ELECTION 99
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Coup to stall conciliation?

Pakistan's Chief Executive Pervez Musharraf is quite right when he says Nawaz Sharief must repent for making him the army chief. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto also regretted appointing General Zia-ul Haq as the army chief. This only shows how scared the two prime ministers were of the military establishment that they looked for such officers to head the army as would not retard the political process.

That both of them had to pay the price for reposing trust in wrong persons does not mean that the effort to cut the army to size was wrong. It only means that the military establishment in Pakistan is so strong that it tolerates civilian rule up to a point, not beyond. Both Bhutto and Sharief committed the mistake of "going beyond".

This does not, in any way, give legal sanction to the military regime. Even a referendum, which Musharraf has hinted at to determine the people's backing, is not a real test. Fear will play on the minds of people. Pakistan has gone through it. General Ayub Khan was elected president against Fatima Jinnah, sister of the Quaid-e-Azam, the founder of Pakistan. She was a venerable lady, deeply respected throughout the country. Still, she could not win.

The failure of Sharief or earlier civilian rulers does not suggest that the Pakistanis love military rule. Musharraf should not be under any such illusion. They applaud him because he has promised to clean up the country and carry out reforms like decentralisation. His promise of accountability will, however, carry more weight if he initiates action, not only against corrupt civilians but also corrupt military men. It is more than a coincidence that no army, air force or naval official has been arraigned for corruption since the foundation of Pakistan.

Musharraf's observations on relations with India at the last press conference reflect an unfortunate bend of mind. That he is anti-India or a hawk is known. That he is responsible for the Kargil intrusion is also a well-established fact. But that he would be so indiscreet in his remarks after becoming the chief executive was not expected.

Musharraf should have noted that New Delhi has not reacted to the military takeover beyond saying that it was 'concerned' over such a situation in a neighbouring country. Not a word has been said about democracy being throttled once again in Pakistan. This is in sharp contrast to India's comment after the first military coup which took place in Pakistan on October 8, 1958.

I was then in the press gallery of the Lok Sabha. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was in his seat when a note was handed over to him informing that Ayub Khan had taken over the administration in Pakistan. He got up from his seat in the midst of the proceedings to announce that it was naked military dictatorship in Pakistan. He was a democrat. It was hard for him to reconcile himself to a person who had not come to power through the ballot box.

The BJP-led government has been overcautious. It had all the justification to throw caution to the winds because it was Musharraf who hatched and executed the plan to attack India in Kargil. Still the most reprehensible thing he did was to end the process of conciliation which was set in motion after the Lahore Declaration.

It is no more a secret. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has confirmed in an interview that there were backdoor negotiations between India and Pakistan on Kashmir and that they had the official blessing. Editor R K Mishra and former Pakistan foreign secretary Niaz A Naik were the messengers, who carried the brief to New Delhi and Islamabad, and tried to broker an agreement.

Vajpayee has also said for the first time that the two countries were "nearing a solution". Understandably, he has not spelled out the terms which he was discussing with Sharief. If they were "nearing a solution" it was a breakthrough in a 52-year-old impasse. This is what people in the two countries and beyond have been longing for.

Who sabotaged the process? Naik's remarks which a leading Pakistani daily in Urdu, Jang, published after the Kargil operation gives a clue. He said: "the programme and the informal diplomacy which could have led to resolution of the Kashmir dispute by September-October this year was derailed by Kargil." Naik goes on to add: "there was no coordination between the armed forces and the civilian leadership."

What it means is that the two countries would have crossed the biggest hurdle in Indo-Pak relations if the Kargil intrusion or the military establishment had not come in the way. Naik's interview to the BBC at the end of June when the unilateral withdrawal from the Kargil heights was in progress, confirms it. He said that "Vajpayee's message to me was that if the situation is resolved as quickly as possible, then the process which he had started along with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief can easily be resumed and accelerated."

This indicates that either Sharief did not know about Kargil at all or had very scanty information about it. Defence Minister George Fernandes's initial statement was right that Sharief was not aware of the Kargil operation. Probably, Sharief communicated his lack of knowledge to New Delhi. That may be the reason why Fernandes made the second statement that if the Pakistani forces were to withdraw, there would be no firing at the retreating troops.

It was not difficult to add two and two. What Sharief did was not to the liking of the army, neither the "nearing" to a solution on nor the withdrawal of troops and the Mujahideen from Kargil. He had to pay the price. A knowledgeable top military officer in India has put it succinctly: "No prime minister in Pakistan will now ever dare to settle Kashmir knowing the fate of Nawaz Sharief."

It was nothing unusual if Sharief had not been told about the Kargil intrusion. General Ayub was in the dark of the infiltration in Kashmir in 1964, called Operation Gibraltar. His information secretary, Altaf Gauhar, in an article in The Nation,, said: "While Ayub Khan was determined not to embark on any military operation in Kashmir, Aziz Ahmed and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were preparing a plan to launch a commando operation in Kashmir with the help of the Inter-Services Intelligence. Ayub, who was in Swat knew little about these developments. The GHQ was sending him reports to suggest that operation Gibraltar was making progress."

New Delhi should now take the nation into confidence and tell what happened. Mishra undertook five trips to Pakistan and Naik visited India six times. Still nothing is known officially. The matter was raised in the Rajya Sabha. But Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, who wound up the discussion on the President's address, did not throw any light in his reply. In truth, it reflects the government's disregard for Parliament because it does not consider it necessary to take the House into confidence.

The entire sequence of events has become important because Kargil may have led to the military coup in Pakistan. Sharief has been a casualty. In fact, there should be a white paper on 'The Lahore Process and After.' While in Delhi before the coup but after the end of his mission, Naik told a former Indian foreign secretary that there was an understanding between the two prime ministers at Lahore that non-official emissaries would pick up the thread on Kashmir. And they did. Then what transpired between the two governments? That they were "nearing a solution" is heartening to know, although it is all history. Still the country must know.

Kuldip Nayar