Opinions | Columnists
India-Pakistan ties need to mature
The way forward must see a renewed commitment to improve living conditions.
- By Farhan Bokhari, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:31 November 29, 2008
The brutal attacks on prominent landmarks in the Indian city of Mumbai has provoked some Indian officials to point the finger towards Pakistan. Some of the immediate circumstantial evidence, such as suspicions of a cargo ship which sailed out of Pakistani waters, has prompted this reaction.
However, much of the inspiration for tying links to a neighbour with whom India has had a historically troubled relationship points towards an unfortunate trend. In the midst of internal security crises, for too long, India and Pakistan have gone for knee jerk reactions, making veiled references to the other side.
Reactions such as "militants from a neighbouring country" or "links to an enemy state" or "those who seek to destabilise us from beyond our borders", have often remained central to the vocabulary used in periods of turmoil. Both India and Pakistan need to mature beyond their previous relationship.
India must understand that in spite of its phenomenal loss, it has to find not just a smoking gun before its points the finger at Pakistan. More importantly, it has to be a smoking gun with credibility. Bits of evidence such as confessions under duress by one or more of the militants caught in Mumbai, may simply not become a convincing act.
Similarly, Pakistan must wake up to the challenge that security conditions on its turf now pose a threat to the security of its neighbours. Even if Pakistan is able to establish that its intelligence services or the Pakistani state had no links with the carnage in Mumbai, it must still work overtime to come clean.
Even suggestions that some of the militants involved came via Pakistan have to be investigated very seriously. Ultimately, the government has to act aggressively if it is proven beyond doubt that undefined non-state actors were involved.
Beginning
The Pakistani government has made a potentially promising beginning, with the highest levels of the regime offering to assist India in its moment of grief and pain. But what lies ahead is making certain that efforts to clamp down harder on domestic terrorism and violence are all doubled up.
Pakistan has long suffered from the reputation of being a fertile breeding ground for militants. This has struck at the heart of Pakistan's future as a state capable of making a meaningful contribution to global peace and security.
The evidence of this is found nowhere in greater abundance than Pakistan's region along the Afghan border, which has become notorious as the home to Al Qaida and the Taliban. The Pakistani military has been engaged in that region for over five years, taking one hit after another.
While there is plenty of evidence of the human sacrifice offered by Pakistan's military and security services, meeting the challenge ahead is in fact about a much wider agenda.
As India and Pakistan pick up the pieces of a carefully crafted and potentially fragile peace process, the way forward must also see a renewed commitment by Islamabad to unleash a series of reforms aimed at the improvement of living conditions.
It is no secret that abject poverty forces humans to embrace harsh choices, including the option of turning towards violence. Powerful and compelling realities such as abject poverty have to seen not just as social and economic parameters. After Mumbai once again, the writing on the wall is essentially that such realities have to be seen as central to overall security interests, rather than being treated as peripheral issues.
Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
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