Pervez Musharraf and India Pakistan Rapproachment

#11 Posted by tahmed32 on February 25, 2008 7:45:31 pm

prophetboy...not that I care for your opinion, but there are a ton of pakis who have openly admitted to supporting the jihadis i.e. the islamic terrorists..

heck..your great analyst capt clueless is a great example..during the t-shirt with paki flag days, he was telling us pakiland had uncle sam's wind in her sails and was threatening to sic the jihadis on india if it didn't hand over kashmir...

tell me prophetboy...if you pakis are pure as the wind driven snow, why were you put first on the register/fingerprint list? why are the visa applications of paki males of a certain age cleared in DC? why does atif get the TSA danda treatment...

arjun_5:

I won't disagree that situation changed after 9/11 and have referred to it in my piece. But I also recall the unrelenting pressure on Nawaz Sharif from Clinton over a period of three weeks. I have a feeling that a military leader would have buckled under the Clinton pressure even at that time.

#17 arjun: you should have stopped when you were ahead ("not that I care for your opinion"). You then proceed to seek my opinion..ha! ha!

dost mittar: I read your article just now and I think you give mush more credit than he deserves.

Two elected PMs were meeting to discuss peace - and Mush does Kargill and pulls the carpet away from under them. Common sense would say this was a deliberate act to sabotage the peace effort. WHy would NS collaborate in making himself look like a fool?

The nuclear bombs had made it quite clear that neither country could afford a war - so it was only natural for Pakistan and India to move towards peace after that. So, please dont credit Musharraf for moving towards peace - he is very good at patting himself on the back for all kinds of things anyway.

tahmed#20:

"WHy would NS collaborate in making himself look like a fool?"

I do not think that he collaborated although be probably had been informed. But I also think that if the Kargil operation had not turned into a disaster and had forced Indians to withdraw from Siachen, Nawaz would have taken full credit for it.

"The nuclear bombs had made it quite clear that neither country could afford a war - so it was only natural for Pakistan and India to move towards peace after that."

I don't think so. Kargil operation was launched after nuclearisation of the two countries; indeed nuclear weapons were the raison d'etre of the Kargil opoeration; the thinking was that nuclear weapons had made an all-out war between the two countries impossible, therefore Pakistan was free to engage in proxy warfare and limited operations, such as Kargil. You may want to check several of Romair's posts at that time expounding this viewpoint.

PS: What are you doing at the computer at this time? Have you taken "parkhatti" (that's to test your expertise in punjabi) from sleep?

“The recently concluded elections in Pakistan were unprecedented in many ways. One of the less noticed aspects of these elections was the complete lack of hostility towards India during the electoral campaigns of various candidates and political parties. There was no rhetoric calling for a thousand-year war; no mention of completing the “unfinished business” of the Partition, no talk of jihad to liberate Muslim brothers suffering under the Hindu yoke nor of bleeding India with a thousand cuts - not even of providing principled support to the Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom. This was a vast change from most previous elections when political parties vied with each other for anti-Indian rhetoric.”

Give me one election in Pakistan since 1970 when any of the above mentioned issues were part of any campaign. The Pseudo-political writer in pursuing his own agenda makes up stories as he pleases. Any citation any reference that would show that India got more than a passing reference in any elections after 1988.

Otoh, give me one election in India since the partition when Pakistan was not an issue in that election. These Pakistan obsessed nutcases are found on the Indian side of the border. Pakistan has no claim on any Indian geographical entity whereas every Indian it seems has a claim over all of Pakistan. I know most idiot-bred in the Indian slums would not even understand this. The communal mindset rules the Indian politics; there is no Indian mind which can think about issues beyond the religious differences and there is no Indian who can reconcile with the fact that the people everywhere in the world have a right of self determination. Pakistani exercised that right in 1947. There might be weaknesses in the political methodologies used but once the right is exercised, it is final.

All major Indian political parties agreed with the partition and facilitated it. Once that is done, the Indians should live with that decision as any honorable nation would.
Honor and Indians??? Sounds contradictory…isn’t it?

The rest of the article is just rehashing of many ups and downs in the Pak-India relationship. Neighbors routinely interfere in each others affairs and Pakistan and India would continue to do that. The level of the interference would have peaks and valleys but it will never end.

Btw, in the recent history, the first shot, way before the Kargil, was fired by India when it tested nukes and the Indian government pointed out that the purpose of the nuke tests was to intimidate Pakistan.

Re: # 21

"I don't think so. Kargil operation was launched after nuclearisation of the two countries; indeed nuclear weapons were the raison d'etre of the Kargil opoeration; the thinking was that nuclear weapons had made an all-out war between the two countries impossible, therefore Pakistan was free to engage in proxy warfare and limited operations, such as Kargil. You may want to check several of Romair's posts at that time expounding this viewpoint."

Quite right!!

Nuclear test brought symmetry of information about each other's actual nuclear potential- since underassessment in any future conflict would have led to exchanges. Now, it was open that Pakistan could bomb any one any time. It also exposed AQ Khan's black market. It was a good thing in a way.
This was a classical nuclear black mail situation that we find even Iran is adapting when it threatened US with appropriate response and great pain if it attacked Iran.
With the information about nukes in open - there was "symmetry of information" and a realistic estimation of the situation was possible - that means covert warfare and nuclear blackmail becomes apparant and open to all!!

#21
"You may want to check several of Romair's posts at that time expounding this viewpoint."

One great citation to prove the point. Romair can't even distinguish between a proxy war and the real war.

Only a stupid would need to start proxy wars when the mother of all deterrents, the nukes had shown that any error of judgment would be catastrophic.

Kargil had nothing to do with India. It was as usual a Pak army ploy to bring down a political government that had just sacked the army COAS for interfering in the political affairs.

Indians fought this war in Indian media and that was all there is to that war.

Author,

Thank USA, not musharraf.

HP#22:

". The communal mindset rules the Indian politics; there is no Indian mind which can think about issues beyond the religious differences and there is no Indian who can reconcile with the fact that the people everywhere in the world have a right of self determination. Pakistani exercised that right in 1947."

- where is there any reference to religious differences in this article?
Where does this article deny the right of self-determination?

This article is not about the creation of Pakistan. However, the common understanding is that it was a political settlement between major political actors involved in the drama; self-determination, I believe, was held only in the frontier province and some districts of Assam.

As far as previous Pakistani elections are concerned, I am going by my recollection; one of my vivid recollection is of Nawaz Sharif holding a gun as a symbol of his support for Kashmiri insurgents in the elections held in the 90s.

zee:

I did acknowledge the US contribution as well. As I said, the seminal event was the Indian mobilisation of armed forces along the border in 2002 and the subsequent US intervention. By this time, India had become vulnerable to the US economic pressure.

HP:
"Neighbors routinely interfere in each others affairs and Pakistan and India would continue to do that. The level of the interference would have peaks and valleys but it will never end."

Yes, they would but I do think that there has been a fundamental transformation in the relationship.

The chnages in India – Pakistan relationships can be attributed to the change in communication technology.

The flow of information between the countries has been tremendous. In such flow of information … it is tough for a state to keep up the propaganda.

These things just happen… ussually govts have little to do with these things… Soon the pakistani politcal establishment will start looking more like the Indian establishment..

Credit to Pervez Musharraf is that … he did not try to stop these things….

While we can fight Pakistani terrorists and their Pakistani state sponsors, there is nothing we can do about Indians who insist on being wilfully ignorant.


From satp.org

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/index.html

India Assessment 2007

Since 2002, terrorism-related fatalities have demonstrated a secular decline in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), and this trend continued in 2006, with a total of 1,116 persons killed. More than 40,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict since 1989, and, even at present, an average of nearly 100 lives is lost each month in J&K.

Despite the declines in indices of violence, the State continues to suffer from high levels of violence and subversion. Pakistan’s military regime, which was forced to scale down its proxy-war under intense international scrutiny, has nevertheless shown no indication of dismantling the vast infrastructure of terrorism on its soil. According to the Union Home Ministry’s (MHA) "Status Paper on Internal Security Situation" (presented in Parliament on November 30, 2006), the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir is yet to be dismantled and is being "used by Pak based and Pak ISI sponsored outfits like JeM [Jaish-e-Mohammed], LeT [Lashkar-e-Toiba], Al-Badr, HM [Hizb-ul-Mujahideen], etc."

Amidst the hype on people-to-people contacts and confidence-building measures (CBMs), it is evident that the reduced levels of violence in J&K primarily reflect a tactical rather than strategic shift in the Pakistani calculus, as a two-pronged strategy of parallel talks and terrorism is pursued by the Musharraf regime to secure its ambitions against India.

Talks between India and Pakistan thus continue under the aegis of the Composite Dialogue, even as terrorism in J&K, and sporadically in other parts of the India, persists. At the same time, Pakistan has been complaining bitterly about the slow pace of ‘progress’ towards the goals it seeks to secure on the negotiating table, having failed to achieve these through its vicious campaign of terrorism over 17 years. The peace process, consequently, remains, tactical rather than substantive, as the hiatus between the rival positions on Kashmir remains unbridgeable, and much of the ‘progress’ has been in peripheral areas, such as the restoration of communication links, people-to-people exchanges, Track Two diplomacy and a range of confidence building measures. At the same time, the ground situation in J&K remains a cause for concern, as a stream of infiltrators continues to find its way into the terror wracked State. While the various CBMs currently operational between the two countries may have strengthened processes of 'emotional enlistment', have failed to alter India's and Pakistan's stated positions on the Kashmir issue, or to change the fundamentals of the conflict in and over Kashmir. An end to the bloodshed in the State, consequently, seems as unlikely today as it was at any given point since the dramatic escalation of the militancy in 1989-90.

...

Islamist Terrorism outside J&K and the Northeast

At least 270 people died in Islamist terrorist violence in locations outside J&K and the Northeast during 2006. The significant incidents included:

March 7: At least 21 civilians were killed and 62 others injured in three serial bomb explosions at a temple and railway station in Varanasi. Seven bombs were later defused, including four that had been planted on the Gowdolia-Dasashwamedh Ghat Road near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Hours after the blasts, a suspected LeT terrorist was shot dead during an encounter with the police in the Gosaiganj area on the outskirts of Lucknow city.

April 14: Two bombs exploded inside the Jama Masjid at Delhi injuring approximately 14 persons, including a woman and a girl.

June 1: Three suspected LeT terrorists were shot dead during an abortive attempt to storm the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu organization, at Nagpur in Maharashtra.

July 11: At least 200 persons were killed and over 700 others injured in seven bomb blasts targeting the railway network in the city of Mumbai. First class compartments of local trains at Mira-Bayandhar, Jogeshwari, Mahim, Santacruz, Khar, Matunga and Borivli stations on the Western Railway were targeted.

September 8: Forty people killed and 65 sustain injuries in three bomb explosions at Malegaon town in the Nashik District of Maharashtra.

According to the MHA’s Status Paper, the current strategy of Pakistan-based terrorist groups is to:

* Maintain a continuous flow of finances to sustain the terrorist networks in India

* Target vital installations and economic infrastructure in India

* Recruit and train local modules

* Attack soft targets like market places, public transport system, places of worship and congregation, etc.

* Provoke communal tensions to create a wedge between communities

* Supply hardware through land and sea routes

The Status Paper discloses that the LeT and JeM also use territory and elements in Bangladesh and Nepal for movement of terrorists and finances. Army chief J. J. Singh, on December 27, 2006, stated that "As terrorists are finding it hard to penetrate the fence and new anti-infiltration systems placed all along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and in Punjab… The areas bordering Nepal and Bangladesh are still porous and intelligence reports suggest that terrorists are trying to use them to infiltrate into India."

According to data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management, at least 81 Inter-Services Intelligence-Jihadi modules have been disrupted just over the years 2004-2006, leading to hundreds of arrests across India – outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast – in locations that extend from Uttaranchal in the North, to Andhra Pradesh in the South, and from Gujarat in the West to West Bengal in the East. These modules had been tasked to target security and vital installations, communication links, and commercial and industrial centres, as well as to provoke instability and disorder by circulating large quantities of counterfeit currency and by drug trafficking. The National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had stated, on July 28, 2006, that Indian security and nuclear installations are under "very serious threat" from the LeT, which may be planning a "major assault".

Worse, terrorist attacks by Pakistan-backed groups have occurred in places as far as Delhi, Mumbai, Malegaon, and Varanasi in 2006. Terrorist attacks in places like Mumbai and Varanasi in 2006 and earlier at Bangalore (December 28, 2005) and New Delhi (October 29, 2005) are only the more visible evidence of a long-term war of attrition by Pakistani state agencies and their jihadi surrogates, intended to undermine India’s political stability, by increasingly attacking its economic, scientific and technological strengths. The frequency, spread and, in some cases, intensity of these operations in other parts of the country has seen some escalation in the past years, as international pressure on Pakistan to end terrorism in J&K has diminished levels of ‘deniable’ engagement in that theatre, and as violence in J&K demonstrates a continuous secular decline since the events of September 11, 2001 in the US.

It is important to note, however, that despite occasional and inevitable terrorist ‘successes’, this relentless strategy – which has targeted virtually every concentration of Muslim populations in India for decades – has overwhelmingly failed to secure a base within the community, beyond a minuscule radical fringe. Further, the record of intelligence and security agency successes against such subversion and terror, although lacking the visibility and drama of a terrorist strike, is immensely greater than the record of the successes of this strategy.

Ananth,

This is just not true. Communication seems to have had the opposite effect.

Chowk is an excellent example. It has the ability to take the most gungho of the "lets sing kumbaye" South Asian types in Pakistan and turn them extremely anti-Indian.

dost-mittarji
Sorry to touch upon the personal but this article will not be complete without an acknowledgement that the author's own unarmed friend was killed in a university campus by a Pak-trained Pak-funded attacker who got his orders from Musharraf's govt agents.