Asia Times: India/Pakistan


	June 28, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Kashmir a litmus test for Musharraf
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Tough months lie ahead in troubled South Asia, especially for Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. He is caught between those within his team who are pushing for Pakistan to lend outright support to the Kashmiri military struggle, and the United States and world leaders who want him to stop cross-border incursions into Kashmir at all costs, especially as he has already given his word that he will do so.

The sudden removal of Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Maleha Lodhi, and foreign minister Abdul Sattar reflect the turmoil within the government, while there is also discontent among the top brass of the army over Pakistan's stance on Kashmir. Inamul Haq is the new foreign minister and Jehangir Asharaf Qazi the new ambassador to the US.

The army leadership is known to be very critical of the Pakistani Foreign Office. After September 11, Sattar and Lodhi briefed a joint meeting of the federal cabinet and the National Security Council as well as corps commanders separately to impress upon them that Pakistan's support of the US in its war against terror (and Afghanistan) would benefit the region. And they insisted that this policy would give Pakistan the upper hand in the region, especially with regard to Islamabad's position on Kashmir.

In the current military standoff, though, all of these pledges have meant nothing. US officials have linked the Kashmiri movement with al-Qaeda and they have placed heavy pressure on Musharraf to stop cross-border incursions, while they have not said a single word against Indian state suppression and atrocities in Indian-held Kashmir. India's diplomats, clearly, have won hands down and their Pakistan contemporaries have not even been able to muster support among the 56 members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).

To add salt to the wound, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has stated that "we won the war without firing a bullet". Not something that Pakistan's generals like to hear.

And on the domestic front, the political parties are making a mockery of Musharraf's Kashmir policy. Politicians such as Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) chief Nawabzada Nasarullah Khan; former premier and chairperson of the Pakistani People's Party, the exiled Benazir Bhutto; Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the largest Muslim party, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI); and Maulana Fazalurehman, chief of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam, have made routine statements saying that Musharraf has sold out Kashmir.

And sources say that the military leadership is keeping up the pressure on Musharraf, arguing that if Pakistan reverses its support for the militants in Kashmir in midstream, 12 years of the Kashmir struggle would go waste.

The sacking of the two top Foreign Office officials, presumably to appease hawkish elements, indicates that Musharraf is not going to change his tack on Kashmir entirely, and in coming days Kashmiri fighters will definitely carry out some big military actions and the situation will return to how it was before the easing of action a few weeks ago. And now, after a relatively long silence, Musharraf has started talking in the same tone he has used in the past when referring to the Kashmiri freedom struggle.

Musharraf has rejected suggestions that he has sold out Kashmir under US and Indian pressure, saying that he ordered a halt to the infiltration of militants for the same reason of "national interest" that he cited in ditching the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Absolutely not," he said in an interview with the UK-based Independent newspaper. "The cause of Kashmir must be resolved. Kashmir is a festering wound ... since partition; there is a United Nations Security Council resolution on Kashmir and we are demanding its implementation. We must resolve the Kashmir dispute, this is our stand even now." He said the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir was "another Palestine in the making".

"I keep telling the United States and everyone: We must understand the dangers of this region. These dangers can only be averted if we resolve the Kashmir issue. We must do that. Otherwise, there is another Palestine here in the making," he said, adding, "Kashmir needs to be resolved. I also say it needs to be resolved in a peaceful manner. But if the other side does not want to resolve it, then we are stuck again."

Musharraf denied reports that Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, resorted to threats to pressure him to halt cross-border infiltration into Kashmir. In another interview to the US-based publication News Week he clarified that he had never promised the United States that he would stop incursions into Kashmir permanently. However, the US was quick to dismiss this claim.

A US spokesman asserted that the military ruler had given assurances to Armitage during his visit to Islamabad recently. "Deputy Secretary Armitage was given assurances by President Musharraf on June 6 that ending of infiltration across the Line of Control would be permanent," a US Embassy spokesman said in New Delhi.

Now, in Muzzafarabad (the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir), the leaders of the Kashmiri militant groups with their Islamic background as well as those Kashmiri leaders with a nationalist background have started hitting out at Musharraf.

The chief of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, Amanullah Khan, said Pakistani leaders had no right putting a ban on Kashmiris crossing the Line of Control that divides Kashmir as it was a divide that they had never accepted. He termed the latest Pakistani policies as stabbing the Kashmiri struggle in the back. Amanullah Khan is a nationalist Kashmiri leader who wants an independent Kashmir.

Similar sentiments were expressed by Syed Salahuddin, the chief of the United Jehad Council. He adheres to the Jamaat-i-Islami school of thought, a premier fundamentalist party that exists in India, Pakistan and both the Indian and Pakistani sections of Kashmir.

Musharraf has shuffled the top ranks of the army leadership several times since September 11 to silence those opposed to his policies of siding with the US and ditching the Taliban, for example.

This time, though, it will be much more difficult for him to change his position on Kashmir radically as, unlike in the past when the issues were largely related to fundamentalism, this is not the case with Kashmir - nationalism is involved.

(Š2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)