terrorism-hit train fails to move the South Asian peace process
by J. Sri Raman (truthout.org)
The hawks of India and Pakistan can heave a sigh of relief. A terrorism-hit train has failed to carry the South Asian peace process forward even fractionally, as many had fondly hoped.
This should come as no surprise to watchers of the region, considering the place for terrorism in the political themes official India and Pakistan have pursued in the past, especially in the post-9/11 period. Before coming to that, a brief look at the latest twist in the tale.
The bomb blasts of February 18 on the Samjhauta (Understanding) Express, taking a toll of 68 Pakistani and Indian lives (mostly the former), caused a surge of hope along with great sorrow on both sides of the border. The common tragedy was expected to make the rulers of the two countries move, even if reluctantly, towards a common approach to terrorism - to its perception as a common enemy.
For a short while, this seemed to be happening. Observers noted a series of negative gains.
For the first time, in the first place, an apparent terrorist strike did not lead to an abrupt break in the bilateral talks through which the peace process has proceeded thus far. The Mumbai train blasts of July 11, 2006, attributed officially and by the opposition in India to "cross-border terrorism," had applied a sharp, sudden brake to the process, with the scrapping of scheduled talks at the level of foreign secretaries. Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, was due to visit New Delhi on February 20.
The very next day, an India-Pakistan pact on nuclear risk reduction was signed. And, the two sides went ahead with their earlier plan to hold the first meeting of an India-Pakistan Joint Counter-Terror Mechanism (JCTM) in Islamabad on March 6-7.
The list of pluses ends here, and the longer one of pathetic minuses begins. Many may wonder how much of a plus the pact on nuclear risk reduction was, considering that it envisaged no more than alerting the other side in case of a "cross-border" fallout; and some may find strange the official safety promise following an accident of this scale. Let us, however, let that pass.
What we cannot forget is how fast the feigned anti-terrorist solidarity disappeared at the official level. The people of Panipat, where the bombs went off, rushed to rescue the Pakistanis, and passengers from across the border vowed to travel by the same train and not to concede a victory to terrorism. Representatives of the two governments, especially in the foreign affairs and railway ministries, however, started bickering even as the Samjhauta victims lay groaning in hospital beds.
While Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukhejee voiced the most virtuous sentiments, lesser officials traded charges over the charred bodies. Pakistanis were accused of impeding investigations, and Indians were accused of treating the victims as "suspects."
Pakistan's Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed gave a new dimension to the ugly debate by insinuating that Kasuri was "compromising" Pakistan's position in India. We do not know whether it is an official policy to let Rashid get loudly anti-India while the rest of Pakistan's establishment, including President Pervez Musharraf, appears sober and responsible. But the Railway Minister has gone full steam ahead trying to derail the peace process.
Nothing much, in these circumstances, was really expected from the JCTM meeting, and nothing much has emanated. According to Indian accounts, based on official briefings, the Indian side shared "evidence and information" with Pakistan about the Samjhauta affair, though the evidence seems to have been confined to the picture of a single suspect, handed over for further investigation. According to similarly based Pakistani accounts, this picture was not accompanied by the person's passport number or other particulars. Denying this, New Delhi insists that specific details were given. The public has no way of knowing which of the reports is right.
The Pakistani side claimed to have given its counterpart "concrete evidence" of India's involvement in the Balochistan rebellion. The role of Indian consulates in neighboring Afghanistan's Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat in this regard is said to have been documented in detail. The Indian side has, of course, indignantly denied this as well, claiming that the consulates were only devoting themselves to Afghan development projects.
The JCTM is scheduled to meet again in June. But, despite the Samjhauta tragedy, no serious observer expects New Delhi and Islamabad to become comrades-in-arms against terrorism. The barest possibility of such a partnership, in fact, disappeared when both of them became part of the Bush-led "alliance against global terror" in the aftermath of 9/11.
Both of them, after all, entered the alliance with eagerness only in a desperate bid to turn it decisively against each other. President Musharraf has repeatedly reiterated his hope that Islamabad's anti-terrorist partnership with Washington and the West will help its cause in Kashmir. New Delhi under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for its part, while forging a "strategic partnership" with the US, pressed for recognition of its right to stage "a pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan. Anti-terrorism, obviously, does not carry the same connotations in both the capitals.
It never did. B Raman, a former official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence service, illustrates the point in one of his recent articles. Recalling earlier efforts made in the late '80s and early '90s for a common mechanism of counterterrorism, he says that the Indian side then focused on the Khalistani separatist movement in Punjab, believed to have cross-border backing. The Pakistani side's counter was to present New Delhi with a dossier on India's involvement in the separatist struggle in the Sindh province.
Punjab and Sindh, in other words, have just been replaced by Kashmir and Balochistan in the supposed counterterror confabulations of the two countries. The game can be expected to go on.
We should not be surprised, however, that Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, finds the outcome of the JCTM session "positive." Such charades do help to keep appearances of an anti-terror alliance, while keeping its South Asian members divided enough for cynical manipulation.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
The hawks of India and Pakistan can heave a sigh of relief. A terrorism-hit train has failed to carry the South Asian peace process forward even fractionally, as many had fondly hoped.
This should come as no surprise to watchers of the region, considering the place for terrorism in the political themes official India and Pakistan have pursued in the past, especially in the post-9/11 period. Before coming to that, a brief look at the latest twist in the tale.
The bomb blasts of February 18 on the Samjhauta (Understanding) Express, taking a toll of 68 Pakistani and Indian lives (mostly the former), caused a surge of hope along with great sorrow on both sides of the border. The common tragedy was expected to make the rulers of the two countries move, even if reluctantly, towards a common approach to terrorism - to its perception as a common enemy.
For a short while, this seemed to be happening. Observers noted a series of negative gains.
For the first time, in the first place, an apparent terrorist strike did not lead to an abrupt break in the bilateral talks through which the peace process has proceeded thus far. The Mumbai train blasts of July 11, 2006, attributed officially and by the opposition in India to "cross-border terrorism," had applied a sharp, sudden brake to the process, with the scrapping of scheduled talks at the level of foreign secretaries. Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, was due to visit New Delhi on February 20.
The very next day, an India-Pakistan pact on nuclear risk reduction was signed. And, the two sides went ahead with their earlier plan to hold the first meeting of an India-Pakistan Joint Counter-Terror Mechanism (JCTM) in Islamabad on March 6-7.
The list of pluses ends here, and the longer one of pathetic minuses begins. Many may wonder how much of a plus the pact on nuclear risk reduction was, considering that it envisaged no more than alerting the other side in case of a "cross-border" fallout; and some may find strange the official safety promise following an accident of this scale. Let us, however, let that pass.
What we cannot forget is how fast the feigned anti-terrorist solidarity disappeared at the official level. The people of Panipat, where the bombs went off, rushed to rescue the Pakistanis, and passengers from across the border vowed to travel by the same train and not to concede a victory to terrorism. Representatives of the two governments, especially in the foreign affairs and railway ministries, however, started bickering even as the Samjhauta victims lay groaning in hospital beds.
While Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukhejee voiced the most virtuous sentiments, lesser officials traded charges over the charred bodies. Pakistanis were accused of impeding investigations, and Indians were accused of treating the victims as "suspects."
Pakistan's Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed gave a new dimension to the ugly debate by insinuating that Kasuri was "compromising" Pakistan's position in India. We do not know whether it is an official policy to let Rashid get loudly anti-India while the rest of Pakistan's establishment, including President Pervez Musharraf, appears sober and responsible. But the Railway Minister has gone full steam ahead trying to derail the peace process.
Nothing much, in these circumstances, was really expected from the JCTM meeting, and nothing much has emanated. According to Indian accounts, based on official briefings, the Indian side shared "evidence and information" with Pakistan about the Samjhauta affair, though the evidence seems to have been confined to the picture of a single suspect, handed over for further investigation. According to similarly based Pakistani accounts, this picture was not accompanied by the person's passport number or other particulars. Denying this, New Delhi insists that specific details were given. The public has no way of knowing which of the reports is right.
The Pakistani side claimed to have given its counterpart "concrete evidence" of India's involvement in the Balochistan rebellion. The role of Indian consulates in neighboring Afghanistan's Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat in this regard is said to have been documented in detail. The Indian side has, of course, indignantly denied this as well, claiming that the consulates were only devoting themselves to Afghan development projects.
The JCTM is scheduled to meet again in June. But, despite the Samjhauta tragedy, no serious observer expects New Delhi and Islamabad to become comrades-in-arms against terrorism. The barest possibility of such a partnership, in fact, disappeared when both of them became part of the Bush-led "alliance against global terror" in the aftermath of 9/11.
Both of them, after all, entered the alliance with eagerness only in a desperate bid to turn it decisively against each other. President Musharraf has repeatedly reiterated his hope that Islamabad's anti-terrorist partnership with Washington and the West will help its cause in Kashmir. New Delhi under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for its part, while forging a "strategic partnership" with the US, pressed for recognition of its right to stage "a pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan. Anti-terrorism, obviously, does not carry the same connotations in both the capitals.
It never did. B Raman, a former official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence service, illustrates the point in one of his recent articles. Recalling earlier efforts made in the late '80s and early '90s for a common mechanism of counterterrorism, he says that the Indian side then focused on the Khalistani separatist movement in Punjab, believed to have cross-border backing. The Pakistani side's counter was to present New Delhi with a dossier on India's involvement in the separatist struggle in the Sindh province.
Punjab and Sindh, in other words, have just been replaced by Kashmir and Balochistan in the supposed counterterror confabulations of the two countries. The game can be expected to go on.
We should not be surprised, however, that Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, finds the outcome of the JCTM session "positive." Such charades do help to keep appearances of an anti-terror alliance, while keeping its South Asian members divided enough for cynical manipulation.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
Comments
No new comments allowed (anymore) on this post.