, 2004

Tags: indo-pak , peace

The Islamabed SARRC 2004 Conference: A Promise for Disappointment

rel="tag" href="/tag/trade">trade and one on the improvement of social conditions in the region. From the sound and fury of the closing statement, it seems that the circumstances of the past years are about to change.

I, though inclined to share the believe of some of a change in fortunes, am not so sure about the inevitable. My living memory warns me not to heed the voices of hope, because I have seen too many hopes killed on the alter of old hatreds. I am not sure that even if the leaders make bold pronouncements about moving beyond the past, the rest of the populace will follow them. SARRC 2004 achieved nothing, and it will achieve nothing as long as hate is a powerful reminder in the region’s two most populated and biggest member states.

I might be proven wrong and that would be a perfectly satisfactory set of affairs, with which I am quite content to live. I will believe that all this will amount to something, when I see the actual proof of the endeavor. I hear the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and I smile at the futility of the empty gesture. I have been shown a vision of the promised land and I may not live to see the promised land, but I am fully confident that we, as a people, will never reach the promise the land, because we are too secure in our hatred and distrust of one another to forsake it and give opportunity a chance to succeed.

Indians and Pakistanis are blessed with a natural relationship, which would make a mongoose and a cobra burn with envy at the depths and sophistication of their venom for one another. I am not hopeful about the future and to me, and I wish that it were a misguided fear, but SARRC did not achieve anything. It is a relatively easy task to make diplomatic pronouncements and sign treaties and make official joint declarations. It all together another task to convince the domestic lobbies of vested interests, in both nations, that the time has come to change. Given the past track record of the biggest and most important nations in SARRC, soon there will contradictions and denials and clarifications and the different tunes, out of step from the promised chorus of harmony, will be will heard from different capitals.

As a poet once said, after this SARRC summit is over and its lingering memories are being swept away into the dustbins of history by the brooms of hatred and distrust, we will sit on the ground and tell the sad stories of our kings and their death. Maybe, we will remember Cassius and wonder where the fault of our failures truly resides. Maybe, we will wish to remember the words of Robert F. Kennedy, just before his own death, when he heard the news about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Kennedy spoke his thoughts to a small group of African-Americans and said, "let us go out and tame the savage nature of man and make gentle the life of the world".

I hope for the best, but I will not be disappointed if this charade of cards collapses, when the first gusts of reality scatter it all over the place and what will be left, will be nothing more than pieces, to be picked up and thrown away.