T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Talking to Pakistan

LINE & LENGTH

We must be clear that it is the Army, and not a modern state, to which we are talking.

Our media hardly ever criticises foreign policy. As a result, whatever the government of the day does is regarded as being good""even when it is against national interest. This is, when you come to think of it, not unlike the Pakistani view of their Army""it can do no wrong. Kargil, 1971, 1965, nothing makes a difference.

Our Press had, I recall, gone quite gaga in September 1990 when Inder Gujral, as foreign minister, went to Baghdad and hugged Saddam Hussein. There are several other instances of such folly, but none quite as striking.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's policy towards Pakistan runs the risk of falling into this category of follies. The reason is simple: whatever the merits of talking to other countries with whom India has a difference of opinion, there is no point in talking to Pakistan because it requires us to suspend belief by assuming that we are talking to a modern State.

We are not. We talk to an Army, period.

The Pakistanis know it, whence their sardonic joke that while other countries have armies, in Pakistan the Army has a country. What is surprising is that even double hard-boiled eggs like the National Security Advisor J M Dixit are going along with this.

There could be four explanations for this. One, the pressure from the US is massive; two, there is an internal assessment that talking does no harm; three, the realists have been over-ruled by the Prime Minister. The fourth explanation is that we talk because of a combination of three reasons.

But it is worth pausing and paying heed to the question that old foreign service professionals are asking: if the horse befriends the grass, what will it eat? (Ghoda ghaas se dosti karega to khayega kya.)

The reference is to the Pakistan Army. If it gives up the Kashmir issue, how will it justify its role in Pakistan? Dr Singh is refusing to acknowledge this fundamental fact.

The other day someone pointed out that the problem is not Kashmir but Pakistan. Actually, it is not even Pakistan, which even as a nuclear-armed country does not amount to very much. The problem is its Army. Unless we understand this, we will keep coming to grief.

Put differently, we all know the US cuddles Pakistan. But if you take a time series of the intensity of the cuddling, it always increases when the Army is in power.

In other words, it is the US that asks everyone to pretend that they are dealing with a modern state when in fact they are dealing with nothing more than an Army, which has never won a war and which is corrupt to the core.

Some naïve people say it is better to deal with the Pakistan Army than with a civilian government. This is supposed to make us look like cunning realists but nothing could be further from the truth, which is that when we talk to it, we make it look good. It offers to talk and we have to reciprocate because PR requires us to.

Everyone knows that the Pakistan Army needs the Kashmir issue to be kept alive because on that depend its perks and the system of looting it has put in place. It allots itself irrigated land. It ensures that the land belonging to its officers is properly irrigated.

It allots itself urban land. Then there are the Army foundation business operations. At the higher end there is the control of Afghan drugs. And until it got caught, there was the nuclear business as well.

The money is huge and the game is about that, not Kashmir, which is just a pretext to keep the goodies flowing. Not for nothing do they say in Pakistan, "faujaan hi faujaan, maujaan hi maujaan."

The tactics in respect of Kashmir are also now well understood. It is clear that there is not going to be any change in the territorial status quo. Kargil was the last attempt by none other than our friendly neighbourhood wolf, now disguised as a sheep.

The Pakistani Army now knows that it can't get any territory through war. It also knows that it can't get anything through terrorism because India can withstand the loss, 60,000 lives in 10 years. So we must ask: what does it expect to get at the negotiating table?

Nothing at all but the strategy remains: keep the issue alive but at the same time create a wall on which the rest keep banging their heads. That way the Army stays on and so do its perks.

Are these the rantings of an Indian obscurantist? Well, here is what Pervez Hoodbhoy, a respected Pakistani, a physicist and professor at the Qaide-e-Azam University, has written in a book review published in the latest Foreign Affairs. The book, called The Idea of Pakistan by the South Asia specialist Stephen Cohen, seeks to dress Pakistan up in modern finery. Hoodbhoy is unimpressed.

"Pakistani generals express contempt for the civilian order and steadfastly hold that 'what is good for the army is good for Pakistan,' and Pakistani society is thoroughly militarized. Bumper stickers read, 'The Finest Men Join the Pakistan Army'; tanks parade on the streets of Islamabad while jet aircraft screech overhead; discarded naval guns, artillery pieces, and fighter aircraft adorn public plazas. It is even a criminal offense to 'criticize the armed forces of Pakistan or to bring them into disaffection'."

Some people argue that it is not just the Army, that there are other members of the ruling establishment like the civil service and the landlords. True, but the Army is primus inter pares, the first (by far) amongst equals. In any case, the oligarchs are mostly related to each other, just as the British aristocracy used to be in the old days.

Hence the question to the Prime Minister: if you know all this, as surely you must, why are you bothering with these fellows? What can they do to us that they have not already done or tried to do? What do we expect to gain? Why not do what the Chinese do, namely, talk only on our terms and not otherwise?

Besides, what are we going to talk about? The Pakistan Army will not accept converting the LoC into an international border; we will not accept anything else. So what else is there to talk about?

We need credible answers, Dr Singh, before we start frittering away the current hard-won advantage. Being nice is all very well, but please, not to an Army that is committed to dismembering our country.