COVER STORY

A 'sell-out' and some hard-sell

Facing mounting reverses on the battlefield and under international pressure, Nawaz Sharif agrees to a pullout from Kargil, and angers hawks at home.

AMIT BARUAH
in Islamabad

THE countdown has begun. If Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Army stay the course, the Pakistani pullout from Kargil, already under way, will be completed in a few days. There could be twists and turns in the withdrawal process, but Sharif has so far given no indication that he will resile from his July 4 agreement with U.S. President Bill Clinton.

There is little doubt that Pakistan has capitulated: it buckled in the face of sustained international pressure and a determined operation by the Indian Army. Sharif's action in ordering the pullout from the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) may have angered the hawks in the Pakistani establishment, but it has not caused many ripples on the streets of Pakistan. Officially, since it was a "war" between the Kashmir mujahideen and the Indian Army, the Pakistan Army was not "involved". The Army is angry but has gone along with the course steered by the political executive.

The July 11 meeting between the Directors-General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of India and Pakistan was on the cards ever since Pakistan made the first move of "appealing" to the mujahideen to pull back. Whether it was the visit to India of special envoy Niaz Naik or the three visits to Pakistan of R.K. Mishra, editor of the Observer of Business and Politics, as the official emissary of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, diplomatic channels of communication were always open. Finally, of course, there was the Sharif-Clinton meeting and the U.S. President's telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

KHUE BUI / AP
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with U.S. President Bill Clinton in Washington on July 4. Islamabad may seek to put a spin on the joint statement issued by the two leaders, but there is little doubt that Pakistan has buckled in the face of international pressure and the Indian Army operation.

The very fact that the pullout from the Kaksar and Mushkoh sectors was announced by both India and Pakistan shows that the contacts have been productive and that in the days to come the pullout will be extended to the entire Kargil sector.

Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz said at a briefing on July 11: "Following the mujahideen's positive response to our appeal to de-escalate in Kargil, the Government of Pakistan and the Government of India have been in contact on the question of the restoration of the LoC. The DGMOs of the two countries met today and agreed on the modalities for de-escalation including sector-wise cessation of ground and air hostilities to facilitate the mujahideen's disengagement."

Aziz further said: "We have been informed that disengagement from the Kaksar sector which began yesterday has been proceeding satisfactorily. The disengagement from the Mushkoh sector will commence tonight. Gradually the disengagement will be completed in the entire area..." He said that it had "always been our position that both Pakistan and India should respect the Line of Control, make efforts to de-escalate and promote peace through dialogue and contacts between civil and military officials. We also believe that both India and Pakistan should honour their commitment to implementing the Lahore Declaration in letter and spirit. The Lahore process, which envisaged an early solution of the Kashmir dispute, should be revived immediately."

K.M. CHOUDHARY / AP
At a rally in Lahore on July 9, supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami protest against Sharif's "sell-out" in Washington and against the role of the U.S. The pullout has angered hawks in the establishment, but it has had little impact on the streets of Pakistan.

Not so surprisingly, Pakistan claims that the militants are "dispersing", not withdrawing to the Pakistan side of the LoC. This is consistent with Pakistan's position that the militants are "indigenous Kashmiris". In effect, by making such an "appeal", Pakistan has sought their "withdrawal" into Indian territory. Clearly, such a position does not belong in the real world.

Militant groups which are branded together under the United Jehad Council (UJC) first rejected the Pakistan Government's call for a withdrawal from Kargil, but that appears to be a case of posturing: after all, can "jehadi elements" be seen to be withdrawing from their religious "duty" of liberating Kashmir? It may therefore be better to declare premature martyrdom, save face and prepare for the same job at another place and another time.

Sharif is under fire at home, and ironically the fiercest attacks have come from a constituency that the Government has all along pandered to: those journalists, analysts and former Generals for whom India-baiting is a profession. They have accused him of having sold out in Washington after raising expectations of a profitable "war" for the "liberation" of Kashmir.

In the whole process, Sharif has demonstrated that he is a man not to be trusted by India, a man who has no consistent policy towards India and a man who presides over an imperfect, unstable and adventurist nation. The real danger to India, however, does not flow from Sharif himself, but from Pakistan's inability, after 52 years of existence, to conduct itself as a mature and democratic international player. When it comes to India, Pakistan appears to suffer from schizophrenia. If bilateral talks are to have meaning, Pakistan must first emerge as one nation, not a sum total of different centres of power.

In an action that is characteristic of Sharif, he rushed to Washington after he realised that the Kargil misadventure could not be sustained. He called up Clinton, requested an appointment and rushed over as soon as the President said yes.

Despite all the spin and twist Islamabad seeks to put on it, the Clinton-Sharif joint statement is quite clear about what is required of Pakistan: "It was agreed between the President and Prime Minister that concrete steps will be taken for the restoration of the Line of Control in accordance with the Simla Agreement. The President urged an immediate cessation of the hostilities once these steps are taken," the statement said.

B.K. BANGASH / AP
Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and Army spokesman Brigadier Rashid Qureshi at a news conference in Islamabad on July 11.

It added: "The Prime Minister and the President agreed that the bilateral dialogue begun in Lahore in February provides the best forum for resolving all issues dividing India and Pakistan, including Kashmir. The President said he would take a personal interest in encouraging an expeditious resumption and intensification of those bilateral efforts, once the sanctity of the Line of Control has been fully restored."

So what exactly does Sharif have to do? The first concrete step must come from Pakistan - it must "restore" the LoC by pulling back the intruders. (The fact that the joint statement does not use the term "intruders" does not in any way twist its meaning around.) And then Clinton will take a "personal interest" in encouraging a resumption of bilateral talks between India and Pakistan.

According to a report in the Pakistani newspaper The Nation (July 9), the U.S. and Pakistan had prepared their own drafts of a joint statement. In its draft the U.S. had described Pakistan as an "aggressor" and called upon Islamabad to withdraw its forces from Indian territory. "The process of marrying the two (Pakistani and U.S. drafts) saw many ups and downs. Finally, Sharif and Clinton personally gave it a final shape," the newspaper reported.

The "compromise solution" is obvious. The U.S., which has repeatedly called for a withdrawal of the intruders, did not want to embarrass Pakistan. Equally, it did not want to dilute its concerns. This explains the final formulation. The "gain" for Islamabad was also clear - Clinton would take a "personal interest" in "encouraging an expeditious resumption and intensification" of bilateral efforts to resolve Kashmir and other disputes. Clearly, this phraseology reflects Pakistan's concerns and represents the "only gain" for Islamabad. Whether it will find any concrete meaning, of course, remains to be seen.

The joint statement also reflects another major climbdown by Pakistan. Sharif agreed with Clinton that the Lahore process was the "best forum" to resolve all disputes between India and Pakistan, including Kashmir. So, what will happen to the United Nations and to Pakistan's calls for intervention by third parties? Has Pakistan changed its mind suddenly after shouting from the rooftops that the international community must intervene?

SAURABH DAS / AP
In Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, a funeral for five militants who were killed in the Indian Army action in Kargil.

The significance of the Sharif-Clinton statement will become more evident in the weeks and months to come. It shows that the U.S. is more than willing to play a role in resolving disputes between the two countries. Today such an intervention may favour India, tomorrow it may not.

After his return from London on July 8, where he met Prime Minister Tony Blair, Sharif went into a meeting with Chief of the Army Staff Gen. Pervez Musharraf and other senior aides. The next day he presided over a meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC), Pakistan's highest decision-making body on security matters. It comprises the Prime Minister, the three Service chiefs, the Foreign, Finance and Interior Ministers, and special invitees, depending on the issue under discussion.

An official statement said that the DCC expressed "satisfaction" that the Clinton-Sharif joint statement had incorporated the "main elements" of Pakistan's position. The DCC "decided that Pakistan should appeal to the mujahideen to help resolve the Kargil situation".

Soon after the DCC meeting ended, Sharif met with leaders of the Jehad Council in the presence of Gen. Musharraf and made an "appeal" to them to "help resolve" the Kargil situation. An official statement issued after a Cabinet meeting on July 10 said: "The Cabinet noted that the mujahideen have responded positively to the appeal of the Government of Pakistan to help resolve the Kargil situation." The statement further said that the Cabinet believed that Sharif's "peace initiative had helped to internationalise the Kashmir issue in a manner that had never been done before while peace in the region had been preserved... The Cabinet acclaimed the heroic contribution of the Kashmiri freedom fighters, particularly the martyrs of Kargil, who laid down their lives for a just and legitimate cause. While stating that their sacrifices would not be in vain, the Cabinet underlined Pakistan's principled policy of providing moral, diplomatic and political support to the freedom struggle of the people of Jammu and Kashmir."

After their meeting with Sharif, the militants denounced appeals for their withdrawal from Kargil. Denying press reports that the militants had agreed to consider the appeal, Council spokesman Abu Shahbaz said that a withdrawal from Kargil would deliver a body blow to the "jehad in Kashmir". The mujahideen, he said, would "fight to the end". "Not all the international conspiracies against the freedom movement of Kashmir can prevent us from moving towards the liberation of Kashmir," he said.

Clearly, the militants cannot be seen as sabotaging their own cause. Since their movement, backed by Pakistan's "political support", is to continue, withdrawal may prove to be disastrous for a movement that is looking for new volunteers from the "jehadi madrasas" in Pakistan.

Aziz Siddiqui, a former editor of The Frontier Post, wrote in Dawn on July 11: "It is hard to see that the defiant refusal of the mujahideen groups to climb down can be much more than a sort of whistling in the dark, a bid to acquire some dignity in defeat. Any indefinite continuance of their operation will require maintenance of a supply line of men and material which may not be easy without the cooperation of the Pakistan Army."

Despite the spin put on the Kargil developments, Pakistanis will find it hard to believe that they have gained from the enterprise. If the intrusion was part of a well-thought-out policy, why was it not pursued to its logical conclusion? If it was doomed from the beginning, why was it executed in the first place? Convincing answers will be hard to come by since the tradition of fudging and flattery, which characterises the Pakistani politico-military establishment, will not permit such a debate.

Siddiqui wrote in Dawn: "Humiliation at India's hand is hard to bear in any circumstance; it is the worst sin a government (or a cricket team) can commit. It shocks the people even more when they have been made to expect the opposite."

K.M. CHOUDHARY / AP
In Lahore, the Jamaat-e-Islami enlists volunteers for its jehad in Kashmir. On the board in the background are inscribed the names of militants who were killed in Kargil.

Asad Durrani, a former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence, argued in The News on July 9: "We had chinks in our armour, but as the events unfolded it was the Indian external pincer that forced us to agree to restore the LoC... Pakistan was pressured to restore the status quo ante, not only because the West desired to prevent turmoil in the region, but also due to our comparative vulnerability to coercion... It (Kargil) has not only brought home the realities of international politics... it has also taught us to regard events in their correct perspective, rather than getting carried away by self-serving hopes and hypes."

KARGIL was a result of the Pakistani establishment's anti-India posture. Cross-border bus rides have not altered this ground reality. Pakistan has been stoking the fires in Kashmir for 11 years; can a single bus trip change anything? Vajpayee's bus diplomacy was a media event - it was intended to project him as a peace-maker after the nuclear tests of May 1998. However, India had hardly done its homework, policy was absent and there was pressure from the United States.

An excellent Pakistani perspective on the bus diplomacy was provided by The Friday Times soon after the Lahore summit: "The transition from a status-quo, jehad-oriented, hawkish foreign policy vis-a-vis India to a forward-looking, moderate, peace-oriented foreign policy which Mr. Sharif appears to be advocating is going to be very difficult. Such a transition cannot take place without Mr. Sharif first cobbling a broad political consensus for it and then nudging the national security establishment to review its historic assumptions and accord its approval to a change of tack... but Mr. Sharif has made no effort to take the security establishment or the Pakistani people into confidence. He has taken no steps to bring the political opposition on board his non-ideological foreign policy agenda... Therefore, our fear is that, like his many other hastily assembled initiatives on equally contentious areas of economy and law, this (Lahore) initiative too is likely to flounder on the rock of institutional confusion, political indecision and jehadi counter-pressure."

The post-Lahore scene seems to match these words - in a sense, it has been true to script. India had done nothing to jeopardise the Lahore process. In March, in the cool climes of Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka, Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh were chalking out the methodology of implementing the Lahore agreements. In April, the Indian High Commission was liberally doling out visas to Pakistanis who wanted to travel to Mohali in Punjab to see the India-Pakistan one-day cricket match. Special trains were organised to take the Pakistani fans back and forth.

In May, when the Indian patrols returned to Kargil, they found Pakistani intruders occupying Indian posts. So who was responsible for the rupture - India or Pakistan? The finger must be pointed at Pakistan - or, more specifically, both its civilian and military leaderships - for having ruined what could have proved to be a long roller-coaster ride to better relations.

As one diplomat in Islamabad put it: "Every Prime Minister who takes power in New Delhi thinks that Pakistan is virgin territory waiting to be explored." Clearly, the BJP does not have an understanding of the dynamics of India-Pakistan relations, or it would not have used persons like R.K. Mishra as emissaries.

At the other extreme, one sees the ludicrous spectacle of the Indian Government banning Pakistan Television broadcasts and blocking access to the Web site of Dawn. It is clear that notwithstanding the creation of a new bureaucratic structure like the National Security Council, the Indian establishment suffers from a poverty of strategic thinking.

MUZAMMIL PASHA / REUTERS
United Jehad Council leader Syed Salahuddin in Islamabad on July 7. The militant groups initially rejected the Pakistan Government's "appeal" to them to withdraw, but that appears to be a case of posturing.

Did the BJP ever consider the possibility that Pakistan would be emboldened by its nuclear weapon status? There have been reports that Pakistan had four times in the last 15 years planned to execute the Kargil operation, but had to abort it on each occasion. But, now, when it has the "ultimate weapon", Pakistan thought nothing of the Kargil adventure. It may have backfired, but the absence of strategic thinking shows the BJP establishment in a poor light.

Pakistan has begun calling back its men from Kargil, but it is clear that there is no change in its policy of sending "jehadi elements" into Kashmir. If anything, an Army that is smarting from the experience of having to listen to political dictates may step up the infiltration into Kashmir from other areas on the LoC - or try some desperate actions elsewhere. The acknowledgement of "valiant actions" by the mujahideen is not mere talk; the Pakistani establishment genuinely believes it.

India must talk to Pakistan, but only on an equitable basis. Islamabad should not be given any concession following its Kargil misadventure. The infiltration into Kashmir must stop before a genuine dialogue process can begin.