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Q:
Will Pakistan allow peace to return to Kashmir?
A:
"Pakistan's strategy is to make impossible demands
and then put the blame on India."
Pakistan
will continue its support to terrorist activities in Kashmir till
such time as the military-intelligence establishment recognises
that the costs of such actions far exceed any tangible benefits
to it. There is a nexus which has grown between the military-intelligence
establishment and the extremist jehadi groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba,
the Harkat-ul-Ansar and Sipah-e-Toiba. This nexus is mutually reinforcing.
Many of these groups have links with political parties like the
Jamait-ul-Islam. In the absence of a political base, these groups
provide some form of domestic support and sustenance and also further
the aims of the military-intelligence establishment in India, Afghanistan
and elsewhere.
In
recent months, the Pervez Musharraf Government has bent backwards
to appease these groups on issues like the blasphemy law and Islamic
features of Pakistan's Constitution. These groups are also linked
to the Taliban and the smuggling of narcotics across the Pak-Afghan
border. In these circumstances, there is a compulsive urge to assist
these groups in escalating their recourse to violence in Kashmir.
There
are a number of factors behind the Hizbul Mujahideen's cease-fire
offer. There is a recognition that people in Kashmir are tiring
of violence and that after Kargil, Pakistan has become internationally
isolated and so will not be able to win outside support for its
policies. There are, in fact, repeated references by the US and
others to respect the sanctity of the Line of Control. Finally,
it was becoming clear that the non-Kashmiri groups, primarily comprising
foreigners were getting more support from Pakistan.
The
Musharraf regime in all probability politically acquiesced to the
Hizbul offer believing that it would act as the puppeteer controlling
the strings. The Pakistani strategy, very clearly, is to get the
Hurriyat Conference to make impossible demands which India cannot
concede, and thereafter put the blame on India. They would, for
example, pressurise the Hizbul and the Hurriyat to insist on early
Pakistani participation.
There
has been considerable pressure on Pakistan. Given its economic bankruptcy
and reliance on western powers for sustenance, Pakistan will at
least have be to seen to be responsive to American concerns even
as it continues its support to the jehadis. This is the approach
it seems to be adopting, both in regard to the Taliban and in its
support to terrorism in Kashmir.
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