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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Why should India talk to the army?

After the recent India-Pakistan talks debacle in Islamabad, there were some murmurs that have turned into a crescendo from the Indian side that the real people to talk to are in Rawalpindi, not in Islamabad. This has surprised some analysts in Pakistan.“Governments can only talk to governments, regardless of the issue of their legitimacy or efficacy. Even when State institutions talk to each other across borders, they do so with the approval of their respective governments. In the past, Indian officials and political leaders have talked to generals and politicians and bureaucrats in Pakistan, depending on who was in power and who was authorised by the government in power to talk to India. Today, American political leaders and generals talk to Pakistan’s political leaders and generals only with the implicit or explicit approval of the civilian government in power. But, for a host of reasons, this laxity or leverage is not likely to be available to India even if India were to demand it.” From the point of view of some other analysts, the Indian perspective is naïve.  Nusrat Javeed, journalist with television news channel Dunya News Pakistan, says that Delhi had been negotiating with General Pervez Musharraf and it's believed that it reached a ‘near-final’ agreement. “Musharraf was in control from October 12, 1999 until the judicial crisis erupted in 2007. But did being in ‘total control’ really help? Our friends in India want us to endorse the feeling that General Kayani is the man to talk to while the civilian government does not matter much,” said Javeed. “They should understand that Shah Mehmood Qureshi represents the forces that be and unless the ‘institutional concerns’ are addressed, nothing substantive is going to happen on the Indo-Pak front.” It is in India’s interest to keep Foreign Minister Qureshi engaged. India’s advocacy to talk directly to the security establishment smacks of double standards. If New Delhi wants to engage with the Pakistani establishment, then Islamabad should be allowed to hold talks with the Indian military establishment as well, since the issues including Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek are directly related to the Indian military. Would India allow Pakistan the same leeway that it wants to be granted?

Gilani prefers continuity to change in Army's top structure

The term of the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice is till 2013. The term of the Chief of Army Staff [COAS] has also been extended to 2013. Now all have secure positions and should work as per the Constitution,” Premier Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani told the media on Friday; 15 hours after he went on national television to announce the three-year extension of General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's term. That said, Mr. Gilani left the media interaction. But, then he had said it all. He had admitted that the extension — widely covered in the international media — was an “insurance policy” to borrow a phrase used by journalist Nusrat Javed on his show. The decision itself did not take many by surprise because this has been in the air for a while now. What did surprise many, though, was the duration of the extension. Still, the response has been muted; both from the Opposition and the Pakistani media, which is ever ready to put the government in the dock on every issue. While part of the reason is the Army's continuing clout over Pakistani polity, where the military establishment remains a sacrosanct institution seldom put under the scanner, there is evident grudging respect for the way General Kayani has conducted himself over the past three years which saw the country return to a democratic framework but has been beset with problems the ruling elite appears to be blind to. In fact — in a country prone to conspiracy theories — there have been whispers of the establishment planning to put together a “national government of technocrats.” These “persistent rumours” of an “unholy alliance of the new power troika in Pakistan — generals, judges and the media — to undo the current malfunctioning system and establish a ‘national government of technocrats' to steer the country…” were echoed recently in The Friday Timeseditorial also. So, it didn't require the Prime Minister's candour to establish that stability in the political arrangement was the primary reason for the government preferring continuity to change in the Army's top command structure. “There was risk in change in the present context and caution prevailed,” explained the former Secretary (Defence Production), Ministry of Defence, Talat Masood.