Is there a thaw developing in India-Pakistan relationship ?

It appears so. The Composite Dialogue (CD) has resumed, deeper normalizing measures such as opening of bank branches in each other's country are on the anvil, multiple-entry longer-duration and multiple-city visas are in the works, more items for trade are being discussed, Track-II meetings are going on at a feverish pace etc.

However, appearances can be deceptive and are always so when it involves Pakistan. I am not a pessimist but I am extremely sceptical when it comes to Pakistan. Things are no doubt happening in the India-Pakistan front lately. India agreed last year to not only resume the Composite Dialogue but also conceded the long-standing Pakistani demand to even make the CD uninterrupted and uninterruptible. The 'uninterrupted & uninterruptible' tag (a common refrain of the 'secular fundamentalist', Mani Shankar Aiyyar) allows Pakistan to mount terrorist attacks on India even on the scale of 26/11 (or even bigger) but expect India to continue talking to it as though nothing really happened. Many Indian analysts have [wrongly] argued the case for such dialogues, terming the 'freeze' as having outlived its utility leading therefore to 'diminishing returns'. I plainly never saw any returns at all in the three years of 'freeze' for one to now talk of 'diminishing returns'. For those who would argue that 'freeze' did not bring us any dividends and therefore a new approach was needed, I have two counter arguments. The 'freeze' was neither strongly enforced nor given sufficient time to bite Pakistan. Besides, we have had talks for several years earlier but we did not realize that Pakistan was only biding its time and preparing for massive terrorist assaults on India in Kabul (twice) and in Mumbai. A cursory look at the extraordinary deception of a trial in the 26/11 case at Adiala anti-terrorism court would prove that Pakistani government, its law-enforcing agencies, its armed forces and its intelligence agencies continue to hoodwink India while continuing to provide support to the same jihadi leaders and organizations. {See The 26/11 Case - How Pakistan and its Judiciary Help the Terrorists - Part V, for example or the earlier parts}

Anyway, more positive things happened. Articles appearing in newspapers speak [incorrectly] of Pakistan having already granted the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) to India {See, for example Pakistan Grants India MFN Trade Status - Reuters, Pakistan Grants India 'MFN' status - CS Monitor, Pakistan Grants India MFN status - The Guardian}. Both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and SAFTA (South Asia Free Trade Agreement) under the aegis of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) demand that Pakistan designate India as an MFN, something that Pakistan has steadfastly refused to do for over 16 years now. Pakistan has been bleeding severely because of its intransigence in this matter but that was of no consequence because Pakistan could not have any trucks (pun intended) with its mortal 'kafir enemy', except to import goats or onions or cotton whenever their scarcity became an existential threat {rather than India, for a change}. Pakistan is now seriously discussing with India of importing petroleum products from India, the prices of which have skyrocketed in Pakistan even as its traditional desert-friends and ummah-brothers have refused to extend any concession to Pakistan anymore {except for Kuwait which is still offering diesel at discounted prices}. Pakistan has in double-quick time given a green signal for import of petroleum products through trucks and has asked India to lay a pipeline to its borders as well. It is quite obvious that when Pakistan badly needs things from India, it is able to clear such proposals rapidly, which in itself is being cited by misguided Indians as an indication of Pakistani willingness to foster a friendlier relationship with India. Another fancied argument of the so-called Peace Lobby in India (anybody who opposes this lobby must be communal, a war-monger and part of the despicable Hindutva brigade) is that Pakistan released an Indian Army helicopter which recently strayed into Pakistani territory by mistake and landed there. Of course, Pakistan released the helicopter and the pilots but not before laying its hands on the codes and GPS coordinates of the Indian positions in Siachen. India would, no doubt, have done the same thing had the case been the reverse, but then the Indian Peace Lobby should not use the release as a proof of Pakistan's friendliness. For Pakistan, it served no purpose holding on to a small helicopter and its crew when it was a clear case of navigational error and especially after Pakistan had laid its hand on vital information. The incident would have snow-balled into a diplomatic row and the situation that it was in, Pakistan did not want it. The Indian Peace Lobby is thus attributing a virtue to a Pakistani necessity.

It is relevant to remember at this stage a few things. A farcical drama is being enacted in the Adiala court over the 26/11 case for the last three years. Very little progress has been made in the case, the voice samples which Pakistan promised to India at one point of time have not been given citing Pakistani laws {we knew even at that time that such a promise was simply to bait to a reluctant India to send its Home Minister P.Chidambaram to Islamabad to thaw the 'freeze'), Pakistan has made very little independent investigation into the conspiracy angle involving JuD/LeT leaders and the Pakistani Army, Navy & the ISI, Pakistan has displayed no urgency or real intention in prosecuting even those who are currently held in jail there. The explosive information revealed by David Coleman Headley alias Daoud Gilani under oath in an American court is being conveniently ignored by Pakistan as it has the potential to unravel the nexus between the Pakistani army (PA) and the jihadi tanzeems. The Judicial Commission drama went on for a year and finally petred out last week when the Commission that came here rubbished their government-agreed process {the members of the commission were more intent on visiting Haji Ali at Mumbai}, and the Pakistani government itself is taking refuge under the guise of 'slow turning of the judicial wheels in the Subcontinent'. As is their usual practice, the Pakistanis point their finger at the whole subcontinent whenever a negative reference to their specific country is made.

Contrary to popular belief, widely created by Reuters {the news headlines cited earlier}, Pakistan has not granted MFN status to India. It has simply moved away from a small positive-list trading practice to a large negative-list trading practice. Even this came about with a huge drama. First, it was announced by their trade minister that MFN has been granted. Then, there was a huge hue-and-cry and the Government of Pakistan (GoP) clarified that only a committee had been setup to develop a process towards moving to MFN. It was announced that MFN would come about by April, 2012, a deadline that has been shifted now to end-2012. In the meanwhile, the Diffa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), a conglomerate of jihadi tanzeems, retired Islamist military Generals and various other ranks and closet jihadi Islamists like Imran Khan have taken a strong exception to granting MFN status to India. Various Pakistani ministries objected to various things resulting in a large negative-list for trading. Cowed down by their threat, Pakistan now says that even the move to the negative-list would be phased and gradual. This itself will not be complete until end-2012 and therefore the deadline for the MFN status now becomes a question mark. This treacherous behaviour of Pakistan has been the rule rather than the exception.

Within the last 18 months, Pakistan has achieved several things for itself from a more-than-willing UPA-II government. It has resumed the Composite Dialogue, it has conceded very little in return to India, it has ensured that the India-Pakistan border would be relatively peaceful even as it focusses its attention on the emerging Afganistan denouement (so that it will re-establish its strategic depth in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, for an eventual attack on India later}, it ensured the Indian withdrawal of objections to the accordance of the GSP+ status to Pakistan by the European Union (EU), got support from India for a comfortable entry into the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a rotating member-country, it has effectively blunted the Indian pursuance of the 26/11 case etc. It is also Pakistan's calculation that the US may positively consider a US-Pakistan nuclear deal (similar to the India-US deal) once Pakistan establishes a facade of friendly relationship with its arch-enemy, India. After Abbottabad and the PNS Mehran affairs and a host of other issues (such as the case of Syed Saleem Shehzad or the Congressional enquiry into Balochistan or the Memogate scandal or Adm. Mike Mullen's very scathing parting gift), the PA is on the back foot and it would rather tactically retreat at this stage than do anything foolishly. Let us remember that Gen. Kayani was completely opposed to Pakistan granting MFN status to India before the major incidents listed above overwhelmed him. It was during his Directorship of the ISI that Mumbai 26/11 was planned.

Many analysts incorrectly propagate the idea that there is a vociferous and influential constituency within Pakistan for normalizing relations with India. They are misled by a despondent and desperate group of Pakistanis contributing some articles here and there in the English language media of Pakistan, a media which is simply *not* the opinion-maker in that country. That distinction goes to the Urdu press which is overwhelmingly hostile and inimical to India. There are no signs of easing there and one should not expect that too as the society moves to the hardest-line Deobandi/Wahhabi/Salafi/Takfiri brand of Islam. Not for nothing that GoP has appointed as the new Director General (DG) of the notorious ISI, a person who was intimately associated with the 26/11 and Kabul attacks as the operational head. Gilani could have appointed anybody else, if he really wanted to reform the ISI, but chose to appoint instead Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam.

An important issue that is generally overlooked is the interlinking of the Afghanistan situation and India's internal and external security. Since the 80s, and increasingly so since the 90s, certain aspects of India's security have become linked with Afghanistan. Pakistan is playing a hide-and-seek game with the Americans and the Afghans and is hoping to install the pro-Pakistani Taliban regime yet again there. Pakistan's game plan with India is to induce a sense of complacency by appearing to be friendly to it and muting its objections to a Taliban take-over of that nation. The Pakistani society, and consequently its armed forces, are getting increasingly Talibanized and the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan next door to a nuclear and Islamist Pakistan would be like fire and cotton coming together. The emerging thaw has this important aspect to it as well.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Added Later: For those of us who were wondering why the Pakistani Judicial Commission arrived in Mumbai last week, it now transpires that it was a bait to arrange a meeting between Gilani and Man Mohan Singh on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Conference at Seoul next week. This is a usual Pakistani ruse used not only against India but also against the US, and successfully too. Gen. Musharraf used to regularly catch a number three in Al Qaeda just before every Washington visit. The reason for the bait is that Indian Prime Ministers usually concede a lot to Pakistan in one-on-one meetings with their Pakistani counterparts and Pakistan knows that quite well. We will wait and watch what more Mr. Man Mohan Singh would concede at Seoul. Anyway, there is no change to Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, even from the Indian side.

The 26/11 Case - How Pakistan and its Judiciary Help the Terrorists - Part II

After framing the charges against the seven accused (two in absentia), the Anti Terrorism Court-II (ATC-II) at Adiala adjourned the hearing by a week until July 24, 2009, by which time the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting was scheduled to be over. We know that Hammad Amin facilitated funds and hideouts for the prepetrators of the attacks, while Mazhar Iqbal was handler, Abdul Wajid and Shahid Jamil were facilitators. (Two other associates, Jamil Ahmed & Younus Anjum, were later arrested.) Expectedly, when the next hearing came up on July 24, 2009, the Honourable Court adjourned further hearing by a month but not before a startling revelation was made. Contrary to reports that stated that a week earlier, charges had been framed against all the accused, the government's prosecutor, Malik Rab Nawaz Noon, said formal charges against the accused had not yet been framed. Even by September, 2009, it was not clear if the suspects had been indicted and for what because the FIA had prepared two sets of chargesheets. Since the ATC has ordered strict censoring of proceedings in the media and since the entire proceeding is in-camera with no journalists allowed (contrary to how India conducted the Ajmal Kasab case), the information has been sketchy and not authentic. In his order on the blackout of proceedings, Justice Baqir Ali Rana, the trial court judge said, "the proceedings would be kept totally secret and not published in any manner as the case had implications for national security and national interests". The ATC's order on in-camera trial is obviously to prevent the relationship between the Pakistani Army and the terrorists from being aired in the public. India was outraged and objected strongly to the secret trial but it did not register in Pakistan. This lack of public information also helps the Pakistani government to fudge the issue and present it with whichever spin it wants, hiding under the twin excuses of a pending trial and the gag order by the court. Having got what it wanted in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Pakistan now went back on what it promised to Ms. Hillary Clinton and the Indian Government. Every step forward was immediately followed by several steps backward by Pakistan. Nothing unusual there regarding Pakistani behaviour.

Meanwhile, in India, on July 20, 2009, Kasab (alias abu Mujahid, a name given him by the redoubtable Prof. Hafeez Saeed saheb himself, no less, at the Chekhalabandi Mountain Terror Camp near Muzaffarabad) made a startling confession before a magistrate, Ms. Sawant Waghule who explained to him that this confession could be used against him and also gave him 72 hours to ponder over the implications of his request to confess. In his confession, he explained in detail about the training he had undergone in the hands of various LeT commanders including Prof. Hafeez Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi (alias Abu Wahed Irshad Ahmad). He also narrated the entire sequence of what transpired from the time he joined LeT to the time he was captured by that selfless martyr Assistant Sub Inspector Tukaram Omble. Of course, Kasab's confession has been corroborated by several eye witness accounts (including a brave 10-year old girl, Devika, who is crippled by Kasab's firing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus), electronic records (such as video footages, data from the five GPS devices and a satellite phone recovered from the terrorists), ballistic evidence, trace of the geographical locations of the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses used, visual evidence by photojournalists from Times of India who captured vividly his terror spree, and various other evidences painstakingly gathered. In the court, Kasab's attorney, Abbas Kazmi, urged the judge to accept the entire confession and not to prolong the trial, a request that was rejected by the Judge saying that complete guilt must be established through a trial even though the criminal had confessed (only partially in Kasab's case). Three weeks later, Kasab would plead guilty to all charges framed against him.

Expectedly, the Pakistani Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar rejected the confession as induced under duress, thus proving yet again that Pakistan was continuing to live under denial. A few days later, July 29 to be precise, Pakistan's Attorney General and a close confidante of President Zardari, Latif Khosa (who has recently become Governor of the Punjab province after the assassination of Gov. Salman Taseer), said that JuD Chief could not be prosecuted because there was no evidence against him. The very next day, the Pakistani newspaper DAWN carried a report that Lakhvi and Shah had confessed to their involvement in the 26/11 terrorist attack. On August 1, India sent the certified copy of Kasab's confession to Pakistan along with interrogation reports of Fahim Ansari and Sahabuddin Ahmed.

However, the euphoria raised in India by the dossier that was sent by Pakistan on the eve of the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting, because Pakistan accepted culpability for the action of the terrorists in that dossier for the first time, soon evaportaed on closer examination of the document. It disproved the DAWN report that Lakhvi and Shah had confessed to their crimes. It was indeed only the two lower level operatives, Hammad Amin Sadiq and Shahid Jamil Riaz who had confessed to "their guilt and their contribution in planning, preparing, financing, arranging boats, logistics, training, facilitating and launching LeT terrorist attacks from Karachi and Thath to Mumbai." The dossier did not link Kasab or the two Pakistani confessors to Lakhvi, Shah and Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu-al-Qama. The dossier did not detail any findings against these three accused as well. There was no voice sample analysis done to establish their role. In short, the dossier gave the impression that Pakistan was simply unwilling to take the investigation beyond those two low-level operatives and go all the way up to its logical end which probably would have implicated Gen. Musharraf, Lt. Gen. Kayani and Prof. Hafeez Saeed.

A further proof of this unwillingness was to come soon when on August 3, the Pakistani Supreme Court indefinitely adjourned a hearing challenging the release of Prof. Hafeez Saeed ostensibly due to the resignation of Punjab's Advocate General Raza Farooq. Another excuse ! On August 6, 2009, the Interpol announced Pakistan's request for lookout and arrest of 13 more Pakistani foot soldiers who were connected with the 26/11 attack. It was becoming clearer that Pakistan was more interested in lower level terrorists and was quite unwilling or unable (or both) to touch more senior leaders and masterminds. Meanwhile, the Interpol also issued red corner notices (RCNs) for Prof. Hafeez Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi based on the arrest warrants issued by the Mumbai court of Special Judge M.L. Tahaliyani. The Pakistani Interior Minister Mr. Rehman Malik was quick to react when he said that even if a red corner notice had been issued against Professor saheb, the government was not obliged to immediately arrest him. “The country makes its own investigations against the person, and only then decides,” Mr. Malik said. He also said that the evidence provided by India in three dossiers "is, in our considered view, not sufficient to link Hafiz Saeed to the (Mumbai) attack". Even before the Indian evidence could be presented to the Court or even analyzed by his lawyers, it was shot down by Rehman Malik, an ex-police officer. This has been the pattern. It has been a battle of wits between a top notch lawyer like the Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram claiming that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute Prof. Hafeez Saeed with the ex-police officer rejecting the same out of hand and immediately.

Finally, on September 19, the Interior Minister Rehman Malik confirmed that no charges had been so far framed against any of the accused (now totalling nine) and that would be done at the next hearing of the ATC, Adiala on September 26. Simultaneously, reports also appeared of Prof. Hafeez Saeed's house arrest on September 21, though Pakistani newspapers also spoke of his 'movement being restricted for his own security'. The 'arrest' came ten days after he had been invited as a guest for an iftaar party hosted by the Lahore-based X Corps of the Pakistani Army ! This in spite of an Interpol RCN pending against him ! As Indian Foreign Ministers were expected to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting at New York on September 27, Pakistan slapped two First Information Reports (FIRs) against Prof. Hafeez Saeed for his speech glorifying jihad against kafir on August 27 & 28 and for collecting funds. Ostensibly, the FIRs were delayed until after the iftaar at the Army Command ! When questioned about this development, Prime Minister Gilani vaguely referred to Prof. Hafeez Saeed being 'in custody' even as Prof. Hafeez Saeed's lawyer claimed that the restriction was only against him leading the Eid prayer at the Gadaffi stadium and there was no restriction otherwise, a fact borne out by a NY Times reporter later. Two days later a petition was filed in the Lahore High Court to quash the investigation. However, Interior Minister Rehman Malik sought more time from India to investigate the role of the detained JuD chief Hafiz Mohd Saeed thus making it appear as though some progress was being made !

Then September 26 came and went quietly by. Unlike what was promised by Rehman Malik, no charge was framed against the accused as the Judge went on leave and the hearing was once again adjourned as it had happened so many times before. The Judges retire, or go on leave or get transferred all the time in Pakistan, especially in the 26/11 case. Contrast this with how the case proceeded in India to understand the various means that Pakistan resorts to blunt the wheels of justice.

In their New York meeting on September 27, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi assured his Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna that the formal trial would start on October 3, 2009 !! Pakistan had given several such assurances to India from Jinnah downwards, only to be flouted in the very next breath and Makhdoom would turn out to be no exception.

(To Be Continued. . .)