Tinderbox

"Akbar comes to the conclusion that Pakistan is a failing state or, at any rate, a state threatened with failure which might take us down with it. I don’t think that is true. I think Akbar does not take sufficient account of the self-interest of the Pakistan establishment, be it the military or the influential civil elements. They don’t want to live in a Talibanised Pakistan. If you look at their lifestyle you see a people that are indistinguishable from the New Delhi elite or even the London elite. And that is why Pakistanis are to be seen in such large numbers at the elite London club Annabel’s. The ones you see there are really the representatives of those who constitute the Pakistan establishment. And they are not just about to commit collective suicide. They will resist when the Taliban actually reaches them. The Taliban, at the moment, is reaching them through episodic terrorist attacks but it is not infiltrating into their daily way of life. The more it does, the more they will repel it. We saw that when the Taliban actually arrived at Buner, a town about 100km from Islamabad. Then, suddenly, Islamabad turned around and the war on terror started being fought by the Pakistani soldier. I am absolutely sure that is true. I am sure they have infiltrated the Pakistan establishment, including the army. But there they can function only as rogue elements. But I do not think an Islamic army whose commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Musharraf, appears for a formal photograph carrying a dog in his hands could represent the Taliban in the establishment. The consumption of whisky in Pakistan is equal to that of India. Scotland makes a major contribution to our welfare in both countries! I think the need is to engage with Pakistan so that the new generation, all of whom were born as Pakistanis and have lived as Pakistanis, will recognise they don’t have to be “not India” to be Pakistani. The diminishing of the perception of Indian hostility has to be brought about by engagement between the two countries. It has actually already happened many times before. There have been these back-channel talks between Ambassadors Lambah and Tariq Aziz during Musharraf’s period and it is clear that almost all the major outstanding issues between Pakistan and India, including Kashmir, were on the verge of resolution. It just so happens that I was a classmate at Trinity Hall, Cambridge of Khurshid Kasuri, who served as Musharraf’s Foreign Minister. Since the fall of Musharraf, I have had Kasuri over to India and in public speeches he has detailed what the progress registered. Private conversations I have had with the Indian side show that what Kasuri said about the progress registered in the back-channel talks was substantially true. That is why I am convinced that when we engage, we can move far forward. The only reason that we are not moving forward is that we so often break the engagement and take such a long time to re-engage. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Now that we have re-engaged, I reassert what I have been saying for the last 15 years in my own books, which is that dialogue between India and Pakistan should not only be uninterrupted but uninterruptible if we are to arrive at fruitful conclusions. If we don’t arrive at fruitful conclusions, then I am afraid, as an Indian, that Pakistan will remain an albatross around our necks. Its terrorism will be directed against India. And the world will not be able to give India the status it deserves on the international stage so long as we are bound into this hostile relationship with Pakistan. I think we should look upon the Pakistani establishment as our partners in the progress of South Asia rather than the stumbling block in our progress, which is how many many people, including my colleagues in politics, do regard Pakistan. I personally think it will be a minor blip in the story of the war on terrorism. Bin Laden was the symbol of all the causes of discontent in the Muslim world against the Western world. None of those causes have changed because of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The strategic importance of Pakistan is of such high importance to the Western world that, whatever their complicity might have been in hiding Bin Laden all these years, the Americans have been very quick off the mark to ensure that Pakistan remains their closest and best ally in all the different wars they are conducting in this part of the world. Pakistan is essential to America’s pretensions to being an Asian power along with China and India."