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India
Nepal Bhutan
Riots,
rumours and refugees
Even as
the 10th round of ministerial level talks to resolve the
decade-long refugee dispute between Nepal and Bhutan moved
towards an encouraging consensus, Nepal’s peace was
shattered at year-end by civil strife and violence in parts
of the country. Protests against Indian establishments and
movie halls screening films featuring Bollywood actor
Hrithik Roshan, animated by rumours of unspecified origin,
provoked a police firing which killed five people, while
retaliatory mob violence and arson caused extensive damage
to property.
There
was an organised flavour to the uncharacteristic turn of
events in a country that has been relatively free of the
kind of social conflicts that have proliferated among its
neighbours. There is latent bigotry and an undercurrent of
racism and intolerance in every society and, in this
instance, there were foot soldiers of various causes readily
at hand to exploit the circumstances. In the feast of street
politics that ensued, Nepal suffered, and its reputation
took a beating.
There
is no shortage of those who would have benefitted by cashing
in on the frustra-tion of the public over the incompetence
of successive elected governments in the past 10 years.
Democracy has just not been able to deliver development,
rather it has institution-alised corruption. Joblessness and
inflation have gone out of control. In the general climate
of despondency, particularly among the youth, there were
many who cynically cashed in: the Congress factions, the
nine leftists, the ultra-right, the Maoists, communal
chauvinists.
The
chain of events point to well orchestra-ted mischief. The
programme on which Hrithik Roshan was supposed to have
expressed anti-Nepal sentiments was aired on 14 December,
but the rumour itself surfaced more than 10 days later. And
as events progressed, the rumour and all that it
represented, lost its salience as other grievances and
complaints came to be ventilated.
In
the subsequent political encashment of the situation,
neither India nor Indians figured even remotely on the
agendas of the various parties. Within the ruling Nepali
Congress,
the anti-Koirala faction found it to be an appropriate
moment to initiate no-trust procee-dings against the prime
minister, who in turn, engrossed himself in thwarting the
challenge to his leadership. Meanwhile, the nation’s
calamity so troubled the nine-party left combine that it
called a two-day strike to coincide with a lucrative phase
in the tourist calendar, in the immediate aftermath of
fairly severe economic dislocation.
Sadly,
the news relayed out of Kathmandu by the media had no place
for the many nuances of the troubles in Nepal, and in this
the culpability of the Nepali media cannot be denied. The daily newspapers, particularly in the initial
phase, gave a great deal of prominence to the many
incendiary statements that were being quite freely
expressed, failing in the process to both distance
themselves from the original rumour and ascertaining the
authenticity of the purported statement that fuelled the
protests. But this cannot condone the conduct of the
international, particularly Indian, media, which is
ostensibly richer in experience and certainly richer in
resources.
In
the haste to break news, little attention was paid to the
events in their unfolding detail. With all the debris
cleared and the body count taken, the clear fact is that all
those who were killed were Nepalis and the property damaged
was by and large of the Nepalis. And after the police firing, the rioting took on an indiscriminate
character. But the Indian media found it unnecessary to
report the change in situation from day to day. With its
one-sided emphasis on the anti-Indian angle and its
exaggeration of the magnitude of the trouble, it only
contributed to adding to the tension in Nepal and keeping
alive the antagonism towards India.
Doubtless
it was this that emboldened a senior functionary of the
Bharatiya Janata Party to engage in revanchist vituperation
and great power nostalgia, going so far as to settle scores
with an Indian prime minister now 36 years dead. That he
subsequently retracted his statement does little to minimise
the damage, more so because of the veiled threat he held out
against Nepalis in India. Clearly, there is no dearth of
provocateurs on both sides.
The
long-term consequences for Nepal are difficult to guess. The
economy has been severely affected, as much by the loss of
commercial property as by the loss of tourism revenue.
Politically, while there has been no scramble to appropriate
the tension, there has been little enthusiasm about
condemning the events. None of this makes for a hopeful
prognosis about social and ethnic relations. Most
alarmingly, what began as an expression of antagonism
towards Indians now threatens a hill-plains rupture.
But
it is not all a tale of unmitigated gloom. The events of the
past few days thrust into
the background the news of a possible break-through in the
Nepal-Bhutan refugee deadlock. The fact that Bhutanese
refugee groups them-selves welcomed the agreement reached in
the Tenth Round of the Ministerial Talks in Kathmandu in
late December, seems a good enough reason to welcome it. And
at first glance, it does look like good news.
Bhutan
and Nepal have agreed that they would take valid documents
belonging to the heads of families to verify who is a true
refugee, and consider anyone below 25 years old as a member
of a refugee family. There is now a faint hope that many of
the 100,000 refugees languishing in camps in eastern Nepal
for the past 10 years (17,000 of them were born there in the past decade and have never been to
Bhutan), may be able to go back to
their homes.
The
sudden mellowing on the part of the Bhutanese government is
directly related to recent international pressure from the
EU, the United States, and Bhutan’s donor consortium.
There could also be an added element: the slaying last month
of ten Bhutanese in Assam by militants that shocked Bhutan.
This is potentially a much more serious crisis for Thimphu,
and has sensitive implications for its relations with India
as well. Thus it might be best to get the refugee thing
sorted out once and for all before it becomes entangled in
India’s dangerous Northeast.
But
the real question is, how smoothly and quickly will
verification happen? Ideally, it should happen immediately.
It is in the interest of neither Himalayan monarchy that the
refugee crisis drags on.
PAKISTAN
The Great Escape
The
seizure of power by the military in Pakistan was accompanied by the
dissolution of Parliament, the suspension of the
Consti-tution and the incarceration of the ousted prime
minister Nawaz Sharif. None of this occasioned any surprise.
Sharif’s subsequent conviction and jail sentence were also
along expected lines. But Sharif’s exile last month to
Saudi Arabia has introduced a new twist to Pakistani
politics. Sharif’s release flies in the face of the
military regime's pledge to conduct “fearless, honest and
bipartisan accountability” of recent rulers.
For
Sharif, the price of freedom is 10 years of exile and an
undertaking not to take part in Pakistani politics for 21
years. In addition, the
government claims it has confiscated
bank deposits worth PNR 300 million (USD 5m), as well as
five industrial properties, five residential plots and 24
hectares (60 acres) of agriculture land.
Whatever
the circumstances that compelled Sharif’s release, the
military regime has now lost the very raison d’être for
its present control of the country. As for the Pakistan
Muslim League, it has been deprived of its leadership, while
the Pakistan Peoples Party has egg on its face, having just
concluded an alliance with Sharif against the military
regime.
More
to the point, Sharif’s release has ramifications that
advert quite substantively to political fundamentals. Even
granting that there was much to the charges levelled against
Sharif that were fictitious, his ‘political’ release,
bypassing the due process, imparts a discre-tionary
inflection to the administration of justice. Judicial
independence is undermined by the political expediencies of
the executive and there can be no clearer illustration of
this than the continued confinement of Sharif’s former
ministers, aides and associates. Sharif's allies, like
former Sindh chief minister Ghaus Ali Shah, former Sindh
police chief Rana Maqbool, and Shahid Khaqan of Pakistan
International Airlines, are still in jail despite being
acquitted by the courts. The pursuit of such expediencies by
the government has raised awkward questions. As Benazir
Bhutto put it, “If there was no criminal case against
Sharif, why was he sacked, arrested and punished? And if
there was a case against him, why has he been set free even
though convicted by a court of law?”
The
strategy pursued by the Musharraf regime also raises the
possibility of a political vacuum of serious proportions and call to mind the consequences of
Benazir Bhutto’s self-exile two years ago after being
hounded by Sharif. The prescient warning that the vacuum
created by the weakening of the legitimate opposition would
be filled by undemocratic forces was then unheeded. It was
this politically corrosive strategy that led to the
overthrow of Sharif’s government by the military. As
things stand now, the leaders of three major political
formations are conveniently out of the way. What effects
this will have in the elections, when they do happen,
remains for the present a matter of speculation.
For
the military regime, Sharif’s exile is not without risk.
Clearly, Musharraf’s coterie felt it necessary to have the
only consequential politician remaining in Pakistan to be
eased out, presumably to arrest any possible increase in his
popular base. While the government would have it that it has
been the net beneficiary of the outcome, the effusive
welcome that Sharif received in Saudi Arabia will not be
lost on
the many in Pakistan who hold the Saudi establishment in
great reverence.
What
then could have induced the military regime to make this
gamble? It appears that Sharif’s popularity was on the
rise even after he was declared guilty of terrorism and
handed a life sentence. The military rulers tried to counter
this first by amending the Political Parties’ Act to
legally bar disqualified leaders from holding party offices.
When even this met with little success, the regime decided
to break up Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League. But since
most of the leaders assigned to carry out the job has no
stature nationally, and were themselves tainted, the
strategy failed to take off. To add
to Musharraf's worries, the failure of his government to
ensure sufficient nominations for the first phase of local
elections coincided with Bhutto’s PPP
and Sharif’s PML entering into an
alliance to oust the present regime. It was this that
prompted Gen Musharraf to make the deal, purportedly
brokered by the Saudis, or the Americans or perhaps even by
both.
Reactions
to Sharif’s exile have been varied. The major newspapers
in Pakistan have reacted angrily, as have the Pakistan
Peoples Party and the main Islamist party, the
Jamaat-e-Islami. But in terms of future possibilities, there
are divergent views. There are those who see Sharif’s
removal as an important step towards the military
government’s promised return to democracy, because his
presence in Pakistan was the most important constraint for
the regime. His departure could therefore encourage the
military to restore the electoral process. But even if this
does happen, the status quo ante is unlikely to be restored
given that most senior politicians are in prison, exile or
under house arrest.
The
army may well try to set up a group of politicians to do its
bidding, but the political credibility that such a grouping
can acquire is another matter altogether. A more optimis-
tic postulate is that the space created by Sharif’s
departure could be occupied by a new generation of Pakistani
politicians who may be more inclined to etch a better
profile for their country.
-
Adnan Rehmat
KASHMIR
The
table waits
Though militant
groups in Kashmir have rejected the unilateral ceasefire
announ-ced by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as
a conspiracy to “sabotage the movement”, the 11-year-old
armed struggle in the state may gradually be heading to the
“negotiating table”. The second in less than six months,
the cease-fire signals the mounting pressure for a
negotiated settlement on Kashmir.
The
first ceasefire, announced by the guerrilla outfit, Hizbul
Mujahideen, last July was short-lived, despite the Indian
govern-ment’s positive response of ceasing military
operations; it failed because of Hizb’s insis-tence on
including Pakistan in the proposed talks. Interestingly,
this time around the Hizbul Mujahideen has neither rejected
nor accepted the ceasefire explicitly. On the other hand,
militant organisations like the pan-Islamic Lashkar-e-Taiba
(LeT),
the Al Badr, the Harka-tul Mujahideen (HuM)
and the Jaish-e-Moham-mad (JeM) of Moulana
Masood Azhar (who was freed in exchange for the hijacked
Indian Airlines plane), have intensified their attacks on
Indian security forces. On 25 December, the JeM exploded a
car bomb right outside the army headquarters in Srinagar.
Such
activities may well be directed to-wards isolating the
Hizbul Mujahideen. But this gambit may not fetch the desired
dividend if the popular mood favours peace. And there is
some evidence that the popular mood
has made some difference. For instance, the separatist camp
headed by the 23-party
forum—the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC)—which
had dismissed the July cease-fire as a “step in haste”,
has been compelled by the overwhelming popular response to
the Vajpayee peace initiative to accept it as a “positive
change in the thinking of Indian leadership”. That the
Hurriyat's stance has the tacit support of Islamabad only
reinforces the point.
Complementary
developments at other levels have provided further momentum
for peace. With Pakistan observing “maximum restraint”
and pulling out troops from the line of control, the
Hurriyat Conference has formally announced its intention of
sending a delega-tion to Pakistan for parleys with militant
leaders and the political establishment. Hurriyat’s talks
with the militants could be significant for the peace
process, particularly if it succeeds in convincing the
United Jehad Council (UJC) on the
agenda for talks with India. Further, the proposed meeting
of militant commanders in Saudi Arabia, for which the Hizb
chief, Syed Salahuddin has already reached there, could push
the process in a positive direction, given that the Hizbul
Mujahideen’s Commander-in-Chief (operations), Abdul Majeed
Dar, has welcomed both the Indian and Pakistani initiatives.
Despite
these optimistic trends, the pitch can still be queered.
Pre-cisely because the separatists want to go ahead with the
initiative irres-pective of what the militants think of it,
differences have surfaced within the APHC.
The hardliners, led by Jamat-e-Islami leader and former
Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Geelani, are adamant that India
should first accept Kashmir as a dispute before tripartite
talks among India, Pakistan and Kashmiris begin. The
majority, moderate group is inclined towards bilateral talks
with the Indian govern-ment first before involving Pakistan
at a later stage. This faultline now divides the
pro-Pakistan and pro-independence parties in the Hurriyat.
Senior
Hurriyat leader, Abdul Gani Lone, while in Pakistan in
connection with his son’s marriage, opposed the presence
of foreign militants on Kashmir soil, and spoke of “no
freedom except that of religion” for those living in
Pakistan-administered Kashmir. This certainly deepened the
crisis within the Hurriyat, and was seen as an
“achievement” for New Delhi. Apart from letting Lone
visit Pakistan, the Indian government had also permitted two
other Hurriyat leaders, Moulvi Abbas Ansari and Mirwaiz Umar
Farooq, to attend the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC)
conference in Doha last November.
These
decisions are seen as a prelude to a long-term game the
Indian government seems to be interested in vis-a-vis
Kashmir. Observers in Srinagar see the ceasefire initiative
as a “big risk” for the Vajpayee establishment as it has
enabled the militants, particularly pan-Islamic outfits, to
re-organise themselves in Kashmir Valley, without any
significant reduction in civilian and military casualties.
To
complicate matters, the Farooq Abdullah government in Jammu
and Kashmir has played its card by announcing Panchayat
elections in the state starting 15 January. The timing of
the announcement, at a time when “serious” efforts are
on to find a solution, suggest deeper motivations. It is
believed that the central government’s bid to arrive at a
settlement with separatists has accentuated Farooq
Abdullah’s fears of a possible change of guard in Kashmir,
engineered from New Delhi. The Panchayat election could be
detrimental to the peace process if the militants train
their guns on the candidates at a time when the ceasefire is
still in place.
Nevertheless,
if the Indian government allows the Hurriyat leaders to
visit Pakistan to meet the Chief Executive General Pervez
Musharraf and the militant leaders, a new chapter on Kashmir
will be opened. This exercise will be reminiscent of the
1964 trip of late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who was sent by
prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to talk to Field Marshal
Ayub Khan.
The
days to come are politically crucial for Kashmir, but much
will depend on the mili-tants’ conduct. If the Hurriyat
leaders succeed in convincing the Pakistani establishment,
it will have an impact on the leaders of those militant
organisations over whom Islamabad has influence.
Significantly, the Hurriyat Conference has already
established contact with LeT
chief, Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed and Hizb supremo, Syed
Salahuddin, in Pakistan. If this momentum is sustained, a
direct dialogue between New Delhi and the Hurriyat leaders
is a possibility. This will not only give the latter
recognition, but will also define their role in deciding an
issue that has hung in balance 50 years too long.
-
Kousar Bukhari
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