Publisher & Managing Editor:
Ikram-ul-Majeed Sehgal

Chief Patron
Air Marshal (Retd)
Mohammad Asghar Khan

Patrons
Lt Gen (Retd) SF Lodi
Brig (Retd)TH Siddiqi
Lt Gen (Retd) Imtiaz Waraich

Board of Editorial Advisors
Ardeshir Cowasjee
Arif Nizami
Ms Maleeha Lodhi
Ms Nasim Zehra
Hameed Haroon
Humayun Gauhar
Ambassador (Retd) Afzal Mahmood
Brig (Retd) Saeed Ismat, SJ

Panel of Contributing Editors
Air Marshal (Retd) Ayaz A. Khan
Vice Adm (Retd) IF Quadir
Dr Shireen Mazari
Farhan Bokhari

Panel of Columnists
Col (Retd) EAS Bokhari
Col (Retd) Abdul Qayyum
Dr. Matiur Rahman
Ms Amina Jilani
Capt (Retd) A.A. Jilani
A. H. Amin

Executive Editor
Ms Ambreen Jahangir

Vice President Marketing
Syed Tauseef  Muhammad Ali
Tel: (021) 5843421, 5843502-9

Karachi
Akber Moiz, VP Coordination
Naushad Alam, AVP Marketing
Rahil Tariq, Advertisement Manager

Lahore
Kamran Ahmed Chohan, Capt (Retd), VP Coordination
Azizullah Goheer, AVP Marketing
Tel: (042) 6313759

Islamabad
Muhammad Jawad Malik, AVP Marketing
Tel: (051) 2828351, 2826674

Circulation & Accounts
Ms Parveen Akhter, VP

Cover Design
Khurram Mahmood

Printing Manager
Tariq Jamal

Bureau Chief Lahore
Dr. Mansoor Ahmed Khan
Tel: (042) 6313759, Fax: (042) 6360236

Bureau Chief Rawalpindi/Islamabad
Brig (Retd) Asmat Beg Humayun
Tel: (051) 815165
Ms Anwara Shaikh, EVP Public Relations
Tel: (051) 2823851, 2826674

Printed at Pathfinder Printing Press. Under the steps Hocley Stadium, Phase 5, Defence Housing Authority Karachi.

Creative Publicity is handled by
DYNAVIS (Pvt) Ltd
Tel 5843502, 578798, 5863920 Fax:(021) 5863924
Lahore: (042) 6360236
Islamabad: (051) 277683, 815168

Dear Readers,

Ground Zero for India and Pakistan was Agra on July 15 and 16, 2001. A scant half-a-mile from the beautiful Taj Mahal, the media waited not with bated breath but with runaway speculation at the Mughal Sheraton, only a few hundred yards away from the conference site where President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee had as much as five hours plus of talks one on one. Without any formal declaration, the Agra Summit can be said to have been inconclusive. In reality it was a major success, at least the two countries were talking to each other again. While a solution to the multiple problems that bedevil us is still far in the future, the process has started at least. Agra was a Pervez Musharraf success story, he won the media war hands down. He was ably supported by a galaxy of media personalities from Pakistan, for once Pakistan came away from an important event with the sweet smell of success. The success can be laid to the military regime’s free media policy. It seems India badly miscalculated that the Pakistan media would badmouth an unelected President of a military regime, by the time they realized they were mistaken and attempted some damage control, Pakistan media was ruling the Indian airwaves. One must commend the freedom and sophistication of the Indian electronic media, their potential is nothing short of tremendous. Their freedom was used to maximum effect by Pakistani media-persons. Please do read my article published in THE NATION entitled “UNDERSTANDING EACH OTHER” which appears subsequently. As the subject of our cover story, “Remembering Our Warriors”, I am privileged to cover my friend, Maj Gen HUK Niazi, SJ with whom I served with in Army Aviation. I have used my privilege to write a detailed personal note.

At Agra Pakistan and India seemed very close to an agreement, post-Summit statements make it quite clear that both sides were in fact far apart in their respective perceptions about what the agreement amounted to. Pakistan held out that their long-standing stand on Kashmir being a core issue was about to be formally recognized, India felt that its main concern, “cross-border terrorism” was going to be addressed by Pakistan and this would drastically curtail the freedom struggle within Kashmir. Such different interpretations post-Summit would have made any Declaration a non-starter, the various clauses could have been used as enough pretext by extremists on either side to destroy whatever understanding was developing among the leaders and intelligentsia of both the countries, seriously retarding the peace process. Both Musharraf and Vajpayee are very conscious of hard-liners in their constituencies, that is why they avoided eroding each other’s domestic standing by giving these hard-liners due cause. When two people meet to solve a problem, the sensitivity each displays for the other’s problems despite disagreeing with each other goes a long way in creating the right atmosphere for eventual solution. The good chemistry between Musharraf and Vajpayee was the main success of Agra, that it did not result in an “instant Declaration” may be temporarily disappointing, in the cold light of reality one can understand it has created the foundation that will eventually lead to lasting solutions.

Kashmir as a conceptual issue does threaten India’s secular ideology. Most Indians are right when they say that any solution of Kashmir issue on the basis of religion would be used as a precedent by India’s many other disparate minorities, both in religions and races, to demand their independence on the same premise. At the moment India faces a number of armed insurrections other than the revolt inside Indian Held Kashmir, particularly in the East viz (1) Mizoram (2) Manipur (3) Nagaland (4) Assam (5) Bodoland, etc. What worries India is not only the religious and racial issues but also the language divide, not so much with the East as it is with the South. And the South is quite vehement about speaking their local languages as opposed to Hindi. The economic divide is also widening quite alarmingly, the South is far more affluent than the North, with the exception of Indian Punjab. With the exception of Haryana to an extent, the great Hindu heartland of UP, Behar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, etc is well below the poverty line. This becomes very apparent not only in New Delhi but along the road from Delhi to Agra even though one believes that in Haryana and Indian Punjab one comes away with a definite perception of affluence. In contrast the highways and agriculture fields of Pakistan exude far more affluence throughout the country. While religious and racial divide may be bad enough, economic disparity is the source of most conflict in history and the portents are not good.

That is not to say that everything is hunky-dory in Pakistan. The most visible symbol of dispute between the various Provinces has been the Kalabagh Dam, shelved for the time being. Water has been an age-old problem to fight over, as the requirement increases and the quantity available decreases, the situation has become acute. Indian analysts were almost unanimous in their premise that what holds Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab together is Kashmir. While this is a very wrong perception the fact remains that the Provinces have problems with each other, mainly about water and revenue sharing. This is not unlike the problem in India between at least 3 States because of the Cauvery Dam and the sharing of water thereof. Moreover as the income level of the southerners in India become higher, mainly because of the IT boom, per capita they will pay for more taxes than their northern and eastern brethren. India is better equipped to handle this economic divide because the States exercise far more authority as envisaged in their Federal structure. This was not so for many years when Congress used to rule almost everywhere. The emergence of strong regional parties has ensured that the national parties such as Congress and BJP cannot form a majority government anywhere on their own. But exercising of their due mandate by regional parties within the sanctity of the Constitution does not spell secession by any means. To their credit, the military regime has addressed this issue because of the devolution of powers down to the District level in Pakistan, the local authorities will have far more control over their lives in Pakistan. District Governments should have come eventually but only after Divisional Governments or the creation of more Provinces but in the circumstances there is no argument about giving power back to the people. What is a democratic system without grassroots rule? Most of Pakistan’s problems stem from over-centralization of everything in Islamabad, to survive as a Federal entity we have no other alternative but to divide power. The only weak link in the Devolution Plan is the possible ascendancy of the feudal lord to almost absolute monarchy status in some rural areas of the country, particularly Balochistan. Instead of going step by step the military regime decided to go the full distance in one giant leap, only time will tell if this was “a bridge too far”.

Given that both the countries need to get their economics and political houses in order, it may be good for eventual rapprochement to learn from each other’s experience in dealing with such problems. As much as India does not want to treat relations with Pakistan as an Hindu-Muslim problem, the Kashmir problem is ground zero of a conflict that goes back more than a 1000 years. The Muslims of Kashmir are a majority and do not want to live under Hindu minority rule. To give them their due, most Indians sincerely believe that there is no Hindu-Muslim problem but a India-Pakistan problem. If so why don’t they give vocal support to Hasina Wajid’s Awami League in Bangladesh and see what happens to her in the coming elections in Bangladesh? It is no use putting our heads in the ground and ignoring reality. We must recognize that the solution lies in genuine Hindu-Muslim rapprochement, not an alliance against anyone but rather than alliance to overcome mutual suspicions and apprehensions. Over the past few weeks the traffic of E Mail from Hindu academics and intellectuals has increased from all over the world (in contrast to Muslims abroad they seem to read THE NATION more) who may not agree with my views but except for the odd madman full of abuse and hate they are mostly reasonable in their logic and explanation, we have a civilized debate with each other. One must also add that there is a also a growing and genuine feeling of mutual respect and understanding.

That is what Agra accomplished, the need for continued dialogue to resolve issues, while the Kashmir dispute needs to be resolved and “confidence building measures” will help, what is needed is more and more dialogue, not only between leaders and intellectuals but across the broad cross-section of the great normally-silent majority. The people of Kashmir need relief. We in Pakistan need to convince our Indian friends that in leaning backwards over Kashmir they may be tactically disadvantaged temporarily but in the strategic sense they would have laid the base in the long term for one South Asia. For all those who are privileged to comment and debate on the situation availing today in whatever capacity, even those like us who only live on the fringes of history, it is incumbent to drive home one salient point, South Asia is the most contiguous economic unit in the world. All the countries have complementary economies, and it is only with economic togetherness that we will alleviate the sufferings of our impoverished masses.