[sacw] SAANP 16 Jan 2000 [Pro CTBT Pakistan views]

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asians Against Nukes Post - [Pro CTBT Pakistan views]
16 January 2000

#1. Time to reassess policies in Pakistan
#2. HRCP favours CTBT signing
#3. Beyond CTBT
-----------------------------------
#1.
Dawn
16 January 2000

Time to reassess policies
By M.B. Naqvi

PAKISTAN'S external relations have been in turmoil ever since the
competitive nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998. The tests
directly led to a euphoria which in turn led to the Kargil crisis. The
tensions that resulted from these were augmented by India's shooting
down of a Pakistan naval aircraft.
The latest incident of hijacking of an Indian airliner on December 24
may have roused the dogs of war somewhat more. They are straining at the
leash. The ugly and dicey situation needs to be cooled.
What can be realistically recommended to New Delhi and Islamabad does
not easily suggest itself. The forces and the political classes behind
the two governments are so passionately involved in mutual animosity
that a rational course of agreeing to disengage and begin talking like
civilized people looks exceedingly unrealistic. The Indian leadership
has boxed itself into a legalistic stance of not countenancing
third-party mediation - the only normal, civilized course in situations
of high tension between two neighbours. Maybe some subterfuge to enable
informal facilitation by the five permanent members of the Security
Council, (P5), coupled with a strong initiative by President Bill
Clinton, can still become the starting point.
Should some preliminary disengagement be agreed upon, it will give a
breathing space to the peace and human rights lobbies to restart their
labours. Maybe the two governments would thus have time to cool off and
let normal political discourse about war and peace and how the two
countries should go about trying to resolve the contentious issues
between them be resumed.
Ordinarily observers would tend to suggest the highest level contacts
for effecting disengagement and for reiterating peaceful intent and
resumption of dialogue. Constituted as the governments of India and
Pakistan are, it might not be feasible. It seems the Americans are the
only people who can possibly nudge the two sides into this by means of
shuttle diplomacy at an appropriate level. But the road to take is via
Track II and effective Track III diplomacy to reactivate the forces that
can stand up to the hardliners who are in full cry on both sides of the
Wagah border.
Left to our own devices, we in this country must focus on what needs to
be done. The fact of the matter is that it is time for Pakistanis to
reassess basic policies, including the validity of the assumptions and
attitudes underlying them. This has been necessitated by the
accumulating evidence that none of Pakistan's basic policies is working
with a reasonable expectation of achieving the stated aim. The Kashmir
cause, for which Pakistan has paid an enormous price in the form of
debilitation of the economy - teetering on the brink of a loan default
and collapse for some time and with no realistic hopes of climbing out
of the bog - is about as distant as ever from any possibility of
success.
Political life has become so skewed as to have led to the repeated
abortions of democracy; the polity remains dangerously divided along
ethnic and regional lines even after the 1971 disaster. The primary
structures of the state are in fact crumbling, and the living conditions
of a majority of Pakistanis have continued to deteriorate for many
years. The fruits of democracy have been repeatedly found to be toxic in
character and the country is again, for the fourth time, being ruled
directly by an army chief.
It is important to take cognizance of the fact that the goodwill of the
US, and with it, other leading western powers like the European Union
and Japan, is vital to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the economy.
Pakistan also needs quite a bit of understanding and support from the
West on political issues, not excluding Kashmir, nuclear weapons, drugs,
Islamic fundamentalism and jihadist groups. The country's
vulnerabilities ought to be kept in view. The western attitudes toward
the actual social and political reality of Pakistan constitutes a
problem in itself, though what it can mean for the future of the people
of Pakistan ought not to be forgotten, especially as polarization is
sharpening between the right-wing and the religious parties on one side
and the dispirited forces of what may be called modernist Islam together
with the small band of liberals on the other.
This developing situation was sharply underlined by a joint statement
issued by the leaders of religious and right-wing parties, including
Jamat-i-Islami, JUP, Tehreek-i-Ittehad, Tanzimul Akhwan, Markaz-i-Dawa
and various other small groups and armed jihadists who have asked
Islamabad not to sign the CTBT. These leaders have tried to link nuclear
weapons with patriotism and love of the country at one level and doing
one's duty to Islam and the Islamic world at the other. What they aim at
is to present those who do not agree with their jingoistic nostrums as
lacking in patriotism and concern for the Islamic world.
It is the standard method of the ultra-rightists to focus on
insubstantial and emotive issues that have nothing whatever to do with
the actual problems that common Pakistanis face in their daily lives.
They are promoting their own brand of politics in the name of Islam and
by emotionalizing issues that require calm, dispassionate and rational
calculation about how cost-effective and useful nuclear weapons are for
the security of Pakistan.
=46ar too much of emotional dust raising has taken place on the subject of
nuclear weapons. The voice of reason has been drowned in the loud noise
being made by ultra-rightwing elements. All of us in South Asia had
never tired of calling the nuclear weapons an evil that can do no good
and had long proposed nuclear weapons-free South Asia and indeed Indian
Ocean with its populous littorals. The question today is: what are we to
do with these weapons now that they themselves are a cause of ever more
trouble.
Whether for idealistic reasons and moral principles or for realistic
assessment of the national situation, the best course for Pakistan is to
re-evaluate its basic security postulates. The first of which should be
to revert to the position that there is no military solution to Kashmir
or any other Indo-Pakistan dispute; a solution can only be found through
an amicable settlement, not war. If it is true that the Kashmiris can
only get their human rights respected when the Indian people and their
governments concur, then we need an entirely different Kashmir policy.
It is a root and branch kind of change that may now be unavoidable.
As for the nuclear weapons, the ineffectiveness of their deterring
quality has been in full display ever since May 1998. The hubris created
by these weapons led to the near-war over Kargil heights. That
heightened the tensions between India and Pakistan which led to the
shooting down of the Pakistani naval aircraft as well as an
intensification of India's brutal suppression of the Kashmiri freedom
fighters (including perhaps some foreign jihadists) as well as the
recent hijacking of the Indian airliner. The menacing gnashing of the
governmental teeth in New Delhi and Islamabad has created war hysteria
in India which is nowhere near the point of abating.
Pakistan has to assert, for once, that it does not need or want a war -
no matter for what reason. War must be avoided. And there is no better
way today of avoiding it by substantively securing the support of the P5
and most other nations of the world by signing the CTBT in strict good
faith - not for the cynical reasons that the treaty has no teeth and has
virtually no chance of coming into force or it has been discredited too
much by the American Senate's refusal to ratify it.
__________
#2.
Dawn
16 January 2000

HRCP favours CTBT signing

Staff Reporter
LAHORE, Jan 15: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan wants the
government to make Pakistan a signatory to the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty (CTBT) which, it said, is in the best interest of the
country.

In a joint statement issued here on Saturday, HRCP chairperson
Afrasiab Khattak and his predecessor Asma Jahangir said the
criticism against signing of the CTBT was either politically
motivated or was due to mis-information.

The joint statement held the view that the ban would not bar
Pakistan from possessing nuclear weapons or building more of them
or improving upon them......
__________

#3.
The News International
16 January 2000

Beyond CTBT
by Najum Mushtaq

It is a pity that the nonproliferation debate in South Asia boils down
to whether, when and how to sign the test ban treaty. And it is yet
another success of military establishments and political elites of the
two countries that the linkage of their nuclear/military programmes with
the state of their people is totally ignored in this debate.

"By acknowledging that this country's (India's) security interests go
beyond the subcontinent and by giving up the earlier American insistence
that New Delhi quantify its minimum deterrent, Washington's
interlocutor-in-chief has given a broad enough hint of nuclear
accommodation," commented The Hindu (January 15, 2000) after the
American deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, suggested in an
interview last week that the "path to greater understanding has been
successfully mapped."

Similar sentiments of satisfaction are likely to come from Islamabad
when Pakistan, too, maps the "path to greater understanding" with the
United States on the modalities of signing the CTBT. But everything said
and done on the issue of nuclear weapons is based on myths (deterrence,
for instance), illusions (greater security and peace) and make-believe
scenarios (first-strike/second strike). The only nuclear-weapon reality
is what the world had seen 55 years ago: destruction--indiscriminate,
and colossal.

Those who had expected "greater security" in this region after its
nuclearisation last year now explain the worsened relations between
India and Pakistan as 'low-intensity conflicts'. War is out, and they
cite the Kargil battle to back their argument.

What they fail to see--or choose to overlook--is that people made of
flesh and blood were killed in hundreds in that conflict on the
Himalayas and thousands of civilians still live in the line of fire
there. If "greater security" only means fewer casualties, then the two
countries might as well revert to dagger and bayonet--or fisticuffs--to
settle their disputes. Peace in South Asia with nuclear weapons around
is surely an illusion.

The only purpose nuclear weapons have served in the subcontinent is
tightening of the stranglehold of ultra-nationalist forces in India and
of the military in Pakistan over their respective people. New slogans of
a militaristic nationalism have been woven around the mystique of these
weapons that just don't let the public mind think about the reality they
live.

The reality is that the Pakistan-India conflict has enriched a few
classes on both sides of the divide by impoverishing the millions of
earthlings who exist here. Surreal images of invincible power and higher
status in the international community are used to rob the poor and
unlettered--in the name of national defence and by displaying hi-tech
weaponry.

The current debate is about which set of jargon the two countries can
use when talking about their nuclear programmes. What we should be
looking at is how to create such conditions in which it becomes possible
to eliminate these weapons of mass destruction--at least, in South Asia.

"Nuclear accommodation" by the United States means nothing for the
people, except that it legitimises their exploitation by those who have
always thrived on hostilties between India and Pakistan--with or without
nuclear weapons.

http://dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=3Dtop10.htm&date=3D20000116