Two templates in regional politics are seriously debilitating the United States's campaign to bring Pakistan down on its knees in the Afghan endgame. One is that Delhi has distanced itself from the US campaign and pursues an independent policy toward Islamabad.
The second factor frustrating US policies to isolate Pakistan is the South Asian nation's bonhomie with Iran. Pakistan would have been pretty much isolated had there been an acute rivalry with Iran over the Afghan endgame. The current level of cordiality in the relationship enables Islamabad to focus on the rift with the US and even draw encouragement from Tehran.
It's baloney
A recent statement by the Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna on the US-Pakistan rift underscored that India doesn't see eye-to-eye with the US approach. (See US puts the squeeze on Pakistan, Asia Times, October 22). It was carefully timed to signal to Washington (and Islamabad) that Delhi strongly disfavored any form of US military action against Pakistan.
There is a string of evidence to suggest that the Pakistani leadership appreciates the Indian stance. The general headquarters in Rawalpindi acted swiftly on Sunday to return to India within hours a helicopter with three senior military officers on board which strayed into Pakistani territory in bad weather in the highly sensitive Siachen sector. The official spokesman in Delhi went on record to convey India's appreciation of the Pakistani gesture. Such conciliatory gestures are rare (for both sides) in the chronicle of Pakistan-India relationship.
Again, last week, India voted for Pakistan's candidacy for the Asia-Pacific slot among the non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and the Pakistani ambassador promptly responded that he would work with his Indian counterpart in New York. Ironically, the UN has been a theater for India and Pakistan's frequent clashes over the Kashmir problem.
Looking ahead, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan are likely to meet on the sidelines of the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation summit in Male on November 10-11. Washington would have been quick to insist that it acted as "facilitator" in fostering the improving climate in India-Pakistan relations. But the US is instead watching with a degree of discomfort that its complicated South Asian symphony is throwing up jarring notes. Calibrating India-Pakistan tensions traditionally constituted a key element of the US's regional diplomacy.
Washington has "retaliated" to Krishna's statement by issuing a travel advisory cautioning American nationals from visiting India because of heightened terrorist threats. Delhi, in turn, ticked off Washington saying it considered the US move "disproportionate" - a cute way of saying that the advisory is a load of baloney.
Jundallah in retreat
What is happening in Pakistan-Iran relations is even more galling for the US. There has been a spate of high-level visits between Islamabad and Tehran and the two capitals have reached mutual understandings on a range of security interests. Last week, Tehran acknowledged that there had not been a single attack by the terrorist group Jundallah from the Pakistani side of the border in the Balochistan region during the past 10 months.
Concerted effort
In sum, the overall regional scenario is becoming rather unfavorable to the US. The easing of tensions in Pakistan's relations with India and Iran undermine US strategy to get embedded in the region.
The Afghan endgame is moving into a crucial phase; much will depend on regional politics. The worst-case scenario for the US is that subsuming the contradictions in the intra-regional relationships between and among Pakistan, Iran, India and China, these countries might have a convergent opinion on the issue of American military bases.
M K Bhadrakumar in Asia Times Online. Here
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
The crowning glory was without doubt his rendition of Ghalib’s timeless poetry for Gulzar’s unforgettable television serial based on the life of the great poet, brilliantly essayed by Naseeruddin Shah. While the bard has always been a favorite of most ghazal singers, perhaps no one has presented Ghalib as Jagjit has. Each one of those ghazals, every line indeed, is a rare gem, forcing you to listen again and again. He poured his heart into Ghalib forever tugging at the heartstrings of his audience. This from someone who didn’t study Urdu at school nor did inherit it from his parents.
What is most fascinating though is his universal appeal and how he touched millions of lives around the world and helped them connect. I have been amazed by the spontaneous outpouring of grief across the border in Pakistan. Hours after his death, Pakistani television networks paid fulsome tributes to the singer, vying with those across the border. The two leading English dailies of the country, Dawn and the News International, even carried editorials recounting his stupendous contribution. It’s not often that you see Pakistani media shower such unqualified and unreserved praise on an artist from the other side. Which incidentally holds true for Indian media as well.
I remember years ago when I expressed my hopeless admiration for Mehdi Hassan, a Pakistani friend had surprised me by declaring, “but I love Jagjit Singh! He’s incredible.” She found solace in Jagjit’s comforting voice amid all the confusion and pressures and demands of an expat existence.
As India and Pakistan mourn the singer, I am once again struck by all that the separated at birth twins have in common despite the unpleasantness of the past few decades and wars they have fought on and off the field.
Despite the best efforts of our perpetually scheming politicians, duplicitous diplomats and ever zealous media to divide us and poison our relations, what unites and bonds us, Indians and Pakistanis, is still greater than what divides us. From music to culture to literature and from food to sports to arts, the things that ordinary people of India and Pakistan share is truly mind-boggling.
Much of what Jagjit Singh sang was not just about love, longing and the heart-wrenching pain of losing a loved one, usual themes of a traditional ghazal. The songs of innocence and experience that he sang were also about finding peace amid conflict, keeping your sanity when everyone around you is losing theirs. The collection of Gulzar’s pNaetry, Marasim, to which Jagjit lent his voice is a dream about reuniting with long lost friends from across the divide (“Sarhad ke uss paar se kuch mehman aye they”).
The day he suffered that wretched brain hemorrhage, from which he never recovered, the singer was to join his old friend and fellow traveler from Lahore, Ghulam Ali, for a rare concert in New Delhi. Indeed, it was to be a series of concerts bringing together the best of voices from both sides of the Indo-Pak border.
It may sound like a silly call from a sentimental scribe but this is what we all need to do — bring together the voices of reason and sanity from India and Pakistan. There has never been a greater need to speak out for love, peace and reason — and not just in South Asia. There cannot be a better tribute to Jagjit’s enduring legacy.
Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News.
Here
Given the toxic history of India-Pakistan relations, it's perhaps only natural that establishments on both sides are obsessed with each other. But since when has media become part of establishment? Whatever happened to its fabled independence and objectivity?
While when it comes to dealing with the reviled neighbor next door everyone is vying with everyone else to appear more hawkish and patriotic, few can beat Times Now and its insufferable, holier-than-thou Arnab Goswami. The bespectacled news anchor, who also happens to be the network's editor in chief, is forever presiding over an all-season hate Pakistan fest, day after day feigning an air of pompous solemnity. It's as if he's got the responsibility of resolving the Kashmir conundrum or leading the billion plus nation resting on his shoulders.
The morning the world woke up to the big news from Abbottabad, our hero was up in the air within a couple of hours of Obama's ‘we-have-done-it” moment. Aided by his battery of familiar talking heads, Goswami began what was to be an endless orgy of thrashing and trashing Pakistan. He was on a familiar turf, doing what he does best: Whipping up a collective hysteria against the neighbor.
Indeed, this time around he went a step further. Even as Pakistan's befuddled politicians and men in khaki tried to make sense of the Abbottabad affront, the guardian of our national interest was calling for burning Pakistan at the stake. "If Americans could fly into Abbottabad cantonment and take out the man responsible for 9/11, what prevents us from doing the same and taking out those responsible for 26/11?" he repeatedly demanded referring to the 2008 terror strikes on Mumbai.
It was an invitation to his guests — many of them former diplomats and at least two of them being former envoys to Pakistan — to move in for the kill as they implored India to hit at its separated-at-birth twin. This is payback time as Pakistan is at its most vulnerable right now, they seemed to suggest, openly debating the options of surgical strikes or US-style assassination to take out characters like Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and of course Dawood Ibrahim.
I found it hard to believe my ears and eyes. Do they really mean that? Do the pundits realize the calamitous ramifications of their call? And they were supposed to be former diplomats!
And how irresponsible the media can get in its attempts to sell itself? Well, everyone in this business is always looking for a larger slice of the pie and more readers, more viewers and more revenues. Which is fair enough. But are there no rules in this game? No sense of right and wrong? Whatever happened to good ol' honesty and noble ideals that once inspired and drove Indian journalism?
Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News. More Here
