India struggles with dossier controversy
By Santwana Bhattacharya
NEW DELHI - Dossier upon dossier - some real, some imaginary, some still in the
making. The present round of India-Pakistan bilateral engagement, and the
public gaze fixed on its twists and turns, is being dominated by a strange kind
of competitive dossier diplomacy.
Not a day goes by without the mention of the delivery of secret official papers
flying from one side of the border to the other. Then a treasure hunt ensues.
Where is the dossier on Balochistan that Pakistan supposedly handed over to the
Indian prime minister in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt? Or was it quietly given to the
Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad? One side insists it happened. The other
denies it vehemently. Where to look for proof? Under the table?
No, wait. It was not the Balochistan one, it was Islamabad's first
written admission that last November's Mumbai attack was indeed planned on its
soil by non-state actors. No, actually, the one on Hafiz Saeed, the chief of
Jamaat-ud-Dawa (the politico-religious parent outfit of the Lashkar-e-Taiba),
offering "sufficient evidence" that he masterminded the Mumbai attack. Is it in
the Indian home minister's office or has it reached Islamabad? Or is it in
transit? Does Saeed figure in it alone or does it have dope on all the dramatis
personae? They say it has the attested transcript of Ajmal Amir Kasab's
confessions in court over his role in the attack? Is it only on paper or is
there a CD? And, while we are at it, where's the one on the “action taken” by
Pakistan against the proven accused?
It's endless and it's confusing. Does it get the sub-continent anywhere near a
solution? The simple and obvious answer is no. But that's never been on
anyone's real (or hidden) agenda. Diplomatic transactions between India and
Pakistan are always prone to take on the shape of a ping pong match, and then
it always takes on a life of its own, as if every little bilateral thrust and
parry were a proxy war to be waged for its own sake. The specifics of any
situation - in this case, complicated dossiers, the qualified resumption of
composite dialogue, and the "callous drafting" of a joint statement - become
part of this eternal narrative.
Much of the bleeding, as always, is internal. Yashwant Sinha, former external
affairs minister and now member of parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party,
leading the opposition charge, has mockingly asked Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh what changed between his meeting with Pakistan President Asif
Ali Zardari in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani in Egypt that he had to sign a joint statement giving so much leeway to
the other side. Manmohan noted, "The dossier, Mr Sinha!” Yes, in between,
Pakistan provided a dossier.
To put it exactly in the prime minister's words, it began on January 5, when
India handed over a dossier detailing the links of the Mumbai attackers to
Pakistan. "Some action followed and Pakistan formally responded to us [through
dossiers] on two occasions regarding the progress of their own investigations -
in February 2009 and then just two days before my departure for Paris [for the
G8+G5 summit] and Sharm el-Sheikh," said Manmohan.
That is exactly what, he went on to explain, prompted him to sign the joint
statement purportedly dehyphenating dialogue from terror attacks, much to the
chagrin of his domestic constituency. He insisted that he has not deviated from
the national consensus, and he would not resume the composite dialogue unless
tangible action on the terror front is taken by Pakistan. The devil is in the
text.
The way he put it across, it was clear that he had to cede a few inches in
response to the criticism. But for all the talk of bad drafting, it must be
admitted that the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement is an elastic wonder - for it
allows each side to have it interpreted in absolutely opposing ways without
contradicting the text itself. For while Manmohan defends himself saying
dialogue is predicated on the "terror" clause, Pakistan says it means dialogue
is liberated from all other factors.
And for that reason, even as Manmohan shrinks back a bit for the benefit of his
own audience, he has won grudging praise in Pakistan for doing what he is
claiming he has not done! And while he swears he isn't swerving off the old
path, he is being portrayed in the liberal sections of the Indian media as a
risk-taker and even a visionary.
On the floor of parliament, though, he touched not only on the grand themes but
also on the micro-details. The dossier from Pakistan, he said, is a 34-page
document that gives details - the planning, the sequence of events, results of
the probe carried out by the special Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan,
a copy of the first-instance report and photographs of the accused in custody
and of those declared as proclaimed offenders.
"The Pakistan dossier states that the investigation has established beyond
doubt that LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba] activists conspired, financed and executed the
[Mumbai] attacks," he said. Not without satisfaction, he listed it as an
achievement of his government that LeT operatives Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Zarar
Shah and 13 others have been declared offenders by their own state, Pakistan,
for unleashing terror on India.
The Indian defense establishment and strategic experts are not buying this.
They say Pakistan has cleverly sacrificed a few small pawns but is refraining
from taking real action against the masterminds of the terror apparatus, the
likes of Hafiz Saeed - who provides the biggest ideological and logistic
support to any form of anti-India operations in Kashmir and beyond.
Then came the next dossier (was it the fifth?): on August 1, India sent
certified copies of a confession made by the sole terrorist caught during the
Mumbai attack, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab. The court confessions were tagged
with the interrogation reports of LeT operatives Fahim Ansari and Shahabuddin
Ahmed.
The seven-page document, sent to Pakistan, has an equal number of annexures.
Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram says enough evidence has been provided. Both
LeT and Jamaat-ud Dawa top guns could be charged "if Pakistan really wanted
to". The whole package, it was emphasized, provides all answers to the queries
Pakistan had posed earlier and could go a long way to nailing Saeed.
This, of course, came as a counter to the Pakistan interior minister's claim
that "sufficient proof" has not been provided by India, which would allow
Pakistani authorities to go after Saeed and then fix him in a court of law.
Thrust, parry, and counter thrust. "If Pakistan really wanted to" - the
implicit sarcasm in Chidambaram's quip relates to the widely held view in India
that Pakistan can never really afford to act against Saeed. For one, he
continues to be seen as a strategic asset; and two, public opinion will go
against the government in the event of a crackdown on him.
All the flood of dossiers, however, could not throw light on one source of
controversy. For, sticking out like a sore thumb in the present discourse on
terror attacks - specifically the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks - is
Balochistan. How and from where Balochistan got on the table unannounced - or
made its way to the Manmohan-Gilani joint statement - is a riddle. There are as
many conjectures as there are experts, analysts and journalists on either side
of the border.
Pakistan media quoted sources close to the top echelons of their government to
report about the existence of a sixth dossier on India's interference in
Balochistan and "other areas". Apparently, irrefutable proof provided in this
dossier made it impossible for the Indian prime minister to avoid putting the
hugely contentious Baloch issue on the joint statement.
The Indian establishment - from junior Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor to
Manmohan - has since denied the existence of this sixth dossier. Given the way
Gilani praised Manmohan's "statesman-like speech" in the Indian parliament,
where he spoke about a peaceful and stable Pakistan being in India's interests,
it seems talk of the Baloch dossier will ebb for now. If it had existed, it had
served its purpose, and could go now to that place where dossiers go in the
afterlife.
Meanwhile, it was on this issue that Manmohan received his sternest criticism -
not just from the opposition, but the entire security and strategic affairs
community, the diplomatic corps, all manner of experts popping up in the media
and even his own party. To give him credit, he summoned his most persuasive
skills in response, and has partly lifted the gathering gloom by dint of his
personality.
He strongly refuted the opposition's charge that the inclusion of Balochistan
in a signed document was a blunder - "India has nothing to hide", so why should
the country run scared if an internal problem of Pakistan gets mentioned on a
bilateral document? In a rearguard defense, some of his backers even claimed
that it was actually Pakistan that would face the long-term implications of
"internationalizing" a long-standing secessionist movement in one or more of
its provinces.
However, Manmohan's Egyptian adventure may haunt him politically for some time.
He has certainly not looked so isolated before. Neither the opposition nor his
rivals in the ruling Congress party want to let him get away easily. Manmohan
is already lapsing into that old Reaganism - "trust, but verify" - transposed
from the Mikhail Gorbachev-era Soviet Union to contemporary Pakistan is being
parodied by the opposition as "first verify, then trust". You never know what
clicks with an Indian public that has learned to mistrust everything, let alone
Islamabad.
How the script unfolds from here on for Manmohan also depends on the extent of
support he gets from the party. Whenever crisis strikes, Congress president
Sonia Gandhi takes her time to read the situation, and then come out with
unconditional support of the man she chose as prime minister. This time, most
observers say the signal from her is pale green.
Perhaps sensing that it might not be politically prudent to engage Pakistan in
a composite dialogue when the wounds of Mumbai are still raw, what Sonia has
offered is certainly a cautious, qualified endorsement. Speaking at the
Congress parliamentary party meeting a day after the premier spoke in the Lower
House, Sonia backed his parliamentary intervention without mentioning his joint
statement with Gilani. She made it clear that there was no change in her
party's view: dialogue with Pakistan can resume only after they crack down on
India-targeted terrorism.
In other words, Manmohan have to beat a retreat and dialogue may slip back to
the backchannels. It was apparent to all that the party, if not plunged into
disquiet, was not exactly brimming over with enthusiasm either about Manmohan's
initiative. Inevitably, speculation arose that cracks had appeared in the
relation between Manmohan's government and the Congress party; the situation
became so hot that Sonia fielded her son, the young and recently popular Rahul
Gandhi, to cool matters.
As for the Pakistani establishment, Manmohan seems to have done them a
remarkable favor. By agreeing to mention Balochistan, he made it possible for
Gilani to sound triumphant at home. It has helped Gilani to sell his end of the
compromise, deflect criticism from Pakistan's Kashmir lobby for that issue
being given a miss, and to pull out troops from the eastern border with India
for redeployment in the US-led "war against terror" in the Af-Pak (Afghanistan
and Pakistan) zone on the western front without any hue and cry.
The biggest casualty in the whole episode is the just-retired Indian foreign
secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon. The room that was being readied for him in the
prime minister's Office for a post-retirement special envoy's job is likely to
remain vacant. His undiplomatic candor on the Sharm el-Sheikh document being
"badly drafted" has earned him a reposeful retirement, unless of course he
decides to write a tell-all book.
Santwana Bhattacharya is a New Delhi-based journalist who writes on
politics, parliament and elections. She is currently working on a book on
electoral reforms and the emergence of regional parties in India.
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