Another Day Of Infamy

While assessing the meeting of Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh withPresident Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan at Yekaterinburg in Russia in an articleon June19, 2009, I wrote as follows: 

"Manmohan Singh is not a man of confrontation. He took the decision to freeze the composite dialogue mainly because of the fears of a likely adverse impact on the voting in the recently-held elections to the Parliament if he did not take a seemingly hard line against Pakistan. Now that the Congress (I)-led coalition has come back to power--with the Congress (I) improving its own individual position in the Lok Sabha -- he is unlikely to feel the need for maintaining the present hardline position on the composite dialogue........ At this time, when winds of some change for the better seem to be blowing towards India from Washington DC, Manmohan Singh would find it difficult to reject suggestions from the US for a political gesture to the Government in Islamabad by way of a resumption of the composite dialogue. The question is no longer whether it will be resumed, but when and how it will be projected to save the faces of both India and Pakistan." 

In the context of this assessment made by me on June 19, today'sdevelopment during his meeting with the Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf RazaGilani of Pakistan in the margins of the non-aligned summit at Sharm El Sheikhin Egypt did not come to me as a surprise. I do feel upset not so much by thereported agreement of Manmohan Singh that "India was ready to discuss allissues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues" as by thephraseology relating to terrorism in the joint statement, which would enablePakistan once again to wriggle out of any negative consequences arising from itsinvolvement in the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 26, 2008

The relevant question is not whether Pakistan is against terrorism. AllPakistani leaders had said that they are against terrorism. But, not one of themhad ever agreed that the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which carried out the Mumbaioutrage, is a terrorist organisation. Even the Pakistani judiciary has alreadypronounced that the Zardari government has not been able to produce any evidencelinking the LET or the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) with any terrorist movement. TheLahore High Court judgement of June 6, 2009, explaining the decision to releaseProf.Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, the JUD Amir, from house arrest, clearly said asreported by the Daily Times of Lahore: 

"About the Dawa leaders’ involvement in the Mumbai attacks, the benchobserved that not a single document had been brought on the record that Dawa orthe petitioners were involved in the said incident. There was no evidence thatthe petitioners had any links with Al Qaeda or any terrorist movement." 

The oral observations made earlier this week in the Pakistan Supreme Court byChief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury during the preliminary arguments onthe appeals sought to be filed by the Punjab and the federal governments againstthe release of Sayeed made more or less similar observations and expressedconsiderable scepticism over the case against Sayeed and the JUD. 

When senior judges of the Lahore High Court and the Supreme Court have alreadyexpressed their scepticism in open court over Indian allegations of theinvolvement of the JUD, the political wing of the LET, in the Mumbai attack, toexpect that justice will be done to the memory of the 166 persons killed inMumbai--123 Indian civilians, 25 foreign civilians and 18 brave officers andother ranks of the security forces-- by the terrorists of the LET as promised bythe Pakistani co-operation against terrorism will be naiveté of a very highorder comparable to the naiveté of Neville Chamberlain, the predecessor ofWinston Churchill as the British Prime Minister. 

I would have been at least satisfied if the two Prime Ministers hadspecifically stated that the countries would co-operate against the LET insteadof just saying that the two countries would co-operate against terrorism. If thePrime Minister's advisers had properly briefed him before his meeting withGilani, they would have drawn his attention to the following facts: 

• While even Musharraf banned the LET for some months after the December,2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, Zardari has till today not banned the JUD, the post-2001 name of the LET.
• He and his advisers have been saying that they had to act against Sayeed and his associates because of the declaration of the anti-terrorism committee of the UN Security Council that the JUD is a terrorist organization and not because they had any independent evidence against it. It was on this ground that Sayeed was ordered to be released.

Not a single reference to the LET. Not a single reference to its continuingterrorist infrastructure. And, we have provided dignity to Pakistan's baselessallegations against Baloch freedom-fighters by agreeing to make a reference toBalochistan in the joint statement in the context of terrorism by indirectlybringing on record in an official statement Pakistan’s projection of the lateNawab Akbar Khan Bugti and other Baloch leaders as terrorists. Hafiz MohammedSayeed is not a terrorist, but Bugti and other Baloch leaders were or are. Thathas been Pakistan’s contention and we have let this figure in the jointstatement. 

This agreement, which seeks to white-wash years of Pakistani sponsorship ofterrorism against Indian civilians and security forces, will make all those whodied at the hands of the terrorists shed tears in heaven. 

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.