Will this ceasefire last | Faraz Ahmad

Cessation of war anywhere in the world, whoever might have intervened and said halt, is welcome, even if the whistle blower is some illiterate pompous ruler of a nation full of monetary wealth but somewhat lacking in finesse and intellect.

It is true that the terror attack from across our western border in Pahalgam identifying and killing non-Muslims tourists was too dastardly to be forgiven. Never mind that among those killed was also a Christian and a Kashmiri Muslim, trying to save the victims. Never mind that this Government at the Centre, in total command of security forces and their conduct in the union territory of Kashmir, despite prior intelligence later admitted, left that entire large patch of land surrounded by forests, with thousands of tourists from all over the country, without a single security guard. But that’s another matter dealt with elsewhere.

At any event, both India and Pakistan announced ceasefire and while it took more than a few hours to actually bring it to a halt, war has ceased, all the same. But our reason for going to war with Pakistan was the terror attack, killing 26 men mostly youth with newly-wed wives or little kids, vacationing out there. How devastating it was for the family of those killed!

US President Donald Trump has also offered to mediate and resolve the “1000 years old Kashmir” issue between India and Pakistan. Trump has not yet succeeded in persuading Ukraine supremo Zelensky to smoke a peace pipe with Russian President Vladimir Putin, more than 100 days since he assumed office when he announced his decision to end that long drawn war within days or weeks.

As for Israel and its premier Benjamin Netanyahu, evading ICJ arrest warrants, no American president, least of all Trump, has shown any inclination of reining in Netanyahu and his forces’ drive to butcher day after day starving women and little children forced by the Zionists in Gaza. And once the sole American-Israeli hostage was set free, Netanyahu thumbed his nose at the Palestinians and resumed annihilation of Palestinians with greater vigour and determination, till he either drives out each and every Palestinian— men, women and children from Gaza strip or they die of starvation or simply to IDF guns and bombs. So much for Trump’s concern for peace, while the White world stans there gleefully enjoying this Zionist apartheid annihilation of the Palestinians.

Yet Trump seems to set a lot of store by Pakistani chicanery—their express desire for peace and good neighbourly relations with India. But that desire may be limited to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, a virtual puppet on the Army string, who lacks both power and popularity. Popularity of the Pakistan Muslim League is the sole prerogative of former Prime Minister and Shahbaz’ elder brother Nawaz Sharif or at best his daughter Maryam Nawaz the glamorous chief minister of Pakistani Punjab.

Power in Pakistan rests entirely with the Army. Shahbaz is complicit in or at least a witness to the incarceration and humiliation of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, once a poster boy of the Army, after he fell foul of the GHQ for overstepping his brief. So, much as Nawaz Sharif and even Shahbaz may be sincerely seeking peace and prosperity for their country, reeling under debt and deprivation, it is finally Hafiz ji Asim Munir who will decide the course of Pakistani action vis-à-vis India. Hafiz ji is a term used for those who have mugged the Holy Quran by heart and can recite from page one to the end without looking into the Holy book. Ashutosh Varshney in his latest piece in the Indian Express of May 14 considered the Indo-Pak “situation especially inflammatory” because Hafiz ji “is both an Islamist and a believer in the two-nation theory” Varshney recalled how this Army chief in his April 17, address to a gathering of non-resident Pakistanis, less than a week before the Pahalgam attack, projected Pakistan as a second Medina (where Prophet Mohammad took refuge fearing his life in his city of birth Mecca). Finally, the Islamic forces conquered Mecca but the Prophet made Medina his permanent abode till his demise. Varshney reminds here that while most scholars of the Darul Uloom Deoband opposed the creation of Pakistan during Partition, a breakaway section amongst them did campaign for Pakistan as a future modern-day Medina. Thus, this Hafizji’s modern day Medina is no figment of his imagination. He was recruited by that Mulla in Khaki General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, in his Islamization drive of the 1980s. Zia stirred peaceful waters both in Punjab and Kashmir in the East bleeding India with his thesis of “a thousand cuts” and Afghanistan in the west of Pakistan. Similarly, this Hafizji is evidently breathing a new lease of life in Laskar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and other Islamist militia, a real threat to any peace or good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan, Trump be damned. Unless Trump too is in it.

Varshney recalls that in Zia’s times though, India was ruled by a secular government. “Munir’s rise to the top means that we have an Islamist nationalist heading Pakistan’s most powerful institution, the Army and a Hindu nationalist ruling India’s polity.” That hardly sounds encouraging for lasting peace on our western borders.

However, it is also true that the number of Pakistanis turning against the Army too has risen exponentially in these last few years, with Imran Khan’s party the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) having stormed the General Headquarters of the Army. Now is perhaps the time for Pakistan’s political class to rise and succeed where first Zulfikar Ali Bhutto failed in the 1970s and lately Imran Khan too made an unsuccessful bid. Remember the Islamist attack on an Army school in Peshawar on December 16, 2014 killing 150, including 134 children and rest women teachers. The Islamists targeted mostly the children of Army officers studying in that school. This clearly demonstrated how the Pakistan Army is riven by ideological rift between the Islamists and Jihadis on one side and the professional soldiers on the other. Forcing the Army back to the barracks and taking command of the nation is a difficult task, but the only way out from this quagmire, in which the Islamists are pushing that nation to consolidate their iron grip on the throats of Pakistanis.

If the Pakistan establishment were really sincere about peace with India for its own sake to attend to development and prosperity of its people, it has to seriously decide over the question of sponsoring terror. But how can it when it has no dearth of private Islamist armies— Laskar-Jhangvi, Tehreeek-e- Taliban, Lashkar-e-taiyabba, Jaishe-Mohammad and many, many more, all spawned and nurtured by Zia and his successors. India may have bombed the LeT headquarters in Muridke and JeM’s at Bahawalpur, but these hydra headed monsters will not take much time to regrow.

The source of all terror in Pakistan is the Hudood laws and the Law of Blasphemy again a legacy of Zia, openly misused by communal Muslims mostly in Pakistani Punjab to target anyone, but primarily poor Christian workers. If Pakistan has any desire for peace it has to start with the Blasphemy law. Scrap it here and now. Though I wonder whether any government would have the courage to do that. Second is removing that Hafizji and confining him to the mosque to recite the Holy Quran, all day, all night as his be all and end all.

India, on its part, could tackle the situation again, if it were sincere. The nation solidly backed our Government this time to rebuff terrorism from across the border. For the first time we saw the Kashmiri men and women on the streets with the tricolour in their hands rising with one voice against Pakistani terror. But Modi’s troll army harassed and threatened Kashmiri students, petty merchants and street corner Muslim vendors wherever the BJP government was there. Be it Uttarakhand or Uttar Pradesh. Did we hear from Modi a single word of chiding those of his followers who trolled Col. Sofiya Quraishi or Foreign Secretary Vikram Sikri? Those who blamed the Foreign Secretary for ceasefire were obviously Modi’s men. Otherwise, they would have questioned Modi in their posts. But they troll Himanshi Narwal whose Naval officer husband was killed by Pakistani terrorists in Pahalgam because she opposed attacks on Kashmiris and Muslims at large, despite such overwhelming support from the community. This could be Modi’s great moment of reckoning if he had responded positively to the unquestioned support he received from the entire country. But those lessons, it seems, are an anathema to Modi’s alma mater the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shakhas.

Whatever fond hopes Donald Trump may be having, the situation here is grim and scary, this ceasefire notwithstanding.