The Hindu : Killing two birds with one stone

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 01, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Killing two birds with one stone

By Inder Malhotra

To those in New Delhi who can think beyond New Year festivities and their coverage on page three - their number, alas, is not very large - the Pakistani President and Army Chief, Pervez Musharraf's double-speak on whether or not he had threatened this country with a nuclear war hasn't come as a surprise. On the contrary, it is entirely true to type. Indeed, the episode is a rude reminder that in the art of propaganda, Gen. Musharraf can throw rings round the leaders of Indian Government who seem blissfully unaware that information warfare is an integral part of conflict, confrontation and competition between nations.

It is all very well for South Block to angrily point out that the Pakistani President's statement was "highly provocative" and "dangerous", to imply that Pakistan is a "rogue state" and to stress that under the existing circumstances, expectations of any "meaningful dialogue" with the neighbouring country are "unrealistic". But shouldn't we look at what Gen. Musharraf has been able to achieve, doubtless through clearly dubious means, and why?

By using the clever, indeed cunning, expression "unconventional war" for his reaction to the Indian Army moving "just a single step beyond the international border or the LoC", he has killed two birds with one stone. He has, in the first place, let the Pakistanis wallow in the belief that, in the wake of the massive military mobilisation that followed the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, their leader had threatened to use nuclear weapons, and had thus won a victory without firing a single shot. Secondly, after mulcting his macho propaganda to the full, he directed his faithful spin-doctor, Major-General Rashid Qureshi, to reassure the international community that nuclear weapons were farthest from the Pakistani President's thoughts when he talked of "unconventional war".

Gen. Qureshi's rigmarole about the Pakistani definition of an unconventional war need not detain us. But we ought to look inwards and ask ourselves whether Gen. Musharraf's ability to use verbal gymnastics for his purposes is not enhanced by our inability to think things through and to accompany our actions with words that would carry conviction to the outside world. There was a clear and felt need to convey to all concerned that the huge deployments, lasting nearly 10 months at the highest level of alert, were intended not for war but to contain a dangerously deteriorating situation. Instead the world heard from New Delhi such rhetoric as "arr parr ki ladai" (fight to the finish).

The crowing irony of it all is that Gen. Musharraf manages to get away with his double-speak and even duplicity all the time, which cannot but encourage him to follow the same course in future. After all, as far back as on January 12 last, he had made his famous speech that was trumpeted in this country as a ``victory" of our coercive diplomacy. But the promised stoppage of cross-border terrorism did not materialise. On the contrary, there followed the horrendous Kaluchek outrage during which families of the gallant jawans defending the border and the LoC were slaughtered. There was another burst of stirring rhetoric about "writing a new chapter of victory, regardless of what the international community might say or do".

Immediately, America's weighty negotiator, the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, headed for the sub-continent. After what was described, as a "tough meeting" with Gen. Musharraf, he assured New Delhi that the Pakistani President had agreed to end "infiltration" across the LoC "permanently and visibly". This has not happened to date. But the General is able to blandly state that he has done all he could, and if 700,000 Indian troops deployed along the Loc could not stop all infiltration, how could his much smaller force? Washington pleads helplessly that it cannot lean on the Pakistani leader more than it already has. And Pakistan is declaring derisively that India could not use the military option in the recent past and would not be able to do so in future. If anybody in authority is worrying about this strange state of affairs, the country has yet to hear of it.

Over ten years ago, George Tanham of RANC Corporation, in a penetrating study on Indian strategic thought, had come to the sad conclusion that it practically did no exist. If he were to conduct the same investigation again, he would have to arrive at the same melancholy verdict today. The formation of the National Security Council - complete with all the paraphernalia of the Strategic Planning Group, the National Security Advisor Board and what not - has been a colossal waste of time and money.

Can anything be more scandalous than that four and a half years after the Shakti series of nuclear tests, the country is being told yet again that the nuclear command structure would be in place early in the New Year? Is this glacial speed compatible with the Nuclear Age? The Hamletian dilemma, to have or not to have a Chief of Defence Staff, remains consigned to the deep freeze. And 17 years after the Indian Air Force first asked for it, successive governments have failed to decide which advanced jet trainer to buy.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

A sensible move

Starved of funds

Devaluing the NHRC

Anatomy of terrorism in South Asia — I

Killing two birds with one stone

Countering Pak.'s nuclear blackmail