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Transparent Deception
September 11 has proved to be much more than a sinister attack on American soil by a handful of vengeful terrorists. While it sounded doom and gloom for countless families whose near and dear ones perished in the unfortunate tragedy and led to a timely offensive against the forces of terrorism - an effort that continues with sustained momentum, and rightly so - 9/11 has come to impart a new connotation to simmering conflicts and waxing issues that have remained unresolved for decades. Fallaciously a new twist is being given to ground realities as a deliberate attempt is made to confuse the underlying causes of unrest in parts of the world described as flashpoints - Kashmir, Palestine, and Chechnya - to name a few.
A classic example of this unholy trend is the standoff on the Pakistan-India borders and India’s continued saber-rattling in various international forums. As crowds clamor “We want war” the Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Vajpayee, addresses his troops in Kashmir with the triumphant call for a “decisive battle.” At the Almaty conference, he is a picture of nonchalance as he spurns a god-gifted chance of meeting the Pakistani President. Neither the Russian head of state nor the promptings of the US government can coax him to avail of the opportunity of talking peace with Pakistan at the negotiating table. Instead, Mr. Vajpayee continues to indulge in his usual tirade against Pakistan.
Can such a posture yield tangible results? Perhaps to a certain degree if the objective is to hoodwink world opinion by ignoring ground realities. Yet there are compulsions at times to spell out the truth, though with reservations.. Kuldip Nayyer, a senior Indian journalist, concedes in one of his articles: “Whatever the objective reality, the international community wants India to sit across the table with Pakistan to sort out all our problems, including Kashmir. Already some signs of exasperation with New Deli are beginning to appear in the American and British press…. What Vajpayee can offer to Musharraf is difficult to quantify because Vajpayee has lost the stature he had even six months ago. The hardliners in the BJP are the real rulers. But they too realize that the status quo cannot continue. The continued detention of Yasin Malik is not understandable…This is not the way to retrieve the Kashmiris most of whom are alienated from India. There have to be talks…” True.
Then there is the cost of the standoff which is beginning to hurt, not only Pakistan but India too. Writing in The Hindu, C. Rammanohar Reddy, observes: “The illusion that a country can beat the drums of war and yet assume that normal life will go on was at last shattered last week. The cost of a war finally begun to hurt most the very groups which have been the most enthusiastic supporters of an open conflict with Pakistan - the urban upper middle and wealth classes….a common belief among those who support an open war is that if (the) US can wage war on Afghanistan and Israel on Palestine, there is no reason why India should not likewise attack Pakistan. Setting aside the absence of a moral compass that underlies this argument, it should be obvious that as far as the economy is concerned India is not the US or for that matter even Israel. Globalization imposes its own decrees and a distaste for war between two developing countries is one of them.”
A Times of India report makes a stunning revelation: “Standing committee members were also told that given the ground realities, a short surgical strike, either against terrorist camps in Pak occupied Kashmir or against strategic targets in Pakistan, was not possible. The war was bound to be a prolonged one unless interrupted by a nuclear strike or heavy international pressure, representatives of the Army, Navy and Air Force reportedly said.”
In the face of these disclosures it is obvious that September 11 provided adventurous India with a decorous pretext to hoodwink world opinion about the ground realities of the Kashmir conflict. New Delhi was neither willing nor prepared to wage a war yet it created the impression that it was hell-bent on settling scores with Pakistan over “cross border incursions” and imperiling peace in the South Asian subcontinent. It is for the world to see through such transparently deceptive machinations and to play its due role in resolving the Kashmir conflict.
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