Rogues will never learn

by Dr. RL Bhatt

Wine breaks my resolve, resolve breaks my cup: broken cups lay in heaps all around me, here. Fifty years of Indo-Pak talks are little-red with heaps of shattered talks, resolves and intentions. Nehru-Liaqat talks in fifties, Shastri-Ayub talks in sixties, Indira-Bhutto talks in seventies, Rajiv-Benazir talks in eighties, Vajpayee - Nawaz talks in nineties: all broken, all heaped, all littering the short Indo-Pak history.

Proving, that no peace can be brokered with sweet mumblings that go no deeper than the lips. Peace is a commitment, a thing from the heart. No amount of words, no talks, no clauses, no prints, bold or fine, can ensure peace if your heart is not in it. Pakistan's heart is not in peace. And that is that. You may talk till you look silly, but nothing'll come out of it except silly points and sillier counter-points.

On 4th of July Nawaz Sharif ran to Washington begging US to save Pakistan from a total rout in Kargil. Within hours Sartaj Aziz reneged on the commitments given and talked of US intervention. When the Pak-troupe landed in London, Aziz added Siachin. When it reached home, withdrawal of troops became a 'request to Mujahideen.' In his address, Nawaz Sharif congratulated the 'Mujahideen' for having accomplished their task and "requested" them to return. And later, the Pak foreign office denied that any dead-line for withdrawal had been fixed.

Meanwhile the Pakistani Government was busy telling its people that it had not withdrawn, had not given up Kashmir, had not diluted commitment to terrorism. With this background no peace drums will ever by sounded. Nor heard. This music leads to bugles of war alone. A war that is also known as a jehad there. Pakistan will be waging this war whenever she perceives India weak, wherever she finds a weak spot. It is easy to rationalise this inherent belligerency. The general argument is that the Pak Government 'needs' somehow to mollify the people, needs to 'sell' peace to their people. But would peace ever be built upon the see thing belligerency? There is a deeper truth lurking beneath this argument: that it is the Pak nation, the whole people, that wants nay fuels, the anti-India hostility. Somehow this truth is always ignored, though its denial changes neither the reality nor the result. The result is that peace is sold to the people there, as a strategy of war. Bhutto did it after Simla accord; Nawaz is doing it now. Neither of them believed in peace, one of them paved the way for Pakistani bombs the other is stoking more belligerency. One talked of 'a thousand years war', the other of a thousand 'Kargils'. That peace did not prevail then. Shall this peace prevail now! A peace projected as a war, planned as a war, persued as a war?

The Pak Government insists that it has won the Kargil round. The Pak press and opposition charge that the Government has lost. Pakistani people are uncertain. But none is opposed to the principle behind Kargil. Together, they look upon Kargil as an objective, not an aberation. Not as a mistake in principle, but as a mission that did not click. A mission to annex Kashmir, to trounce India. That mission continues to be dear to Pakistani heart. Hence none questions the wisdom of a persistant war-mongering. None clamours for peace. None asks for an end to the irrational hostility. Nawaz may convince his nation of the need for a respite, but it is a respite alone, and a temporary one at that. Peace is neither his nor his nation's aggendum.

Accords and agreements, here, sow war not peace. The cessations of hostilities are periods for preparation for another intrusion, another insurgency, another war. It must be admitted that, Pakistan is Indias sorrow. A misfortune that history has thrust upon India. And, history is something that can't be reversed. History can only be lived with, with adequate precuations. In Pakistans case the adequate precaution is a proper, effective, sustained action that would restrain the rogue state in her crass adventurism. That action should also include a refusal to accept charades of peace like the aggreement at Lahore. Yet, more Lahores shall be talked, signed and broken. No Lahores can help till Pakistan keeps labouring for war. Will a help? A war once fragmented Pakistan. It took her twenty years, but then she was there, again, braying at the border. Another war may shatter Pakistan, but depend upon the splinters to get and ready, in due course of time. That is the way with misfortunes; they keep visiting again and again, in new garbs, in new versions. Vigilence is the only way to keep rogues at bay. Vigilence of the nation, the people, machinery of the state and the political leadership.

India shall always have to be alert for the misfortune called Pakistan is waiting at the border. A misfortune bred by this millenum!

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