Pervez Musharraf and India Pakistan Rapproachment

HP # 105

``Pakistan's survival depends on not having the army as the uniting force. I hope you agree with this!''

I entirely agree. This baboon must be put back into its cage. There are some good chances of doing that now.

NHK

Re: # 164

the statement should read "completely agree"

From the daily times...doesn't seem like pakiland's bleed india strategy is going so well...turning out to be a death by a thousand self-inflicted wounds for pakiland..

of course, we all are now expected the accept that pakiland was never interested in kashmir..just like the fox wasn't really after the grapes(which were sour anyway).

Second Editorial: Zardari’s message to India

The PPP co-chairman Mr Asif Ali Zardari
has repeated his party’s commitment to the improvement of relations with India to bring about an era of peace between the two countries. Speaking to an Indian daily Monday he said his party had a special relationship with the Congress party whose leaders were personally friendly to the late Ms Benazir Bhutto.

The current misfortunes of Pakistan are a consequence of bad policies adopted to counter India. The false search for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan was India-driven just as the current Afghan policy is driven by fear of India’s comeback into Afghanistan after 1996 when it was driven out by the Taliban. Equally, Pakistan’s refusal to bring about a change in its India policy is an internationally isolating act. That is why Islamabad must begin free-trading with India after ratifying the treaty that President Musharraf has blocked. The “option” of jihad in Kashmir must be irrevocably abandoned in favour of normalisation which is what the people of Pakistan want. And Pakistan must stop defying the WTO and agree to reciprocate the grant of Most Favoured Nation status by India to Pakistan. Far from being made a conditionality of bilateral normalisation, Kashmir should be the object of free-trade cooperation between the two occupied zones. President Musharraf erred on normalisation by dithering; the PPP must move forward after taking the new parliament along. *

Re: # 161
Re: # 160
Re: # 158 etc

Tahmed, you do have a point let globalizaton force the issue. If there is one place where India and Pakistan compete, it is at the WTO. There it seems the views are completely congruent.

Eklavya and HP,

Alas, in the end, it will be the political people who will end up resolving the issue.

Why not practice what you preach. Lets ignore the zees and the arjuns etc when the discussion invariably turns to contenious issues on chowk, and lets focus instead on how the discussions and contacts can move forward in a postive way first on chowk and then on the ground.

Tahmed sahib:

You often say that India reversed its policies toward Pakistan, once it exploded the nuclear bomb, because it became worried that Pakistan will use nuclear device against India. I disagree, and let me give my reasons below.

The only nuclear attacks todate have been surprise attacks. Both sides and their Uncle Sam knew that each other had nuclear bombs. This knowledge served as the deterrent. Open explosion by Pakistan can not deter, when all scenario of first attack confirm that India will survice to hit back, and the world would come and takecare of the parties to such adventurism. Bush was not joking when he said that nuclear Iran is third world war.

Successful blasts certainly raised the passion and united Pakistanis against their nemesis. This unity, instead of being channelized productively, was destroyed by attacking Supreme Court and rest of the sequel that followed.

New reality is that all those who cheered for independence of Kosovo, prove my point that Ummah can be manipulated by the other side too.

To understand this, please look at the map of Islamic nations, all now have something going at their borders or inside their borders. Turkey and East European countries included in the north; Pakistan, Afghanistan (and couple of ...tans of Central Asia) in the east; Darfur in the south, and west is the Atlantic Ocean to contain. These conflicts will play out as war of attrition.

Iraq gives a clear platform for this turmoil to go on inside, if McCain is to be believed for 100 years. Palestinian and Israel problem does not show any urgency in resolving either. There seems to be a complete encirclement with violence (=fire), and there is fire in the middle too. One more interesting observation is that oil in the center is encircled by despotic leaders, Iran excluded. Shite Sadr keeps extending ceasefire in Iraq. When these fires go on, and locals fight among themselves, they are less likely to deal with the despotic leaders encircling oil assets.

OBL wanted to get rid of Saudis, instead look where he attacked and where he is hiding, and who is killing who. Clearly this Ummah is getting manipulated by the both sides.

Recent elections in Pakistan have shown that Pakistan is a different place than most other Islamic countries. Grass root democracy is alive in Pakistan. Why is it so, I would not know.

Even there the fire has started. Neither Musharraff nor the Taliban can sing that “I didn’t start the fire.” Next government will have to deal with it, and therefore, would be tied down.

Also, neither you nor HP Mian can figure out reality of India Inside.

Pakistanis can - just as people like me can observe Pakistani scene and mix my biases - from the outside,and can throw in personal biases. I as many other outsiders, including a couple of Pakistani friends I talked, did not see this surge of grass root democracy in Pakistan. This is a danger Pakistanis run also when they observe India.

I wrote my biased view in an earlier post on this essay about India Pakistan.

It is a generational change. Pakistanis are genuinely fed up of Army rule. You may know more than I do, if Pakistanis can now be united with a war cry against India, even when according to all in Pakistan, there is no visible progress in solving this issue.

For the future, by the time Pakistan is over with the cycle it is in, I am certain the middle class there will be vibrant, economy can be vibrant, and new reality will emerge there too. Prolonging sixty years of past is no longer acceptable to Pakistani Awam.

This new reality will be more Pakistan centric, and will not be "not-India" based identity, and in my view, this Pakistani will do business anywhere and compete anywhere with anyone.

If you need a proof, look at Shoaib Akhtar, and others. I only hope IPL does not fail.

This younger generation has very little time for old and failed romantic ideas or theories. You see a proof, right here at Chowk; just read interactions between Dost Sahib and Arjun, or Dost Sahib and Sadna. She is politer than Arjun, but equally firm.

The middle class Indians are now busy elsewhere. This group is growing faster than the Indian GDP, and hence indicates that there is upward mobility into this group.

At this rate, this group will soon be larger than the entire population of Pakistan. This is ground reality; discard it at your own peril.

Other realities include that no single party rules India. It is also safer to assume that this is an irreversible phenomenon, and therefore, no single party will come in power for a very long time.

The coalition with younger generation among its cadre, can never reach a consensus on Pakistan as the enemy to fight. Generals there don't act alone on their tetosterones.

Indian Armed forces and bureaucracy no longer attracts the best and the brightest. If democracy is allowed to settle down, the scene there will be similar. Current government could not get all members to agree on nuclear deal with the U.S. Even though all armed forces staff must have wanted the deal to go through.

Problems of Indian armed forces are multiplied by the middle class's new economic reality and dream. Disinterest in armed force officer recruitment is all time high. Middle class provides these recruits. In fact, India’s chief of army staff was asking Bollywood to make more patriotic movies, so that armed forces can be romantically viewed by talent to volunteer.

Going back to Pakistan, pleae look at the election results. This tally is quite like breakdown of regional parties in India. PML-N and PPP may not like to be called regional Punjabi and Sindhi parties, so be it the result speaks for itself.

Therefore, I submit that India-Pakistan can no longer fight each other. This has nothing to do with testosteronics of nuclear or non-nuclear armed forces.

Generational change; new ground reality, as I mentioned above, in the Islamic countries; and shifting priorities require a new paradigm for India Pakistani relations.

Indian Kashmir cannot be central to this paradigm. Shoaib Akhtars, Adnan Samis, Romairs (yes our Romair), and a new crop of entrepreneurs (and not lawyers of old time Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru) will define this paradigm from Pakistan side. After all it was a group of entreprenuers who rushed to Delhi, to plead a case against breakout of hostilities when India piled up 1-million armed forces at the border.

These Akhtars, Samis, Romairs & Co. will deal with people who will include persistent and tough Sadnas, Arjuns and red-necks like Laddus too. Ganesh mutants, mother burners, pedophile etc. cannot be the currency in this deal.

I confident this will happen in our lifetimes.

I doubt even Col Kool Aid aka DM will buy this BS about how the pakis don't really want kashmir...

LOL, you know very well HP sahib, for a politically-minded person like me (just like you) that would seem a very very risky proposition. But I wouldn't mind, even if I (or people like me) keep urging caution.

So long as those contacts are not stopped (with or without caution) you (we) would get what you suggest.

Is that fair?

Kaal,
"Our history is a mess, I would love to know how we can resolve its "contradictions" without either side feeling cheated!"

I knew some one would ask this question. Do I have the answer? Yes, I think I do but would you agree with that? Your reply could go either way yes or no. That is the reason countries have negotiations and diplomats resolving issues.
The baggage we carry is enormous and 60 years are not long in history.

Imo, the best way is at this time to let the history take its course. Couple of generations later, things would cool down. In the meantime just let the people to people contact flourish. Non political people, just curious tourists, historians and scholars who would worry less about the political issues than the curiosity issue. I wanna see Taj, you wanna see Ketas or perhaps Kaghan and that should be good enough!

The more political people try to resolve the issues, the less chances we have in resolving the issues!

# 158 agreed.

Eklavya #155 i think the elephant in the room we need to consider when discussing india-pakistan relations is globalization. until we do that, we would merely be living in a mid-20th century world that is long gone even today.

giani: it is good that indians dont want pakistan "back". joining india has never been an issue in Pakistan - including in the current elections - in Pakistan. so you need to move beyond this issue.

#153 HP: Time has shown that a nuclear standoff is a strategic, not tactical, situation.

Thus, it prevented the US and Soviets from going to full-scale war in the four decades after WWII. And we are well on our way to four decades without a full-scale war between India and Pakistan.

While no doubt historical animosities and resentments are there, but so are historical ties and cultural aspects and (now) even political ideologies (the latest elections in Pakistan show people voting overwhelmingly for a political structure a la western-style democracies rather than the bs that mush was giving out in Davos e.g.

HP/Giani ji, agreed that we have to come to terms with history and accept each other. But how? What can the two countries do, except let the other believe what they believe (as tahmed suggests, but that contradicts what HP has posited)?

Our history is a mess, I would love to know how we can resolve its "contradictions" without either side feeling cheated!

Really, all ideas should be explored.

Re: # 146

HP,

You are correct. I am one of those "a usual extremist from the wrong side of the border ". As a matter of fact, I am pretty proud of it too.

But you and tahmed are wrong about the bomb. The bombs have been there for while. It only became public in 1998. The idea to make it all public was good one. It is debatable as to who benefited.

I wonder what Salim would say about

"Pakistan exists in areas where the current Pakistanis have always lived and they exercised their right of self determination in 1947!"

However, you do have one misconception. I do not think that other than a negligble minority, Indians want Pakistan or Pakistanis back. The Indians have enough problems of their own.

Belonging to the Jammu region, my individual position on Kashmir is that it should go to Pakistan and the Kashmiris should enjoy the life as the rest of Pakistanis.

However, of late, this desire on their part seems to have dimmed.

Eklavya, if you look to the future without digesting the history, as someone wise once said that you are bound to repeat it.

Cheers

Giani

Kaal, Tahmed,
That is where you two make mistakes. The nuke issue is a balance of power issue so it is more a tactical thing than something to augment better relations.

Nations develop relations when they come to terms with each others existences in every which way. Territorial claims whether real or imaginary, always hinder progress in any relations.

As I said the basic issue between India and Pakistan is Indians inability to come to grips with Pakistan now. They had the opportunity in 1947 to deal with the issue and accepted the deal that was offered to them. The honorable thing now is to live with the deal and then perhaps find ways to work towards better relations!

#150 yes prophet-foetus. (yawn).