World wants settlement, not victory

Rajiv Gandhi wanted to give Benazir Bhutto a welcome such as no visiting dignitary had ever received in India. Was this innocence or overconfidence?

Some of the starry-eyed even had visions of a handsome Gandhi and a beautiful Bhutto making a perfect pair on the ramparts of Red Fort while they declared peace before captive television cameras and liberated masses while their aides filed applications to Oslo for the next Nobel Peace Prize.

The opening moves between the two had been promising. Rajiv Gandhi had taken the initiative, sent Ronen Sen to prepare the ground, and the two signed an agreement promising no first-attack on each other's nuclear installations. The Soviet Union made this the basis for a message to Benazir that the Soviets were ready to help Pakistan build three nuclear plants if they could get their own quid pro quo, which was inclusion of Najibullah in the Afghan Interim Government following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. But that is another story, or is it?

The tentacles of this subcontinent cling to one another across time and space, history and geography. Afghanistan too has become part of the Kashmir story. We are talking of the 1980s, and the Eighties were another world, much more distant from today than the lapse of a mere decade would suggest. For one, so many of the principals are dead. Rajiv Gandhi. Zia-ul Haq. Najibullah. Even the Soviet Union is dead. There was a debate in Delhi even in the 1980s about whether India should deal with the leader of a military coup, General Zia-ul Haq, or wait for the establishment of a democratic order, which meant inevitably the arrival of Benazir Bhutto.

Gen. Zia, who had to hang Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in order to preserve his coup, made more than one effort to open a peace front with India. Like any sensible military man, he had both a deeper knowledge and a consequent respect for the abilities of the enemy. Even when Pakistan lost a few posts on the Siachen Glacier under his watch, he did not order expensive (particularly in human terms) retaliation; instead, he dismissed what had been lost as ice and stones.

Gen. Zia's focus was on the lucrative Western front in the Eighties, on the dream war in Afghanistan against the might of Soviet troops, funded by the CIA, which meant hard cash in liquid flow without any questions asked. It was a war that the Soviet Union could never win and Pakistan could never win.

If Gen. Zia had a post-Afghan war grand vision then that too lay in the West, of a great alliance of Muslim countries between Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and all the Muslim Central Asian republics that would soon, he had no doubt, prise themselves away from the Soviet empire. He was not wrong about the consequences of a Soviet defeat in Afghanistan but his great alliance was opium smoke. It had no basis in the realities and interests that govern relations between nations.

Zia's India policy had more to do with Punjab than Kashmir. All through his term the Valley was at peace with itself, and kept its undercurrents under control. Punjab was on fire, and Gen. Zia always kept a supply of matchsticks on hand, but under cover. Out of cover he took the position of a peacenik, claiming that he could not fight on two fronts, and throwing more than one ball (occasionally a cricket ball) towards India for Delhi to pick up. Rajiv Gandhi was cool to the general, treating Zia's overtures with a disdain that bordered on condescension. Rajiv did not need to be told what price India and his family had paid for the troubles in the Punjab.

'Not one of us'

The official line was dutiful faith in democracy. But there was an unmentioned element as well. Zia was not "one of us"; Benazir Bhutto was. The Oxbridge factor was of great help to Benazir who maintained sometimes indiscreet channels to Rajiv Gandhi through her years of exile and during her years of struggle against Zia. The Oxbridge types, who wanted to trust Benazir instead of the "unreliable" Zia, were elated when time and circumstance brought her to power through an election. It was too good to be true. Oxbridge had been elected in both countries.

Rajiv Gandhi could separate social circumstance from political behaviour, but he was not immune to the former. He took the first opportunity he got, that of a Saarc summit in Islamabad, to extend the visit into a bilateral. On their first evening in Islamabad, the Gandhis (including Sonia, Priyanka and Rahul) dined alone with the three reigning Bhuttos: Benazir, her mother Nusrat and her husband Asif Zardari. Both told their delegations later that politics was off the menu, and that they had fun. It was utterly believable.

There was agreement in that first summit on protection for nuclear installations, and some progress towards a common position on NPT. Rajiv Gandhi suggested that secret negotiations should continue between officials on this: the "invisible" dialogue. More visible would be talks on reduction of conventional arms and Siachen. Rajiv urged free flow of information, travel and popular- cultural exchanges. Benazir on her part stressed that only a control of the arms race between the neighbours could alter the "poverty-heritage."

As is evident there was no shortage of good English metaphor. Benazir mentioned Kashmir; Rajiv opted for silence. He realised later that this silence was not playing well back home, particularly on the eve of a general election, which, according to the opinion polls, would result in a sharp setback if not defeat. He stopped over in Pakistan a few months later, on the way back from a non-aligned summit in Belgrade. When asked about Kashmir at a joint press conference, he was vehement that it was an integral part of India.

Although the fires burned in Punjab, Rajiv Gandhi did not ignore Kashmir. He attempted a variation of the model that had worked with some success in Assam and Punjab, creating an electoral pact with Dr. Farooq Abdullah. He analysed, correctly, that the decline in the Valley began with the dismissal of Farooq Abdullah's government by Indira Gandhi in 1984. But the answer the two found was no solution. The advantage of the Abdullahs had been that they represented Kashmir against the encroachment into the Valley by the Congress (despite his differences with Sheikh Abdullah, Jawaharlal Nehru never allowed the Congress to operate in the state).

The raison d'etre of the National Conference was diluted by this alliance. The Congress gained nothing, while the Conference lost all. Simultaneously, the substantial economic progress that the two promised in their joint campaign was nullified by the inertia of the state government and the sabotage of the Central government. The anger that simmered against the accord created a devastating foundation for the future. When the unholy combination of Delhi and Srinagar once rigged the elections in 1989 to deliver a victory to Farooq Abdullah, a running fever became epidemic.

When V.P. Singh became prime minister in November 1989 he inherited a Kashmir that made Punjab look manageable. In a few unbelievable weeks the peace of the Valley was gone, not to return till the moment of writing. The first major incident was the kidnapping of his home minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's daughter; that was how Kashmir welcomed the first Kashmiri home minister of India. The g