Blazing Saddles

While Indian officials were celebrating the fact that US President George Bush had raised "cross-border terrorism" with Musharraf, the general was being enlisted by the Americans for yet another job—to slowly push Saudi Arabia off the Islamic stage and take the microphone himself. His new job description: capture the Organization of Islamic Conference and use it as a forum to fight Islamic extremism. Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia will be the new faces of this all-new front in America’s global war on terrorism. Significantly, Musharraf said in New York that he would support Bangladesh’s candidate for the oic secretary-generalship. The Arabs, with their Wahabism and dubious charities, can kindly take a backseat, Bush’s strategists have decided. The idea is to promote "liberal values" and bring textbooks out of the dark ages in the Muslim world.

The UN forum was but a small stage from which Musharraf launched his international campaign to speak for "enlightened moderation", of a civilisational bridge between the Muslim and the ‘other’ world. "Muslim nations must assume their responsibility for internal reform. They must eschew extremism and confrontation," he said. The West, in turn, must help resolve political disputes (read Kashmir and Palestine) and fill the social deficit.

Bush met him twice—once for what Musharraf described as a "chat" during a reception he gave for world leaders and then for a scheduled meeting the next day (September 24) for 45 minutes. Truth be told, the chat was nothing but filing past Bush alongside the many other leaders who had been through the tortuous "safe rooms" and security checks before emerging into the ballroom. Bush himself asked Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha if his PM was attending the regulation US reception. When Sinha said no, Bush remarked: "He is wise. He is a good man." Again, that didn’t stop Musharraf’s press brigade from claiming the handshake was a meeting.

The whole American experience is working at many levels for Musharraf—the message going out from the administration through the US media is a tough one. But the public face of the US is a smiling one. The mixed message came across in an official briefing when a senior US official explained: "Musharraf has been a very strong fighter in the war on terrorism. So I think that this is not necessarily a lack of will. This is hard." At the same time, Musharraf was asked to "go back and to redouble his efforts to try and deal with this particular problem". In diplomatese, it was a signal to do more to earn more of the goodies Pakistan wants.

But it was the Kashmir issue he flogged the most. In his enthusiasm to rush out with plans, he also took ownership of the terrorists. The three-point plan included an offer that ‘Pakistan would be prepared to encourage a general cessation of violence within Kashmir’—meaning it can if it wants to—provided some reciprocal obligations are met by the Indian forces.

And then he took his final mean-spirited swipe at India when he told the UN General Assembly that the big boys can expand the Security Council but they must not admit any ‘states which occupy and suppress other peoples’. Perhaps, being a US ally is getting to the general’s head. He must remember that no interests are permanent, and no friendships eternal.