Since then, Pakistan’s Kashmir strategy has taken a dramatic turn in returning to the negotiating table and participating in the peace process. The ice was bro-ken during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Islamabad in January 2004.
Declaring that “history had been made,” General Musharraf promised not to allow the territories under Pakistani control to be used for terrorism.97The two countries agreed to resume their dialogue for a peaceful resolution of all bilat-eral issues, including Kashmir. Despite a change in government in New Delhi, which caused much anxiety in Islamabad, the peace process has been sus-tained.98In fact, buoyed after his first meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in September 2004, Musharraf has been firing a rapid volley of propos-als to resolve the Kashmir issue when just a year earlier he was being called the
“mastermind behind Kargil.” He has suggested dividing Kashmir into seven geographical regions, demilitarizing a part or all of them (variations of the Chenab formula), having a soft border across the Line of Control, and finally, creating a demilitarized autonomous Kashmir (for the specific details, see chapter 8). The large question, of course, is whether this is a harbinger of a strategic shift or is yet another tactical maneuver.
The reasons for changing course may be telling. On one hand, Pakistan’s Kashmir strategy has reached a stalemate. The army has failed to take over Kashmir by force or to use force as a “tactical instrument” compelling India to make territorial concessions on Kashmir. Politically, it has alienated the Valley Kashmiris, who no longer look to Pakistan as their savior and are less willing to do Pakistan’s bidding. Pakistan had armed and trained Kashmiri militants but never trusted them as a reliable partner. Islamabad was nervous that the latter would strike a deal with New Delhi, as was evident from a public admis-sion that Pakistan leadership was instrumental in splitting the Hurriyat to forestall its dialogue with New Delhi.99Threats to eliminate the Hurriyat lead-ers and the steady depletion of the Kashmiri cadre in the militant ranks also point in this direction. In other words, Pakistan has unsuccessfully exhausted the entire spectrum of violence—from nuclear blackmail to unleashing jihad—in attempting to alter the status quo in Kashmir. Therefore Pakistan seems to have little option but to return to the negotiating table.
On the other hand, one could say that growing pressures, from within and without, have persuaded the Musharraf regime to abandon the jihad strategy, whose fundamental assumptions in the post-9/11 period have started going awry. The same mujahideen who targeted Kashmir after the eviction of Soviet forces in Kabul had—after the fall of Taliban—turned toward Pakistan in search of new agendas. When they found that the government had not only abandoned the Taliban but was also “arresting people indiscriminately, particularly those with beards,” many groups, such as Jaish-i-Mohammed led by Maulana Abdul Jabbar, decided to “resist and work against U.S. interests in Pakistan.” Their objec-tives were to “hit out at top government functionaries who are perceived to be pro-American while driving the country towards a state of anarchy.”100Soon, its
“blowback effect” began to hurt the ruling establishment because its corporate interests, being that it was an ally of the United States, clashed with those of the jihadis, who in serving the state in Kashmir also developed “an independent agenda of eventually capturing the Pakistani state.”101This may be “a bitter pill”
for Pakistan’s generals to swallow, as some have pointed out, but “the fact is that Kashmir cannot be liberated by force. The ‘bleed India’ policy, an apparently cheap option for Pakistan, was vociferously advocated for over a decade. This has totally collapsed—Pakistan has bled no less than India.”102
Furthermore, jihadi culture, sectarian organizations, and their numerous splinter groups, many of which have acquired the status of a “Pakistani al Qaeda,” have seeped deep into the body politic of Pakistan.103Government officials investigating domestic acts of terrorism soon realized the length and breadth of the canvass available to these people, stretching from a small village
in Azad Kashmir to Karachi in one direction, and from Pakistan’s eastern bor-ders to South Waziristan in the other. In the Miramshah and Wana areas of Waziristan, hundreds of foreign militants including Arabs, Central Asians, Chechens, and Afghans, as well as members of the Pakistani militant outfits, are reportedly deeply entrenched. Over the years, they have established bases and dens for storing explosive devices, not to mention training centers where militants are taught various tactics, including how to carry out ambushes, raids, and attacks.104Pakistan offers a fertile place for hosting them partly because it gives them “access to unlimited manpower and acquiring explo-sives or weapons of any sort is not a problem” and partly because “they expect to find friends in the government and sympathizers among the people.”105
At the same time, partnership with the jihadi groups is at cross-purposes with Musharraf ’s professed goal of ending the sectarian violence and ridding Pakistani society of extremist elements. They all share deep bonds of Islamic ideology, common political targets, training centers, and resources. For exam-ple, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian organization recently renamed Jundullah, is working as al Qaeda’s strike force. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Aalami, widely believed to be an offshoot of the Kashmiri militant outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, is also suspected of having close operational ties with al Qaeda and was responsible for bombing the U.S. consulate in June 2002.106Although the first suicide bombing in Pakistan, on March 17, 2002, targeted an interna-tional church in Islamabad, soon the tactic became part and parcel of homegrown organized terrorism and was even directed at the country’s top leaders, President Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.107Five abortive assassination attempts on Musharraf—two within a span of eleven days in December 2003—perhaps forced him to rechristen the jihadis “spoilers” in an effort to find a way out of the impasse in Kashmir. “He is serious,” a U.S. State Department official noted; “he was born again on December 25th.”108As one commentator observed:
Back in 2001, Pakistan’s permanent establishment (read army/ISI) was still riding the tiger of jihad and thinking that with the American con-nection restored, Pakistan could have its cake and eat it. It could carry America’s bags in Afghanistan and simultaneously sustain jihad in Kash-mir. . . . Having to contend with the real world in the meantime, they are now the wiser. Far from being able to ride and control the jihadi tiger, they have found themselves on the receiving end of its menacing snarl.109 This was also the lesson emanating from Afghanistan. Pakistan’s support for pan-Islamic jihad had turned on its head. The Taliban had accepted the theory
of strategic depth on its own terms, implying that Pakistan “provided the ideo-logical strategic depth for Afghanistan.”110The new strategic context in the post-9/11 world stigmatized terrorism and raised the costs of supporting terror.
Notwithstanding its lavish praise for General Musharraf ’s contribution in fighting terrorism, the government in Washington is beginning to realize that the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistan was only partly affected after 9/11 and is still capable of harboring al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden. Most telling are the continuing arrests of top al Qaeda functionaries on Pakistan’s soil and the footprint of Pakistan-based jihadi groups from Iraq to California to Lon-don.111Pakistan is under constant pressure to completely dismantle the jihadi infrastructure. As the core commander, Safdar Hussain, explained, “Military operation in South Waziristan was necessary because in the post-9/11 geopo-litical environment, un-administered areas cannot exist in any part of the world, particularly in places such as the Pak-Afghan tribal region, which has been a breeding ground for terrorists participating in the Afghan war.”112 Notably, the Pakistan army has paid a heavy price in fighting this war: it has lost more than 600 men over the past three years. Perhaps that is why the Pakistan army yielded and signed a peace deal with the local Taliban shura in Septem-ber 2006. It ceased the military campaign, freed prisoners, and sent the army back to barracks, and the militants agreed to halt attacks on Pakistani forces and stop cross-border raids into Afghanistan targeting U.S. and Afghan troops.
This, in turn, led many U.S. analysts to question General Musharraf ’s commit-ment to fighting the war on terror.
The growing gap between Pakistan, almost a “failed state” in some eyes, and a “globalizing India” drove home the point that the strategy of “bleeding India through a thousand cuts” had utterly failed. In 2003 India’s economy posted 7.4 percent growth, the second-fastest rate in the world, while that of Pakistan had slid to 3.6 percent and was castigated as the “Jihadi rate of growth.”113Though IMF-approved government policies bolstered by generous foreign assistance have generated a solid macroeconomic recovery, with eco-nomic growth climbing beyond 7 percent in 2004 and 2005, there is a widening gulf between the government’s idea of economic performance and the harsh economic reality experienced by Pakistan’s people.114
Overall, Pakistan is clearly in a difficult situation, though this does not nec-essarily dictate that its establishment should make peace with India at the cost of its core national interests in Kashmir. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, for instance, Pakistan was in a far more dire condition, yet Musharraf had stead-fastly refused to compromise on the Kashmir policy and through sheer tactical maneuvering managed not to do so. This is but one of several reasons why it
is difficult to assess whether Pakistan has permanently relinquished the jihad strategy, the foremost being that the jihadi groups are its only leverage against India. Resistance within the army to dismantle these groups may not be “ide-ological” so much as tactical, in that the extremist forces are viewed “as strategic assets in the ongoing conflict in Kashmir.”115The pro-militancy lobby argues that it was the armed uprising in the Valley that drew international attention and questions whether it is strategically wise to wrap up the entire militant campaign without any meaningful concessions from New Delhi. In this view, the militant movement should be allowed to simmer in the event that bilateral negotiations fail to deliver a breakthrough.116Some also point out the practi-cal difficulties of abruptly jettisoning a policy that has been nurtured for decades: “For 23 years, the Pakistanis were taught that Arabs and Afghans were mujahids. All of a sudden, they want us to unlearn that lesson.”117The locals had difficulty enough understanding international diplomacy in the fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, let alone the compulsions for Pakistan or President Musharraf to reverse this policy now.
Another cause for skepticism is that the Pakistani establishment, especially Musharraf, makes a deliberately fuzzy distinction between jihad and terrorism.
For example, barely three months after promising that Pakistan would not permit its territory to be used for terrorism (clearly in Kashmir), Musharraf reverted to his old position in an address to an India Today enclave in March 2004: “There is no terrorism in Kashmir. We think there is a freedom struggle going on. I have said Pakistan will not export terrorism to any other area. I have been saying that all along. I have also clearly been differentiating between what is happening in Kashmir. We in Pakistan don’t call it cross-border terrorism.
We call it a freedom struggle.”118He also gave an extremely narrow definition of the Taliban as “the previous Mullah Omar’s government, their abettors and supporters,” and while he categorically denied they would be allowed in Pak-istan, he maintained a conspicuous silence about the domestic jihadi groups.
As one commentator observed:
From the point of view of Pakistan’s Islamist militants and their backers in the establishment, Jihad is only on hold but not yet over. The major Kash-miri Jihadi groups retain their infrastructure that could be pressed into service at a future date. Afghanistan’s Taliban also continue to find safe haven in parts of Pakistan as recently as the spring of 2005. Afghan and American officials complain periodically of the Taliban still training and organizing in Pakistan’s border areas but their protests are rejected sum-marily with rhetoric similar to the one about domestic militant groups.119
Pakistan’s foreign office, through its permanent representative to the United Nations, has periodically debated the definition of terrorism at the United Nations even though it has ostensibly been a crucial ally in the U.S.-led global war against terrorism.120The bottom line is that if the Musharraf regime had made up its mind to foreclose the jihad option of any kind, as it seems to have done in the case of al Qaeda and that organization’s remnants in Pakistan, it would have moved to disarm extremist groups, block their sources of funding, and reduce their potential recruitment to marginalize them in the political process.121There lies the rub. In trying to keep out the mainstream political parties, the Musharraf regime has been forced, time and again, to rely on Mut-tahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamic parties, which in turn draws on the vast, deeply entrenched network of more then fifty radical groups. For instance, when elections produced a hung parliament, the state worked frantically to cobble together a multiparty grouping that would elect Zafarullah Jamali as prime minister. These efforts included the ultimately suc-cessful wooing of Azam Tariq, leader of the defunct and banned Sunni sectarian organization, Sipah-e-Sahaba. On the other side of the political divide, the leader of Tehrik-e-Jaffria, another banned group, closed ranks with other Islamic parties in the MMA. This explains why the rise of Islamic mili-tancy cannot be assessed in isolation.
Earlier, the establishment required the support of Islamic groups to imple-ment its regional goals (that is, Kashmir policy), whereas now the Musharraf regime, operating in a political vacuum, needs them for its own survival. “Will it be possible,” one observer asks, “to muzzle the mullahs when the government itself solicits their support in times of political crisis?”122Similar compulsions have led certain quarters within the establishment to steadfastly continue sup-porting those who have directly challenged the writ of the government, made the country a “soft state,” forced it into political isolation, and nearly earned it the status of a country spawning global terrorism, which seemed warranted when the head of the militant Jamiatul Ansar, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, was released from detention after only a few months. His outfit was rechris-tened following an American ban on the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which had an extensive network and infrastructure in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Khalil’s case is not the only one that runs against the government’s counterterrorism policy. Earlier, the military government had released Maulana Abdul Jabbar from custody despite charges of organizing suicide attacks within Pakistan.123 Without doubt, such a radical transformation in Kashmir policy must be emanating from a broadly based consultative process involving all of Pakistan’s important players across the political spectrum. The debate on Kashmir within
Pakistan has only just begun. A growing awareness of the costs of this conflict has led many intellectuals, journalists, and scholars to urge a reappraisal of the Kash-mir issue. Although a broad consensus is emerging among political parties on the need to improve relations with India, Musharraf is skating on rather thin ice when it comes to securing support for his specific proposals to resolve the Kash-mir issue. A paradigm change in Pakistan’s KashKash-mir policy would require not only a shift in structural imperatives but also a political approach that appears to elude the Pakistani establishment. The following section explains why.