S. K. Singh on Pakistan’s policy appeared in "The Hindustan Times" on July 17, 1999

Since independence and partition, Pakistan has been a difficult neighbour with whom our links have been many and close. China after 1962 saw Pakistan as a close friend, who deserved help. During the cold war period, the West was glad to have it as a protege, able and willing to render services.

Pakistan has tried to grab Kashmir ever since the partition, believing that as a predominantly Muslim state, it must wish to join them. Its efforts to annex Kashmir have followed the same unvarying route, tricks and technique. What they first tried in October 1947, was repeated on each subsequent occasion - May 1948, July-September 1965, and autumn 1998 onwards in Kargil. Each time, they began by sending their army personnel in mufti, claiming that these were either tribals, or true-believing Islamists, or fervent, Mujahideen-Jehadis, or members of Kashmir liberation movement; or Taliban from neighbouring Afghanistan; indeed anything but what they are. Each time they have denied connections with the Pakistan army and each time these claims have proved false.

Sir Mohammed Zafarullah Khan, their very first Foreign Minister, had to confess in the Security Council that regular Pakistan army elements were indeed involved; and this has been repeated in 1965 and 1971. In his recent interaction with Nawaz Sharif, President Clinton indicated that he believed that Pak regulars were involved in the Kargil problem. The world is refusing to believe that unknown to the ISI and Pakistani army, it was the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Harkat-ul-Ansar and other Islamist-Jehadis from inside and outside Pakistan who fought in the Kargil-Drass-Batalik areas. When asked how these Kashmiri youth have received access to snow mobiles, heavy artillery etc. at these Himalayan heights of 14 to 18 thousand feet, Pakistan shrugs and has no reply to give.

Bhutto once said that the Pakistan army was the country’s protective “wolf hound, always on duty, powerful enough to keep the enemy at bay, or to destroy its ‘Master’, if the latter forget the proper password or the hound’s feeding hour”'. Nothing, not even Simla could discourage Bhutto. He asserted after 1972 that “India...thrust upon us violence, tyranny and oppression...denied to the Pakistanis the plebiscite that had been pledged”. And he commented later that Simla was “to his mind, irrelevant as far as Kashmir is concerned”... no matter what was written on a piece of paper he may have signed; “he had not accepted Indian position, Indira Gandhi’s position”. In recent years several Pakistani politicians, commentators, army and diplomats have declared unilaterally that Simla does not and cannot bind or commit Pakistan.

In another manner, too, the pattern each time has been repetitive. After each time’s fighting Pakistan tends to lose its principal dramatis personae. In the midst of the 1947-49 fighting, they faced the demise of a frustrated Jinnah through anxiety and ill-health. In another few years, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated. After 1965-66 the country saw the sacrifice of Field Marshal Ayub Khan who had to quit ignominiously, after his peers told him to quit the Presidency. The wider war of 1971 resulted not only in the separation of Bangladesh, but also Bhutto’s execution soon thereafter.

Pakistanis blamed him for his political failure, and lack of understanding of the psychology of his own armed forces and his political peers who were from other parties. Bhutto paid with his life for having made himself the nation’s buffer between the society at large and the army. Once the army under Zia had taken over governance, and claimed that it alone represented the entire society, the buffer had to be destroyed, as an awkward piece of evidence of the schizophrenia that is Pakistan.

In the last ten years the Pakistan army and politicians have underlined the importance of Kashmir and raised its international profile. Along side, Pakistani Islam has been evolving. The present generation of Pakistani leaders in politics, military, business and industry have used Islam as their faith, and as their society’s principal motivation for using both Islamic urges and frustrations, as also the Islamic fervour, not only nationally but also in the entire region i.e. in Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. They exploited this for promoting their own Kashmir-related agenda. They made a conscious effort to identify the entire region’s Islam with militancy in Kashmir, and thereafter claim that the army and the Jamaati-Jehadi groups are spearheading the Islamic urges for Pakistan’s future. Mixing Islam with liberation in Afghanistan, Pakistan was able to strengthen and enrich its own army and ISI at the expense of those who wanted merely to damage the Soviets. The stocks of arms they gained in Afghanistan, have been exploited ever since for their so-called jehad in Kashmir. The army and the ISI, therefore, claim that they, and not the Pakistani foreign office, should handle decision-making in respect of the country’s Kashmir and Afghanistan policies. Also that policies in the nuclear and missile contexts should remain their exclusive preserve.

The tripod of decision-makers who ran Pakistan after Zia’s death consisted of the President, Prime Minister and the Chief of Army Staff. The tripod ruled supreme, until Nawaz Sharif with his two-thirds majority in the National Assembly was able to knock out, first the President and later the Chief Justice followed by General Jehangir Karamat. This sent a firm message down to the military, and to the country that henceforth this PM intended to exercise state authority by himself, in a style that should be called monolithic. It is probable that the Kargil incident has been used by the army for reinventing itself, due to its greed for power. Its involvement, through the ISI with narcotics big money, small arms and terrorism all over the region gave it a de facto leadership amongst all the drug-money-small arms mafias in the region.

In recent months, the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have had their different anxieties about Osama bin Laden and his select band of crackpot terrorists. This must have been a factor in sensitising the US to the dangers inherent in their trusting the Pak army. The US oil companies too have been getting worried about the capacity of the Taliban with Pakistani help, to bottle up and keep unutilised the hydrocarbon resources of Central Asian countries. The US has thus acquired a new insight into the affairs of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudis and Iranians too have seen through Pakistan’s negative role vis-a-vis their own efforts through the OIC to seek greater Shia-Sunni coordination. These factors have opened the eyes of many around the world about the depth of irrationality in Pakistani policies, beliefs and ideas. The Islamic factor in Sinkiang too is now beginning to bubble over. Brooding over all these elements and factors is the nuclear and missile capability of Pakistan that is irresponsible as also difficult. Can Nawaz Sharif face up to the complexities of real life in this extremely complex geopolitical and geoeconomic environment? Are relations between Pakistan, its army, and their old and tried allies, China and the US, likely to remain simple and unwavering or are we seeing the contours of a volatile and dangerous new set of perceptions?

Too few in Delhi and Islamabad remember today that JFK had sent Ambassador Chester Bowles for the second time to Delhi in succession to Ambassador Galbraith for just one purpose, that of getting India replace Pakistan as the US’ predominant partner in South Asia. The cold war, however, was still raging and the State Department and the Pentagon were able to get the President to review his earlier determination, and not abandon Pakistan. Again, in 1966, at the Tashkent summit when Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ayub Khan met for the first time, by themselves, but with Prime Minister Kosygin present; Shastri told Ayub in his typically unvarnished and plain style: “You may not like to hear this, Mr President. But you should not expect me to give you Kashmir as a gift”. This has not changed.