At diamond jubilee celebration of Blind Men’s Association managed H.V.Desai Eye Hospital in Pune of Maharashtra, G..
Can India and Pakistan Break the British Curse? - Ramtanu Maitra

There are distinct indications that some forces within India and
Pakistan have made headway in improving relations between their two
countries. While the intent, and whatever progress has been made by
their efforts, are laudable, what both sides must recognize is that
a number of external, and some internal, forces will do their best
to prevent consolidation of this progress. Well-wishers of both
India and Pakistan must train their eyes on those who want the
conflict between these two populous South Asian nations to
continue.
First in that list is Britain, which harbors, and has promoted over
the years, politicians, bureaucrats, immigrants, and terrorists who
spare no efforts to stoke the fires of the Kashmir conflict and to
organize those who are ready to lay down their lives for an
independent Kashmir. Even if such an effort does not succeed, the
British empire-servers “need” the conflict in order to exert
influence over the area and to prevent India and Pakistan from
working together for the development of their respective countries
and the nations of the Eurasian landmass. London, because of its
hundreds of years of involvement in the Indian subcontinent, has
assets on both sides of partitioned Kashmir. Some of these are old
assets, who have kept the pot boiling all this while, and some are
new, and perhaps more violent.
Foreign Obstacles in Pakistan : Two other powerful
forces play significant roles in keeping India and Pakistan apart.
One is Saudi Arabia, which has found an agreeable, and financially
dependent, Pakistan, which is more willing than ever to promote
Wahhabism, the Saudi version of orthodox Sunni Islam, in Pakistan
itself, and in Central Asia. The Saudi objective is to get control
of the Islamic nations by eliminating secular and independent
Islamic leaders in the Arab world and Central Asia, and to put in
their place those who would pledge their religious allegiance to
the Keeper of Two Holy Mosques: the Hashemite Bedouin King of Saudi
Arabia.
The other key force, of course, is Washington. Although the United
States no longer actively promotes this conflict, it adopts British
policies in the region. For instance, the decades-old
Washington-Islamabad relations were built entirely on a tit-for-tat
basis. During the days when the Soviet Union was identified in
Washington as the “mother of all evils,” the Pakistani military was
a key cog in Washington’s machine to destabilize the Muslim parts
of the Soviet Union.
That came into full view in the 1980s, when the Soviet Army moved
into Afghanistan to “protect” its socialist assets there. It was a
disastrous adventure, any way one looks at it. Afghanistan’s
so-called socialist assets were never a consolidated political
force, nor did the Afghans have any love for the invading Soviets.
Seizing upon these contradictions, the West led by the United
States and the fundamentalist Wahhabi and/or pro-Salafi regimes in
the Arab world, moved in to set up the Pakistan military as the
force that would carry out a proxy war for a price. The Soviets
were defeated and the Pakistani military was rewarded
accordingly.
In 2001, when the G.W. Bush Administration declared that the 9/11
attack on the United States was carried out by al-Qaeda, under
protection of the ruling Afghan Taliban regime, Afghanistan was
invaded by the United States and NATO, the latter extending its
jurisdiction for the first time in the history of this dubious
military alliance beyond Europe, to the doorsteps of Central Asia,
part of the former Soviet Union.
Washington, having fattened the Pakistani military with arms and
cash, expected relations to continue as before. But, over the
years, it has found out that such relations no longer hold up. The
Pakistani military has its own agenda, which does not quite mesh
with what the United States has demanded of Pakistan, thereby
creating a separation between Washington and the Pakistani
military. This may not be a permanent split leading to the end of
the old pragmatic relationship, but as long the Afghanistan
situation remains unresolved, no clear light will be shined on
US-Pakistan relations.
For instance, if, and more probably when, the US and UK decide to
wind down their Afghan operation by handing over power to a
“moderate” Taliban faction, with the intent to prevent regional
forces such as Russia, Iran, India, China, and Pakistan from
working together in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Washington may
work out yet another barter agreement, whereby the Pakistani
military will be allowed to exert control over Kabul and the United
States will keep on modernizing Pakistan’s military hardware. That
will “revitalize” US-Pakistan relations, simply because the
Pakistani military, which is now lying low, will come to the fore
again.
The Pakistani military, with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and
the United Kingdom as its major clientele, will torpedo any attempt
to improve India-Pakistan relations, because it has become
exceedingly corrupt. Financial corruption aside, even worse is its
accommodation of jihadi forces within the military, while the
military brass charms the Americans with its secular credentials.
The Pakistani military, which has remained the bastion of power in
that country for decades by branding India as its mortal enemy, has
now incorporated within its rank and file those jihadis who are
domiciled in Pakistan, but controlled from Riyadh, London, and
elsewhere.
China-India Model for Economic Ties : It is
relevant to note in this context that the deterioration of the
US-Pakistani military relations has given an uptick to
Pakistan-India and Pakistan-Russia relations. Both these
developments are important for regional stability. One of the
highlights was the April 8-9 “unofficial” visit by Pakistani
President Asif Ali Zardari to India, and his one-on-one meeting
with Premier Manmohan Singh. Reports indicate that during their
talks, Zardari argued that an improvement in economic ties between
the two countries should not be held hostage to the various
irritants, and cited the Sino-India template to drive home his
argument.
This is a reference to the improvement that has occurred in trade
and economic relations between India and China, even while the
decades-long boundary dispute between the two remains in the
process of resolution. India and China have managed to scale up
annual bilateral trade to over $70 billion and have set an
ambitious target of $100 billion by 2015.
India and Pakistan could also work purposefully toward improving
economic ties to mutual advantage, while taking a long-range
strategic view to resolving complex issues like Kashmir, nuclear
weapons, and missiles. Bilateral trade between India and Pakistan
stands at a mere $2.7 billion, and there is little doubt that
cooperative economic relations would raise this figure
significantly. Expanded trade would generate powerful forces within
each country who would like to see peaceful relations between the
two countries and stability in the region.
Trade between India and Pakistan has greatly improved in recent
months. Pakistan has switched to a “negative list” system,
specifying which products cannot be imported from India - which
means that everything not on the list can be imported; this is
understood as a move to boost trade. Pakistan has committed itself
to grant Most Favored Nation status to India by the end of the
year. (India already granted MFN status to Pakistan in 1995.) Both
countries are working on simpler rules governing business
visas.
On April 13, India said it would allow a flow of foreign direct
investment (FDI) from Pakistan soon. “India has taken an
in-principle decision, as a part of the process to deepen our
economic engagement, to allow foreign direct investments from
Pakistan in India,” India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Anand
Sharma said in New Delhi at a joint news conference with his
Pakistani counterpart, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.
Under the current rules, Pakistani citizens cannot directly invest
in India. The consolidated FDI policy of the Ministry of Commerce
says, “A non-resident entity (other than a citizen of Pakistan or
an entity incorporated in Pakistan) can invest in India, subject to
the FDI policy.” Sharma added that an India-Pakistan Business
Council would be set up in the coming days. Cooperation will also
be extended to opening branches of banks from both countries in
each other’s territory. “RBI [Reserve Bank of India] and State Bank
of Pakistan are in favor of opening branches,” Sharma said.
India has also reportedly extended its own friendly gesture to
Pakistan by offering 5,000 MW of electricity when Prime Minister
Singh met his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani, on the
sidelines of the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on March 29. The
energy offer could help Pakistan’s urgent need for power and,
according to Zee News in India, “could be transmitted through
Punjab without much delay.”
Complex Internal Dynamics : There is a strong
lobby in India, however, that opposes improved relations with
Pakistan, on the grounds that Pakistan cannot be trusted, since it
has waged a number of wars with India, was virtually openly
inserting terrorists into the state of Jammu and Kashmir to
undermine stability within the state, and is involved in turning
the Muslim majority population within the state virulently
anti-India. This lobby cites some Pakistanis’ repeated references
to India as a “Hindu India” - although about 170 million Muslims
have long made it their home - as an indication that Pakistan’s
authorities would like to keep their citizens forever hostile to
India, using religion as the tool.
Moreover, within India, there exists a large segment of the
population, mostly English-speaking, who would like stronger ties
with the West. They consider that improvement of India’s relations
with China is unworkable, citing China’s past hostilities with
India that resulted in the 1962 border skirmish over delineation of
the borders drawn by the British Raj, but also because China is an
“all weather” ally of Pakistan.
The 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, by terrorists from Pakistan
raises another obstacle. It has been widely acknowledged that that
terrorist action was carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a
terrorist group born, nurtured, and harbored in Pakistan, and that
the group also planned and executed the attack on the Indian
Parliament in New Delhi in 2001. And, yet, the LeT chief, Hafeez
Sayyed, who lives freely in Pakistan under the protective umbrella
of the military and the ISI security services, has not been charged
in Pakistan for these terrorist attacks.
US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman’s declaration in New Delhi
on April 2, that the United States had put a bounty of $10 million
on Sayeed’s head, did little to change the environment. Sayeed
remains free, and as powerful as ever. As a result of such
developments, anti-Muslim terrorists have begun to emerge within
India. Although not a dominant force, they have developed
capabilities to undermine improvement of relations between these
two countries.
On the other hand, the LeT, which was banned internationally, and
subsequently by Pakistan, under international pressure, is now
operating internationally, drawing its strength from Britain and
Saudi Arabia. While it maintains its links to the Pakistani ISI, it
is also a tool of the British MI6 and whoever promotes Islamic
fundamentalism to undermine sovereign nation-states.
In addition, British intelligence and Tony Blair-supported British
militants have gathered strength within Pakistan, drawing into
their fold a large number of Pakistani military officers and ISI
personnel. The Times Online (UK), on July 4, 2009, published an
article, “British Islamists plot against Pakistan,” which stated
that British militants are pushing for the overthrow of the
Pakistani state. Followers of the fundamentalist group Hizb
ut-Tahrir (HuT) have called for a “bloodless military coup” in
Islamabad and the creation of a Caliphate, in which strict Islamic
laws would be rigorously enforced.
At Lahore’s Superior College, where the London-based militant
Tayyib Muqeem has set up an HuT student group, he said the
organization’s aim was to subject Muslim and Western countries to
Islamic rule under sharia law, “by force” if necessary. He
reportedly added that Islamic rule would be spread through
“indoctrination” and “military means” if non-Muslim countries
refused to bow to it. “Waging war” would be part of the Caliphate’s
foreign policy.
One of HuT’s strategies in Pakistan is to influence military
officers, according to the Times Online article. Shahzad Sheikh, a
Pakistani recruit and the group’s official spokesman in Karachi,
Pakistan, talked openly about persuading the Army to instigate a
“bloodless coup” against the present government, which, he said, is
“worse than the Taliban.”
The HuT’s Long Reach : The Daily Times of Lahore,
Pakistan, carried the following report on Oct. 4, 2004, on the
HuT’s activities in Pakistan: “They are considered a new breed of
Islamic fundamentalists, who study at top British and American
schools yet abhor Western values, advocate a pan-Islamic state and
favor the removal of Pakistan’s pro-US government.
“Militancy and violence [are] not part of their agenda and they
want to achieve their ‘lofty goals’ through a peaceful and
non-violent struggle. But analysts say such men, fired by the
passion of an Islamic renaissance, stand on a thin line dividing
political and violent struggle.
“Hizbut Tehrir, an international Islamic group with roots from
England to Central Asia, is a recent addition to myriad radical
organizations striving to enforce ‘true Islam’ in Pakistan. The
group was outlawed in Pakistan in November 2003, just three years
after it started operations, but its members continue undeterred,
distributing party literature and holding small meetings in efforts
to expand their base. Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the
war on terror, banned several militant Islamic groups, but most
re-emerged under new names. Hizbut Tehrir has refused to change its
name despite the closure of offices and the arrest of several
members.
“British and US nationals of Pakistani origin comprise the backbone
of this secretive group formed in Jerusalem in 1953. It wants to
establish a supra-Islamic state on the model of the caliphate that
existed in the early days of Islam. The group came to Pakistan
through second-generation Pakistanis living in the West,
particularly in Britain and the United States. They claim they had
supporters in Pakistan for a long time but formal operations took
time to establish.”
In addition to the LeT and HuT, a myriad of terrorist groups
function within Pakistan, under the protection of the ISI and
military, one of whose objectives is to carry out Britain’s
empire-servers’ plan to keep the India-Pakistan conflict going,
through terrorist actions.
Unfortunately, this is the reality on the ground, and those who
wish well for both India and Pakistan have a massive task on their
hands, which is to remove these thorns and make the path
navigable.
Ramtanu Maitra, South Asian Analyst at Executive
Intelligence Review
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Disclaimer: The author is a commentator on issues of national
interest. These are his personal views and do not necessarily
reflect IBTL's opinion.
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