Role of Bangladesh and Pakistan in Promoting Security Environment in South Asia

Columnist Dr S M RAHMAN looks at the positive nexus between the two countries in security improvement in the Sub-Continent.

Socrates, made a very profound statement, which if it were adhered to could resolve many of our existential dilemmas and extricate South Asia from its morbid geopolitical climate. He had counselled: “Ask right questions if you wish to find the right answers”. In the context of South Asia, we have never asked the right questions with the result that a jingoistic sensibility has become our overriding passion and a tragic trait, whereas other nations have transcended their traditional hostilities to create vibrant communities capable of enhancing the qualities of life of its people. Had we asked the right questions, our fate would have been different. Munir Niazi our contemporary Urdu poet highlights this pernicious legacy

Kisi ko Apne Amal Ka Hisab Kya Deta
Sawaal Saare Galat They
Jawaab Kya Deta
(How could I account for my deeds
All the questions were wrong what answers could I give?)

The question to ask is. Are the arms and nuclear weapons going to deliver food and sustenance to our hopelessly impoverished and deprived people? Are we going to provide the creative education the much needed imperative, to live with dignity and respect in this age of informatics, science and technology? Paul Johnson, is right in asking how can one fourth of humanity be held hostage to this mind numbing terror at the expense of mortgaging our children’s history? The question is, how do we develop and educate ourselves with the tool of right thinking?
It appears that emotions subordinate our rational thinking and we simply carry out what others think for us. In the bipolar World Order, we either served as surrogates of one power or the other. A major chunk of our problems emanate from this legacy. The British, for instance, through sheer chicanery and deceit have ensured that peace must not prevail between India and Pakistan — the two important actors in South Asia. A similar conflict was designed between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East. These notorious gifts of the British, are the roots of conflicts, which Huntington is unduly credited for conceiving as Clash of Civilization. The clash between nations are not congenital. These are the kinds of games great nations play to hoodwink humanity and keep amassing wealth through arms and armaments. In a very recent report published in the New York Times, United States sold arms worth $ 15.2 billion followed by Britain a $ 5.9 billion, France $ 4.0 billion and Russian $ 2.4 billion. Who consumed them? These are the Third World nations. The great arms bazaar is essentially the killer of peace in the world and promoter of conflicts among nations.
India and Pakistan ever since independence have never tasted what real peace is like. They are madly arming themselves to the teeth. But why? The answer is that the British through a parting gift left Kashmir problem deliberately unresolved to fish in the troubled waters. It has lately been revealed through a letter by a Retd Lt. Col. RJG Begbie, to the Daily Telegraph, that only 24 hours before the partition, Lord Mountbatten prevailed to shift the boundary 20 miles westward in favour of India to give her common border with Kashmir, over which the Indian troops marched the following day. The mischievous alterations were made by Sir Radcliff, under specific orders of the Viceroy to demarcate the border so that the sensitive areas of Punjab could go to India. Had these alterations not been made, India and Pakistan would not have tormented each other so brutally and shed so much human blood. So, we must dispassionately answer why are we arch-rivals? Why can’t we resolve issues amicably through respectable means as many nations of the world have done? There could not be greater animosity than what existed between the European countries, who fought two great world wars. But now conflict has gone into the pages of history.
ASEAN nations have not only resolved their contentious issues but are now on way to a giant step to adopt a common currency as the European Union did. African leaders have belatedly realized that they should not be out of step with the rest of the world and their countries should also be interwoven in the bond of regional cooperation. Pakistan and Bangladesh separated some thirty years back after a bitter experience, but we both accepted the reality and have been able to bury the past for a better future.
SAARC was a brilliant idea conceived by Bangladesh, whose time had come. But it is more dormant than dynamic. How to transform it to pave conditions for peace and security in the region is the vital issue. Pakistan and Bangladesh must transcend the narrow bonds of nationalism to revive all out cooperation to achieve growth and prosperity, which is the only means to eradicate terror which is so rampant in the world. A new and wholesome security paradigm must, therefore, be initiated so that the conflicts and differences are mutually resolved. We must make collective efforts to free SAARC from the “bilateral” syndrome, which has not delivered peace in the region and consequently has retarded prospects of economic cooperation to a magnitude that is the vital imperative of the time.
Trudeau of Canada describes the predicament of being a neighbour of USA: “Living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt”. Ours is much worse. To sleep with India is nightmarish, as it is brutal and predatory by instinct. But our relation with Bangladesh to borrow what Ikram Sehgal in his well-researched write up says: “In the new partnership envisaged ... it should be a case of friendship without any pre-conditions for the ultimate goal of ushering in a new era of prosperity for our masses. Importantly our cooperation should not be seen as an alliance against India but as a model for friendship and cooperation that India can join as soon as it comes to terms with its own inherent suspicions”. We should not lose hope.