India and Pakistan turn into good friends, and America is kept at arms’ length. Is that possible?

Diplomacy like politics is the art of the possible, and if you listen to the new voices emerging from Pakistan, there is change blowing in the wind as it makes the transition to civilian rule after nearly nine years of military leadership.

To stop the extremism and intolerance that is sweeping Pakistan, it must turn away from the Middle East and instead look to its east to rediscover a gentler, yet immensely vibrant heritage that took root in India through the centuries, Pakistan’s The News argued in an extraordinary editorial urging the country’s new leaders to respond to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh call to transform relations into the “best ever”.

“Despite all the attempts to deny this, the reality is that Pakistanis and Indians share a great deal in common — from cuisine to wedding traditions, and of course a great deal more. Rather than tearing ourselves away from this past, which is so much a part of our present, it should be warmly embraced,” it said.

To be sure, there is an element of rebound here and it’s more the fraying relationship with the United States that is driving Pakistan into the unlikely embrace of India, rather than any new-found love for its bitter rival, as the Daily Times said, warning that forging a new relationship with India while dumping America wouldn’t work.

“From the editorials written by the newspapers one comes to the conclusion that whereas the American nexus has become anathema, Pakistan’s good relations with India are a part of the new vision.” it said.

“Somehow, it is presumed that normalising with India will get rid of our problems at home. It is also assumed that getting rid of the American friendship and its implied slavery will benefit us on the basis of our earlier normalisation with India.” But taking on America would only damage Pakistan and give it less leverage in negotiations with India, it added.

On the other side of the border there are equally insistent voices calling for faster normalisation of ties. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is hoping to make a visit to Pakistan, a rare event by an Indian leader, at the earliest opportunity. The two sides are trying to put some agreements in place so that it doesn’t look like an image-building exercise, one for a new leader and another facing elections in India that could be as early as this November.

But of course, mirroring the sceptics across the border, there are voices of caution in India too. A day after Singh said he would try to transform relations with Pakistan, his security adviser M.K.Narayanan warned that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence continued to support militant groups that had carried out attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

And those with longer memories point out that the installation of a civilian government in Pakistan historically has not been a portent of improved bilateral ties, mostly because of the need for politicians to appear strong on national defence. As an army general President Pervez Musharraf was less vulnerable than civilian politicians on that issue. The Indians are aware of the history.

So is it going to be a real detente? Or are the neighbours condemned to uneasy ties, prisoners of history?

When it comes to Pakistan, sometimes you want to be told what is going on; sometimes you want to stop and think for yourself.  But rarely is there a middle ground. Here are three very different pieces for those who are interested in this conundrum.

In an op-ed in Dawn Cyril Almeida tackles the perennial question of how far Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) controls the Islamist militants who helped end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, fought against Indian rule in Kashmir in the 1990s and this century turned first against the United States in 9/11 and then against Pakistan itself in a wave of suicide bombings.

“The evolution of Afghan jihadists of the 1980s to today’s suicide bombers via the Kashmir insurgency and the Taliban regime is an open secret and few question the role of the intelligence apparatus in nurturing that progression,” he writes. “Today, the problem is that neither the civilian elite nor the general public is convinced that suicide bombers are no longer under the control of intelligence ‘handlers’ who have guided the activities of militants for over two decades now.”

His editorial calls, perhaps paradoxically, for a new approach to militancy which is both nuanced and decisive. “Whatever course of action the incoming government takes will be fraught with difficulties. The key though is to act decisively. If the incoming government dithers, the coming crisis will almost make people yearn for the simpler days of a tussle between the presidency and the judiciary.”

On another subject, here is an article I came across on a website called n+1 defending the legacy of President Pervez Musharraf. It credits him with creating the conditions for a working democracy in 2008 that did not exist when he seized power in 1999. After a day in which he swore in a new prime minister from the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, and watched Pakistan’s new civilian leadership courted by the same U.S. officials he counted as allies, the article makes interesting reading, running against the tide of his current unpopularity. ”It is entirely fitting that the very conditions that Musharraf has attempted to create to make true democracy possible in Pakistan should provide the force that may remove him from office when he starts to behave autocratically,” it says.

Finally, I noticed a blog by a Pakistani called Ahson Saeed Hasan, who blames Pakistan’s current problems on the Islamist policies of former military ruler Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Unlike the other two posts, his entry is personal rather than dispassionate. “A few days back a close friend raised an obnoxiously intriguing question,” he writes. “Why is it that a good number of folks from my generation who grew up during General Zia-ul-Haq’s rule are so severely antagonistic and aggressive when it comes to a conversation that is inclined towards Islam being a religion of peace?”

Can someone find a coherent narrative here which draws these different threads together? Or are they all reflections of a country which more than 60 years after its creation has yet to settle on a clear identity?
 

Thanks to openDemocracy for highlighting this piece on EurasiaNet about a row between the Taliban and al Qaeda which it says has surfaced among bloggers on a website in Egypt.

“Islamic extremists who regularly post messages to a pro-Al-Qaeda website in Egypt are accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad,” it says.  “Internet criticisms of the Taliban follow a February statement from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar announcing that his movement wants to maintain positive and ‘legitimate’ relations with countries neighbouring Afghanistan.”

It caught my eye since it linked into comments in the Pakistani and other media about the relationship between pro al Qaeda Arab fighters and the Taliban based on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its implications for Islamist militancy now spreading into the heartland of Pakistan.  The usual argument is that while elements in the Pakistan army and the ISI, the country’s powerful intelligence agency, might have some sympathy for the Taliban — a legacy of the days when they worked together to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan — they blame al Qaeda for turning on Pakistan. 

In a blog on this earlier this month I highlighted a feature on Salon.com headlined Killing ourselves in Afghanistan in which the writer accused the ISI of working against American interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This had begun to change, however, said writer Matthew Cole, with the attacks on 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,” he wrote. “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.”

Is there a pattern emerging here? Is there a split between the Taliban and al Qaeda that could be exploited by the Pakistan army and the ISI? Or is this just more smoke and mirrors about an invisible enemy that nobody can either understand or control?