news details |
|
|
| Musharraf's desperate attempt to steal thunder | | He can't force India to accept his funny recomendation | | B L KAK
NEW DELHI: Gen. Parvez Musharraf is a super commando--a fact that has been acknowledged even by his adversaries in Pakistan's political class and armed forces. But his attempt to thrust his opinion on India has, interestingly, triggered adverse reaction in his country. It was not a dextrous political and diplomatic move when he said just the other day that that India must accept Pakistan as its ‘equal’ for peace in the region.
“I respect the Indian Prime Minister but it is regrettable that India wants to keep its domination in the region and wants Pakistan to be a weaker force. India should come out of its phobia (sic!) of being a greater nation and should talk to us at an equal level”, Gen. Musharraf said. That the Pakistan President continues to enjoy acting like a super commando was borne out by his rash utterings: His government will not allow anyone to interfere in Pakistan’s internal matters and that India should set its own house in order before telling others what to do.
The next observation by Gen. Musharaf was even more interesting: “There are no separatist movements in Pakistan (sic!) but in India 21 separatist movements are taking place, thus India should not consider us a weaker nation”. In the same breath he said that “talks with India on Kashmir were on the right path” and progress was being made. As a part of his foray into the country’s foreign policy, he also promised to ‘review’ Pakistan’s policy on Israel after the Lebanon invasion, as if this review would somehow tip the balance of power in the Middle East.
The Pakistan President thinks India should treat Pakistan as an equal on matters of peace. This is fine if it is meant in terms of intrinsic rights and wrongs. But the hidden reference here is apparently to the ‘nuclear parity’ which the two countries achieved in 1998. Apparently an atomic bomb complete with a credible delivery system is supposed to be ‘an equaliser’. Pakistan has always chafed under the feeling that it was militarily unequal to India which had three times more firepower than Pakistan. So Pakistan initially relied on its big-power links to overcome this numerical imbalance. It obtained weapons systems which were considered better in technology than India’s. Therefore when it fought wars with India there was always something that gave Pakistan an edge, whether it was better aircraft or better tanks. Of course, the fact that this did not matter in the final analysis because Pakistan never won any war against India was conveniently ignored by this doctrine.
Pakistan has always thought militarily because it is completely dominated by military men who think nothing of politicians who have made a hash of democracy whenever they have been in office. Indeed, politicians who have ruled Pakistan fitfully have usually come out of the crotch of the Army as its protégées. They too were broken to thinking like the generals: get better weapons, get F16s or AWACS or anything to get an ‘edge over India’. The thinking was repetitive but the same. Add to that the parrot-like recitation of the ‘21 separatist movements’ in India and you have a dubious ‘national strategic doctrine’. Gen. Musharraf may dislike Gen. (Retd) Hameed Gul but, with a thousand apologies, we should like to remind him that he is simply regurgitating what that man has unloaded on the nation a thousand times before him? Where is President Musharraf’s originality?
Every soldier-President of Pakistan who has lost a war to India has said the same thing. Therefore, the truth requires to be spelt out: Pakistan cannot defeat India and cannot wrestle Kashmir by force. But that is not the doctrine. Instead it is to ‘wound India with a thousand cuts’ until it weakens to such an extent that its ‘21 separatist movements’ rear up and bring it down from within. In other words, India is to be nudged for it to crumble from within so that Pakistan can simply tip it over at the right time. How ridiculous can you get?
There are many ‘third world’ things where Pakistan and India are indeed at par. The red tape, the delay of law, the abysmal state of their courts at the level of the lower judiciary, the persistent poverty of the masses, the almost zero level of infrastructure needed for a good modern economy, etc. But India’s size and India’s problems that once made it vulnerable in comparison with Pakistan are slowly disappearing and President Musharraf should worry about it if he feels adversarial these days to boost his image at home.
====================
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
