Heed the border warning bells

The present political crisis in Pakistan poses a challenge to the Indian establishment. A large number of analysts believe India should do nothing. Not because India can do little, but because it is in India’s interest to have the Pakistani army — popularly referred to as ‘the establishment’ — in direct control. Such thinking reflects either intellectual laziness or a refusal to learn from history, or both.

The basic premise that it is not for India to decide who rules Pakistan cannot be doubted. A ruler firmly in the saddle should normally suit international interlocutors since that would allow for serious negotiations. Successive civilian Pakistani governments have attempted to normalise trading relations with India, but have been stymied by the establishment.

Similarly, former president Asif Ali Zardari’s first reaction to the horrendous attack on Mumbai (November 2008) was to say that he was sending the DG-ISI over; this sounded hollow as the army was not amused. Hence the yearning for a system that can deliver is understandable.

But in this case we should ask ourselves whether it is in India’s interest that the Pakistani army is not only in command but is seen to be so. However, to say that it is only when the army directly rules Pakistan that relations with India will be stable and desirable is ahistorical and reflects woolly-headed thinking.

While it is not for India to preach to the Pakistanis who should rule them, how they are ruled can become relevant if the way Pakistan is ruled works against India’s interests. What then is in India’s interests?

A stable neighbourhood where nations can be trusted not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs would top the list. A conducive environment in which mutual differences and disputes are solved through dialogue and understanding. For that, neighbours should be comfortable in their skins, defining themselves in terms of where each society and state looks at finding itself in the medium- to long-term.

Attaining such goals would need cooperation, which should be mutually-beneficial and mutually-reinforcing, not transactional. But if a country defines itself as not being the ‘other’, and its leadership’s greatest fear is that some day its people will see through the pretence, then trouble cannot be far away.

Early in its days of being a country separate from India, the Pakistani establishment realised that tensions with India were sine quo non for the continued existence of the country, more so since a large number of Muslims in whose name Pakistan was created had no desire to move to it. Hence they launched the so-called tribal invasion of Jammu & Kashmir despite a standstill agreement signed precisely to prevent attempts to change the status quo .

Slowly, due to the artificial nature of the country created, the political system failed to stabilise, leaving open the door for the army to first put its boot inside the political door and then take over the system. (People seem to forget that as early as 1951, Ayub Khan as the serving army chief became the defence minister.) The army realised early on that tensions with India would enable it to control a disproportionate share of the national cake. The rest is history.

Since then, the army has directly or indirectly run the country, particularly its policies on India, Afghanistan, the US and the nuclear programme (since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown). The army, aided by Bhutto, refused to hand over power to the Awami League even after it had won a majority in the only free and fair elections held to the national parliament in 1970. The resultant crackdown and massacres led to over 10 million refuges fleeing Pakistan, leading ultimately to the December 1971 war and to the creation of Bangladesh.

The Pakistani army, led by its dictator Zia-ul Haq, then went on to support the Khalistani terrorists. The decade-and-a-half of violence led to tens of thousands of innocents deaths, an Indian Prime Minister was assassinated, and communal harmony was disturbed. Under Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani army promoted terrorism and secession in Kashmir, leading to large-scale deaths and destruction of the Kashmiri way of life. Subsequently, it sponsored terrorist actions in Mumbai (1993, 2008), Hyderabad, Varanasi, Pune, New Delhi and other places.. It is, therefore, completely wrong to argue that direct army rule in Pakistan is in India’s interests.

As Christine Fair has shown in her book, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War , the Pakistani army defines success in a very narrow manner — it lives to fight another day. This is because it has completely hijacked the national narrative and does not tolerate any civilian regimes ‘intruding’ on its domain.

Though Nawaz Sharif started out as a creation of the army, he later tried to chart an independent course emphasising economic growth, which would imply improved relations with India. This the army was determined to prevent; its Kargil misadventure sabotaged Sharif’s reaching out to India at Lahore, or extending normal trade relations.

Further it has not taken kindly to Sharif’s attempt to support journalists and television channels targeted by the ISI, nor his refusal to allow Pervez Musharraf to escape prosecution. The same people who would prefer the Pakistani army to its civilian elected executive are critical of Sharif for attempting to put the army in its place.

Promoting democracy à la George Bush is one extreme, total cynicism that is indifferent to any principles is the other. Both lead to disaster. If India can do nothing about stabilising a democratic regime in Pakistan, it should avoid legitimising and giving credibility to the Pakistani army’s insatiable and illegitimate thirst for power.

The writer, a former IAS officer, is the director of the South Asian Institute for Strategic Affairs