India's Travail, Kashmiri Women, Pakistan's Crisis, Afghan Dilemma

By M. M. Ali

The London Economist of March 13 described Bangladesh as "poor, overpopulated, corrupt and inefficient." To varying degrees, the same could perhaps be said of more than 100 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, the challenge posed by the Indian subcontinent is of a huge magnitude. Over a billion people in this part of the world live in abject poverty, and continue to suffer from all of the human afflictions that accompany poverty. Political unrest and the breakdown of law and order only compound the awesome economic problems.

There was a time in the developing world when every mishap was attributed to the CIA. The devil is no longer so easily identifiable today. The blast that took close to 100 lives in Calcutta may or may not be connected with the explosions that rocked Bombay just four days earlier. The Bombay incidents may or may not have anything to do with the previous happenings in Delhi or Ayodhya. Occurrences in Punjab and Assam may be independent of each other. The tragic Kashmir saga may have a life of its own. Nevertheless, while forensic scientists pursue their methodical investigations, politicians are tempted to offer their own self-serving explanations.

For instance, it is common knowledge that two worlds coexist in Bombay—one on the surface and the other underground. This Indian port city remained tranquil as long as the two worlds did not collide. The underworld trade in contraband, narcotics and gold has produced a crop of kingpins. They have a culture of their own which places its loyalties solely on pecuniary considerations.

Bombay's large mercantile class, known for its civility, has been forced to live uncomfortably with a growing quasi-military extremist group, the Shiv Sena, that strives to establish Hindutva, a land for the Hindus alone. Presiding over these and many other strange bedfellows is the badly fractured ruling Congress Party. Each faction within it will go to any length to capture power, the latest example being the overthrow of the Naik group by Sharad Pawar.

Some political parties do well under conditions of peace and others make gains in turmoil. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, basked in the post-independence glow, and styled himself a secular-democrat. For almost three decades, the Congress Party ruled over the country with no real political challenge. Ultimately, what was latent underneath had to surface. The shadows over post-Nehru India, it seems, have substance.

With each new crisis, the Congress Party loses ground, and the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earns political dividends. Whether the trend can be reversed, or slowed, depends on the manner in which the Congress pulls into its fold the historically oppressed Untouchables, including the Dalits and the Scheduled castes; the secularist intellectual class; and the minorities, including 110 million Muslims. A vigorous and committed leadership is needed in New Delhi to do the job. Narasimha Rao may not be the answer.

The Kashmir Question

Girish Saxena, the governor of the Indian-held part of Jammu and Kashmir, has offered to step down if that will help negotiations between the Indian government and Kashmiri leaders. This is the first concrete evidence of New Delhi's willingness not only to acknowledge the seriousness of the Kashmir crisis, but also to talk to the freedom seekers.

In Kashmir itself, things appear to be going from bad to worse. The Kashmiris, who are predominantly Muslim, are largely conservative. When a Kashmiri woman leaves the sacred confines of her home and defiantly takes to the streets, it is an indication of how bad things have become.

Having suffered killings, torture and rapes at the hands of the Indian occupying forces, Muslim Kashmiri women have banded together under the banners of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Community) and the Muslim Khawateen Markaz (Muslim Women's Center).

"Following the recent massacre at Sopore, the leader of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, Seyyeda Asiya Indrabi, has been arrested," according to another Kashmiri woman, Prof. Shamima Shawl. "No charges have yet been made and her place of confinement is not known." Professor Shamima currently is touring the United States to draw attention to "the atrocities being committed in Kashmir."

Back in September 1991, Harinder Baweja of India Today wrote: "Behind the veil seems to lurk a will of steel which the security forces are finding increasingly difficult to bend." In an accompanying piece, Baweja said of Indrabi: "In this daughter of Islam the fire of azadi [freedom], newly kindled, obviously burns deep."

In recent months Washington has become a sangam, a point of convergence for different waters, for Kashmiris from both sides of the U.N. Line that divides them to meet. One such convergence is that of a three-member women's delegation consisting of Dr. Attiya Inayethullah, a social worker from Islamabad, Ms. Shireen Waheed Khan, a member of the Azad Kashmir Assembly from Muzzafarabad, and Prof. Shamima Shawl from Sopore, in Indian-held Kashmir. In an interview with the Washington Report, Attiya Inayethullah called for an implementation of U.N. resolutions that call for a plebiscite in Kashmir; Shireen Waheed spoke of "the short-term" objective of opening trilateral talks among India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris and a "long-term" goal of ending the Kashmir dispute; and Shamima Shawl confined herself to drawing the world's attention to "the growing acts of violence and violations of the human rights in the Valley (of Kashmir)." She remarked: "Kashmir is no different than Bosnia."

Over the past 45 years, the Kashmir question has been a catalyst for war and arms buildups in Pakistan and India. An equitable settlement will go a long way toward defusing many of the tensions that exacerbate all of South Asia's problems.

Constitutional Controversy in Pakistan

The late President Zia U1 Haq left behind a constitutional headache for the Pakistani leadership. The infamous Eighth Amendment that enabled Zia to exercise so much authority from the office of the president has now become anathema in a parliamentary democracy. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wants the Eighth Amendment to go, or else he would like to become president in place of Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto also opposes the Eighth Amendment. Ghulam Ishaq Khan, therefore, keeps on his side army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Waheed Kakhar, lest Nawaz and Benazir join hands to pull the plug. With elections for the president due in November, each of the four is under intense media scrutiny.

A new element has been added to Pakistan's politics by Zul-Ullah, chief justice of the Supreme Court. He is seeking to bring contempt-of-court charges against the former army commander-in-chief, Gen. Aslam Beg. Beg has alleged that in the past he successfully prevailed upon the court not to reinstate a prime minister who had been dismissed by then President Zia Ul Haq.

The press is having a field day on the issue, digging up historical examples of presidential influence on the judiciary, particularly during the military regimes. None of the three organs of government—the legislature, the executive and the judiciary—is likely to emerge unscathed, nor will the military. Even the validity and the reach of the contempt-of-court law (a legacy of the British) is being brought into question.

Afghanistan: Still Smoldering

Had Pakistan buckled under Soviet threats and acquiesced, like India, to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the recent history of the region would have been very different. Prompted by the Reagan administration, however, Pakistan accepted the Soviet challenge.

Now that formerly secret Politburo and KGB files are becoming available, the story of Afghanistan from the other side, from Leonid Brezhnev and Hafizullah Amin to Mikhail Gorbachev and Mohammed Najibullah, can be told with greater precision. At first, the swift progress of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan indicated that Yuri Andropov had not been unduly optimistic in 1982, when he told his Politburo colleagues that although it had taken almost the entire Red Army 15 years to subdue khanates in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, it would take much less time to subdue Afghanistan.

By 1986, however, Soviet Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev had acknowledged in a memo to Moscow: "We control Kabul and the provincial centers . . . but. . . we have lost the struggle for the Afghan people." By mid-April 1992, the Najibullah regime had fallen and one segment of the Mujahedeen, led by northerner Ahmed Shah Masoud Tajik, had occupied Kabul while Gulbuddin Hekmatyar made his way north from Khyber to Jalalabad and on to the southern environs of Kabul.

Masoud struck a deal with General Dostam, a former supporter of Najibullah, and agreed with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the appointment of a moderate, Maulana Mojaddedi, as interim president. Masoud became the defense minister. This arrangement, to which Hekmatyar was not a party, lasted until December 1992, when Mojaddedi was replaced by another moderate, Burhanuddin Rabbani. Hekmatyar was opposed to Rabbani as well, and continued with his sporadic military attacks on the capital.

It is no secret that the Pakistan government has used the good offices of retired Lt. Gen. Hameed Gul, a friend of Hekmatyar who had headed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) unit, which helped to conduct the Afghan war from the U.S.-Saudi Pakistan side, to help break the stalemate. Apparently Hekmatyar has agreed to assume the office of the prime minister and allow Rabbani to continue until the end of June 1994 as the president. An accord to that effect was signed in Islamabad with the blessings of Nawaz Sharif and representatives from Iran and Saudi Arabia as witnesses on March 7, 1993.

The trouble is far from over, however. Ahmed Shah Masoud and Abdul Rasheed Dostam did not attend the signing ceremony. Prime Minister Hekmatyar has talked to Masoud but would have nothing to do with Dostam. With all sides armed to the teeth, the peace accord remains tenuous. Masoud and Dostam need each other. Hekmatyar does not trust either of them, particularly not Dostam. Until the problem is resolved, the document signed on March 7 remains, at best, a paper accord.