An involuted mindset

The views expressed by the Pakistani academics left one wondering about the vigour of conviction of orthodoxy which influenced their thought processes.

I visited Pakistan late January last to participate in a conference in which the Islamabad Policy Research Institute and the Delhi Policy Group on Nuclear Risk Reduction participated. Two events occurred during the visit highlighting the contrast between the Indian and Pakistani approaches. India extended the cease-fire for a second time. The apex body of the Pakistan-based terrorist groups rejected it stating that ‘Jehad’ is the only way to resolve the Kashmir problem.

The Indian delegation had a meeting with the foreign minister of Pakistan, Abdus Sattar, and the foreign secretary, Inamul Haq. It was preceded by an hour-long briefing by the additional secretary in-charge of multilateral affairs of Pakistan’s foreign office, Riaz Hussain.

Hussain emphasised that efforts at mutual restraint are rooted in the removal of the basic cause of tension, namely the Kashmir issue. He stressed that nuclear risk reduction cannot be considered in isolation as a separate issue affecting regional security. When the Indian side pointed out that the rise of nuclear confrontation is a more dangerous phenomenon than Pakistan viewing the Kashmir issue as a territorial dispute, Hussain indulged in a colourful simile. He said both India and Pakistan know that the water in the well of mutual peace is dirty and poisoned. Just drawing out the dirty water will not result in the well being cleaned because there is a dead dog in the well. The dead dog is the Kashmir dispute. Unless we take out the dead dog and dispose of it, we cannot hope for fresh water in the well.

The Indian side could have responded to this bizarre simile by pointing out that it is Pakistan which killed the dog and put it in the well, when it invaded Kashmir in 1948. But we did not, because the argument would not have led anywhere. A political point made in this briefing was that Pakistan considers nuclear risk reduction intrinsically linked with its views on Kashmir and thus an affirmation that Pakistan’s nuclear weaponisation in one dimension is an instrumentality to further its Kashmir policies.

The Indian side presented structured and written papers on three aspects of nuclear risk reduction; one on the political and strategic context in which Indo-Pakistan confidence-building measures have evolved since 1989. The second paper was on possible technical proposals and measures which both sides could adopt to reduce the prospects of nuclear confrontation or accidental nuclear conflict. The third paper was on whether the contradictions between the Indian nuclear doctrine and the Pakistani nuclear doctrine could be reconciled, given the Pakistani doctrine of retaining the option of first strike and the Indian doctrine of no-first-use of its nuclear weapons. The Indian presentations focussed on this specific issue.

The Pakistani delegation, in contrast, did not present any written paper. While the Indian approach was technical and focussed, the Pakistani presentation consisted of broader political perspectives from Pakistan’s point of view. It was interesting to note that in these intellectual exchanges the Pakistani side reflected the approach outlined to us in the foreign office briefing. They emphasised with greater vigour that nuclear risk reduction is dependent on and intrinsically linked with Kashmir.

The Pakistan delegation emphasised that India’s no-first-use doctrine and its abjuring the option of the first strike have no meaning because a Pakistani first strike may obliterate India’s capacity for a second nuclear strike. Alternatively, India’s no-first-use approach is a public relations exercise and in a conflict situation what is there to prevent India from indulging in first strike?

The meetings at the other academic institutes were even more revealing. In discussions on developments in Afghanistan and its fallout on the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, Pakistani academics justified Taliban’s policies and objectives. The Indian apprehension about Taliban exporting or conniving at cross-border terrorism in J&K and in the Central Asian Republics was rejected with the assertion that Taliban was not involved in such activities. It was a flat denial. As far as Taliban’s extremist domestic policies is concerned, the Pakistani view was that external criticism was misinformed and was based on deliberate misrepresentations. That such views were expressed by Pakistani academics who have had exposure to foreign universities and media, left one wondering about the vigour of conviction of the orthodoxy that influenced their thought processes.

The Pakistani academia at the strategic institute proceeded to argue at great length that the world at large and India in particular is deliberately labelling the intensively spiritual and religious phenomenon of ‘Jehad’ to malign Pakistan. This argument was further expanded with the assertion that the international community led by the US is deliberate in its opposition to the rise of pan-Islamic movements and Islamic religious resurgence in the world. Indian advocacies that Jehad in the religious sense is different from militant separatist terrorism and violence was polemically rejected.

When these discussions meandered into the ups and downs of Indo-Pakistan relations, the Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies justified the Pakistani intrusion into Kargil in 1999, stating that India should evaluate the intrusion in contextual terms because Pakistani moves in Kargil were justified as a retaliation to India’s violation of the Line of Control at Siachen in 1984. An additional point was made that Pakistan would not have withdrawn from Kargil but for the US pressure.

The comparative analysis of the experience in nation-building and building of institutions of state at the foreign service academy was remarkable because the Pakistani participants questioned the credibility of India’s democracy and India’s secularism citing the contradictions of Indian civil society in terms of treatment of minorities, the caste system, the fragmentation of political parties, the rise of Hindu religious extremism in India etc. In contrast, discussions with Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar and his colleagues were of comparative relief to the Indian delegation. Sattar affirmed Pakistan’s desire to restore a dialogue with India.
The overall impression one came away with can be summed up as follows: There is no intense anxiety among the Pakistan elite to restore democracy.

There seems to be a widespread belief in these circles that India is getting exhausted in Kashmir and that it will not be able to hold on to Kashmir for long and, therefore, political and militant pressure should be continued on India. While there is an awareness about dangers of nuclear confrontation, there is a parallel feeling that the threat of such confrontation will become an incremental pressure on India on the Kashmir issue.

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