Ahmadiyya Times | Staff News | Intn'l Desk
Source: Dawn.Com | Re-Print
Irfan Husain | November 28, 2009
AS I write this, it is one year to the day since the terrorist atrocity in Mumbai. I watched the city’s three-day ordeal with fascination and horror in Sri Lanka on various news channels.
A year later, perhaps we can look back on the attack with a greater degree of objectivity, and count the winners and the losers.
The real winners, of course, are militant groups, like the Lashkar-i-Taiba, and their shadowy backers in Pakistan. They have achieved what they set out to do: sabotage the peace talks between India and Pakistan. Although these negotiations had not achieved a breakthrough, they had greatly improved relations between India and Pakistan.
The second prize goes to the security establishments in both countries, although this is truer of Pakistan than it is of India where the military is firmly under civilian control. The reality is that soldiers and spies need enemies to justify their lavish budgets. Peace between traditional enemies means cuts in defence, and less toys for the boys.
Obviously, the biggest losers are the victims of the attack, and their friends and families. But the other big losers are the people of the subcontinent. Millions in the region will continue suffering, just because their leaders remain locked in a 60-year old conflict. And when there was a glimmer of hope of some kind of resolution, relations have plunged to a new low.
The militants’ victory is not restricted to poisoning bilateral relations between India and Pakistan: by hitting Mumbai, it has ensured that there will be no cooperation between the two countries in the war against extremism in the foreseeable future.
This is no small victory. The war being waged on the Pak-Afghan border is perhaps the most decisive conflict of our times, and its outcome will affect the region for years to come. In order to combat the Taliban and their various partners effectively, active cooperation between India and Pakistan is crucial.
After the Mumbai attack, India has refused to pursue peace talks, arguing that as long as Pakistan tolerates the presence of terrorist organisations on its soil, there can be no meaningful negotiations. Again and again, the Indian leadership and media have echoed the mantra of Pakistan ‘not doing enough’ against the planners of the Mumbai attack.
In several articles, I have argued that it is precisely because of the atrocity that peace talks need to be pursued with greater focus and political will. Does India really want to hand a major victory to the perpetrators of the attack?
I have also suggested that in order to reassure the Pakistani military that it has nothing to fear on its eastern border, India could easily withdraw one of its divisions deployed there. This would encourage Pakistan to transfer more troops to its northwest where the real battle against extremists is now going on.
Each time I have written along these lines, I have been flooded with emails from India readers, blasting me for daring to make such a suggestion. According to them, Pakistan does not merit such a gesture because it is harbouring terrorists, and because it has long followed policies hostile to India. And for these reasons, they are also against the resumption of peace talks.
They miss the point that one negotiates with one’s adversaries, not one’s friends. And they have the bizarre notion that peace is a reward for good behaviour, not a mutual need. The fact is that India needs peace just as much as Pakistan does. True, it is Pakistan that is currently being battered by an unrelenting wave of terrorism. But a Pakistan destabilised by extremist violence should be New Delhi’s worst nightmare.
Those who think a victorious Taliban would stop their mayhem on Pakistan’s eastern border are living in cloud-cuckoo land. These thugs have no respect for international boundaries, and have repeatedly declared their intention to ‘liberate’ Kashmir. Many of them also want to re-establish Muslim rule over India. These insane goals will ensure that terrorist groups will go on trying to hit Indian targets.
Another reason for India to pursue talks is that as a major regional and global player, the last thing it needs is continuing tension on its borders. When in 2001, a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament caused tensions to rise sharply, a number of multinationals withdrew their executives from India. The bottom line is that the threat of a nuclear exchange is not good for business.
Clearly, then, it should be in India’s interest to support the peace process, irrespective of the attempts made by terrorists to derail it. Indeed, the bloody events of a year ago should act as a spur — not as a reason to suspend negotiations.
In a recent interview in the United States, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made the point that his government did not know who to speak to in Pakistan. While there is some validity to this observation, it is equally true that there is now an unprecedented desire for peace with India across the political spectrum in Pakistan. This goal is shared by the army leadership. Gen Musharraf genuinely did his best to work out a lasting solution to the Kashmir conflict.
Now, the defence establishment does not need India to justify its budget, given that the whole country views the Taliban as the real foe. It also realises that an armed conflict with India would be suicidal. Both the ruling PPP and the main opposition parties support peace with India.
Unlike in the past, when the real resistance to normalisation came from jingoistic groups as well as the army in Pakistan, it now seems that the stumbling block lies in India. Buoyed by years of rapid development and military expansion, many Indians feel their country no longer needs to consider their smaller neighbour a threat. This is a short-term assessment that ignores the dangers of asymmetrical warfare, and the horrors of terrorism.
India, as the more powerful nation, can afford to make peaceful gestures without endangering its security. The question is whether its economic and military strength have made it self-confident enough to reach out to its deeply troubled neighbour.
Judging from the hysterical coverage of last year’s attack on NDTV — the only Indian channel available to me in Sri Lanka — I fear that both the media and the political leadership will continue gloating over Pakistan’s woes. But while a little schadenfreude, or pleasure over somebody else’s discomfort, is understandable, it is not in India’s long-term interest.
Read here: Mumbai’s winners & losers
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