Earlier this month, Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, said relations between India and Pakistan should not be held hostage to Kashmir.  The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone.

The writer is Vice Chancellor of the Islamic University of Science & Technology, Kashmir. The views expressed in this article, however, are those of a private citizen.

By Siddiq Wahid

 Soon after hearing Asif Zardari’s statement on Kashmir, I received a two line mass-email from a friend in Delhi saying that an unnamed “senior journalist” in Pakistan was “surprised” at the reactions to it in Kashmir. ‘Why is everyone so agitated about this positive statement?” the journalist had asked. My friend in Delhi wondered if the recipients of the mail had any thoughts on this question. I responded, tongue in cheek, that Mr. Zardari seemed a good candidate for an invitation to the many symposia on Kashmir so that he could be educated on the subject. My friend responded that I should be more “generous”, given that Mr. Zardari had come across as “quite reasonable” in his television interview. My friend’s response caused me to read and think a little more about this controversy.

It is clear that reactions in Pakistan to Mr. Zardari’s statement have alternated between perfunctory objections to benign disregard amongst the power-set, largely because of the exposure of a simple political reality about nation-states, to which Pakistan is far from immune: self interest. This reality has emerged with progressive clarity for Kashmiris ever since the funeral of the cold war regime. Witness how the radical resistance that surfaced in Kashmir in 1989 was used with such brutal efficiency by all the parties to self-interest so that today it is an unrecognizable shadow of its former self. In the face of this, the Zardari statement is “no surprise”, as averred by Gul Mohammed of the University of Kashmir.

The history of the pursuit of such self-interest is not recent. In the mid-1960s, Indian and Pakistani diplomats famously kept referring, in private, to the Kashmir dispute as a ‘simple’ matter that could easily be resolved once Delhi and Islamabad put their minds to it. However, statecraft demanded rhetorical posturing and selective leveraging, and the J&K problem was conveniently at hand; Mr. Zardari’s statement is an ‘outing’ of this reality. But sixty years has thickly layered the Kashmir problem and the last two decades are an indication of how complex it has become; in the light of that, as Sheikh Showkat Hussain has put it, we must regard the statement as that of a “politically immature” person.

Politically immature perhaps, but it is also that of a money-wise savvy person. If we read between the lines, Zardari was merely being the consummate businessman. What he meant, although not put as crudely as I am about to, is this: ‘I am a businessman and well understand all the talk about exchange of goods across borders, etc. India is a big market for me, so let us leave messy confrontations like Kashmir for future generations to solve because they are untidy for the bottom line.’ And what happens afterwards? ‘We shall see. Things will not go as wrong as the Americans and Europeans think it will, because we are no less reasonable than they are when it comes to such things as the proliferation of armaments and nuclear confrontation. It is that simple.’

This is how Mr. Zardari’s statement needs to be understood in an immediate sense; that of a businessman and political novice. But more disconcerting is the “surprise” of the senior journalist in Pakistan to the angry reactions from the entire spectrum of political thought in Kashmir, from the radical resistance to mainstream politicians. It betrays a lack of understanding of the Kashmiri frustration, for what is missed is that they are not responding to Mr. Zardari’s comments of today but to sixty years of political poor governance, political obfuscation and moral abdication. The timing of the statement, its cavalier affordability and the muted reaction to it in Pakistan can only increase the trust deficit that exists in Kashmir not just towards New Delhi but, increasingly, towards Islamabad as well. This is not good news for the unending ‘peace process’. The continued decline in the trust quotient will result in radicalizing opinions (of all shades including political, ethnic and religious opinions) in various directions, not just in Kashmir but the J&K State in its entirety; again, not a very good legacy for “future generations”.

But another observation of Mr. Zardari’s deserves positive mention - that the rapprochement between India and Pakistan must not be held “hostage” to the Kashmir problem - in its message to Kashmiris. And herein is the problem with the some of the reported reactions to the Zardari statement in Kashmir. Many of them have argued as if the India-Pakistan relationship needs to be held hostage to the Kashmir problem. A. Gani Bhat of the Hurriyat (M) has said that India and Pakistan cannot “live with the tension” of the rivalry between them. Such reactions betray a somewhat dated approach to the problem on the one hand, and a lack of confidence with the fundamentals of the struggle on the other. Is there really any of the “tension” that Professor Bhat refers to? Let us admit it, there is not. India and Pakistan have had a tacit understanding for almost six years now that the Kashmir problem is holding both their countries back, and that it must be resolved without damaging either of their sovereignties. Similarly, Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s argument that “supporting the Kashmir cause is in [Pakistan's] vital interest” is a position, we must admit, that was jettisoned by Islamabad long ago. Indeed it has concluded (at least since September 11, 2001) that Kashmir is undermining its national interest and threatening its own security.

The point I want to make here is that Kashmiris need to find arguments that are not dependent on fears about another India - Pakistan clash over Kashmir. That is to give legitimacy to Zardari’s accusation of hostage-taking. If Delhi and Islamabad want to be friends, it does not spell doom for Kashmir. To react as if it is does is to admit of no independent existence of the Kashmir conundrum outside of the nationalist egos of the two states. Surely this cannot be the argument in Srinagar. If Delhi and Islamabad don’t exploit emotions over Kashmir any longer, it is because making Kashmir a bone of contention no longer serves their national interests. No more, no less.

If there is a need to analyse the stated objections in Srinagar and Islamabad, there is also a need to do so with what has not been said in Delhi about Mr. Zardari’s insight. It reflects a very confident and self-assured India. Why is this so?  “Shining” India, after all, seems to have given way to an “emerging” one, a term that is appropriately apathetic given the width and depth of poverty, corruption and other malaise that afflict this complex mega-country. Delhi’s silence, it seems to me, is in part a direct reflection of the ubiquitous American presence in Southasia. Washington has long been pursuing a strategy of cascading imperialism whereby it seeks to identify regional allies, whom it assures of its essential support in return for furthering U.S. interests in the region. In Southasia it has identified India as its primary partner, as suggested by Nicholas Burns in a recent article in Foreign Affairs. As such, its task is to watch over Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and, putatively, Burma. It is also seen by Mr. Burns as an overseer for China in his advocacy, rather patronizingly, that India must “ensure that China’s rise is peaceful” and, beyond that, also “prevent the Muslim world from turning its back on modernity.”  Given these global tasks, Delhi need not sweat over off-the-cuff remarks of a political novice.

The negative reactions from across the political spectrum in Kashmir to Mr. Zardari’s statement should demonstrate one thing to Kashmir-watchers in Delhi and Islamabad: that the Kashmir conundrum has now become one that is independent of New Delhi and Islamabad. It is in this context that the statement of the PDP Patron, Mufti M. Sayeed, that, “We should not mislead ourselves about brushing the [Kashmir] issue under the carpet as was done on earlier occasions”, must be seen. In other words: civic, social and economic issues in Kashmir are important, but the Kashmir polity is no longer content with running a municipality and wants to debate the central issue of their perceptions of sovereignty, or the quantum of their role in governing themselves. It is an open assertion of the fact that local aspirations can no longer be ignored, that it is the denial of these aspirations that has created the problem.

Although the PPP Co-Chairman’s remark on Kashmir is the spontaneous reaction of a political lightweight, it is reflective of Pakistan’s strategic direction in the context of globalization, despite recent “clarifications”. It is this that needs to be analysed and understood in Kashmir. Mr. Zardari has only understood ten percent of the Kashmir problem, and will soon come to understand the rest. Meanwhile it is critical that the State’s Kashmiris, particularly its radical resistance, and its non-Kashmiri population, together evolve and agree on an approach that is less Islamabad or Delhi centric, and more J&K State centric. All the peoples of J&K, admittedly of divergent political views, will recognize and appreciate it.

Siddiq Wahid

Ladakh House

Srinagar

March 6^th, 2008

As the premiere of the long-awaited Koran film by far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders nears, it's not uncommon to hear Muslims call for some way to censor what they expect to be a blistering condemnation of their faith.

But not all see the film -- now expected to be broadcast by the end of this month -- as an opportunity to revive the polarisation of the Prophet Mohammad cartoons clash in 2006, when freedom of expression and respect for faith were presented as implacable opposites.

Tariq Ramadan, one of Europe's most prominent Muslim intellectuals, has never shied from confronting the critics of his faith. But his approach to the Wilders film aims to avoid a repeat of the cartoons controversy. At a recent conference in Sweden, he told Reuters that people could not be prevented from publishing material like the Wilders film and the Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that triggered protests across the Muslim world.

"My position is they have the right to do it and we don't need new laws to prevent them from doing it," Ramadan said. "But not everything which is legal is intelligent. Sometimes you have to think about a sense of decency and to live together."

Ramadan went on: "My advice (to Muslims) is take an intellectual critical distance towards this. Say 'we don't like it' but go ahead and just ignore it."

Ramadan is optimistic that lessons learned from the Danish cartoons affair will help the Dutch authorities avert a similar crisis over the Wilders film, expected to be released on or around March 28.

His upbeat view was shared by Dutch security experts addressing the conference. One of them, Bob de Graaff of Leiden University, said the affair had fuelled interest in Islam among the Dutch population at large, with more visits to mosques by non-Muslims and a higher quality of media debate.

A newspaper poll this week showed a surprisingly high level of public knowledge about Islam, said de Graaff. He ventured to suggest many of his countrymen knew more about Islam than Christianity. "An intellectual middle class of Muslims in the Netherlands has established itself...They are causing some Dutchmen to retreat from the easy arguments of populism which they preferred for a while," the academic said.

Other European experts praised the Dutch for taking pre-emptive steps to defuse hostile Muslim reaction to the film. The authorities have worked hard in recent months to reach out to the Muslim community, for example through imams and youth workers. They are also working through diplomatic channels with Islamic nations.

For a Reuters story on how the Dutch are trying to apply the lessons of the Mohammad cartoons crisis, click here.

Will it be enough? Some security analysts fear the Dutch will find it far harder to contain international anger and protests than to mollify the domestic Muslim community.

With NATO saying it is nearing a deal to use Russian land and airspace to supply its security forces in Afghanistan, I’ve been trying to  work out what this could mean for Pakistan.

In the Asia Times Online, former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar quotes U.S. military spokesmen as saying that about three quarters of all supplies are currently sent to Afghanistan via Pakistan. ”On the face of it, Washington should jump at the Russian offer of support to the NATO mission in Afghanistan,” he writes. “Pakistan has proved to be an unreliable partner in the ‘war on terror’. The growing political uncertainties in Pakistan put question marks on the wisdom of the US continuing to depend so heavily on Pakistan for ferrying supplies for its troops in Afghanistan.”

My first thought was to ask if this would mean a lowering of U.S. support for Pakistan and a concomitant reduction in the $10 billion in aid that it has pumped into Pakistan since 9/11 to obtain its help in the war in Afghanistan? Many Pakistanis complain the  United States has a long history of using and then abandoning Pakistan, most notably relying on it to arm and fund the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then losing interest when the Russians withdrew in 1989.

 But it seems highly unlikely that the United States would turn its back on Pakistan this time around since it can’t afford to keep driving Taliban and al Qaeda fighters out of Afghanistan only for them to seek refuge in Pakistan. According to a report published by the U.S. intelligence group Stratfor in January, “So long as the Taliban have sanctuary and logistical support from Pakistan, transferring all coalition troops in Iraq to Afghanistan would have no effect. And withdrawing from Afghanistan would return the situation to the status quo before Sept. 11. If dealing with the Taliban and destroying al Qaeda are part of any endgame, the key lies in Pakistan.”

In fact it would seem more logical that the United States would want to send troops to Pakistan to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda and prevent them seeking sanctuary there - as Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested in January. That “offer” was promptly rebuffed by Pakistan and is even less likely to be acceptable after parliamentary elections in February left Washington’s ally, President Pervez Musharraf, fighting for his survival.

The new coalition government being put in place by the Pakistan People’s Party of the late Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is expected to try to avoid the confrontational approach to Islamist militants which left many Pakistanis accusing Musharraf of fighting America’s war, and which many blame for bringing  mayhem into its heartland, including the latest bomb attacks in Lahore and Islamabad.

In a comment on a blog I posted last week, former Pakistan diplomat Wajid Shamsul Hasan writes that ”by exploring a more carrot-and-stick approach to dealing with the Taliban and al Qaeda than simply shooting at everything that moves, there may be greater dividends than were possible hitherto. Even the army has been uncomfortable with methods tried thus far.”

There are lots of pieces of the jigsaw missing here. Bhadrakumar says in his Asia Times Online article that NATO is so keen to secure Russian help in Afghanistan that it is willing to defer a decision on membership for Ukraine and Georgia in what he calls “a huge gesture by NATO to Moscow’s sensitivities”. Though the existence of such a trade-off has been denied by western diplomats, it does suggest  Washington is extremely worried about the situation in Afghanistan. If it is desperate enough to go cap in hand to Moscow to help it defeat the Taliban, can it also be patient enough to tolerate a new government in Pakistan trying a more softly, softly approach?

So to go back to my original question, what would a deal between NATO and Russia on Afghanistan, if confirmed, mean for Pakistan? Would the United States’ reduced reliance on Pakistan for supplies to Afghanistan lead to less involvement there? Or does it signal the opposite — that Washington is now so worried about Afghanistan that it will put even more pressure on Pakistan to crack down harder to cut off the escape routes?

In this context it’s perhaps worth rereading Henry Kissinger’s warning to the United States in an op-ed published last week in the International Herald Tribune. “A wise policy must recognize that the internal structure of Pakistani politics is essentially out of the control of American political decision-making,” he writes.

I just came across a feature on Salon.com headlined Killing ourselves in Afghanistan which I’d recommend to anyone interested in U.S. policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Writer MatthewCole has collected evidence which he says shows that some of the $10 billion given in U.S. aid to Pakistan since 9/11 has been used to fund Taliban militants killing American and other troops in Afghanistan. “In part because of Pakistani help, the Taliban have made a steady comeback and American and Afghan casualties are at their highest annual levels since the war began,” he writes. “Islamabad has denied complicity and Washington has maintained official silence, but the double-dealing is not surprising. It’s just the continuation of the Pakistani government’s former alliance with the Taliban, which was itself an outgrowth of a decades-old Pakistani policy of trying to exert control over the internal affairs of its chaotic neighbor.”

Cole quotes European and American analysts as saying thatPakistan stepped up aid to the insurgents in 2004 because the administration led by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf saw that U.S. forces were achieving no better than a stalemate in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban’s stronghold. “The Pakistanis stepped into the resulting power vacuum by aiding the Taliban.”

As any journalist who has ever tried to write about this part of the world will know, establishing the truth is nearly impossible, and much of Cole’s evidence will no doubt be challenged, both in Islamabad and elsewhere. But what makes this article interesting reading is the way in which he has tried to put his own experience on the ground together with the CIA perspective on Pakistan.

“The Americans were quickly aware that the Pakistanis had no enthusiasm for fighting the Islamist insurgency,” he writes. “Gary Schroen, a former senior CIA official who led the first U.S. team into Afghanistan days after 9/11 and a former station chief in Islamabad, told me recently that where the Pakistan army does engage in battle against militants, they do so without vigor. ‘The Pakistanis don’t want to fight a counter-insurgency inside their own country,’ he said. “They don’t want to fight against Muslims, they want to fight against India.’ Ultimately, the Americans came to realize that the (Pakistan intelligence agency) ISI was not just avoiding conflict with the insurgents, or shielding them, but actively abetting them.”

That the U.S. administration did nothing about this, he considers “an American foreign-policy debacle”.

Whatever you think about his article, I’d recommend you read through to the end, for it’s only then that you realise that pinning down the relationship between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban is like trying to hit a moving target. Cole says that the Pakistan administration has now turned against many of theIslamist militants,  fearing that they are endangering Pakistan itself:

“Of late, however, the foreign-led Taliban factions in the Tribal Areas, the ones believed to shelter al-Qaida’s Arab leadership, have begun focusing more attention on destabilizing Islamabad than Kabul. Now Pakistani intelligence has reason to work with the Americans, at least when it comes to some jihadis, including those known locally as ‘the Arabs’. Many of these insurgents were once aligned with the ISI, but no more,” Cole writes. “The ISI and the Pakistani army are now at war with a powerful, many-tendriled insurgent band they helped to create. The ISI’s history of double-dealing has come back to haunt it.”

Cole’s article does what many journalists aspire to do — “a first writing of history”. It’s already history in the sense that Musharraf is now battling for survival. It’s history because Cole himself says that the attitude of Pakistan has changed. It’s history too in the sense that Pakistan, which for so long looked to Afghanistan to give it strategic depth againstIndia, is now trying to make peace with its much bigger neighbour.

So where does that leave us? As a journalist, who is interested in history, I’d like to know what you think. What did happen after 9/11 and what is happening now?

Benjamin Disraeli, one of Britain’s foremost prime ministers of the 19th century, once said that, “Coalitions, though sucessful, have always found this, that their triumph has been brief.”

News that Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari have agreed on a coalition government raised the same issue.Will theirs be a brief triumph, or the start of a sea change in Pakistani politics?

And with both now calling for the restoration of the judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf last November — in what appeared to be a quid pro quo from Zardari in return for Sharif agreeing to bring his party into the government — the pressure is mounting on the former army general.

In my last post on what is next for Musharraf, written immediately after the election, one commenter said even if Zardari’s PPP and Sharif’sPML (N) agreed on a coalition, that the government “after the honeymoon period is bound to have differences cropping up as they are ultimately two different parties having different ideologies thus paving the way for the return of the Musharraf allies.”

Has the mood changed since then? Is the pressure on Musharraf becoming irresistible?

Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party has delayed naming its prime ministerial candidate, setting off Internet chatter about a power struggle in the party with backroom machinations stretching from Washington to Islamabad. And not far behind is the fear that a prolonged political vaccum at the top will embolden even more lethal militant strikes than the ones witnessed over the past week or so.  PPP vice chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim remains the frontrunner as he has from the time Bhutto was assassinated, the Pakistani Spectator says, but her husband and successor Asif Zardari had other ideas and wanted the issue to be debated further and that had opened the way for more pulls and pressures. One comment on its blog complained: ”Will the voices of the people count or will the American and Saudis control this nation’s future ?”

B.Raman, a former chief of Indian intelligence agency RAW, writes in South Asia Analysis Group that the successful election may yet turn out to be a false dawn, arguing that Zardari’s attempt to pass over Fahim partly because he was a fellow-Sindhi, and instead pick someone from politically crucial Punjab, might inflame party workers in the home base and widen the provincial divides never far from the surface.    

Asif Ali Zardari has raised hackles in Kashmir and Pakistan by telling Indian news network CNN-IBN that relations between India and Pakistan should no longer be held hostage to the Kashmir dispute. The leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and widower of Benazir Bhutto said in an interview that the two countries should focus instead on building trade and economic ties.

“I am not getting hostage to that issue,” he said. “The idea is we feel for Kashmir, PPP has always felt for Kashmir, we have a strong Kashmir policy and we always had one. But having said that we don’t want to be hostage to that situation. That is a situation we can agree to disagree (on). Countries do, we have positions, you have positions. We can agree to disagree on everything.”

In the Kashmiri capital Srinagar, the Kashmir Times says his comments “evoked strong reaction and resentment from not only the separatists in the valley, but also from the mainstream politicians”. Greater Kashmir says Zardari had no right to speak on behalf of his country on “the mother of all the issues between India and Pakistan”. Thousands of Kashmiris had not lost their lives in the revolt against Indian rule just so that people like Zardari can promote trade and tourism, it says.

 Pakistan blogger moinansari goes further, accusing him of betraying the beliefs of his late wife and of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. “PPP Treachery! Unelected Zardari’s True Colors are Showing!” it screams, in a lengthy blog which also includes quotes from both Benazir and Zulfikar Bhutto. ”Zardari has no right to speak for Kashmiris or Pakistanis,” it says.

To be fair, the reaction is more muted than it would have been at the height of the Kashmir revolt a few years ago. Even Greater Kashmir concedes that “no sane person in the subcontinent would advocate continuation of strain in the relations between the two neighbors.”

And aside from the blog mentioned, I can find very little in the Pakistani blogosphere about Zardari’s remarks. Is it a sign of the times or just a reflection of the internet that the response on Kashmir was minor compared to the torrent of blogs unleashed when Pakistan pulled the plug on YouTube? Was Zardari merely reflecting a new realpolitik in Pakistan, or did he betray the Kashmir cause?