Wishful Thinking

As the US led campaign in Iraq enters the mopping up and consolidation stage, it isbecoming clear even to the more obtuse in India and Pakistan that things have changed; that, even when thecoalition entered Iraq, ignoring the cacophonic and quarrelsome 'international community' and the UnitedNations, the strategic architecture of Asia, indeed, of the world, had been transformed.

This is now being clearly realized even by the leaders of Islamist terrorist groups, who recognize thepossibility of a shift of American attention from Iraq to other areas of potential terrorist threat to thenational interests of the world's 'hyperpower'. Nevertheless, it is apparent that groups based in Pakistanbelieve that they will still be able to conceal themselves in the interstices of 'plausible deniability' andthe complexity of the South Asia situation. 

As Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the head of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT,now rechristened Jamaat-ud-Dawaa to get around the letter of the law), declared in an interview to TheFriday Times, "Pakistan will not be next. Saudi Arabia and then Iran, possibly Syria will come first.Pakistan is a nuclear power, is very close to China, and is a nation of jehadis. This should avert disasterfor some time."

This, according to Saeed, is time enough for a consolidation of the jehad: "We must fight against theevil trio of America, Israel and India," he says, "the need for jehad against India isparamount," adding further that "a suicide attack is the best form of jehad."

Saeed is not alone in his convictions. Indeed, Indian intelligence sources are abuzz with information on anestimated 4,500 jehadi assembled at launching pads in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), ready toinfiltrate into the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir as the snows melt on the high altitude passes alongthe Line of Control (LoC).

At the same time, a strident competition for American attention has commenced between Islamabad and Delhi,with the latter projecting a muddled case for 'pre-emptive strikes' against Pakistan. The Indian case arguesthat pre-emption against Pakistan was an even more urgent imperative than action against Iraq, since Pakistanis in unarguable possession of weapons of mass destruction; has been guilty of proliferation of missile andnuclear technologies (with supplies to and from North Korea); and is a supporter and sponsor of terrorism - ifnot, indeed, itself a terrorist state.

[India has maintained a degree of ambiguity on whether it is the US, orits own forces, that are to execute the pre-emptive strikes. If it is the latter, this can be little more thanadventurist bluster - after fifty years of pursuing a policy of military parity on its western borders, Indiadoes not have the overwhelming superiority that an effective and definitive pre-emptive strike would require.] 

Pakistan has responded with a call for pre-emptive strikes against India for the latter's supposed 'failure'to implement the UN Resolution on Kashmir.

Pakistan has, however, kept all its apparent options open. The Pakistani state's manifest intent to continuewith the campaign of terrorism, and its missile and nuclear proliferation programmes has been repeatedlyemphasised in recent pronouncements. There is, of course, a degree of divergence between the tacticalperspectives of the Islamist fundamentalist and terrorist groups, on the one hand, and those of PresidentMusharraf, on the other. 

While the former seek action against the 'enemies of Islam' now, Musharraf hasrepeatedly insisted that it is necessary for Pakistan and the Muslim Ummah to make strategic accommodations,till they have acquired sufficient power to confront and defeat the 'enemy'. There is little evidence,however, of any radical divergence in the identity of the 'enemy', or, indeed, of their eventual strategicgoals. 

Repeating much of his September 19, 2001, speech - notorious for the parallel he drew between thetactical arrangement the Prophet Muhammad entered into "with the Jewish tribes" under the Charter ofMadina (Meesaq-e-Madina), and the short term imperatives of a Pakistani accommodation of US interests -General Musharraf, in a speech at a 'Grand Assembly of the Tribal Jirga' at Peshawar on April 10, 2003, onceagain reiterated the need to build up Pakistan's and the Muslim Ummah's military and economic power before"showing eyes to the world" ("aankhe diikhaanaa" -- an Urdu expression indicating the display of aggressive or hostileintent).

Both extremes of the Indian and the Pakistani position represent a high measure of wishful thinking and afailure, not only of intelligence, but even of the ability to learn some of the obvious lessons of the war inIraq. Underlying both positions is an implicit acceptance that South Asia is now far more vulnerable tomanipulation by the US on the Kashmir issue. Pakistan is explicitly pushing for an enhanced US role, whileIndia seeks to initiate another round of coercive diplomacy to which it believes it owes some past successes. 

And while the leadership in Pakistan believes that it can continue indefinitely to play on its 'frontline'status in the war against terrorism, even as it exploits all available ambiguities, the Indian leadership isyet to display the requisite measure of maturity and confidence in their country's democratic system andcredentials. In sum, both nations remained substantially trapped in the power equations and ideologies of theCold War, and of their own fractious history.

More significant, however, is the failure to recognize the impact of the unprecedented events in Iraq. Notonly has the coalition campaign in Iraq completely revised the character and rules of warfare in perpetuity,it has put every authoritarian regime in the world on notice. The collapse of the regime in Iraq reflected,equally, the collapse of a way of thinking. 

Witnessing the fallen statues and torn portraits of Saddam Hussein- beaten with shoes, spat upon, hammered, torched and shredded - every tyrant and dictator in Asia will haveseen his own image and experienced a wrenching spasm of dread. In the vanishing myth of the prowess of theIraqi Republican Guards, the fidayeen, and the rumoured armies of Arab mujahiddeen who were torise and exact vengeance on the invading 'infidel', the hollowness and predestined failure of the Islamistterrorist enterprise has been exposed: terrorists can kill; their supporters and sponsors can inflict greatsuffering on the innocent; but - confronted finally, with clear determination - they cannot win. 

Theauthoritarian regimes of the Islamic world have long been threatened by Islamist extremism within segments oftheir own citizenry - and they have sought to channelise this incendiary potential away from themselves, andinto terrorist movements across the world. They will now confront another and rising threat from those whomthey oppress; those who reject their tyranny, their denial of individual freedom, and the enslavement ofentire societies through institutionalised terror; those, in other words, who now demand liberty anddemocracy. 

The odious tyrannies that have emasculated the world of Islam and sapped its greatest civilisationsof their creativity, their dynamism, and their abilities to deal with the universe of continuoustransformations and diversity that we live in, are now all under imminent threat - and Pakistan is noexception. Dictatorships - or, less offensively expressed, authoritarian forms of government - have long beenpeddled as the institutional arrangement more uniquely suited to the character of the populations in the'Muslim world'. 

But Iraq - and before it, Afghanistan - had already given us irrefutable evidence and stirringimages that freedom is desired by all mankind. The eventual outcome of the war in Iraq will, however, bedetermined by the success of post-war arrangements, more specifically, of the establishment and efficacy of asuccessor system based on democracy.

Returning to the subcontinent, it is essential for the political leadership of this region to understand thatIndian democracy - with all its imperfections and failures - is on the right side of history; and Pakistan,with its fundamentals based on an ideology of hatred and religious exclusion, is not. 

And to understand thatit is myopic, and will eventually prove entirely counterproductive, to constantly seek international - andparticularly US-intervention for the resolution of a problem that can and must be solved within the region,and within the enveloping context of the movement of history.

The author is Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management and Editor, South AsiaIntelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, courtesy which this article appears here.