Can Pakistan survive?

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the ones less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I WONDER why Robert Frost sighed. Was it for missed opportunities, or for the ease with which a chance might have been lost? It is a question that vexes anyone who looks at Pakistan from Delhi. What should be our reaction to the bubbling mulligatawny in which General Musharraf finds himself?

What is the situation in Pakistan? It was summed up beautifully by a member of the diplomatic corps (who must remain anonymous): ‘‘It is as if Washington commanded Prime Minister Vajpayee to arrest Mr. Sudarshan, crush the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and send its leaders to the United States for trial!’’

One school, heard loud and clear and often, is that the policy of the Vajpayee government is a ‘‘failure’’. India ‘‘failed’’ to convince the western alliance to look beyond Osama bin Laden, a ‘‘failure’’ epitomised by the fact that the Jaish hasn’t found its way into the US black-list. Others believe India should seize the opportunity to descend upon the terrorist training camps in Pakistan. World opinion, they say, is so focused on the war against terrorism that nobody shall complain. Witness the renewed vim displayed by Russia against the Islamic fundamentalists in Chechnya.

I admit the temptation, the desire to bomb Pakistan memorably expressed by Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah in his emotional speech to the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly. I love the Pakistanis as much as they love India, which is to say not at all. As Musharraf admitted in a rare foray into candour, ‘‘We hate each other!’’ But history urges us to think with the head rather than the glands. So, regretfully, I lay aside the thought of a bombed and blitzed Pakistan that has been cut into pieces. Because then the question follows: ‘‘What next?’’

It is tempting to think of a reformed Pakistan, living together in as much amity as two neighbours can. (Even the US and Canada have the occasional spat!) But, if this is impossible — as I fear it is — I would prefer the status quo. Because the alternative is a talibanised Pakistan.

Assume the Indian foreign policy advocated by so many people had ’succeeded’, and that Pakistan was isolated. It is not so far-fetched as it seems; Pakistan has no friends in India or in the satellite states of the former Soviet Union, and even Iran would prefer to keep a distance. It would, become as much of an outlaw state as Afghanistan, but on a greater scale and an Afghanistan with nuclear weapons.

Today, everyone agrees that it was a grave error to leave Afghanistan to its own devices following the departure of Soviet forces. That isolation was the abandoned hot-house in which the Taliban weeds flourished. Please explain if you can why the same state of affairs would help us in Pakistan.

The alternative to interaction with the world is for Pakistan to turn in on itself. That is no idle supposition; the Mullah-isation of Pakistan began when it was despised by the world in the early years of the Zia regime. Has anything changed today? At best, there would be a civil war across the border, with tens of millions of refugees pouring into India. At worst, there would be a bunch of fanatics plotting the conquest of a ‘‘Kafir’’ India - suicidal idiots with nuclear weapons.

Call them cowardly or rational depending on your perspective, but the current crop of leaders in the Pakistan Army is actually the better option. They are educated enough to know something about the world outside heir own narrow horizons. (Unlike the Taliban who would cheerfully defy the military might of the western alliance). They are greedy enough and corrupt enough to siphon money and stash it in tax-havens abroad. They want to send their sons and daughters to study abroad, even, if possible, to emigrate for good.

Let me repeat: I neither like nor trust Pervez Musharraf. I expected the failure of the Agra Summit, and, consequently, was not particularly dismayed by its collapse. But given a choice of two evils - Musharraf and Mullah Omar - I plump unhesitatingly for the former. May I also state that I am not particularly convinced by the crusading zeal of the western powers? The staying power of the US remains to be tested. The death of 250 Marines led to a precipitate flight from Beirut in 1984, and the death of 20 Rangers led to a retreat from Somalia. If India joins the war, is there any guarantee the US won’t run away, leaving us to hold the body-bags?

Again, I find the new-found mission to combat terrorism a bit hypocritical, a point made by Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani to Tony Blair. India has been battling Islamic terrorism far longer than the US or Britain with little but homilies from Washington and London. ‘‘The Jaish crowed about the recent attack on Srinagar,’’ Advani told Blair, ‘‘but you still refuse to condemn it openly as a terrorist outfit.’’

‘‘How many troops will you send to the front?’’ Stalin asked the British in 1939 when they approached him for a united front against Hitler (the Osama of his age). ‘‘Six divisions, and six later,’’ was the answer.

‘‘Do you know how many I need if we go to war with Germany?’’ Stalin asked. There was a pause. ‘‘More than three hundred.’’
If India goes to war, it won’t be an antiseptic war with missiles, but an enormously bloody affair. India shouldn’t shy from war, but it shouldn’t necessarily court conflict. As with Stalin, we need to join coalitions only if war is forced upon us.

It is tempting to take advantage of Pakistan’s embarrassment, but we are taught in kindergarten to resist temptation. ‘‘It was a chance that comes only once in five thousand years,’’ Fascist Italy said when she joined a seemingly victorious Germany in 1940. History, speaking through Churchill had the last word: ‘‘Such chances, though rare, are not necessarily good.’’

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