STRATEGIC DEFIANCE: FROM COVERT TO OVERT

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    A Pakistani lawmaker from the lawless Pashtun tribal belt, Zafar Baig Bhittani, has revealed in a TV talk show that the imminent defeat and almost certain ignominious exit of the American and other Western troops from Afghanistan marks the success of Pakistan's policy of not allowing the 'foreign occupation forces' to settle down in Afghanistan. The double-game being played by the Pakistan army in Afghanistan has long been suspected, but Mr Bhittani's mea culpa is perhaps the first occasion when this fact has been publicly admitted. Imperial hubris in Washington always discounted or disregarded warnings by Pakistan-watchers in India that Pakistan was keeping the Taliban option alive and kicking, and would use it at an opportune time to get back into the driving seat in Afghanistan. Now that the endgame has begun in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis are shifting gears and pushing ahead with their agenda more openly, even brazenly, than they have in the past.

    The policy that Mr Bhittani has referred to is a variant of the 'strategic defiance' doctrine that was first unveiled by the former Pakistan army chief, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, way back in 1990. The policy speech delivered at the Pakistan Ordinance Factory, Wah by Gen. Beg was against the backdrop of the First Gulf War in which Beg opposed joining the US-led coalition against Iraq. According to Beg, deterrence, when combined with defiance, becomes the most effective defence against external aggression. For Beg, the first Gulf war was an act of "'strategic defiance' by the people of Iraq against the 'strategic military intimidation' by the Western powers."

Beg went on to say: "Strategic military intimidation through the power of the weapons and the armament to break the will of a nation against the might of the mightiest of the world. What challenges this might is the spirit of defiance of the people of Iraq. Such a defiance is likely to become more meaningful if other nations also join in.... because if Iraq is cut to size and their armed forces are destroyed, who will be the next target?.... Such strategic defiance is very important for Pakistan... If we try to deter aggression and defy it, and that too single-handedly, then it may be difficult to withstand. Our policy objective must aim at getting the support of other friendly countries who think alike and have common perceptions. I think there should be no problem for Pakistan to establish such an understanding with Iran and Afghanistan with whom we have many things in common."

    The Beg doctrine of strategic defiance was a non-starter in 1990. But a decade later it was put into practice after the US invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. The 'spirit of defiance' of the Afghan people (read Taliban) became more meaningful after Pakistan, which felt it would be the next target, joined in, albeit covertly. In the initial years, the focus of Pakistani strategy was to preserve and protect its Taliban assets from obliteration. This was achieved by providing them sanctuaries and launching bases in the Tribal belt. Places like Quetta and Karachi provided rest, recuperation and resources. Indeed, the 'Quetta shoora' was in place within months of the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The Taliban supremo, Mullah Omar, has been so beholden to his benefactors in Pakistan that he has absolved Pakistan of all blame and explained away Pakistan's support for the US-led international coalition by calling it 'Majboor-istan'. Omar has always dissuaded his followers from attacking targets inside Pakistan. But his edicts have often been flouted by elements in the Taliban fraternity who are not willing to view Pakistan's duplicitous policy as benignly as Mullah Omar. For their part, Pakistan security agencies have reciprocated by adopting a hands-off approach towards those Taliban elements that have by and large stuck to the quiet understanding that has been reached between Pakistan and the Taliban supremo.

    As far as Pakistan is concerned, it has managed to weather the most difficult period when, in the aftermath of 9/11, immense pressure was brought to bear upon it to make a U-turn on the Taliban. Without surrendering its real 'strategic assets', Pakistan was, at the same time, able to satisfy the Americans with its 'unstinted cooperation' in the War on Terror. Having successfully kept the Taliban option alive against all odds, there is no way that Pakistan will now give in to US pressure when they are almost on the verge of achieving their long term strategic objective. The way the Pakistanis see it, they have the Americans just where they want them: vulnerable, confused, without options, desperate for some sort of face saving.

Clearly, the tables have turned and the US now pleads, not pressures, the Pakistanis to 'do more'. The Pakistanis are increasingly becoming far more assertive in their demands from the US and are inclined to throw tantrums – for instance, over the Kerry-Lugar bill and the enhanced screening procedures at US airports that have come in the wake of the failed attempt to blow up an aircraft by the 'underwear bomber'. The Americans no longer shrug off these tantrums and go out of their way to assuage, even apple-polish, the Pakistanis and shower them with money and arms.

Until just a few months back the Pakistanis weren't quite sure how the Americans would react to hardball. In order to test the waters on how far they could go in pushing the Americans, the Pakistani establishment started taking one step at a time. The visa delays, the harassment of US diplomats, the propaganda campaigns over Kerry-Lugar bill, drone attacks, presence of American private security companies etc. were all part of shifting the policy of 'strategic defiance' from the covert to the overt mode. The diffident reaction to all these measures by the Americans only convinced the Pakistani establishment that they are now in a position from where they can lead the Americans, not follow them. They calculate, perhaps correctly, that the Americans now depend so desperately on Pakistan to deliver Afghanistan that they can no longer dictate terms to Pakistan, much less open another front against Pakistan.

To be sure, the Pakistanis won't push the Americans too far just yet. This means that while they will continue to remind the US of the leverages they hold, the Pakistanis won't stop the logistics support, the bases, the odd operation and intelligence sharing with the Americans. What the Pakistanis are likely to play for is getting the Americans to outsource Afghanistan to Pakistan. After all, someone has to fund Pakistan's Afghan venture. As the Pakistanis see it, while the US is a declining power and will most likely be replaced by the Chinese in the years to come. In the meantime, the Pakistanis will seek to extract all that they can from the Americans for as long as they can.

The fly in the ointment in all this highfalutin strategy is Pakistan's economy, which cannot survive without tons of money being poured into the country, money that might stop flowing in once the Americans realize how they have been done down by Pakistan's double game. While Pakistan might succeed in establishing its dominance over Afghanistan, how it will bear the burden with its already sick economy is obviously something that has not been thought through by the grand strategists sitting in Rawalpindi. Even more serious will be the impact of a Taliban government on Pakistan's social and political structure. Pakistan could of course use the dangers of its nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands to extort money from rest of the world. But it is entirely possible that the rest of the world might be forced by this threat to once and for all end the threat that these weapons pose to civilisation.

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    <1300 Words>                    27^th January, 2010

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BALOCHISTAN IS NO BANGLADESH

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    The separatist sentiment sweeping through the province of Balochistan has led many in Pakistan to draw parallels with the situation that prevailed in East Pakistan and which ultimately culminated in the formation of an independent state, Bangladesh. But such parallels, while they sensationalize the issue of Balochistan and help to draw attention to it, tend to gloss over some very critical differences between the situation that existed in the erstwhile East Pakistan and what obtains in today's Balochistan. More than the similarities, which are many, between East Pakistan of yore and Balochistan of today, it is the differences that stand in the way of Balochistan becoming another Bangladesh.

Like in East Pakistan, the alienation of the people in the Baloch populated areas of Balochistan with Pakistan appears to be near total. There is an accumulated sense of grievance that is increasingly being expressed in the desire for seceding from the federation. Political formulas for granting greater autonomy, fiscal resources, control over the natural resources of the province, the freedom to decide development priorities, a greater hold over the security forces operating in the state to quell the insurgency no longer seem to hold any attraction for the disaffected Baloch. If anything, efforts on the part of the federal government – the new National Finance Commission award, the holding of a cabinet meeting in Gwadar, the announcement of the Aaghaz-e-Huqooq-e-Balochistan package (that includes stopping the construction of cantonments, pulling out of the Pakistan army from parts of the province, release of 'missing persons' etc) are all probably a case of too little too late.

As far as the Baloch are concerned, even after all the pious declarations by the federal government, nothing has changed on the ground: activists continue to go missing or are found dead, replacing the army by the Frontier Corps has only increased the indignities to which the Baloch are subjected. FC troops, mostly Pashtun or Punjabi often stop people on the road and force them to shout slogans like Pakistan Zindabad, play songs like 'dil dil Pakistan...' on street corners, and carry out 'full pat–down searches' of any Baloch who is found to be wearing Baloch-style baggy trousers. Incidentally, even as the Pakistani leaders fulminate at the US for 'enhanced screening' at American airports, there is not a peep out of them over the 'racial profiling' that leads to 'enhanced screening' of fellow citizens on the streets of Balochistan.

The brutal repression, extra-judicial killings, summary executions of Baloch activists, forced disappearances, harassment and mistreatment of ordinary people have only fuelled the disaffection with Pakistan. The sense of deprivation, exploitation, powerlessness and marginalisation that pervades the Baloch consciousness has a remarkable resemblance to how the Bengali's perceived their state in Pakistan. If it were only public opinion that would settle matters, then perhaps Balochistan today would choose a path similar to that of East Pakistan and secede from the federation. But the problem in Balochistan is that apart from public sentiment there is little else that is common between Balochistan and Bangladesh.

Unlike Bangladesh, where the public sentiment was harnessed by a political leadership and transformed into a mass-movement, in Balochistan there is only a groundswell in favour of separatism but no political direction to translate this into reality. One glaring obstacle in the path of a national movement in Balochistan is the structure of society. Despite the fact that the insurgency is today more bottom-up rather than top-down like in the 1970's, the tribal chiefs continue to be one of the biggest obstructions in the path of the aspirations of the people. While some of the tribal chiefs – most notably, Brahmdagh Bugti, Hairbyar Marri and his brother, Ghazain – are believed to be in the vanguard of the movement, or are at least poster boys of the separatists, the ballast for Baloch nationalism is coming from the middle-classes.

The trouble is that while many of the tribal Sardars, in their hearts might be supportive of the Baloch cause, or are being forced by public sentiment as well as the circumstances on the ground to pay lip-service to the aspirations of the Baloch people (for example, Akhtar Mengal insisting on a dialogue with the Pakistani authorities under the aegis of the UN!), they are not willing to put aside their personal egos in the service of Baloch nationalism. Their personal ambitions, feuds, rivalries, a desire to be one-up on their fellow sardars makes it impossible for all of them to come together for the larger cause of their people.

Take the case of Sanaullah Zehri. He became the home minister of Balochistan in Jam Yusuf's government in 2002 but resigned a few months later by taking a stridently nationalist position and revealing that he was totally powerless on when it came to issuing directions to the law enforcement agencies. He merged his party with the National Party, which had a middle class leadership. But just few days back he joined PMLN, which is a Punjabi-dominated mainstream political party. The reason that some observers give for this volte-face by Zehri is that all his contemporary sardars have become chief ministers and his best chance was to join the PMLN which is widely perceived to have the best chance to form the next government in Islamabad, whenever that is. And as it so happens, the government in Quetta is almost always decided not so much by the votes of the people of Balochistan as by the powers that be in Islamabad. Even more difficult for the sardars is to let a middle-class person, who is probably more articulate, better educated, much more committed to the cause, to lead or represent the Baloch movement.

On their part, the middle-class leaders are not willing to either trust or follow the sardars beyond a point. Many of these leaders feel that the sardars (even those who have been declared Public Enemies by the Pakistani authorities and anchorocracy, i.e. TV anchors) could at the end of the day sabotage the movement by cutting deals with the Pakistani establishment and leave them in the lurch, as they have done in the past. Some time back, the Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleman Dawood, held a jirga in which all the sardars were present. A decision was taken in this jirga to raise the case of Balochistan in the International Court of Justice. But within weeks, some of the sardars who endorsed this decision were sitting in the lap of the Pakistani establishment – Zulfikar Magsi became governor of Balochistan, Aslam Raisani the chief minister. Clearly, for the sardars their class interests dominate everything else and this is something that the middle class activists are not willing to accept unquestioningly anymore. After all, if the middle class has to once again kowtow to the sardars, then they might as well become subsidiaries of the Pakistani establishment, as indeed many of them have.

The middle class leaders have another legitimate grouse against the sardars. They point out that when the sardars are targeted, the middle class agitates on their behalf, but when middle class activists are gunned down by the intelligence agencies, the sardars are quite mealy mouthed in their protests. The irony is that despite the role of spoiler that the sardars play, Pakistani commentators often toe the establishment line and disparage the Baloch movement by blaming the sardars for the backwardness and disaffection in the province, not realising that if the powers of the sardars was finished, it would actually be a shot in the arm of Baloch nationalism. If anything, the Baloch sardars play the role that the rulers of Indian states played during the British Raj in undermining the movement for independence. Unlike Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who because of his own middle class background had deep antipathy for the feudal Sardars and tried to undercut their power, the wily Asif Zardari understands the social structure of Baloch society well enough to overturn many of Musharraf's steps and restore the power of the sardars.

The Sardars are only one part of the problem affecting the Baloch movement. A bigger problem is that the Baloch nationalism is an 'insufficiently imagined' movement. There is a lot of rhetoric that is mouthed ad nauseam by those who are in favour of an independent Balochistan. But once you cut through the rhetoric, you realise that they all these people are offering is slogans. There is no over-arching vision of what sort of a state they want, no road map on how they propose to achieve nationhood, no thinking of how the state will be run, what sort of government it will have, how they will utilise the natural resources of the province for the welfare of the people, what sort of developmental model the new state will adopt, will the new state be a tribal confederacy in which the tribal order and customs will rule supreme or will it be based on rule of law and progressive ideals, what will be the status is women in the new state (will honor killing be acceptable or will it be treated as murder, will women be allowed to study and work, or will they be cloistered behind the walls of their houses and bought and sold like chattel? There are innumerable such issues over which there is total obfuscation by the Baloch nationalists and separatists. So much so that there is not even any consensus on what are the areas that will constitute the Baloch state. Clearly then, it is one thing to whip up passions which have already been aroused by decades of marginalisation, and start an aimless insurgency, and quite another thing to put in place the political, ideological and military structures that will deliver nationhood.

To the internal problems that afflict the Baloch national movement and are preventing it from achieving its goals can be added an external environment that is still not sympathetic to the Baloch cause. Notwithstanding the self-serving accusations levelled against India for fuelling the insurgency in Balochistan, both the Pakistani authorities as well as the Baloch separatists know perfectly well that there is practically no interference from India in Balochistan. In any case, unlike Bangladesh which India liberated by sending in its army, such a possibility doesn't exist as far as Balochistan is concerned. Iran remains implacably opposed to all manifestations of Baloch nationalism. And given that the government in Afghanistan is unable to extend its writ in Kabul, to expect it to fund and arm the Baloch separatists is nothing but a flight of fancy. As for the Americans, their involvement is probably more in their joint venture with ISI in funding the Jundullah rather than in any support to Baloch separatists in Pakistan. The assassination of Balach Marri by NATO is a stark example of what side the Americans are backing.

As things stand, unless the Baloch nationalists are able to get their act together and set aside their petty differences in pursuit of 'achievable nationhood' within Pakistan or without, it will be only a matter of time before this latest upsurge in Balochistan will be brutally crushed. Given the demographics of the area which are loaded against the ethnic Baloch, and the growing attraction as also inclination of sections of Baloch youth towards radical Islamic groups like Jundullah, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Deobandi Jihadi groups, not to mention the active encouragement to such groups by Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, there might never be another uprising for attainment of Baloch national rights. From wanting to become a nation, the Baloch will almost certainly end up being reduced to being a minority ethnic group in their own land – a South Asian version of the Red Indians.

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    <1950 Words>                18^th January, 2010

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HOT AIR ON 'COLD START'

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

Going by the over-the-top reaction, almost veering on the hysterical, in Pakistan to the statement of the Indian Army chief, Gen. Deepak Kapoor, who talked of possibility of a limited war under a nuclear overhang and of reworking the war doctrine to meet the challenges of a two-front war with China and Pakistan, the impression that one gets is that the Pakistan army has been somewhat rattled by the words of the Indian military chief.

At one level, the Pakistanis have been quick to latch on to Gen Kapoor's remarks and impress upon the international community of the threat that Pakistan faces from India. The India bogey is useful not only to ward off growing pressure to commit more troops in the fight against the Taliban, but also in putting international diplomatic pressure on India to make concessions to Pakistan. But at another level, there appears to be genuine concern and worry in Pakistan over the possibility of India actually executing its war doctrine at some point of time in the future in response to an unbearable and intolerable terrorist strike.

    The concept of limited war under a nuclear overhang has been on the table for nearly a decade now. It was first aired by the then chief of the Indian Army, Gen. VP Malik, who was, ironically enough, put wise to such a possibility by the Pakistan Army, which had launched precisely such an operation in Kargil in 1999. More than anyone else, the Pakistani generals know that Gen. Kapoor was not exactly being "outlandish in strategic postulations" (to quote the Pakistan army's Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Tariq Majeed). That the top brass of the Pakistan army take the possibility of limited war and the 'cold start' strategy seriously was made amply clear after the 26/11 terror strike in Mumbai. At that time, the Pakistan army went into a state of high alert and half-expected some sort of punitive action on part of the Indian armed forces. The fact that no military action was taken after 26/11 was not because the Indian Army was not in a position to take such an action, but because the political clearance for such a cross-border military action was not given.

Given that the Pakistan army keeps a hawk-eye on its Indian counterpart, it would be quite well aware of what the Indian army can and cannot do. The Pakistani side knows well that over the years, especially after the experience of the full mobilisation of the Indian army along the borders with Pakistan after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 when the Indian army took nearly a month to put in place its strike formations, the Indians have been working on being battle ready to launch in the shortest possible time. This is where the 'Cold Start' doctrine come in, a doctrine which the Indian army has been practising and fine-tuning in military exercises for quite some time now.

To be sure, the Indians know that Pakistan army is not going to roll over and play dead to any Indian military manoeuvre against it. But the measures taken by the Pakistan army to counter any 'cold start' by the Indian army would already have been taken into account and catered for in the battle plans of the Indians. As of now, the Pakistan army has kept in place its security matrix on the eastern front with India. But what must be causing concern to the Pakistan army is the possibility of an expansion in operations on its western borderlands. This could force the Pakistan army to redeploy forces from the eastern front to the western front thereby creating gaps which they fear might be exploited by India.

To the extent that the cold start doctrine reduces the time-lag for launching a military operation, it raises the spectre of the two armies being on a hair-trigger alert, which becomes even more dangerous against the backdrop of an ever present threat of a spectacular terrorist strike that could break the dam of tolerance. If it were left only to the Indian armed forces, they would have probably hit out at Pakistan long time back. But the Indian army cannot make any move without the nod of the government, which following Georges Clemenceau's dictum of 'war is too serious a business to be left to generals alone', prefers a shouting match over a shooting match. The Indian politicians are wise enough and don't really need Gen Ashfaq Kayani to tell them of the "unintended and uncontrollable consequences" of a military action against Pakistan. After all, it is one thing to war-game under controlled conditions and quite another to prosecute war, albeit 'limited', on another country.

By definition, a 'limited war' initiated through 'cold start' has shallow objectives. Such a war is more in the nature of a punitive expedition which involves nothing more than a short but fierce border war. The problem, therefore, is not that such a war will immediately lead to a nuclear exchange. Unless the Pakistan army has either internalised or been inspired by the mindset of a suicide bomber, a nuclear exchange in response to a border war can be safely ruled out. After all, if the Pakistanis are going to launch nuclear weapons in response to a border war or skirmish, then perhaps it would save Pakistan a lot of money if the conventional army was to be disbanded!

 

The problem with 'limited war' and 'cold start' really is that there is no certainty whether such an expedition will compel the Pakistanis to stop the export of jihadist terror to India. More importantly, there is always the danger of such an action putting the two countries on an escalation ladder which ultimately leads to a full-fledged war between them. The abundant caution displayed by the Indian political leadership as far as launching any limited war on Pakistan is concerned is therefore the result of it not being entirely convinced whether this strategy will achieve any major objective, except perhaps giving the Pakistanis a bloody nose. Only, bleeding noses don't necessarily knock good sense in the heads of an adversary and could in fact lead to even greater deviant behaviour. At the same time, it must be said that although the Indian political leadership has displayed enormous restraint in retaliating to jihadist terrorism, there could come a time when the provocation is of a level that government throws all caution to the winds and gives the go-ahead to the Indian army.

For the moment, however, the only war that the two sides are likely to indulge in is a war of words, which in the current case has ended in a stalemate. But in order to prevent the war of words from ever becoming a war on ground, it is important that Pakistan follow through on its commitments to not let its territory to be used for planning or exporting terrorist attacks on India. If Pakistan actually delivers on its international commitments, and Pakistani state agencies stop supporting and sponsoring and using terror groups as an instrument of state policy, then the 'cold start' doctrine will be consigned to the cold storage. Else, all bets are off the next time a terror strike in India has a Pakistani fingerprint on it.

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    <1225 Words>                    10^th January, 2010

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LAUDABLE BUT IMPROBABLE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    Two leading media groups of India and Pakistan – the Times of India and the Jang Group – have come together "to energise the process of peace" between the two countries and have launched a "cross-border collaborative peace project" – Aman ki Ashaa. Quite aside the fact that the very names of these two media groups illustrate the trajectory that their countries are following – the 'Times' of India are a story of which everyone in the world wants to be a part, while on the other hand Pakistan is being ripped apart by a 'Jang' (war) within and is being seen as a purveyor of jihadist 'jang' without – calling this initiative an 'Indo-Pak peace project' smacks of a commercial undertaking. Frankly speaking, this is not entirely a bad thing and is perhaps far more sustainable and durable than merely making peace in the pursuit of some higher, philosophical ideal. But a caveat is in order: it is one thing to market a media product like toothpaste or soap, and quite another to sell peace like packaged peanuts. The former can make tons of money, the latter can lose tons of money.

According to the joint statement issued by the two media giants, they are mindful of the obstacles they will face in this endeavour and "recognise that setbacks will occur [an allusion to 26/11?] but these should not derail the process"! The two partners in the 'peace project' have set out an ambitious, even unrealistic agenda. They intend to "reach out and pluck the low hanging fruit in the beginning" – issues of trade and commerce, investments, financial infrastructure, cultural exchanges, religious and medical tourism, free movement of ideas, visa regimes, sporting ties, connectivity, reviving existing routes, market access, separated families and the plight of prisoners! And only after this will they aim higher to create "an enabling environment" for taking "bold initiatives" to resolve the "more intractable and contentious issues – whether relating to Kashmir, water disputes or the issue of cross-border terrorism".

    Laudable as the publicly stated objective of the joint statement is, it is probably a case of naiveté at best, and at worst, megalomania ("leaders must learn to be led and not blindly followed"). A number of joint initiatives between the two countries, far less ambitious and pretentious than 'aman ki ashaa' have been taken in the past, but each of them have had either very limited success or have ended up unsung, unmourned. The maximum that even the most successful peace initiative can claim is that it brought together small groups of people from the two countries who managed to strike individual friendships. Therefore to expect that two media houses can push their governments into a peace deal or completely change the perceptions of the peoples in the two countries about each other to a point where they are ready to set aside their differences and grievances and enter into an era of lasting peace and friendship is nothing but the height of presumptuousness.

    Perhaps this presumptuousness is born out of megalomania which some owners of media houses suffer. In recent years, the media, especially the electronic media, has emerged as an extremely powerful pressure group in India and Pakistan. So far the power and influence of the media has been limited to national and local issues and not so much issues of state. It is one thing for the media to carry a campaign for or against a politician or political party, to investigate and expose corruption or maladministration, to act as judge, jury and executioner on some high profile criminal case, to demand justice for victims of abuse of power by influential tormentors. But the media's ability to influence, much less alter, the policy of the state on issues of national security or the state's ideological orientation is a different ball game altogether. In other words, the ability to make and break governments is very different from setting the agenda for the state.

    But megalomania, by definition, is a psychological disorder that refuses to accept any limits on power and tends to do the undoable. At least as far as the Jang group is concerned, the taste of power felt by the owners in their fight against successive heads governments – Nawaz Sharif in 1999, Musharraf in 2007-08, and Asif Zardari in 2009-10 – has probably convinced them that they are powerful enough to make peace possible between India and Pakistan (something they tried unilaterally in 1999 on the eve of Prime Minister Vajpayee's Lahore visit), even if this means taking on the omnipotent 'establishment' of Pakistan. Frankly, this is a battle worth watching. If successful, the Jang group will have re-written the rules of the game. On the other hand, if this initiative collapses, it will only mean that the state of relations between the two hostile neighbours will follow the predictable path.

    There are a number of other reasons for being sceptical about this 'peace project'. The first is, of course, the huge task of changing the mindsets, not only of the public in the two countries but even more importantly of the staffers of the two media houses who are collaborating to usher in an era of peace and friendliness between India and Pakistan. On the day that this initiative was unveiled, a prime-time news programme Geo TV hosted by a journalist who is firmly embedded with the infamous 'agencies' had two stories. The first was on 'Aman ki Ashaa' and how this was a great initiative. The next story was on Gen. Deepak Kapoor's remarks on the possibility of a limited war under a nuclear overhang and the same news anchor and his guest went ballistic in highlighting Indian militarism! As for the Indian partner, its network was probably the most stridently anti-Pakistan TV network in India following the 26/11 attacks. Indeed, this is a TV channel that has followed the Fox News model of wearing patriotism on its sleeve, not because the anchors or owners of the TV channel are hyper-patriotic but because patriotism and demonization of the 'enemy' sells and sends TRPs soaring.

    The second reason is that it is still not clear as to how these two media houses will be able to succeed when presidents, prime ministers, military dictators, statesmen, and global powers have tried and failed. Every Indian prime minister comes to office thinking he will be the one to break the logjam between India and Pakistan. By the time he demits office, he has nothing to show for his labours. If statesmen are unable to withstand the pressure which comes after an attack on the Indian parliament, or after a 26/11, or even after a Kargil, can a media group, which is only one among a host of other media outfits in the country, go against the well of public opinion and jeopardize its commercial interests by sponsoring 'pappi and jhappi shows' and propagating peace and brotherhood? Quite unlikely.

Unless a media organisation is ideological driven and/or is plugging a fringe line or representing a sectional interest, it cannot afford to alienate its readership or viewership. Therefore the real test, if not efficacy, of this collaboration will come when the next big crisis erupts on the Indo-Pak front. Will these two media giants be able to buck the trend and "cool the temperature and wean away the guardians from fortified frontiers" or will they slip back into catering to the lowest common denominator in their respective readership and viewership?