The Zero outcome from the Home Secretaries meeting in Islamabad was unexpected. The hype in the run up to the meeting on May 24 and 25 made the divided families and businessmen to hope for a liberal visa regime between the two countries. The reason given by Rehman Malik, the Pakistani Minister for the Interior, shows the limited turf space political leadership of the country has where India is concerned.
The Minister told the media that the Pakistani cabinet was yet to consider the visa issue. “Once the cabinet gives the go ahead, we (Pakistan) will move forward on relaxing visa restrictions with India,” he said. Being a seasoned bureaucratic and political war horse, Malik knows full well that any major policy decision- liberal visas for Indians is certainly a major policy issue – needs the approval of the cabinet.
So much so, how could his ministry entertain the Indian Home Secretary for two days and tell the waiting media that signing the agreement on eased visa restrictions was a mere formality. Either the minister is an ignoramus or a rank outsider to the system, or he was made to dance to the whims of someone who is more powerful than the country’s cabinet, and President.
Frankly, Rehman Malik is not an ignoramus; garrulous he is though. He is not a rank outsider to the system either. He has been present around for a long while if his innings during the Zia era is factored in, particularly the sobriquet he had earned then as glorified orderly of the General’s wife. So the inescapable conclusion is that he went through the act of liberal visa talk at the bidding of someone who calls the shots. Any lay student of Pakistan knows full-well that it is the General Headquarters of the army in Rawalpindi, which has the last word on all policy issues that range from resumption of NATO supplies through Pakistani soil to visa regime for visitors from India.
It is common knowledge in both Washington and Islamabad that Pakistan army chief Gen Pervez Kayani has stood his ground on NATO supplies’ issue. He has made the ‘resumption’ conditional on American apology for the NATO attack on a Pakistani border post near the Afghan border in November last year. President Obama has ruled out the question of apology. Kayani’ army is demanding $ 5000 as fee per NATO container. US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has ruled out paying Pakistan this amount.
During the first eight years of American war in Afghanistan, Pakistani road infrastructure from Karachi port to Torkham on Pak-Afghan border was used without paying any user charges. Only from the ninth year, the US started paying a nominal fee to National Logistic Cell, which is Pakistan army’s logistics arm. And the handling fee, as the payment was billed, was a paltry $220 per container.
No surprise therefore, Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential aspirant, had dubbed Pakistan army’s demand as “extortion”, even as his fellow Congressmen called Pakistan a failed state over the weekend.
For the past couple of months, Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) has been spearheading the ‘No NATO supply routes’ campaign with rallies across the country from Peshawar to Karachi. This front is made up of religious groups and fringe political entities whose decibel level is regulated from Rawalpindi. Put differently, the GHQ converted the NATO supply issue into a religious and emotional plank.
‘Get tough with the US, bargain harder, dig in our heels — and the Americans, along with the other countries that matter, will eventually acquiesce’, became the moto, as a Pakistani commentator said. And the GHQ began to entertain hopes that it was close to forcing Washington accord to Islamabad parity with Delhi in civilian nuclear field.
These hopes were dashed at the NATO summit held in Chicago. The mood on the other side of the table is ‘engage Pakistan or punish Pakistan’ to quote Dawn’s commentator Cyril Almeida. President Obama administered a public snub to President Zardari by refusing to hold a one-on-one meeting.
Change in the White House mood has much to do with the re-election bid of President Obama and his need to appear to be tough with Pakistan that has been creating troubles in Afghanistan. There is also another reason and it is a very important input for the mood swing. The way Gen Kayani and his GHQ Shura in Rawalpindi reacted and acted after Abbottabad (elimination of Osama bin Laden) and Salala ( NATO attack on Pakistan border post while on hot pursuit of terrorists from Afghanistan), exposed the feet of clay of Pakistani generals.
These twin episodes have proved that Pakistan’s establishment loves grand spectacles staged by the likes of Raymond Davis in full public view in the jihadi citadel but is unable, if not unwilling, to retaliate against US intrusions and attacks on the Pakistani soil. This view gets reinforced by the fresh drone campaign the US has launched even as President Zardari was returning from the NATO summit. It also signals that US may not subscribe to ‘Bad Taliban –Good Taliban’ theme of Gen Kayani, giving him another rude shocker.
Viewed against this back drop of ‘a public insult’ administered by US of America rather crudely, the failure of Pakistan-India home secretaries meeting comes as no surprise. The only way for Pakistan army chief to reboot his prestige and regain his honour is to booting India in full public view. Liberal visa regime with India, like the much talked liberal trade regime, may be the need of bankrupt economy but it can wait for some time. More over, as several Pakistani commentators have noted, the new visa regime that has been on the cards is businessmen-specific. In the short run the regime will be advantage India.
A Pakistan, which was willing to eat grass to produce the Muslim Bomb, can afford not to receive a few business visitors from the land of the infidels to the east of the land of the pure. A good face saver to hide the bruises inflicted by President Obama and his NATO!
The ever willing ‘orderly’, Rehman Malik, has put a spin that has been lapped up by the like of DPC’s Hafeez Saeed Munawwar Hasan, Liaquat Baloch, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed and Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi. And Rehman Malik has said the proposed visa agreement should be signed at ‘the political level’. He issued ‘a call for his Indian counterpart Palaniappan Chidambaram to pay a visit to Pakistan to finalise the arrangement’. The caveat that he left unsaid is that the visit can take place only after Islamabad is “fully prepared” with Cabinet and the GHQ on the same page.
The Home Secretaries of the two countries appear to be fully conscious of the pitfalls ahead. Hence their joint statement hoped that the agreement would be signed “at an early date”. And this early date will very much depend on the talking point Gen Kayani could gift to his countrymen on Siachen.
Pakistan army lost more than 150 brave soldiers in an avalanche that hit their camp at Gyari on Siachen on April 7. Gyari is home to an important battalion headquarters and at one time, up to 3,000 soldiers were based in the area. It was the first such major casualty in peace time for the country and sparked off a demand for demilitarising the area where no blade of grass grows. Gen Kayani himself had set the tone for the demand. Gyari is not very far from Skardu, a popular landmark at the confluence of the Indus and the Shigar Rivers, in the eastern Karakoram mountain range in the in the disputed Gilgit –Baltistan region.
Siachen had no military presence from either side till 1984 when India pre-empted a Pakistan move by 24-hours and deployed its forces on the Saltoro Ridge on the western wall of the 76-km-long glacier. The place gives a geo-graphical advantage; who ever is on Saltoro cannot be dislodged through direct assault.
Gen Kayani will have his way with his wish list only if India is willing to play ice hockey with his team in Siachen. And New Delhi speaking through Gen V K Singh, the army chief, made its mind clear. “We have earned certain areas by the blood of our people. These (proposals for demilitarisation) are all gimmicks that keep coming from the establishment in Pakistan and we will be fools if we fall for them”, the general said in a series of interviews on the eve of his retirement in May end.
Put simply, it is the Indian army, which will have to withdraw from the glacier in the event of any agreement with Pakistan and this Delhi is unwilling to do.
There could be some forward movement if the actual ground position of the troops of the two countries is marked formally in a document. Gen Kayani, like his predecessors, is unwilling to accept this line. And India doesn’t want to see a repeat of Pakistan’s run on Kargil.
Frankly, inescapable is the conclusion that the stars are not shining bright for the Pakistani army chief even as he appears to entertain hopes to see a ‘political initiative’ by Delhi to break the deadlock on Siachen when the defence secretaries meet in Islamabad on June 11 and 12. Time for General Kayani to stop reading Rudyard Kipling’s Barrack-room Ballad: “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”!
-By Malladi Rama Rao
