Parallax View: The Pakistanis have tried to give Kashmir the Tibet-Afghanistan treatment

The recent arrest of Gulam Nabi Fai by the FBI tells us something about Pakistan and the Kashmir issue.

For years and years, India has argued that much of what passes for ‘independent Kashmiri sentiment’ abroad is actually generated by Pakistan.

Now, with the FBI‘s 43-page charge-sheet, we have the evidence to back up this claim.

 

   According to the New York Times, the FBI says that Pakistani authorities channelled at least $4 million through Fai and his Kashmiri American Centre. The money was used to help fund the campaigns of such US politicians as the notorious India-baiter Dan Burton, a Congressman from Indiana, as well as various Republican bodies.

 

   Sometimes, the donations would be channelled through front-men: ten US citizens of Pakistani or Kashmiri origin who would make political donations in their own names and would then be reimbursed by the ISI.

 

   The donations usually had the desired effect. In 2004, Fai contributed to the campaign of Joe Pitts, a Congressman from Pennsylvania. Can it be a co-incidence that Pitts then introduced a resolution in Congress asking the US President to appoint a special envoy to broker India-Pakistan issues?

 

   Much attention has been focused in India on Fai’s regular Kashmir conferences, many of which were attended by Indian liberals and peaceniks who were unaware of Fai’s sources of funding. Obviously, it is sad and unfortunate that they were duped into lending legitimacy to an ISI-sponsored initiative but this is a sideshow. The real issue is not that Fai conned a few Indian peaceniks; it is that his organization was created by the Pakistani state to con Americans.

 

   If you were to trace the progress of the Kashmir issue over the last decade or so, you will find that it follows an interesting pattern. In the immediate post-Independence era, it was India that tried to internationalize the issue, taking it to the UN. We argued that India was a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, secular country to which Kashmir had legally acceded in 1947 and that Pakistan was illegally holding on to a large chunk of Kashmiri territory (POK) secured through a military adventure in 1947-8.

 

   Nothing much came of the internationalization. The UN asked both sides to withdraw their forces from the state and to hold a plebiscite in the region. Neither side was willing to do this and, by the Sixties, the issue was largely buried.

 

   Then, Kashmir made a comeback on the world stage in the 1990s. Various authors who have studied Pakistan and the Pakistani army say that Islamabad regards the departure of the Russians from Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s, as its greatest victory. (It sees this as a Pakistani victory – not one for the CIA or the Afghan mujahideen).

 

   The Pakistanis believe they brought the Russian bear to his knees by using a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they created an international campaign to show the “suffering Afghan people” as brave resistance fighters who would rise up against the evil Russians. (This caricature soon became a staple of popular culture, from Rambo movies to the James Bond series where the “Afghan struggle” was portrayed in glowing terms).

 

   They were inspired, in part, by the Dalai Lama’s example. At one level, Tibet is merely one part of China whose people face the same kind of oppression as many other Chinese do in other Chinese regions. As far as suffering goes, there are greater injustices elsewhere in the world: in Africa, for instance.

 

"What matters to the ISI is this: Kashmir should be seen as a trouble spot and the world (especially the US) should regard India as the villain (like Russia in Afghanistan or China in Tibet.)"

   But such is the moral power of the Dalai Lama that he has been able to keep Tibet centre-stage on the global agenda (and in Hollywood movies) defying the will of one of the world’s most powerful nations.

 

   The Pakistanis tried to do the same with Afghanistan and, thanks to a mutuality of interest with America, (to use a Hollywood reference again, the film Charlie Wilson’s War is about this), they succeeded.

 

   In 1989, as the Russians left Afghanistan, their empire fatally wounded by that misadventure, the Pakistanis tried to gave Kashmir the Tibet-Afghanistan treatment.

 

   At a propaganda level, they funded people like Fai to keep the issue upper-most in the global consciousness. At another level, they repeated their experience with the Afghan mujahideen, first funding indigenous separatist rebels and then, directly taking control of the movement, using ISI trainers to create terrorist armies.

 

   None of this is to suggest that there is no dispute over Kashmir – of course there is. But equally, let us also accept that till 1988-89, normalcy had returned to the Valley, Indian tourists were streaming in. The economy was flourishing. Industrial investments were being made. And, in most respects, Kashmir was just another Indian state. You could argue – as some do – that the Centre rigged the Assembly elections to favour Farooq Abdullah over his rivals in state politics but even if this is true, there is little evidence that it dramatically altered the lives of most ordinary people in the valley.

 

   In 1989, all that changed. The first wave of violence and kidnappings transformed life in Kashmir. By the 1990s, when ISI had begun to send in terrorists and mujahideen, Kashmir had become a war zone. Over two decades later, life has still to return to the sort of experience that was considered normal in 1988.

 

   I doubt very much if Pakistan cares about this. The ISI’s view is that if Kashmiris grow up in the shadow of the gun, they will blame India and Indian forces, not terrorists from across the border.

 

   What matters to the ISI is this: Kashmir should be seen as a trouble spot and the world (especially the US) should regard India as the villain (like Russia in Afghanistan or China in Tibet.)

 

   Once this happens, then US law makers can put pressure on the White House to act against India and New Delhi will be forced to make concessions over Kashmir.

 

   For at least two decades, India has been warning the world that this is Pakistan’s game plan. Throughout the 1990s, the world did not believe us when we said that Pakistan was the centre of terrorism. Then, after 9/11, the US finally started listening to us. But even now, Americans are still shocked when they discover the extent of Pakistani’s involvement in terrorism – when Osama bin Laden is discovered to be living in Abbotabad, for instance – though Indians have come to expect no better.

 

   So it is with the propaganda campaigns. We have often alleged that the likes of Dan Burton are influenced by Pakistan and that US law makers are being lobbied or even, paid off, to raise the Kashmir issue in Afghanistan-Tibet terms. The Americans have always said that India is being paranoid.

 

   But now this is no longer just the Indian point of view. We have the evidence that the FBI has collected; evidence that points to the second level of the Pakistani campaign. At one level, Islamabad will organize terrorism. And at the other, it will launch a propaganda offensive to demonise India and to turn Kashmir into a global cause-celebre.

 

   Now that it doesn’t have to just take our word for it, will Washington finally listen?