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Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said of his talks with his Indian counterpart, “Our government is ready for grand reconciliation for the resolution of longstanding issues that need to be resolved peacefully through dialogue and in a manner that is dignified and commensurate with the self-respect of the involved parties.”
In effect, that means talks promising to have more talks.
Who else did Mukherji meet during his visit? Pakistan People’s Party head Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani, the Pakistan Muslim League’s Nawaz Sharif and obviously, Musharraf.
Can any of them, individually or together, walk the talk?
It would be naive to expect that the talks will have any major impact. It is also naive to assume that Pakistan is hurtling toward a democratic road with civilian leaders in full control.
Pakistan’s armed forces and its Inter-Services Intelligence should not be underestimated. They are still the strongest institutions in the country, strengthened over decades and justified by a hyped-up but mainly unfounded threat from India. The ISI has long kept an inventory of militants for creating trouble in Indian Kashmir.
A truce with the hard-line militants in the Swat Valley -- where until about a year ago honeymooners flocked for Alpine tourism at third world prices -- has come at a price. While the government has resigned itself to Sharia law in the region and a release of prisoners, the militants have also agreed to allow girls to go to school, stop incendiary FM radio broadcasts by radical leader and cleric Maulana Fazlullah, and ban the carrying of weapons in public and attacks on government property.
The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who was earlier accused by Musharraf’s government of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, is an ally of Fazlullah. In the past, he has hijacked NATO arms supplies to Afghanistan through the region.
The United States, NATO and Afghanistan are of the view that the truce would allow the terrorists to regroup and step up attacks as they have frequently done in the past. The United States some time back sent troops to train up Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, which was taking heavy casualties battling the militants.
Now, was the government worried that the armed forces were fighting a losing battle -- with increasing numbers of personnel captured and released only in exchange for captured militants -- or was it trying to create an atmosphere for talks as the political parties had suggested earlier just after winning the election mandate?
Attacks by militants in Pakistan have lessened to some extent after the decision to talk. But the truce came at the expense of democratic values in the region, where Sharia law will reign. How far and wide it will stretch remains uncertain.
Even tribal militia leader Baitullah Mehsud ordered a suspension of all attacks from his South Waziristan stronghold bordering Afghanistan.
Is the military winding down in the face of civilian rule? Since no single party was able to coast to a convincing victory on its own, the parties are left to handle the militants without banking on the armed forces.
The civilian government has been arguing all along what U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack observed recently, that what was important was ”getting the right mix of elements…which are socio-political and economic to battle fundamentalism on the loose.”
The bottom line is that attacks will stop if Sharia law is allowed to run.
Fingers need to be kept crossed while debating Pakistan’s future. The Daily News of Pakistan reported Wednesday that Musharraf had offered to resign in return for immunity from Parliament for the unconstitutional steps he took on Nov. 3, 2007. Musharraf denied the reports, but Law Minister Farooq H. Naek made it murkier by saying, “Wait and see. Everything is open as of today.”
Musharraf chose the road of normalization of India-Pakistan relations, and of aiding the United States in its war on terror in Afghanistan. Yet terror attacks in Pakistan rose during his time in office, and India repeatedly alleged that Pakistan was supporting militant infiltration into Kashmir.
It remains to be seen if militancy will recede under the civilian government’s socio-economic policies or if the truce will fuel ambitions of further Islamization of Pakistan, with supporters of this idea coaxing civilian leaders to regroup and ultimately making it imperative for the military to step in again.
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(Susenjit Guha is a freelance writer living in Kolkata, India. He can be contacted at sguha60@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Susenjit Guha.)
