Don't miss the nuclear train, there won't be another for a long time to come

Once upon a time in another continent, there was a country, almost as large as India, which was rich and prosperous. Between 1880 and 1916, Argentina was among the top ten nations of the world, a potential great power. Since then it has been steadily declining, with its politics veering between conservatism, military rule and radical populism.
Even today, the country possesses abundant resources and a well educated and talented population, but it remains a potential great nation, rather than an actual one. Somehow, it seems to have missed all the chances that it got in the past century to get back on the track to greatness. India’s story is an older one, going back more than three centuries. But these days we, too, seem to be resembling luckless Argentina, rather than our northern neighbour China which, in the short space of three decades, has nearly restored its status as a great world power.
There is a trite assumption that “Shining” or “Incredible” India, one with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, are inevitable; indeed, in some measure, we are already “there.” The reality, if we are to learn from history, could be different. With the world’s largest population of illiterate, ill and hungry people, we are only part way through the journey. Our recent successes could turn out to be a peak, rather than an upward trend line.

Circumstance

Looked at from another angle, the health of the country’s political system and processes does not appear too good. First, India’s political system seems to be suffering from a serious dysfunction. With none of the three major political formations — the Congress, BJP and the Left —being able to establish themselves, the country is being pulled apart by smaller ethnic and caste leaders whose narrow focus not only does not take into account “India” and issues related to it, but actually undermines the idea of India. Second, the administrative system of the country has become so corrupt and inefficient that the delivery of public health services, education, and even basic law and order does not exist for the poorest half of the population. Third, the inefficiencies associated with the Indian political and administrative system have led to a collapse of rural infrastructure and the creation of shoddy urban conglomerations which are, in some measure because of factors 1 and 2, becoming ungovernable. Fourth, India’s sclerotic political and administrative system is so caught up with simply surviving that it has ceased to be effective in solving outstanding political problems, or problems that are emerging. So negotiations with separatists in Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Assam, or with the Maoists in central India, seem to be trapped on a treadmill.
Just how does the Indo-US nuclear deal connect to these varied set of issues? It is not as if the nuclear deal will resolve all of India’s problems and make us a superpower. What the deal and the way it has been handled does is to tell us a great deal about India’s self-doubts and uncertainties, and indeed points to the hubris that could bring our ambitions low. Beyond the nuts and bolts of civil nuclear cooperation, the deal represents a major effort by the leading nations of the world to bring India into the mainstream of international politics — somewhat akin to the exercise that took place in the 1970s with the People’s Republic of China. Fitting India into the world’s non-proliferation system, whose lynch-pin is the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is seen as an act that will promote global stability.

Opposition

The heavens will not come down if the deal does not go through. We can bungle on as we have. But it will leave uncomfortable questions about India’s ability to discriminate between what is good and what is bad for itself; and of the ability of its political system to work the international system. By all accounts, the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency have yielded on every single count raised by India, yet a significant chunk of our politicians, driven by short-term and narrow considerations, are unable to accept this.
Of the two main opponents, it is easier to understand, though not condone, the Left’s opposition. It is based on an irrational, and untenable belief that the US is the leader of “world imperialism”. The problem with the Indian Left and its leadership is that they are fighting a war on another planet. In that world, the Vietnam war is still continuing, Che and Fidel’s revolution has swept Latin America and the Soviet Union is flourishing. Unfortunately for the Left, in our world, a united Vietnam, has followed China’s “market socialism”, become a new tiger economy, and is a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations, a once reviled grouping of “imperialist lackeys”. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist and Fidel has just retired as the head of a nation he has left decrepit.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s opposition is completely spurious, and somewhat cynical, because it has no bugbear like “imperialism” holding it back, neither is it opposed to the idea of having the US take the lead in lifting the nuclear embargo on India. The BJP, which termed the US India’s “natural ally” and whose current prime ministerial hopeful once pressed his government to send troops to Iraq, can hardly oppose the deal on the same grounds as the Left. The BJP says it will get a better deal. But, as Strobe Talbott has pointed out, it was willing to settle for less than 50 per cent of what the Congress has got. In these circumstances to argue that a “majority” of Parliament is opposed to the deal is superficial.
India certainly needs to be grateful to the US for pushing the deal to the extent it has. No doubt the US has its own interests in mind, but India is not a callow new nation, or a failing state which can be manipulated to some nefarious end. The 123 Agreement with the US and the India-specific IAEA safeguards agreement have shown that our officials, if properly directed, are capable of not only preserving, but furthering the country’s best interests.
As it is, in its totality, the deal is between the NSG cartel and India. The 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act, the India-specific safeguards agreement are all enabling processes. The actual agreement will be the “clean exemption” that the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have to give India to enable all its 45 members to resume civil nuclear trade with India. For a time the NSG was a western grouping. But over time it has gathered strength and drawn in countries like Russia, South Africa, Brazil and China and become a true international cartel.

Wishful thinking

There is an argument that, given the trends, the US and the world community will be happy to offer the deal to India at a later date. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t. True, having established several benchmarks, it will be easy to pick up the thread of the negotiations subsequently. But consider two issues: First, there is nothing left to negotiate. Everything that India could have conceivably wanted has been delivered. Second, it is not impossible that we can once again arrive at a conjuncture where we can get a friendly US president, an acquiescent US Congress, and a cooperative head of the IAEA to offer us a deal. But it is improbable. History does not usually repeat itself. In the coming decades we are unlikely to have another system-destructive US president like George W Bush, who was willing to bend the NPT system, as no other US leader would have been willing to, so as to accommodate India.
This article first appeared in Mail Today March 12, 2008

Spies are also human beings

The story of Kashmir Singh cannot fail to stir the heart of every Indian. Here is a man, convicted for spying, who spent 35 long years entombed on the death row in Pakistan. Singh says he was not a spy; that does not matter. Even if he was one, he was a pawn in a larger game that routinely has dozens of agents crossing the border, or the Line of Control in Kashmir, to gather low level military intelligence. Their task is to update what is called the enemy’s “order of battle”— the location of armoured or infantry units, artillery batteries, air force squadrons and cantonments — the pieces of a real life chessboard.
In the world of blacks and whites, espionage occupies a grey area. Those who spy for our country are considered heroes, while the ones who spy on us are reviled as the lowest of the low. In the old days, and that means till World War I and II, spies were routinely executed after a trial of sorts by military tribunals. With India and Pakistan stumbling towards peace and the perceptible decline of hostility towards each other, it’s perhaps time that some humane principles were introduced into this primeval gladiator pit as well.

Pawns

Spying was considered a distasteful, if necessary, part of the contest between nations. However, an interesting twist was brought on by the enormous threat of global destruction that came with the emergence of arsenals of nuclear weapon-tipped missiles. Early arms control treaties between the US and USSR worked with the assumption that both sides would keep track of compliance by the other through, what were called national technical means — spy satellites, electronic and other kinds of surveillance. The idea was to provide assurance that no one side was sneaking ahead with a technology that could undermine the peace brought on by the capabilities of mutually assured destruction. In our era, for the big powers at least, the spy was recast as a regulator.
The problem is that both India and Pakistan treat spies like Kashmir Singh as expendable pawns. Most of them are recruited from villages of Punjab — Pakistani and Indian — and belong to the lower strata. Being pawns, they are simply ignored when arrested. So casual is the approach towards them that neither country ever acknowledges their existence and therefore shows no interest in assisting those arrested, or rehabilitating those who have served their time after conviction.
In September 2005, in the wake of the Sarabjit Singh case, several former field agents organised a gathering under the leadership of Vasdev Sharma, a former spy, who had spent eight long years in Pakistani jails. They complained that despite their suffering, no one bothered about their families or recognised their services after their release. Spies of an even earlier generation like Kishori Lal and Gulzar Masih, too, complained of indifference of officials after their release from Pakistani jails in 1974 in the wake of the 1971 Simla Agreement. They also revealed that in 1968 three Indians — Kapur Chand, Gurcharan Singh and Sham Sunder had been hanged in Sialkot jail.
Surinder Kumar, an Indian spy who returned home in 2006 after serving 15 years in Pakistani jails, told The Tribune that Balbir Singh, who was arrested in 1989 on spying charges was hanged in Sahiwal Jail in 1997, perhaps the last Indian spy to be so punished. Kumar said that the Punjab High Court in Pakistan had upheld the death sentence for Kirpal Singh, of Gurdaspur, on the charges of spying. Kirpal Singh is in Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore and apparently has an appeal pending with the Pakistan Supreme Court.
Kumar’s story is perhaps typical. He was in the Indian Army from 1970 to 1978 and was persuaded by the intelligence agencies to serve as a spy with the promise that his family would be looked after if he was caught. This brave man went to Pakistan five times and stayed there for a total of about five years. But in 1992 he was caught in Khiara village in the Narowal district of Pakistan and went through the familiar routine of torture and incarceration.

Knights

The treatment to these pawns contrasts sharply with upper class suspects. Each country has hinted at having high level informants in the other, but no one has offered any conclusive proof. In her book My Feudal Lord, Tehmina Durrani, accused her ex-husband Ghulam Mustafa Khar of being in the pay of the R&AW. Last year, Gauhar Ayub, the son of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, claimed that a high level Indian military officer (he virtually hinted it was Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw) had provided Pakistan Indian battle plans in the 1950s.
An Indian R&AW officer has claimed that a high-level mole had tipped off New Delhi of Pakistan Air Force’s plan for a surprise attack on December 3, 1971, an action that led to the outbreak of the third India-Pakistan war. Jaswant Singh has claimed that a high-level mole in the Prime Minister’s Office had tipped off the US in 1995 and blocked India’s plans to test nuclear weapons. Till now, at least, no high-level person has been tried for espionage by either side. It is entirely possible that such people have been detected and forcibly retired or side-tracked because neither side wanted to be embarrassed by a revelation of betrayal at a high level.
While there does appear to be a clear record of Indian nationals hanged for espionage in Pakistan, no one accused of spying for Pakistan has been executed in India, at least in recent decades. This is in keeping with India’s generally relaxed attitude towards spying and betrayal. Spying has not been a hanging offence in India for quite some time now. Leave alone spies, India is uncommonly lenient with traitors as well. This is best evidenced by the way the government handled the case of R&AW official Rabinder Singh who was allowed to get away, or of the Larkins brothers — one a Major General and the other an Air Vice Marshal — who got ridiculously light sentence for selling military secrets to the US. There have been other important traitors, too, who have been allowed to live their normal lives.

Chessboard

It would be difficult to persuade countries not to punish spies, leave alone treat them leniently. But there is no reason why they should be denied due process and humane treatment. By definition war is a barbaric thing, but that has not detracted from the efforts of the world community to make it, howsoever much of an oxymoron it may sound, humane. The Geneva Conventions ban the use of certain kind of munitions and other conventions prohibit the use of chemical weapons. The campaign against land mines is an effort to expand the prohibition to a new and significant area.
India and Pakistan can also perhaps explore another option —exchanging spies. During the Cold War, some top level operatives were exchanged. Colonel Rudolf Abel, a Soviet sleeper agent arrested in 1957, was exchanged for Francis Gary Powers who was shot down in a U-2 in 1960. Gordon Lonsdale aka Konon Molody, a Soviet sleeper in UK, was exchanged for Greville Wynne, a British spy caught in Moscow. The fate reserved for traitors, however, has been different. In the Soviet Union they were, like Oleg Penkovsky, almost always executed, while in the US, people like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment that will ensure that they are never free.
The quality of an intelligence service is best brought out by the effort it makes to retrieve its agents. The Russians have excelled in this — getting spies back through exchange, or, in the case of George Blake, springing them from jail. The Americans and British, too, managed to get back some of their own, and also made enormous efforts to get Soviet traitors out of the erstwhile USSR. The Israelis have not given up on lobbying the US to release Jonathan Pollard, one of their agents. Abandoning spies and leaving their families to fend for themselves does not speak too highly of the professionalism of the Indian intelligence services.
This article was first published in Mail Today March 5

Our politicians are good at splurging public funds

This article was written on the eve of the Union Budget for 2008-09. Its focus was not the expected Rs 60,000 crores giveaway in the form of the loan waiver, but the expenditure of nearly Rs 150,000 crores for defence and security without any effort to monitor the expenditure, or propose economies which would make our forces more effective, if smaller in size.

The budget documents have already been sealed and are ready to be tabled in Parliament. So a plea for a hard look at our humongous security budget would make little difference. It could have provided some perspective in the budget debate, but that is if and when the Lok Sabha begins to actually debate budgets, rather than rubber-stamp them. So this is really for the public record.

The coming budget will see the annual outlay for defence breaching the Rs 100,000 crore barrier for the first time. This only covers the three wings of the armed forces and not the central police forces, intelligence services and the defence-related components of the departments of nuclear energy and space. Neither does it factor in the rising pension bill which amounted to Rs 14,600 crores last year. If all these were to be totaled up, the expenditure on security would be nearer to Rs 150,000 crores. For all this, are we getting the best bang for the buck — the short answer is, no. Our military may be the envy of the region, but the security threats within — the continuing insurgencies in the east, the growth of Maoism, and terrorism — make us appear hollow.

Waste

The defence budget is the largest single departmental item in the Union budget, exceeded only by the Rs 150,000 crores paid as interest payments on internal and external debt. Yet it does not get the kind of scrutiny that other components get. With an economist Prime Minister and Finance Minister, the civilian side of the demands get a thorough political screening. But on the defence side, the system is that the services make their demands, civilians from the generalist bureaucracy make sure that the i's are dotted and the t's crossed, and pass them on to the politicians.

Being entirely devoid of any expertise or help, the politicians in the Cabinet use the simple arithmetical formula — so much for plan expenditure, so much left over for interest payments on loans, add to this the sums for fertiliser and other subsidies, and the balance is kept for defence. This should cover the normal rise in pay and allowances of the forces, maintenance of existing assets and provide for some modernisation. Expenditure on education, rural development, environment, health and family welfare come, in the main, from plan expenditure, and in any case totaled some Rs 86,000 crores in the past year.

Given the huge claim on resources by a hungry, illiterate and unemployed population, such an approach is scandalous. But there it is. Instead of scrutinising the expenditure and directing economies, Members of Parliament not only rubber-stamp the demands, but often demand additional spending.

Till 2000, the political system made little or no effort to overhaul the system. Then, the Vajpayee government constituted a Group of Ministers to suggest a set of reforms for the national security system. In May 2001, the Cabinet approved all 24 recommendations of the GoM, but it deferred appointing the Chief of Defence Staff, pending consultations with various political parties.

Five years later we have not moved an inch. An integrated staff organisation has been created, but it remains headless because ill-informed considerations have persuaded the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government not to press ahead. The result is, that the person who would become the chief military adviser of the government, and coordinate the far reaching reform on equipping and managing our defence system, remains to be appointed.

In 1952, the government of the day arbitrarily decreed that the defence forces headquarters would become an “attached office” of the Ministry of Defence. The manual of office procedures decrees that while “departments” like the MoD could make policy, their “attached offices” merely implemented it. Since then, all policy is made by the Ministry, though the factual position is that they never take major decisions without consulting with the armed forces, not because they think this is a good thing, but because they lack the technical expertise to make them.

Reform

The decision at the time reflected a fear in the minds of the civilian leaders, including Pandit Nehru, of the armed forces. Remarkably enough, two years ago, a top functionary of the government told me that the reason why the CDS idea would not fly with the UPA was because Sonia Gandhi felt that it could encourage a “coup”. The dynasty's view, no doubt shaped by bureaucrats and intelligence officers who themselves hold vast unaccountable powers, clearly trumps all reason and the 60 years of disciplined service the armed forces have given to the country.

The current system of individual services is not only inefficient, but it adds needless costs and creates security gaps. The Army and Air Force maintain two separate infrastructure for training, spares support, repair and overhaul of their helicopter fleets. As Air Marshal Brijesh Jayal has pointed out in Vayu, one of the reasons why the Kargil incursion was not discovered was that the Army was using hand-held cameras for tactical reconnaissance from helicopters, an improvisation that could not work because of the high vibration levels in a chopper. They did not think of calling on the Air Force to do the job with the help of their sophisticated photo and thermal imaging equipment. But perhaps even if they had done so, the Air Force may have demurred with this or that excuse.

Because the government cannot decide on a CDS, which would, over time, lead to integrated commands, India is blessed with 18 or so regional commands of the three services; most are not co-located. The Army's eastern command is in Kolkata, the Navy's at Vizag and the Air Force’s is at Shillong. The huge savings that could come with half the number of command establishments are manifest. So are the efficiencies that would come with fusing the three wings of the armed forces into one integrated force.

If the government does not want a CDS, they must decide on an alternative system to coordinate and arbitrate between the demands of the three services.Obviously the person or the institution must have the requisite expertise. That is why the CDS was seen as a tri-service institution where the single-service identity of the officers would slowly meld into one. New communications technologies have brought a revolution in military affairs. But to take advantage of the revolution, you need new structures and organisations.

Incomprehension

So when the defence budget comes up on Friday and then is allegedly debated by our Parliament, there will be little effort at scrutiny or a pause for some introspection. There will be no suggestions at saving a couple of thousand crores from the huge security expenditure to meet urgent needs in the field of public health or infrastructure. Since no one has thought it through, for example, the very serious implications— political and financial— of the missile defence system that the DRDO is touting, a couple of hundred crores will be given to them to go ahead. Similar sums will be dished out to this or that scheme without any thought. The primary issue is not cost; after all a country will willingly pay what it must to secure itself. It is the efficacy, or to be precise the lack of it, of the way the present system functions.

In the absence of any political audit, our technology czars and bureaucrats will squander ever larger sums of money without check. So we will have missiles that don’t work, tanks and aircraft that are unlikely to see war, or at least the kind that requires tanks and fighters. Nothing in the performance of the UPA government, or its ministers associated with security, suggests that they are capable of understanding these issues, let alone acting on them.

This article appeared in Mail Today February 27, 2008

Competitive intolerance can fragment the Indian Union

November 18, 1962 may not mean much to someone like Raj Thackeray who was, in any case, born six years after that date. Since he is not a student of history he can’t be expected to understand its significance. But it is one of the blackest dates in modern Indian history.
A famous and well-entrenched division of the Indian army was overwhelmed in battle against Chinese invaders leading to the death of hundreds of officers and jawans, and a greater number wounded or taken prisoner of war. The dead are too many to list, but here is just a random selection of the names of the long forgotten heroes: Captain J.A. Dalby, Second Lieutenant Gurcharan Singh Kochar, Lance Naik Mushtaq Khan, all of the 5 Field Regiment, Havildar Raman Pillai, Lance Naik Armugam of the 6th Field regiment, Havildar Jai Singh Yadav, Naik Vishnu Gawade, Gunner Sambhaji Jadhav of the 36 Mountain Regiment, Jemadar Namdeo Kadam, Jemadar Pritam Singh, and Sapper Abdul Hakim of the 18 Field Company of the Bombay Engineer Group, Guardsmen Ram Sarup and Chandgi Ram of the Brigade of Guards, Sepoy Kuttian Kannan and Madhavan Thampi of the Madras Regiment, Sepoys Pal Singh and Gian Chand of the Dogra Regiment, Naik Kirpal Singh Negi of the Garhwal Rifles, Lt Col D.A. Taylor and Captain B.B. Ghosh of the 2/8 Gorkha Rifles, Lakshman Tanksale and Domnic Topno of the Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

Defenders
As is clear to anyone familiar with names in India, these people hailed from every part of the country and died defending a part of India that was hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres away from their homeland. They were not defending the Marathi manoos, or the UP bhayya or the Tamil thambi, nor for that matter were they fighting for the tribesmen of that far-off land where their remains lie today. They were defending the idea of India.
In the past weeks, as the idea came under assault in Mumbai there appeared to be few defenders of that India. Not the Prime Minister, nor the leaders of the Congress party whose ministry is supposed to govern the state. The leader of the Opposition took a somewhat roundabout route of saying Thackeray’s stand went against the Constitution of India, but not the idea of India. I suppose we should be grateful that he did invoke the Constitution in a generally positive way, because the shouts of politicians demanding that the compact be amended to reflect their sectional interest has been increasing in both decibel and frequency. Thackeray wants changes to prevent “outsiders” from coming into Mumbai, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi wants it to enshrine the reservation of government jobs beyond 50 per cent, Mayawati wants the changes to extend this reservation to the private sector, and the Congress wants to do it for the most tawdry reason — ensure that its hand-picked Election Commissioner is not thrown out of office.

Tribalism
This idea of India may be as old as Alexander the Great, but it is also new. It was created in the space of three months in the summer of 1947. In those months, eleven provinces and nearly 600 princely states were left largely to their own devices to shape themselves as nations. India succeeded, and in the short space of a decade established itself as a republic and a functioning democracy that worked on the basis of an elaborate Constitution. Pakistan remained, and in some senses remains, a work in progress. It shed its eastern wing to give birth to Bangladesh later and is today in the throes of a profound struggle to work out its own identity.
Yet, political India is not quite as solid as one would like to believe. From the outset it has been dogged by separatist demands in the North-East, then Tamil Nadu, followed by Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. The DMK’s Eelam fixation was resolved by the creation of a linguistic Tamil Nadu, but it remains just below the political skin of the Dravidian movement. The militancy in Punjab was crushed by brute force. J&K continues to fester despite tens of thousands of deaths, as does the North-East. Successors to Nehru and Patel have squandered their legacy not just by their ruthless desire to gain, or retain, political control, but by their sheer solipsistic incompetence. The secular, rule-based system that was in place till the end of the 1960s has now given way to one where secularism means something quite different from what it means in the English language, and as for rules, they are strictly for others.
The sudden upturn in India’s economic fortunes has created another set of faultlines. Even as older ones widen, newer ones seem to be created. Till 2007, Rajasthan was seen as a state with a generally peaceable reputation. Then came the crisis relating to the Gujjar demand for Scheduled Tribe status. As for the Dera Sacha Sauda, it seems to have emerged from the special Pandora’s box in a state where sectarian strife goes back to the 19th century.
Growth has been regional, and this in turn has triggered migratory movements that seem to be generating tensions, as such movements do anywhere in the world. But where countries can, and do, erect barriers to keep out nationals of other countries, can a democratic country do so against people of its own country? Nehru’s India managed the issue with pragmatism. To prevent unconscionable pressures it banned the transfer of land to non-state residents in J&K, Himachal, and several north-eastern states. Protecting minorities was a key to holding this diverse republic together. But where do you draw the line ? As sociologist Dipankar Gupta argued in these columns last week, majorities are now discovering that they can suddenly become minorities.
Competitive intolerance and a certain kind of tribalism now appears to be taking hold of the country. In these circumstances, crises and calamities can emerge out of nowhere. So instead of wondering whether we can match China’s GDP in 2050, it is worth asking whether India will be able to survive as a national unit. For those who think this to be a ridiculous question, one needs only to look at two recent events.

Black Swan
Belgium was created in the 19th century by a merger of the Dutch speaking region of Flanders and the French areas of Wallonia. Today, the country, though flourishing and, indeed, the capital of the European Union bureaucracy, is in the throes of a political crisis that could lead to its partition. Another slow-motion birth took place last week when Kosovo was born. The country still has to find a seat in the United Nations, but it is almost certain that it will as the 193rd state in the comity of nations. It is not likely to be the last new state either. Today if people like Thackeray have their way, Maharashtra, too, may become independent. After all, at 307,713 sq km it would be larger than Italy, and nearly as big as Malaysia. The secular, rule-based and democratic India that emerged in the 1950s was based on a compact that promised to protect diversity and the rights of religious minorities. But the political players of today demand changes that would undermine the basic structure of the Constitution and our polity. Some would give primacy to Hindus, others to people of a caste. Most would deny any right to people they deem different from themselves.
Nassim Nicholas Talib’s brilliant Black Swan would suggest that the break-up of India should not occasion surprise. Talib’s theory takes off from the western belief that all swans were white till black swans were found in Australia. A Black Swan event — the collapse of the Soviet Union or recently and most infamously Nine-Eleven — is one which occurs defying common belief that it cannot. In our times, the improbable is often confused with the impossible.
This article appeared in Mail Today February 20, 2008

Pakistan elections

We must take the outcome of the poll in Pakistan in the context of its inauspicious beginnings, principally the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In that perspective, the outcome of the elections in Pakistan has been a pleasant surprise. There were no horrific suicide attacks, considering the situation, the polling was peaceful, there were no visible signs of rigging. Voter turnout was low, but that was to be expected given the fear of violence, and, more important, the past experience of vote fraud. The big surprise of the election was that it defied prognostications that it would be rigged against the opposition. One major factor was the heroic role of the Pakistani media especially the visual media which showed its clout and value for the first time in this election.

I disagree with people who think that the verdict was a major blow to Musharraf. After all, given the events of the past year, he would have to be remarkably sanguine to think he could actually pull off a victory. Indeed, given the circumstances, the King’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) has done remarkably well. Indeed, the outcome as it is—requiring the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) to cobble together a coalition is the best Musharraf could have hoped, and he has got it. PPP as the largest party will lead the coalition anyway, but also because it is the only party to have a presence in all of Pakistan’s provinces.

Musharraf’s great advantage will be that the control of the PPP rests in the hands of the somewhat shady Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto. In his first and rambling press conference, Zardari has signaled that his agenda is not the removal of the general.

According to Dawn, “Mr Zardari parried several questions on issues like reinstatement of deposed judges, possible impeachment of President Musharraf and the party’s nominee for the office of the prime minister.”

After all, don't forget that Benazir had returned to Pakistan as part of a deal through which she would provide legitimacy to the general's crumbling regime, in exchange for the waiver of corruption charges against her and Zardari. Benazir may be gone, but the deal remains. My hunch is that even though large sections of his party men are deeply suspicious of the general’s inability to protect their beloved leader, Zardari will carry the day.

Though his performance has been spectacular, considering where he has come from, Nawaz Sharif lacks the numbers. But he has a clear agenda, one that understands that the election outcome is only the beginning of the battle for democracy in Pakistan. He wants the restoration of the 60-odd judges who were forced out of office by Musharraf in November. He is also seeking the removal of a amendments that make a mockery of the country’s 1973 constitution. Above all, Sharif who has clearly matured in his exile, also understands that the country needs to set clear limits for its army. It is too late to make the army apolitical as in India. But there could be mutually agreed institutional arrangements such as the ones that obtain in Turkey. Nawaz, too, has come back through some kind of a deal. Though not a direct one, but one operating through the Saudis.

The showing of the Awami National Party in the North West Frontier Province has been outstanding . They have bearded the mullahs in their own dens. They have given the lie to the belief that all Pakhtuns want is war. As Afsandyar Wali Khan, the leader of the party has pointed out, the Pakhtuns want “talim” or education, and everything else associated with development. The victory of the party could begin the process of getting back the allegiance of those who have been misguided into thinking that jehad is the only answer to their problems.

The outcomes in Punjab, Sindh, and NWFP suggest that governments there will have to be in the form of coalitions. This is not a bad thing, because it will help kick-start the process of reconciliation. The PPP, as the party which has a presence in all three states will have special responsibility since it will also run the national government.

That other stakeholder

This said, we need to point out that the elections only related part of the stakeholders of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. There is another part, some say the larger, that wields power that was not up for arbitration through an election. In the coming months, the attitude of this party, the Pakistan army, will be the key to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. At present, the army has adopted a low profile because its reputation has sunk along with its erstwhile chief Pervez Musharraf. But though the army has delinked itself from Musharraf, it is unlikely to allow the politicians to bully him either. All said and done he is one of theirs and everything he did had the sanction of the Corps Commanders Conference, Pakistan's other parliament.

There are some habits which will take time and effort to overcome. In some areas—nuclear weapons and support to terrorism—only the attitude of the Pakistan army matters. There is an abundant record to show that civilian prime ministers and presidents were denied any information on these issues, even when they formally held power.

So, all said and done, Pakistan has made a good beginning, but it still has a long way to go before it becomes a “normal” state.

Seven things we should not do to help the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

The general elections may be around the corner, but Pakistan continues to careen dangerously out of control. Specific incidents and events are not the issue, but the totality of developments that have been taking place, beginning last year.
A convenient date would be March 9, 2007, the fateful day on which President Pervez Musharraf began his ill-advised campaign to edge out Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from the country’s Supreme Court. This enraged the community of lawyers, who have since led the civil protest movement against Musharraf.
Parallel to this, the general also managed to botch up the Lal Masjid situation. The mosque, located near the ISI headquarters in Islamabad, had a reputation for radicalism since the time of Zia ul Haq. It had links with the North West Frontier Province because it drew a number of its students from there. The mosque was used by radicals who railed against Musharraf’s US policy and even called for his assassination, yet he failed to act against it. In early 2007, students of the mosque’s two madarsas — one for men and the other for women — began to enforce a puritanical law in parts of Islamabad. They shut down video shops and assaulted people they said were involved in immoral activities.
Finally in July 2007, Musharraf sent in the army. A bitter clash took place, leaving scores dead. While the senior imam of the mosque was captured, his younger brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed. The army action led to the breakdown of a truce between the Pakistan army and anti-government tribesmen in North and South Waziristan, and a spate of suicide bombings aimed at Pakistani army personnel, and even the ISI.
Musharraf’s meltdown has led to a great deal of nervousness across the world. Concerns over the safety of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal have been voiced in the US and India. But New Delhi has few options beyond tailing the US. For the present the Pakistan army remains a strong force and is unlikely to take kindly to any Indian intervention. Yet there are things that India can do to help Pakistan. But first New Delhi must understand that there are things it must not do to help Islamabad.

First, see Pakistan as a basket case. It is easy when you are up in South Asia, to see the other as down and out. It was just the other day, in the early 1990s, when in their arrogance of having helped the US win the jehad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Islamabad thought India could be brought low by supporting separatist movements. In the wake of the 1989 elections, India was indeed in bad shape, its polity shot to hell, separatist movements taking roots in key states like Punjab and its economy in a shambles. The ISI could have been excused for thinking that one more push would have India come apart. But it did not. So, let’s be clear that Pakistan is not about to keel over, just as India was not at that time.

Second, New Delhi must not delay its internal negotiations with Kashmiri parties on the issue of autonomy or whatever. In the past year, while Musharraf has grappled with the judiciary and the mullahs, the India-Pakistan talks have maintained their formal continuity. But there has been little forward movement. But there is one element in which India does not need to involve Pakistan — the issue of internal democracy in Jammu & Kashmir. Addressing the second round table meet on Kashmir in May 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that the first task was to see “what are those political institutions and arrangements which can strengthen the relationship between the Centre and the state.” In line with this he had set up a working group under former Justice Saghir Ahmad to come up with a report on the issue of autonomy or self-rule. Though four other working groups on issues relating to economy and cross-border trade have finished their reports, little or nothing has been heard about the workings of the autonomy group.

Third, India must not demand that the US and other countries accept Indian primacy in South Asia. This is a mug’s game. Indian primacy cannot be got by request or grant. It is an existential fact. Anyone who tries to deny it — like Pakistan has in the past 60 years — has had his head buried firmly in the sand.

Fourth, India must not pander to Pakistan's sense of entitlement on Kashmir or Afghanistan. Islamabad has no locus standi in J&K and we must deal with it as such. There are issues that have arisen in the wake of the Pakistan-engineered tribal invasion in 1947 — the creation of Azad Kashmir, the UN resolutions and the no-man's land status of the Northern Areas — that need to be worked out through negotiations, but not the status of the state.
In normal times — and you can count the period 1947-1979 as “normal” in the context of Pakistan-Afghanistan affairs — the relationship between the two was positively chilly. New Delhi need not insert itself into the equation to deny Pakistan what it did not have in the first place — a pliant Afghanistan. Pakistan’s ability to “manage” Afghanistan of the Taliban era was strictly limited. Islamabad is learning now that the seemingly barbarian Taliban were shrewder than the ISI thought. Instead of Pakistan getting strategic depth, it is the Taliban which has obtained it in the NWFP, Balochistan and Swat at the expense of the Pakistani central authority.

Fifth, we must not encourage fissiparous trends in Pakistan. In other words, do unto Islamabad what Islamabad has been doing to us. As long as Pakistan remains together even in a tattered form, there is hope that it can be repaired. But if it falls apart like Yugoslavia, there will be little chance of putting it back together again. To say that such a development would be counter-productive would be to make an understatement.

Sixth, New Delhi must not privilege the Pakistan Army over the mainstream political parties and civil society in the country. It is one thing to deal with the army when it wields power, it is quite another thing to be happy about it. India's strategic position must always be that the final settlement on anything will have to be with a democratically elected government. India’s relations with Musharraf have been quite proper, and they should continue to be so as long as he is the head of the government. But New Delhi needs to clearly put across the message that while it deals with the army, it does so at sufferance, and not because it thinks that the army is the only viable political institution in the country, because it is not. Fortunately, Musharraf’s own actions have brought this message home to Pakistan far more effectively than through anything that India could have done.

Seventh, we must not give up on Pakistan. It is tempting to say “The hell with you”, redouble the border fence, strengthen the army and maintain bare minimum relations with our western neighbour. This is not an option. While we need not worry about millions streaming across the border from a failed state, we need to understand that “shining” or “incredible” India will not be going anywhere if its neighbours, in this case Pakistan, do not go with it. A Great Power does not have the option of turning its back on failing neighbours.

In the meantime, the new army chief in Pakistan can take six steps to set things right: Get the president to resign, restore the Supreme Court and higher judiciary, set up a neutral caretaker government, get all-party consent for a neutral commission and then hold the elections.

The article was published in Mail Today February 12, 2008