Pakistan: Hostile neighbours

Mir Adnan Aziz
April 20,2008
The Frontier Post

President Musharraf's one man rule saw our foreign ministry, like all other state organs, at its lowest ever ebb. It was pathetically relegated to the dispatch section of the American State Department. Harold MacMillan, a British Prime Minister, described a Foreign Secretary as someone 'forever poised between the cliché and indiscretion'.

These two 'attributes' aptly defined our governence during the 'Pakistan first' years. With professional diplomats being continuously brow-beaten, our foreign policy was in absolute shambles. It morphed into a 'diktaplomacy' and we became servile apologists.

Pakistan's sense of extreme insecurity, compounded more so in these recent years, is derived from three major factors: our geophysical asymmetry with India; India's active role, overtly or covertly, in trying to erode our sovereignty and independence. Finally the overwhelmingly ingrained belief that we have always been used by America to further it's personal agendas. Being dunces in terms of learning from history, we ended up doing the unthinkable in these last eight years. As a result we emerged as we always have from similar flirtatious ordeals - a country torn apart.

At the heart of our rivalry with India is the belief that the Hindus never truly accepted the presence of the Muslims in their midst and the partition itself. This perception has been reinforced with every major act of communal violence targeting Muslims in India. Each Ayodhya or Gujrat though vindicates the two-nation theory and the wisdom of the founding fathers of the country. The Indian mindset was aptly conveyed by the late Indira Gandhi's emotion choked exultation of " today we avenged the thousand years of our dark history". The venue was the sitting of a combined Indian Parliament, the members desk thumping their hearts out in joy - the tragic time when the Pakistani forces surrendered in former East Pakistan.

The fallout of our spineless vacillation under US pressure has been that America now regards India as a key partner in its regional security interests. It is also a testament to India's leadership and their diplomacy that inspite of cozying up to the US, they got a nod from Russia to go ahead with an air base in Ayni, Tajikistan just 2 kms away from the Afghan border. It also provides a footprint for an ambitious India's foray into Central Asia.

India is also viewed as a powerful counter-force to the growth of Chinese influence. The US/Indo nuclear energy deal is an implicit indicator in this regard. However Indo/Sino diplomatic and trade ties are on the mend and ever growing. The US considers having a country of India's size and importance as an ally to be important for its regional plans.In our security context Afghanistan has always been an element of our India policy. In a friendly Afghanistan we have sought to have a peaceful protected western border in response to perpetual insecurity on our eastern border with India. To this end, our long standing objective has been to have a Pakhtoon dominated government in Kabul.

The post September 11 period saw an upheaval of political alignments in this region. We under President Musharraf proved to be rudderless as well as spineless. We were treated accordingly when the United States, totally oblivious to our security apprehensions, allowed the Northern Alliance to become a major player in the post Taliban setup.

Afghanistan became central to America's strategy regarding the Gulf Region, Central Asia and China.India and some elements within the US occupied Afghanistan have helped ferment violence and unrest in our border areas. With four consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, besides their embassy in Kabul, India's reach has never been as expansive in Afghanistan as it is today.

Since the fall of the Taliban regime in Kabul and the sudden rise of foreign influence inside Afghanistan, including that of the Americans and the Indians, Pakistan's western regions close to Afghanistan are witnessing the worst kind of destabilization. The last time our western regions were so unstable was when Afghanistan was a Soviet proxy. It was then being used as a forward base to gain access to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea.These 'consulates' manned by intelligence and military personnel have played upon, manipulated and agitated some within the Baloch and Pakhtun who were already alienated by the reprehensible treatment meted out to them by a 'Pakistan first' extolling President.

India excelled at the covert game of exporting terror while our President with his surreal transformation into a dove, wanted CBMs ala Bollywood and trade. Mark Twain said: "The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten". We forsook everything, even the Kashmir cause, only to be sabotaged in return.In Afghanistan the BRO, an Indian enterprise, is engaged in the construction of the 219 kilometre long Zaranj-Delaram road. The road is meant to be one of the main arteries for the transport of Indian goods to a land-locked Afghanistan and Central Asia via the Iranian port of Chabahar. Pakistan had refused transit facilities to Indian goods for Afghanistan. With this road India will have an alternate direct access to Afghanistan.

Former British foreign and defense secretary Malcolm Rifkind while writing in 'The Independent' identified two aspects of our national interests largely ignored by the West. First and foremost, he said, Pakistan's Pashtun-Balochi problem and the entire Taliban phenomenon are also linked to India-Pakistan differences over Kashmir and to wider India-Pakistan relations. He implied that India manipulated Afghanistan "to see a Pakistan weakened and distracted by frontier problems" on its western border, and under this compulsion, Pakistan "welcomed the Taliban as they were religious fundamentalists, not Pashtun nationalists, and therefore had no claim on Pakistani territory". The solution lies in "encouraging" India to reduce its presence in Afghanistan.

Second, Rifkind said, the Kabul government must be made to accept the Durand Line as the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.Our total foreign policy failure is reflected in how strongly Kabul and Delhi are aligned today. The nexus is far stronger than the 1980s before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. It is an established fact now that India has a firm toehold in the Afghan civil and military establishment.

For nine long years President Musharraf brutalized his own people fighting an alien war and snuffing political dissent. In the process he mutilated a national psyche and allowed India's unprecedented diplomatic and military activism in Afghanistan. This left us with a huge insecure western border along with an already volatile eastern one.

So supremely confident has India become in our predicament that in blatantly disregard of Kashmir's disputed status, it played host to none other than Afghanistan's Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak. Upon his arrival in Srinagar, the minister accompanied by a six-member delegation, was briefed by top military commanders at Badamibagh, the headquarters of Indian army's 15 Corps. It has also been decided that India will impart 'counter insurgency' training to Afghan forces. The top brass in the Indian military see Afghanistan as belonging to their expanding sphere of influence.

What also goes largely un-noticed, with the focus being on the military and intelligence agencies aspect, is the un-nerving fact that India controls the headwaters of all our rivers. The Indus System of Rivers comprises three Eastern Rivers (Sutlej, Beas and Ravi) and three Western ones (Indus, Jehlum and Chenab). Under the Indus waters treaty, the waters of the eastern rivers were allocated to India and those of the western rivers largely to Pakistan. Using water as a weapon is a totally repugnant notion, which no civilized country should endorse. The Geneva Convention and the Indus Water Treaty make such an action illegal. We, however, have a precedent when India, in April 1948, stopped the supply of water to Pakistan for a month. It is therefore a source of little comfort that our vital water resources are in India's control. We have also seen conventions and resolutions treated as rubbish in times of war or even otherwise by powerful countries. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir are living proof of the same.

With the contentious building of two dams, Baghliar and Kishan Ganga, India is setting up a company called the Chenab Valley Power Projects to construct three power plants on the Chenab River in Jammu and Kashmir. All three projects namely Kiru (600 MW), Pakal Dul (1,000 MW) and Karwa (520 MW) are to be constructed in the Doda district.

Pakistan needs to have physical control over these headwaters to ease our fears about India's potential ability to turn a huge chunk of our land into a waste-land. Our dithering stance on Kashmir should be seen in terms of this strategic issue. Our vacillation on the same negates our very own survival.

It has been recently reported that there is a US proposal' (diplomatic lingo for diktat) to place a permanent 'monitor' at their embassy. This official as the 'proposal' goes; will 'deal' with our nuclear issues and would have direct access to the National Command Authority. This 'proposal' has not been made formally. If it is, relenting on this issue would be tantamount to marines loitering in the GHQ and KRL. It may also prove fatally intrusive and detrimental to our security.

It is a very welcome step that the elected leaders, in their latest meeting, gave the go ahead for negotiations in the tribal areas. These people, our own, are as much a part of Pakistan as we are. In these last years they have been treated as pariahs. We blindly brutalized our own to forward Western agendas. In being united we can withstand and counter moves to undermine our existence. It is time that we hold supreme our own national honor and sovereignty.

We do not need speeches, rhetoric and slogans. In these last years we had enough of these to last a lifetime. Actions, when taken, speak louder than any clench fisted chest thumping hyperbole. Moreover small talk brings back images of those years which are painful - memories with slogans of 'Pakistan first' - sounding farcical even then - in hindsight nothing but a betrayal.

(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)