[sacw] sacw dispatch #1 (23 Oct 99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #1
23 October 1999
___________________
#1. Military raided Weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd Offices in Lahore
#2. Kashmiris to Press Case, Trying Not to Be Forgotten
#3. A Comment on The Shahi-Sattar Thesis [in Pakistan]
#4. The Limits of the NDA's Mandate [in India]
___________________

#1.
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 02:26:50 +0000
From: the Labour Party of Pakistan

Military raided Weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd Offices in Lahore

Report By: Farooq Sulehria

Military raided the offices of Weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd today on 21st
October. A truck loaded of military men came to the office this
evening at 5.30pm and entered the premises of Pakistan trade Unions
Resource center. They asked the printing workers about the Weekly
paper that if it is printed here. They asked about the owner of the
weekly paper. They took some copies of the paper.

They also took a copy of a new book, "Prepare For Fight," written by
Amjad Ayub, LPP overseas organizer. In the meantime, The LPP chairman
Shoaib Bhatti approached the in-charge of the military team and asked
why they have come. They asked about the editor, Comrade Shoaib
replied that he is the editor. He asked why you are writing this
against the military. Comrade Shoaib told him that it is our point of
view. On this, he left with his team without taking any action.

The LPP general Secretary Farooq Tariq and Shoaib Bhatti, Chairman
have issued a joint press statement terming this harassment as an
attack on the freedom of press. They said that that it is a violation
of the promise made by the Chief Executive General Pervaiz Mussaraf
in his first address that freedom of press would be respected. They
said that it is our democratic right to oppose the military regime.
They demanded an end of these raids.

The first issue of the Weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd was printed on 19th
October with a title No to Martial Law and an appeal to the working
masses to fight against the military dictatorship. It has detail
articles on the present situation and LPP point of view to fight back
against the military take over.

LPP is the only political party which have not welcomed he present
military take over.

Please protest against this attack and send your Emails and faxes to
the Chief Executive General Pervaiz Mussaraf Islamabad, Pakistan. We
have not yet the contact numbers but will be sending you.
___________________
#2.
New York Times
October 22, 1999

KASHMIRIS TO PRESS CASE, TRYING NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN
By Barbara Crossette

UNITED NATIONS -- As the United Nations drew up plans in recent weeks
to take over East Timor, a lonely band of Kashmiris was in the shadows,
trying to make a case that their region, like East Timor, is still
unfinished business for the United Nations and deserves more international
attention.

More than half a century ago, on April 28, 1948, a Security Council
resolution called for a plebiscite on the territory's future after India
and Pakistan both claimed Kashmir, an autonomous kingdom left in limbo by
the British when their colonial rule ended.

The plebiscite was never held, and therefore the United Nations does not
recognize Indian occupation of the Kashmir valley and Jammu, or the
Pakistani occupation of the rest of Kashmir.

Diplomats say the two cases illustrate the role of outside political
pressure in determining the extent of U.N. involvement in regional
conflicts.

"As a politician who has to get up every day in Parliament to answer
questions," the Canadian foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, said in an
interview, "I can tell you that constant pressure has been for 20 years on
East Timor -- highly organized, articulate lobby groups, churches. I can
go from one year to the next and never hear a peep about Kashmir."

The East Timorese, 890,000 predominantly Christian people in Islamic
Indonesia, have been buttressed by support from Portugal, the country that
abandoned them in 1974 and opened the way to an Indonesian invasion, as
well as from the Roman Catholic Church and various leftist and
international human rights groups.

Kashmiris in India -- more than four million Muslims in a
predominantly Hindu country -- do not have an effective international
support network outside their own community abroad. They find it hard,
therefore, to muster political or diplomatic leverage against India, which
calls their rebellion an Islamic war created and sustained by Pakistan.

Although some international human rights groups have made clandestine
visits to Kashmir and issued reports of atrocities, such organizations are
not permitted to monitor the territory openly.

Last month, Indian officials took two spokesmen for the Kashmiri cause,
Umar Farooq and Abbas Ansari of the All Parties' Freedom Conference, off a
flight from New Delhi to New York, where they wanted to make their case to
world leaders who were attending the U.N. General Assembly. Their passports
were confiscated.

Although Kashmiris have not always been barred from leaving India, this
year only the founder of the All Parties' Freedom Conference, Abdul Gani
Lone, 73, was permitted to go, ostensibly for medical treatment for a heart
condition. His Indian passport was endorsed for travel solely to the United
States.

The Indian foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, said in an interview here
that he knew nothing of the Kashmiris' travel problems and could not
explain why they were prohibited from traveling to New York.

India has more than 500,000 troops and paramilitaries in the Kashmir
valley. Independent outsiders estimate that up to 20,000 people have been
killed since an independence movement armed itself 10 years ago, after what
Kashmiri leaders call decades of political and economic suppression by
successive Congress Party governments in New Delhi.

With Congress now defeated decisively in a national election and a
strengthened Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power, Kashmiris may find
that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will have a freer hand in finding
political solutions for Kashmir, a flash point for war between India and
Pakistan, said David L. Phillips, director of the conflict resolution
program at Columbia University.

Phillips said in an interview, however, that the world had less leverage
to bring to bear on India over Kashmir than on Indonesia over East Timor.
India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris need to look for new ideas themselves, he
said.

Lone, the Kashmiri advocate, is a former member of the state assembly
but now rejects involvement in any form of Indian politics. An election
boycott last month led by his organization was widely followed and raised
questions in New Delhi about India's policy to date.

"By refusing to take part in the election, voters in the Srinagar
constituency are trying to say something," The Times of India said in an
editorial. "The state and union governments must try and understand what
that message is."
___________________
#3.
The Friday Times
Vol.XI, No.34, Oct.22, 1999

THE SHAHI-SATTAR THESIS
By Khaled Ahmed

In a recent article three well-known strategists of Pakistan (Agha
Shahi, Zulfikar Ali Khan, Abdul Sattar) have advocated periodic
'upgradation' of Pakistan's nuclear defence to keep it credible. Agha
Shahi and Abdul Sattar are highly respected ex-foreign service men, the
first easily the most competent foreign minister to serve Pakistan; the
second, one of the best foreign secretaries Pakistan has ever had; and
the third, an ex-Air Marshall. The article entitled Securing Nuclear
Peace, published in The News and Dawn (5 Oct 99), is the most
authoritative statement on Pakistan's nuclear defence to date.

The article makes a case for the creation of a 'credible minimum nuclear
deterrence' which has to be 'upgraded in proportion to the heightened
threat of preemption and interception'. It posits that, as India raises
the nuclear ante, it would be unavoidable for Pakistan to augment 'the
quantum and variety of our strategic arsenal'. It gives the history of
nuclear proliferation in the world but adheres to the view that nuclear
deterrence can be unequal 'provided its survivability is assured'.
Nations who effectively deployed an unequal deterrence ensured its
survivability.

The military paradigm: Some of the basic assumptions of the Shahi-Sattar
thesis are: that military rivalry with India is foreseeably permanent;
support from the nuclear powers who pretend to care for
non-proliferation will not be forthcoming; the only security available
to Pakistan is military security. Pakistan has acquired nuclear
deterrence in response to India's challenge but this deterrence is
constantly under challenge. After the 1971 Indian aggression in East
Pakistan, Pakistan acquired a 'recessed capability' which worked for two
decades and averted at least three planned Indian conventional attacks.

In 1998, after India's multiple tests, Pakistan had to come out of its
'recessed capability' and explode its heretofore untested device 'mainly
because influential opinion in India seemed to discount Pakistan's
nuclear capability'. The article doesn't go into the details of the
politics of testing, but the truth of the matter is that a strong lobby
inside Pakistan remained dissatisfied with its 'recessed capability'
right from the start. Putting the bomb on display was the slogan of this
lobby which actually favoured a policy of defiance to international
pressure. The bomb had become a symbol of Pakistan's sovereignty.

One can also recall the various ways in which Pakistan 'disclosed' the
deterrence of its 'recessed capability' to India and the world. It was
not always easy since Pakistan's economic dependence on the West in
general and the US in particular increased instead of lessening in the
said decades. Pakistan's policy towards India depended heavily on its
advocacy in the West. That difficulty has never really abated and is
being faced by Pakistan even after its nuclear tests. The May 1998
'defiance' of Western opinion was to be a delayed assertion of its
sovereignty; but sovereignty has since been curtailed rather than
augmented. The bomb has spurred the imagination but has not established
the reality we strove for.

=46lights of imagination: Strategy is an act of imagination. A
conventional arms race, in which Pakistan has suffered, doesn't free the
imagination as much as the bomb. It is no surprise that the most avid
advocates of the nuclear bomb are the religious parties in Pakistan. It
is no happenstance that Sura Al-Infal describing the miracle of the
battle of Badr was invoked in the days before the Chaghai test in May
1998. The bomb can achieve all in the face of a superior foe that
conventional arms could not in 1965 and 1971. The bomb has likewise
solidified the strategic imagination that serves the military security
paradigm and ignores problems of internal security.

The Shahi-Sattar thesis emphasises that the bomb is not a war-fighting
weapon. It is a weapon of the mind. It must deter the imagination of the
enemy. It is therefore dependent on the perception of the enemy to
remain deterrent. It is a state of enslavement of the defensive mind to
the mind of the aggressive enemy. The authors do not believe that the
Soviet Union collapsed because of its arms race with the West. This is
only partially correct. One can't forget that the ultimate 'weapon of
the imagination', the Star Wars, totally discomfited the Soviet
strategists. (The Indian have leaked news about a similar undertaking.)
The article says that 'equal if not more fatal flaws (in the Soviet
Union) were the repressive system, egregious pursuit of ideological
rivalry and the attempt to perpetuate and enlarge the Russian empire'.

The Soviet example and Pakistan: Strangely, the above observation about
the internal situation of the Soviet Union is in large part applicable
to Pakistan today. What the authors did not dwell on is the state of the
Soviet economy in the face of the capitalist success in the West. The
weakest section in the Shahi-Sattar thesis is the one dealing with
Pakistan's governance and economic performance. It hopes that governance
in Pakistan will improve and finally attain a quality suited to the
maintenance of nuclear deterrence. Only two sentences are devoted to the
discussion of Pakistan's defence budget. It is assumed that the command
and control system is adequate without analysing the growing gap between
the government and the state in Pakistan. In view of the expense
normally incurred in the erection of such a system, it is hoped that
'cooperation of the experienced nuclear states' would be forthcoming.

Nuclear imagination went wrong in Pakistan because it 'isolated' the
factors of governance and economic performance. It soared without the
ballast of these two crucial factors. That's why the Shahi-Sattar thesis
lays its brief but pivotal emphasis on them. Can one assume that if
these two factors are decisively absent over a considerable period of
time the aspiring nuclear power would come to grief? Is this the key
then to understanding the post-test misfortunes of Pakistan? Is the
military paradigm in South Asia based on reason alone or argued and
backed by vested interests too?

The economic and governance factors: Some indicators stare one in the
face. When India exploded at Pokhran in 1998, its economy was on the
upswing, posting a growth rate of over 7 percent. Its foreign exchange
reserves were over 30 billion dollars, its inflation rate was down to 4
percent (now standing at less than 2) and its exports in the high-tech
sector were soaring. When Pakistan was 'forced' to follow suit, its
economy was in its worst trough in history, growing at a rate of less
than 3 percent, some of its sectors posting negative growth, its foreign
exchange reserves down to a few million dollars, triggering fears of
default.

One can say that governance in Pakistan was at its lowest ebb. Almost
all the institutions of the state were dysfunctional. Prime minister
Nawaz Sharif was forced to admit that almost nothing in the state sector
worked. His government was forced by public opinion and the bomb lobby
of the state to test at Chaghai. It fired the popular imagination and
raised expectations but the economic fallout of the test on an already
prostrate economy was neither analysed nor made clear to the people.
Tragically, the economists at the helm of affairs in Pakistan abandoned
their discipline in favour of overheated nationalism and gave false
assurances to the government.

What happened later defied all nuclear theory. If deterrence achieved by
the test was supposed to be purely defensive it should have created a
balance of anticipated destruction and frozen the status quo. But the
Kargil Operation demonstrated how nuclear deterrence can be misapplied.
Pakistan lost further ground internationally and what was pressure in
the past now became irresistible threat. After Chaghai, the Indians
seemed to be at a disadvantage; but after the experiment at Kargil,
India gained. The Pakistani prime minister who exploded the bomb is
internally under threat; the Indian prime minister who exploded the bomb
has won another election.

The Shahi-Sattar thesis says Pakistan's nuclear deterrence has to be
upgraded or it will cease to be a deterrent: 'As a rule of thumb, if 50
percent of the counterforce becomes vulnerable (through development of
India's anti-ballistic capability, for instance), its size should have
to be doubled. Delivery systems too have to be upgraded in proportion to
their vulnerability'. It goes without saying that the conventional
buffer also will have to be kept in proportional size to avoid a nuclear
hair-trigger. That means more expenditure. The 'conventional' war at
Kargil soaked up 350 million dollars while Pakistan is asking the IMF to
give it 280 million dollars to enable it to pay for its crucial
irreducible imports.

Has security been achieved? India and Pakistan may swear the contrary
but the fact is that nuclear tests have brought more insecurity than
security. Investment in Pakistan has plummeted further and its foreign
exchange reserves are so low that normal debt-servicing can make them
disappear in three months. India's insecurity comes, not from its
economy, but from a nuclear but unstable Pakistan. Pakistan has not
properly analysed why the world is scared of the situation in South
Asia. Unfortunately, this danger is being taken as well-deserved
panache, or at least that is what some retired generals seem to make us
believe.

Pakistan's actual security is no longer linked to its traditional
military paradigm. It is now linked to the clash that is developing
between the state and the government on the one hand, and the state and
civil society on the other. To survive, the people of Pakistan need to
alter the old confrontational paradigm and create a new one in which
external dangers are defused through statesmanship. In this regional
effort the minimum deterrence that Pakistan has acquired may play a
useful role. The caveats of governance and economic performance that the
Shahi-Sattar thesis has lightly attached to its doctrine of
'upgradation' should not be taken lightly. A nuclear Pakistan with an
upgraded deterrent may not be worth living in.
___________________
#4.
STABILITY BY DEFAULT?:THE LIMITS OF THE NDA'S MANDATE
By Praful Bidwai

As Mr A.B. Vajpayee puts together his council of ministers through a
process of bargaining and haggling, the NDA shows a singular lack of
enthusiasm, =C8lan or victorious self-assurance. This is only partly
explained by the negative developments in Pakistan, the absence in the
council of Telugu Desam, the BJP=EDs single biggest ally, and the thoroughly
opportunist nature of the NDA as a purely office-driven (as distinct from
ideology- or purpose-driven) coalition of divergent parties with little in
common. A crucial factor is also that the pivot of the coalition is a
now-politically weakened party, which has had to accommodate a number of
leaders responsible for toppling its government less than six months ago,
and which can at best define governance in drab, unexciting and
incoherently right-wing terms.

In some ways, the BJP is a victim of its own success. That success, it
bears stressing, is modest. The party called the elections to secure a
firm, resounding mandate. But it failed to exceed its tally of seats. More
vitally, it suffered a 2.5 per cent decrease in its national vote. This
happened despite all the presumed advantages it enjoyed=F3from =ECsympathy=
=EE due
to a single-vote loss of Parliamentary confidence to Kargil, and from the
=ECforeign origins=EE issue to Mr Vajpayee=EDs image as Hindutva =EBs =ECgen=
tle=EE
face. The trick in these elections lay in tactful alliance-building. The
Congress was a non-starter here, and the BJP a master of shrewdness and
resilience. But that meant that the BJP won only a hundred seats on its own
steam; the rest came from piggybacking.

A second root of the BJP=EDs success lies in its near-total consolidation of
>upper caste support, perhaps unprecedented for any party, especially in the
Hindi belt and western India. As a CSDS survey shows, the BJP now commands
an upper caste vote share that is nearly twice as much as these castes=ED
population share. This is so with a vengeance in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP=EDs
erstwhile fortress, where two-thirds of them favour it. But as the party=ED=
s
upper caste vote has burgeoned, its support from other castes, especially
OBCs, has shrunk. (It was always poor among Dalits and Muslims.) The
further skewing of the BJP=EDs social base means it can now aspire even less
to command the strength the Congress once did, and hence come to power on
its own. Even at its pre-1977 non-peak performance, the Congress commanded
35 per cent-plus of the national vote. The BJP=EDs percentage now is just 23=
=2E
Equally skewed is its geographical base--despite gains in the South and the
East largely through piggybacking, which only partly offset losses in the
North.

The BJP has succeeded in creating a system apparently dominated by two
coalitions. But this is a far cry from a bipolar or two-party system.
India=EDs two biggest parties command a falling vote-share, now a little ove=
r
one-half. At least one of them (the BJP) is not ideologically dominant
within its own parliamentary terrain. And their volatile, mercurial,
allies cannot promote systemic durability. True, the BJP wrote the NDA=EDs
manifesto, but with its woolly formulations (e.g. of =ECraising=EE the savin=
gs
rate to a level reached decades ago), it hardly set the real political
agenda. The BJP=EDs successes in these respects, then, are circumscribed by
countervailing factors. They do not add up to a strong forward thrust,
especially given the party=EDs considerably reduced weight within the NDA.

Where the BJP has handsomely succeeded is in two areas. First, creating a
straw-man out of the =ECtrident=EE (mandir-Article 370-uniform civil code)
agenda and equating it with Hindutva; and then distancing itself
(temporarily) from it, thus claiming it has =ECsecularised=EE itself! This=
is a
sleight of hand. In reality, the party has in no way altered itscentral
programmatic perspective of Hindu primacy or =ECcultural nationalism=EE, of
which the =ECtrident=EE is only one expression, some others being a
revenge-based view of history, equation of Indianness with the dominant
majority=EDs culture, and macho, religion-based, nationalism. The BJP is thu=
s
consciously following a three-track policy: a central majoritarian
perspective, ambiguity over the =ECtrident=EE, and the limited agenda of the
NDA manifesto. Its greatest success lies in getting its allies to hold it
answerable for only the last, while it pursues the two =EChidden=EE and
not-so-hidden agendas, as it did over 18 months. Secondly, the BJP has
seized on strident economic neo-liberalism as its hallmark=F3to win support
>from privileged classes here and abroad. This does not mean deregulation,
competition and level playing-field creation, but an orientation best
captured by the Enron contract and the telecom scam. This will inevitably
bankrupt the state, parasitically moving it away from public services to
law and order, and further alienating governance from the majority.

The BJP=EDs allies could not be happy with that, nor with being passive
spectators to its three-track approach. But within NDA power equations,
they will find it hard to =ECmoderate=EE the BJP without threatening to quit
the NDA altogether. For, unlike six months ago, the core of a viable
alternative does not exist today. The Congress, with 112 seats, cannot
furnish it. A new pole of attraction can only emerge once the Centre-Left
space expands with social churning and secular realignment, or after the
NDA=EDs regional components start centrifuging away, like the TDP. Till then=
,
the NDA will work--not because it is structurally, inherently, more stable
than its predecessor or the United Front, but by default.

Here lies a strange, fateful, moment in Indian politics. The Congress
started emerging from its long decline, but has not grown (despite a
significant three per cent vote gain) fast enough to form an alternative
pole. Its seats tally has shrunk thanks to poor alliance-building and vote
splits=F3despite base expansion, most impressively in UP. Ironically, the
party=EDs past and to an extent its new present looms large. Regional
parties see it as a major rival. But the BJP=EDs smallness is a big gain:
it is a ready ally because it is no threat except where it has grown fast
(e.g. Andhra). This situation cannot last. Whether the BJP expands or
contracts is not in its own hands, but its opponents=ED. That=EDs not true o=
f
the Congress though. It can resume its historic decline if it remains mired
in the go-it-alone, anti-coalition Pachmarhi delusion, and its imperial and
dynastic ways, while exploring shortcuts to power. Or it can grow big=F3if i=
t
radically revises policies, rebuilds links with the masses, and renews its
organisation by eliminating the deadwood of sycophants. Good democracy
demands the second course. Can the Congress supply it?