OPINION: Do not count on Pakistan

By M H Ahssan

Some sections of civil society and the media, as well as the BJP, the main opposition party in New Delhi, are obsessed with the Pakistan factor in the thinking about countering terror in the wake of the Mumbai terror assault. In the national capital’s civil society and media, the old Punjabi bonding and nostalgia about Lahore is the dominant factor that shapes the public stance.

These two groups feel that at this moment of distress and crisis both sides should reach out to each other and fraternise, and form a common front against the terrorists. Their argument is that Pakistan too is tottering under terrorist assault, and therefore this is the best time to strengthen the bonds across the border. And many of them point to the good work done by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Pakistan general and president Pervez Musharraf in bringing the two countries together.

There is also the anti-Pakistan lobby — which surfaces mostly after every terrorist attack — and this is led by the BJP and its friends, saying that this is the time to bring Pakistan to book and expose its political crimes. The BJP is quite torn on this. On the one hand, it feels that it can find its own legitimacy by normalising India-Pakistan relations. On the other, the old atavistic sentiments reassert themselves. They want a gesture of war, if not real war, against Pakistan. That is what will give them emotional
satisfaction.

Many in this group want the fight against terror to become a full-fledged war against jihad, with all the unsubtle connotations that it carries. At the same time, they are also aware that after the 1998 nuclear weapons tests that the BJP carried out and which the party had flaunted as its great achievement, going to war with Pakistan is not an option.

In the real world, this obsession with Pakistan in Delhi does not make sense. It is not because Pakistan is an irrelevant factor but due to the fact that Pakistan’s terror problem is a deeply internal one and it is not possible for friends and critics of Pakistan here to impose a solution there.

There is no doubt that jihadi groups — the Lashkar-e-Taiba is only one of them — based in Pakistan have a hand in the terror attack in Mumbai and in many others as well. There is not much that India can do about it. Even the Americans are learning that they cannot impose solutions on Pakistan.

Islamabad will have to modernise and liberalise itself. India cannot hope to have Pakistan on its side in the fight against terror. It has to be fought by India on its own. Common sense seems to suggest that this cannot be done. But this is an extraordinary situation and we have lived with an unfriendly, if not always a hostile, Pakistan for last 60 years. We can do this in the future as well. Pakistan can at best be an irritant to India. It cannot be a threat.

It will be necessary to constantly detect terrorist infiltration and repel terrorist attacks. It will be necessary to build sophisticated anti-terror machinery for this. It is no doubt hard and tedious work, but it the most effective way of doing it.

Meanwhile, Pakistan will have to decide on its own and for its own reasons whether it can continue to nurse Islamic extremist organizations as part of its deterrence policy against India. The Islamisation policy which had begun in the end-days of Cold War under Zia-ul-Haq had turned toxic for the country. This has become apparent to all thinking Pakistanis. They have a clear distaste for religious fanatics. But their policy-makers seem to be convinced that religious extremists have their uses and they should be allowed to exist as long as they do not cause problems at home. The Pakistan intelligentsia will have to recognise that they cannot sustain this double-edged policy without hurting, and even destroying, themselves.

India can only serve as a good example to Pakistan and others by uncompromisingly clamping down on religious terrorism – Hindu, Islamic, Sikh — within its borders and in its own society.