Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
My London-based Pakistani journalist friend was perhaps marginally wrong when he told me “all’s well with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif”, just embarked on his third term as the head of the government in Islamabad. After all, my friend knows his Pakistan well enough; not for nothing had he earned the nickname ‘chhota Jinnah’ in his Government College, Lahore days in the middle 1940s. And as a Pakistani he has spent the last four months in his country to see through the election process.
But it did come as a shock to me, nevertheless, to watch the horrifying news on Pak TV channels of 23 people including 14 girl students sitting in their bus being killed by terrorists. Not just that, the terrorists also destroyed the house in which the founder of Pakistan, Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had stayed just a year before his death in 1948, an old mansion in the picturesque mountain resort town of Ziarat in Balochistan. Thanks to Gen. Ziaul Haq who specially arranged for me to see Quetta and Ziarat on a visit to Pakistan I did see Jinnah mansion which alas is no more.
The 14 students died when their bus was blown up by terrorists and to make the tale more gruesome than it need have been was that the armed men besieged the hospital where the survivors of the bus tragedy were taken for first aid. Some of the killers positioned themselves on the hospital rooftop taking pot shots at the injured and their attendants below as the latter carried the injured for medical aid.
The bus, according to one version, was actually standing and probably waiting for more students of the Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University to get in. Some 35 others were injured and a few taken hostage and freed later by the police. The Deputy Commissioner was among the dead, felled while doing his duty.
The area has for several years now been the centre of much sectarian conflict and predictably the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant Sunni outfit, which has since owned responsibility, was obviously out on a shooting spree killing Hazara Shias. The Jhangvis are active in Punjab, in the Quetta region of Balochistan, having spread their tentacles to Karachi as well.
What made me bring in Nawaz Sharif at the outset is the fact that the Prime Minister is someone better equipped than most other politicians to suggest restraint to the Jhangvis, known as he was as a young right-of-Centre favourite of the late military dictator, Gen. Zia.
Indeed Mr. Nawaz Sharif has covered a lot of ground since and today he is seen as a moderate leader for whom the most pressing challenge currently is to restore economic stability in his country. During the poll campaign, he may have avoided any direct references to the various militant outfits, including the Tehreek-i-Taliban of Pakistan but he is committed to engage the militant groups in talks.
The problem, though, may arise when it comes to engaging the Pakistani Taliban and the other Islamist groups including, of course , the sectarian outfits, which seem to rejoice every time they score a hit, say, their killing 100 Shias and the latter returning the compliment with a counter strike bearing their hallmark. The fact, though, is that the Sunni’s are the predominant sect while Shias aren’t all that numerous.
The others, for the record it must be said both the Nawaz PML-N and the Tehreek-e-Insaf of Imran barely touched upon the indigenous Taliban phenomenon in their long election campaigns. The needs of Pakistan are such that the Nawaz League and the Insafists, the former the largest single party and latter having displaced the People’s Party founded by the late Zulfiqar ali Bhutto and nurtured post-Zulfiqar by his daughter Benazir, as the second largest, get together to dead with the local Taliban. As it is, the principal Pakistani Taliban bases are located in the Pakhtunkhwah (old NWEP) and Imran’s Party which won the largest number of sets there is in power in the province.
Imran’s bleeding heart should work to get the Taliban to the negotiating table or at the very least persuade them to abjure from continuing the bloodbath in Pakistan. If the principal political parties were to come together to talk to the Taliban and other reasonable militant outfits, I am sure the results they achieve would be more fruitful than our own experience with the Naxalites, Maoists or armed Adivasis.
The Indian experience should convince the PMNL and the Insafists that the more they delay the talking the sharper will be the challenges by the Taliban and their ilk.
For Nawaz Sharif this won’t be the first time to be talking to the Islamic right. He has acquired the skills under Gen. Zia and to that experience and his own, marked by his rise to the Prime Ministerial gaddi for the third time now, has endowed him with greater credibility. The Army’s ambivalence on the issue has been all too evident in the past; its choice is limited either to the peace pipe or the barrel of the gun. It has been critical of American bombings in tribal areas and curiously encouraged such attacks in the past; this dichotomy saw the Army at one stage refusing American military convoys access into Afghanistan via Pakistan.
Even otherwise it’s imperative for Pakistan to get over the problem of domestic militancy. Its economy is crying out for revival and the businessman in Nawaz Sharif is very conscious of this; he will also have to either close down or sell the non-productive public sector establishments, vigorously pursue Pakistanis to pay their taxes.
Pakistan must according to me, a non expert, be one of the few countries were paying taxes is considered infra dig unlike some other countries where the highest tax payer makes it his business to make it known.
Pakistan is suffering from acute power shortages, most parts of the land of five rivers complaining that they get power for just two hours a day. Nawaz is trying out many options to offer immediate relief; it has sought help from the Chinese and from others. Some 300 to 500 MW are likely to be supplied by the Indian Punjab to light up parts of Lahore for longer spells.
Friends across the border tell me of the horrid time they are having in the near absence of assured power supply. India may not be the ideal source for assured power supply (a very small portion of total need) given its own inability to quicken the pace of power generation. The greens and the environmentalists have virtually blocked most hydel power projects suggesting that the country may have to go in for more energy via the nuclear path which again is not acceptable to the environmentalists.
If the two countries- India and Pakistan- could somehow resolve their long festering bilateral problems, they could jointly work on building up proper power infrastructure. Nawaz Sharif could even contribute his expertise in road-building. I have driven down the massive highway he got built from the tribal heartland down to the plains of Punjab some years ago.
But as I have said earlier, for Indo-Pak cooperation to materialise it is very important that the two sides sit down together to find a sustainable solution to their mutual problems. The old mindsets brought to the table by the moth-eaten bureaucrats steeped in antediluvian ideas should instantly be discarded. Nawaz Sharif, from, what I have known of him or about him, would very much want to get to grips with the Indo-Pak tangle should New Delhi be willing to play ball.
Unfortunately for the immediate future of bilateral relations between the two, New Delhi, slipping gradually into the election mode, may not be prepared just now for a rapprochement. Indeed, the Manmohan Singh government may even not be interested in such talks now. And who knows what kind of a future dispensation India will be saddled with in less than a year from now.
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