General thrust

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has missed an opportunity to deescalate tension on the border when, instead of addressing the co...

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has missed an opportunity to deescalate tension on the border when, instead of addressing the core issue of cross-border terrorism, he chose to speak to his own jehadi constituency.

Having failed to take any tangible steps to contain terrorism since his much-hyped January 12 speech, he should have known that India was not inclined to take any of his promises at its face value. To make sense to New Delhi, he should have come up with a ground-level plan of action to match his words. It is this dichotomy between his promises and his actions which has led the Indian government to dismiss Musharraf’s speech as ‘‘disappointing and dangerous’’. What was also disappointing was his inability to elaborate upon any single measure he undertook to break the backbone of terrorist organisations operating from Pakistan and to prevent them from perpetrating such heinous acts as the one at Kaluchak on May 14. By asserting that there was no infiltration across the border now, which is a tacit admission that there was such infiltration earlier, the General has resorted to Goebbelsian tactics. This claim is tantamount to terming as liars, all those world leaders — including the US president — who have asked him to stop infiltration.

The speech is dangerous because Musharraf has used the occasion to tell the jehadis in his country that despite all his protestations of being on the side of the US in the global war against terrorism, he has not compromised on his stand on Kashmir. Building up peace was surely not his intention when he referred to such totally irrelevant subjects as Gujarat and the treatment meted out to Dalits in India and questioned its criminal justice system. Coming as the speech did, soon after Pakistan demonstrated its newly acquired missile technology, the impression he sought to convey was that of a belligerent Pakistan, which was ready to take on India.

Musharraf’s speech poses a greater challenge to world leaders than to India. The last time round they were able to convince India that the General needed some time to crack down on the terrorist lobby in his country. But the overt bellicosity in his speech this time makes it all the more difficult for them to convince India about the need to show restraint. Instead of wasting their efforts in convincing India, they would do better to impress upon the Pakistani leader that nothing less than the immediate closing down of all militant training camps and the withdrawal of moral, diplomatic and political support to cross-border terrorism would satisfy public opinion in an India that is fed up with the decade-old proxy war.