Pakistan
got a rude shock yesterday when there were told that talks will be called off
if they continue to talk with the separatist, this stand shook the Pakistan
foreign office which was taking advantage of previous Government’s lackluster
and appeasing attitude, Pakistan has been pursuing a policy to create
disturbances in Jammu & Kashmir in tandem with local separatists groups.
However, with a new Government at the Centre with absolute majority under Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, the stand of India is quite clear- don’t mess around
with me, Its not going to be business as usual, The NDA Government has made it
clear to Pakistan that it will have to choose either India or the Kashmiri
separatists. Even after the Indian High Commissioner’s warning, when Pakistan
continued its dubious policy on Kashmiri separatists, the Government of India
rightly called-off scheduled bilateral talks in Islamabad on August 26.
This
sudden shocker has given fodder to many blabbering mouths in Indian media and
of course the congress. As usual Media has got its facts and priorities wrong,
some desperately want the talk to go on even if it costs our jawan’s life or
that coward Haffez sayeed keeps spewing venom against India. Congress on the
other hand was shouting through the roof that why doesn’t Modi speak up? Why is
he going soft on Pakistan and by evening when the meeting was called off they
started singing another tune that this government has no Pakistan centric
policy and this was a knee jerk reaction; this complete U turn is quite
expected from them but the Irony is they giving the government sermon on how to
deal with Pakistan is laughable. At least after analyzing how they surrendered India’s
interest in Sharm-el-sheikh, calling former Pakistan PM Raja Pervaiz Ashraf a man of peace right after Mumbai blasts this
sums up how Congress or UPA dealt with Pakistan or what their foreign policy
was. Now since PM has made his intentions clear that he means business with any
of his neighbors and a warning signal that you better take him and India seriously
this has set a positive precedent as far as Nepal and Bhutan is concerned which
is good news but question is how do you deal with your neighbors in East and
West i.e. Pakistan and Bangladesh? Do we seriously have a policy in place? Where
do we want this relation to go? We can’t use a carrot and stick policy with them
forever.
Let’s analyse how one can deal with Pakistan.
So to deal with your enemy you need to understand there mindset and what their
actual intention is, so let’s go back to history for a while and understand why
there is so much deep rooted hatred between India and Pakistan, it goes back to
the Mr. Jinnah who wanted a separate state for Muslims because he could never
be the PM of United India and he ganged up with Nehru and introduced two nation
theory, where he was successful in getting Pakistan or to call Islamic state.
All said that said and done this whole partition left a never healing wound on
India where scores of people were forced to leave Pakistan overnight and
millions were butchered, women raped and forced to convert and this was Jinnah’s
idea of true secularism where they did not allow a minority (Hindus in Pakistan
were in minority on 1947). Then they were not just content with Pakistan but
also wanted to expand their influence to India and started creating trouble in
Kashmir, then later on Kashmir joined India and we fought a war and as we all
know rest is history. Now if you think that Kashmir is the root cause of all
issues you are wrong, let’s assume we give away Kashmir enmity will never end.
That is because Pakistan has declared itself as a Islamic State which is born for
Islam and its sole purpose is to defend Islam and defeat Hindu State i.e. India
(again one more proof that they are a secular state). If you
have this mindset, you won't accept peace. Peace means defeat in the Pakistani
scheme of things. Every
India-Pakistan negotiation that ends up
ceding some ground to our western neighbor will, in fact, embolden it to seek
even more. The matter will never end till the Pakistanis themselves abandon the
ideology of a religion-based state (especially a religion-based state that is
also setting itself up in opposition to the idea of India.) But that
realization is some decades away. (Now
if you think I have cooked up this story or being biased against Islam then
please check Google and see what Taliban said in a TV interview few years back;
that India is a unfinished Job)
And then read this brilliant interview of
Christine
Fair where she says "Pakistan
is an ideological state. The Kashmir issue is not causal, it's symptomatic. If
there were to be any kind of negotiation on Kashmir that gives up any inch of
territory, it is not going to fix the situation." So there cannot be
anything more clear indication than this, so whenever you see “Aman Ki Aashaa”
and other bull shit that the liberals say on prime time TV debates, just shut
down the TV it’s not going to yield any results.
The other propaganda that these
liberals keep spreading is that people of Pakistan want peace but the Army does
not want peace; how intelligent? In 68 years it was last year that Pakistan has
finally had a democratic government that lasted a full term otherwise it was
only ruled under Marshal laws; so Democracy to Pakistan is like Latin and Greek
they just cannot accept Democracy (look at other Islamic states none of them
have a stable Democratic govt. Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, all
are going through a turbulent phase) It’s always been the Army/ISI which has
called the shots and will always do, Christine Fair found that jihad is central
to the Pakistani army's strategic culture: "The use of jihad is a way to
make it seem as if everything the Pakistani army does is
Islamically justified." If jihad
is the army's policy, it is the policy of the Pakistani state too. Hence, any resolution
to India-Pak conflict means Civilian government will start calling the shots
and Army will start losing its importance or may be forced to fall in line.
Yes, there are some people other side
who want peace but do they have any representation? If you go towards Northern Punjab the hub of
Jihadi you see the civilians hate India more than the army these is where most
of the terrorist are recruited. And come down south to Punjab province where
the most of the army staff is recruited and the rest of Pakistan has its own
conflict of survival.
Also, one important point I would like to make is in PoK the
majority is of Muslim population is Shias and Pakistan is a Sunni majority so
if Pakistan get Kashmir then again we will see these shias driven out of the
valley.
If we accept this reality, we need to
have our own counter-strategy to deal with an illogical Pakistan that is not driven
by common motives of a nation-state. Whether to hold talks or not has to be
part of strategy but we will talk on our terms should be the strategy, we should
keep our other options open like strengthening partnership with our neighbors
like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and China and try and alienate Pakistan in
the region. Build our defense capability and be prepaid to fight on both the
front that is Chinese side and Pakistan side. Expose the Pakistani double
standards on all levels and in all major events be it UN, WTO, SAARC, Common
wealth Nations etc. But the most important point is to Keep the Baluchistan
issue burning because Baluchistan for Pakistan is like what Kashmir is to India
so we get even when there is fire on both ends. Post American forces exit from Afghanistan
is an important time period because Taliban will now start moving east i.e.
towards India and we need to be prepaid for that as well, so our relationship
with Afghanistan is going to be very critical in coming years. As Christine
Fair notes, Pakistan is setting up a “civilizational” conflict with India, and
such conflicts are not short-term ones. This means we should forget about a
deal on Kashmir whatsoever. Fair herself dismisses ideas of a “grand bargain”
on Kashmir as “rubbish.”
We need a 100 year strategy to counter
Pakistan, not an on-off response mechanism to Pakistani provocations.
What
the Modi government should do is not follow the carrot and stick policy and theatrical
gestures and focus on long-term strategy with respect to Pakistan. Because;
they have Attention deficiency syndrome.
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