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Taking out the Taliban - II
By Gail Omvedt
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Dealing with worldwide terrorism requires looking at each specific sore spot. For India and Pakistan this means taking up their responsibility for nurturing terrorism in Kashmir.
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AS WAR preparations proceeded, it was clear that we - lovers of peace, anti-imperialists or whatever - were powerless. Whatever we were going to do, the U.S. Government was sending its troops, bombers and diplomatic emissaries forth to take out its enemies (defined as ``international terrorism'' but specified as the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden) and it was pulling together an international team of support for its actions. I awaited the results with gloom, hoping that the U.S. would not bomb Afghanistan. But it proceeded to do so, and it also became clear that anti-war, anti-bombing demonstrations in India were very small. Simply because while Indian Muslims were silent and confused, most of the rest who considered themselves ``Hindus'' were filled with a mixture of glee (now you know what it's like), jealousy (why didn't our Government do that?), and appreciation (of the determination of its anti-terrorist action) in regard to the U.S.
Now it is over three months since September 11 - not after all a very long time - enough to clarify some things. Among all my initial reactions, I was wrong about some things. Not only did the U.S. bomb, but it did so successfully. The U.S. Government did what it said it was going to do - use (relatively) measured force to take out its enemies. The Taliban is finished, Osama is on the run, and very likely Al-Qaeda will more slowly be weeded out. In other words, its actions have been justified pragmatically. Leave aside the moral and long-term questions of dealing with terrorism, it appears that not too many people have died in the bombing - relative to those murdered by the Taliban itself - and most Afghans appear satisfied with the result, some happy even, as women started coming hesitantly out into the streets and taking up jobs, while youth began to swing again to the sounds of their old music.
The current issue facing the Indian people now (and the world) is Pakistan and Kashmir. The Indian Government in recent weeks has been speaking of war and sending its troops to the borders to engage in fire with the Pakistanis. Jawans are getting killed. In contrast to the U.S. case, I have not been much worried or disturbed. In India and Pakistan also, reactions have been much more muted: while Indian stations and PTV are at present including this at the top of their news, they also quickly go on to other important things; it is clear most people in both countries have many other things on their minds. More important, while the fear of any country having nuclear weapons continues to hang over the heads of all, it seemed clear that Vajpayee, Advani, Sushma Swaraj et. al. were playing to the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh elections. So I have been seeing occasional Doordarshan shots of the Hindutva leaders breathing fire and listening to such remarkable events as the loud declamation of anti- Pakistani sentiment in a a small poetry session of ``patriotic'' poets including Vajpayee, Gujral and all - and turned off the TV quickly. It has not seemed very real.
Whatever happens, the moral questions and long run problems remain. The moral debates will continue; they are perhaps unresolvable. At the long run, practical level, it is absolutely correct that the roots of terrorism have to be eradicated and that the U.S. Government is heavily implicated in the planting and nurturing of these, in the world and in Afghanistan specifically. But it is also true that other countries and Governments are also implicated (Russia, for instance). Dealing with the question of worldwide terrorism requires looking at each specific sore spot in the world's geography.
For India and Pakistan this means taking up their responsibility for nurturing terrorism in Kashmir. Pervez Musharraf has been confronting his responsibility in this. What about the Indian Government? When will the Government admit that some of the most important roots of terrorism in Kashmir (``cross-border'' or not) lie in its own actions? Consider the course of events since Independence. The gradual suppression of democratic rights and autonomy and the jailing of Sheikh Abdullah by Nehru himself - a Kashmiri pandit, we might remember. The falsifying of election results under subsequent regimes. Then, when an armed insurgency occurred in 1991- 92 under what was then a secular force - the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front - its total crushing and the suppression of any information about the fact that the JKLF did not describe itself as ``Muslim'' and aspired to speak for all Kashmiris and the people of Jammu as well. It was in other words not even ``Islamic'' not to speak of ``fundamentalist.'' It was a ``liberation front'' like all the others we used to know in the 1970s and 1980s.
With democracy denied and the JKLF crushed, wasn't it natural that with no other options before them, at least some of the Kashmiri people would listen to terrorists espousing a distorted version of Islam that gave them access to worldwide funding and fanatic warriors?
Just as hatreds cease only by freeing oneself from hatred (at the moral level), so the rage that fuels the conflict in Kashmir has to be appeased at the practical level. Just as this means that the Palestinian people have to be given their rights, so it means that the Kashmiri people have to be given their rights - and both the Indian and Pakistani Governments have to recognise this and engage in a process of dialogue to resolve the situation.
There are many complications ahead. First, the ``Kashmiri people'' here means those of both Jammu and Kashmir, not only the Muslims of the Valley but also the Pandits and Dalits of the Valley, the Muslims and Hindus of various sections of Jammu, the Buddhists of Ladakh. There are various proposals to make the right of self-determination truly meaningful - primarily giving voting rights at the district level, as to whether people would rather join Pakistan, India or form an autonomous/independent state. This includes also a recognition that the process would have to involve a period of teaching and reaching out to people, and that it should/would lead to a recognition by the Kashmiri Muslims themselves that their independent state would have to be one which maintained close relations with both Pakistan and India. This means that the ultimate solution would probably require a new rapport between India and Pakistan, a decentralisation of power (a ``refederalisation'', as one recent writer put it) in both countries, and recognition of a differentiated autonomy for the different parts of ``Jammu and Kashmir''. In fact, this sort of proposal was put forward in 1990 itself by Syed Shahabuddin and O.K. Vijayan, and responded to by Mohammad Haroon Ahmed in a Pakistani journal.
How we move in that direction is another matter. With the current Hindutva leadership of the Central Government, the situation does not look hopeful. India at present seems to be in a situation that will result neither in taking out the Lashkar-e-Taiba or actions leading to the cessation of hatred, rather at best simple border skirmishes and at worst, futile war.
What is required instead, in the moving words of Dr. Vitthal Rajan, a member of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, is: if not the absolute non-violence of a religious commitment, at least ``the deep springs of the human spirit which enables us to reach across chasms of tragic suffering, to embrace yesterday's enemy and make him tomorrow's friend''.
(Concluded)
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