[Reader-list] India Peace Group Required in Pakistan: Sethi

[Rahul Asthana]

Najam Sethi writes...

"Indeed, the truth is that
> the whole
> business of armed non- state actors in Pakistan, and the
> rise of
> Military Inc in Pakistan, who are together the bane of
> democratic
> Pakistan and India, is directly linked to the unresolved
> Kashmir conflict."
This line of reasoning is increasingly becoming popular with Indian liberals like Arundhati Roy who have an obsession with blaming India even if it means sacrificing logic and intellectual honesty.
In Pakistani context it is more interesting.The Pakistani establishment (read Pakistani army and ISI)has been pedaling layers upon layers of bullshit to whip up a frenzy against India, and Pakistani liberals like Najam Sethi are eating it up.
Please consider the following two points-
1-This is from the article I posted earlier-
 "The fact remains that the LeT, created by the Pakistani ISI in the 1980s, is not a Kashmiri group; it is active not only in India, but in Chechnya, Sudan, and in Britain, where Cruikshank resides. Moreover, there is hardly a single Kashmiri in the LeT organization. Most of the LeT members are Pakistanis from Punjab and the tribal areas, in addition to a smattering of British Muslims. It is unlikely that Cruikshank does not know these facts, yet he chose to distort them, to make the point that Kashmir is what keeps India and Pakistan at each other’s throats."

2-If LET,or the so called bastions of Kashmiri independence are because of the Kashmir issue being unresolved,notwithstanding point #1, then what are the Taliban? Why did Pakistan nurture and train the Talibans for so many years? 

This is why I have to say that Pakistanis like Najam Sethi deserve dictatorship.

Thank you
Rahul



--- On Sat, 1/31/09, Yousuf <ysaeed7 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Yousuf <ysaeed7 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Reader-list] India Peace Group Required in Pakistan: Sethi
> To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>, "Kumkum Chadha" <kumkum at hindustantimes.com>
> Date: Saturday, January 31, 2009, 9:40 AM
> PAKISTAN - INDIA:
> 
> Mail Today, January 30, 2009
> 
> INDIA MUST SEND ACROSS A PEACE GROUP
> by Najam Sethi
> 
> A PEACE delegation comprising human and women's rights
> activists, media peaceniks and party political
> representatives from Pakistan recently visited New Delhi.
> They went with a threefold objective: to "condole"
> the Mumbai attacks and express solidarity with Indians in
> their hour of grief, to explain how and why Pakistan too is
> a victim of the same sort of terrorism that is threatening
> to afflict India, and to try and put the peace process and
> people- to- people channel back on track.
> 
> In view of the adverse travel advisories put out by both
> countries and
> the war paint put on by both media, the delegation risked
> being
> branded "unpatriotic" in Pakistan. But the two
> leaders of the delegation, Asma Jehangir, chairperson of the
> Human Rights Commission
> of Pakistan, and Imtiaz Alam, Secretary- General of the
> South Asia
> Free Media Association, are known as fearless crusaders in
> the region
> for doggedly promoting the cause of peace between India and
> Pakistan.
> Given the goodwill they personally enjoy in India, they
> threw caution
> to the wind at home and embarked on their journey across
> the border
> with great expectations.
> 
> In the event, however, even they were surprised by the
> consistently
> frosty, sometimes hostile, reception that they received at
> private,
> official and media forums in Delhi. It seemed as if all of
> India,
> public and private, had consciously united to send out one
> harsh
> message to Pakistan: that India is deeply wounded and will
> not take
> another such attack lying down. This is perfectly
> understandable.
> 
> THE terrorist attack was on the Taj Mahal Hotel, the pride
> and symbol
> of resurgent modern India; it humiliated India's "
> powerful" security
> establishment by exposing its gaping weaknesses; and the
> terrorists
> targeted innocent civilians rather than any specific
> military or
> intelligence organ of the state or government, thereby
> signaling their
> intent to wage war on India, Indians, and indeed the very
> idea of
> secular India.
> 
> Therefore credit must be given to the Indian establishment
> for showing
> great restraint and maturity, unlike the reckless way in
> which America
> reacted after 9/ 11.
> 
> The post- Mumbai composite view in India has three salient
> elements.
> First, they say that elements of the Pakistani state were
> allegedly
> complicit in the planning, organisation and implementation
> of the
> attack, evidence of which is proffered in the recorded
> chatter of the
> terrorists with their Pakistani handlers which suggest that
> this
> message was deliberately meant to be given. The implication
> of this,
> as India's foreign minister has expressly stated, is
> that non- state
> actors and state actors in Pakistan were jointly
> responsible. Second,
> they believe that the government of President Asif Zardari
> is innocent
> but weak and Pakistan's military establishment is
> guilty and strong.
> The implication of this is that there is no point in India
> talking to
> a weak civilian government or strong military establishment
> — because
> both are part of the problem — about redressing terrorism
> and
> advancing the peace agenda. Third, they insist that
> Pakistan should
> not mistake India's overt outrage and anger as merely
> election-
> related histrionics and that it will be business as usual
> after the
> elections are over in April. On the contrary, they claim
> there is a
> consensus in India's state and society that India must
> align with the
> international community and fashion a united strategic
> resolve to
> compel Pakistan's state and society to dismantle its
> terrorist
> infrastructure on pain of international encirclement,
> blockade and
> sanctions.
> 
> Unfortunately, however, India and Indians seemed blind to
> an equally
> harsh reality about their own state and themselves — that
> terrorism is
> not just Pakistan's problem but increasingly
> India's too. This is not
> because the origins of such terrorism lie exclusively in
> political
> distortions within Pakistan but also because India has had
> a role in
> creating conditions conducive to its growth by refusing to
> resolve the
> regional conflicts that spawn it. Indeed, the truth is that
> the whole
> business of armed non- state actors in Pakistan, and the
> rise of
> Military Inc in Pakistan, who are together the bane of
> democratic
> Pakistan and India, is directly linked to the unresolved
> Kashmir conflict.
> 
> Equally, it is profoundly unrealistic for India's
> government to claim
> that because the Zardari government in Pakistan is weak,
> there is no
> one to talk to in Pakistan about how to get the peace
> process back on
> track. New Delhi had five years of unfruitful dialogue with
> a strong
> military- led government from 2003- 08 that was ready to
> think
> outside- the- box and make unbelievable concessions,
> especially on
> Kashmir, but was constantly thwarted by the statusquo and
> lumbering
> Indian bureaucracy.
> 
> INDIANS worry and warn about a second terrorist attack on
> their soil.
> 
> But just as it is inevitable in one way or another in the
> future, so
> too is India's likely response. " Surgical
> strikes" and " limited war"
> may be " honourable" self- satisfying responses,
> but they are not
> realistic options between nuclear armed states. Nor should
> India think
> of responding by manufacturing its own version of state-
> non- state
> actors to foment trouble in Pakistan. It will only hurtle
> the two
> peoples and states into confrontation, make India's
> problem more
> intractable and hurt it disproportionately because it has
> more
> economic and political sheen to lose than Pakistan.
> Equally, if all
> other options are on the table for India in alliance with
> the
> international community, including punitive sanctions,
> blockades and
> Pakistan's total isolation, it should be clear that
> such an occurrence
> will have disastrous consequences for Pakistan's
> tanking economy and
> its equally fragile national unity. Fortunately, the view
> in
> responsible quarters in India is that even this response,
> all options
> short of war, is undesirable because it will plunge
> Pakistan into
> headlong failure. The hawks, on the other hand, argue that
> at least
> India will have ensured that Military Inc. will have only
> the ruins of
> Pakistan to preside over if they continue to muddy the
> waters. Thus
> the debate continues.
> 
> A peace delegation from India needs to visit Pakistan now,
> not to
> explain why India is angry — that message lies in the
> domain of the
> Pakistani delegation that has just returned from Delhi —
> but to
> understand why the cause of its established democratic
> state and civil
> society is the same as that of Pakistan's fledgling
> counterparts.
> 
> The writer is the editor of The Friday Times
> 
> 
> 
>       
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