The Longest August (51 page)

But that was not the end. A second attempt to kill him came on Christmas Day at 1:20
pm
. Two suicide bombers in cars targeted him just 650 feet from the site of an earlier attempt on his life. In a TV speech Musharraf, visibly shaken, referred to one suicide bomber driving out of a gas station toward his car and a policeman attempting to stop him when a bomb exploded. “We increased the speed but another bomb exploded at another petrol pump a few yards ahead of the first explosion,” he continued. He assured his audience that these blasts had given “new strength” to his resolve to eliminate terrorists and extremists from the country.
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It transpired later that these attacks were masterminded by Al Qaida's Amjad Farooqi and Abu Faraj al Libbi. Farooqi, who was also involved in sheltering 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, would be killed by Pakistani security forces during a raid in 2004. And al Libbi would end up in American custody.
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Between these two survivals, on December 17 Musharraf said his government was prepared to drop its long-standing demands for the implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir in order to end the fifty-six-year-old dispute. This required both sides to be flexible, he added.
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Predictably, this was welcomed by Kashmir's chief minister Mufti Sayeed. And it was savaged by the leader of the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Maulavi Abbas Ansari, who said that Pakistan had no right to drop the vital issue for which the UN had conferred the right of self-determination to the people of Kashmir.
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In Islamabad, backed by Finance Minister Aziz, Musharraf had convinced his military high command that only by pursuing a peace process with India could Pakistan achieve political stability and badly needed economic expansion by attracting foreign investment.

Back to Dialogue

This was the background over which Vajpayee rolled into Islamabad, whose administrative heart had been turned into a fortress, to attend the twelfth South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit from January 4 to 6, 2004.

On January 5 he paid a “courtesy call” on Musharraf. It lasted an hour. The following day the two leaders issued a joint statement stating that their foreign secretaries would meet the following month to kick-start the stalled Indo-Pakistan talks on all outstanding issues. At the subsequent press conference, Musharraf referred to the key linkages in the joint communiqué: the continuation of the normalization process, the start of a dialogue that included Kashmir, and Pakistan's commitment to preventing the use of its territory by terrorist groups. He was effusive in his praise for Vajpayee. “I would like to give total credit to his vision, to his statesmanship, which contributed so significantly towards settlement, for coming to this joint statement,” he said. To be even-handed he stated that “I would like to commend the flexibility of the negotiators on both sides.”
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Vajpayee, who as foreign minister had inaugurated the Indian chancery in Islamabad in 1979, laid the foundation stone for its extension over a ten-acre site. “A quarter of a century has passed in a jiffy, and every year has thrown up new questions for which new answers are being sought,” he said. “Our dialogue with Pakistan must continue and we must strive together to find solutions by understanding each other's concerns and difficulties.”
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In practical terms what mattered far more were the “significant meetings” that his national security adviser, Mishra, had with high Pakistani
officials, away from the prying eyes of the media. The most important was his talk with ISI chief Lieutenant General Haq. Instructed by their principals, they agreed to revive a back channel on Kashmir that Vajpayee had established with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif five years earlier.
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After their talks in Islamabad, Shashank and Riaz Khokar, respective foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan, announced on February 18 the modalities and timeframe for discussing all subjects included in the composite dialogue. They agreed to meet in May and June for talks on peace and security, including confidence-building measures, and Jammu and Kashmir. Negotiations on the Siachen Glacier, Wullar Barrage, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation, and promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields were scheduled for July.

But before these meetings could be held, there was a change of government in Delhi. In the general election held between April 20 and May 10, the center-right, BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (134 seats) lost to the Congress Party–led United Progressive Alliance (226 seats). As a result, Congress leader Manmohan Singh, a seventy-two-year-old Sikh and economist turned politician, with a well-groomed, salt-and-pepper beard and a trademark sky-blue turban, became the prime minister.

On the eve of the vote, however, India's military high command, charged with refining the concept of surgical destruction of targets inside Pakistan, finalized its new strategy of blitzkrieg, called “Cold Start.”

The Cold Start doctrine envisioned the formation of eight division-size Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs), each consisting of infantry, artillery, armor, and air support, which were able to operate independently on the battlefield. In the case of terrorist attack from or by a Pakistan-based group, the IBGs would rapidly penetrate Pakistan at unexpected points and advance no more than thirty miles beyond the border, disrupting the command and control networks of its military while staying away from the locations likely to trigger nuclear retaliation. The overall aim was to launch a conventional strike swiftly but to inflict only limited damage in order to deny Pakistan justification for a nuclear response.
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The effectiveness of this strategy was based on the dodgy assumption that the thirty-odd-mile penetration by India would not lead the Pakistani high command to launch nuclear attacks on Indian targets. In any case, the existence of this plan was sufficient to keep alive the fear and loathing of India by Pakistan's people and their civilian and military leaders.

17: Manmohan Singh's
Changing Interlocutors

The return of the secular, center-left Congress Party as the leader of the United Progressive Alliance, headed by Manmohan Singh, augured well for ending the Kashmir deadlock. To further the objectives of the February 1999 Lahore Declaration, foreign and defense secretaries of India and Pakistan met in mid-June 2004 to discuss nuclear crisis management, strategic stability, and risk reduction. Both neighbors decided to continue their moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, which had been maintained since June 1998.

A preliminary understanding reached in mid-2001, requiring both countries to give advanced notification of missile tests, had failed to graduate to a formal concord because of the December 2001 terrorist attack on India's Parliament House. During the latest session the two sides agreed to stay with the original undertaking. Further progress was inhibited for two main reasons: India and Pakistan had only limited command and control structures in place, and neither possessed the technology to recall a nuclear-tipped missile fired by mistake. Meanwhile, in a far simpler context, they decided to install a new telephone hotline between the most senior officials in Delhi and Islamabad and upgrade the existing secure hotline between their senior military commanders to alert each other to potential nuclear risks.
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Manmohan Singh–Musharraf Rapport

The two subsequent rounds of talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers—Kunwar Natwar Singh and Khurshid Mahmood
Kasuri—in Delhi and Islamabad in July and early September 2004 paved the way for a one-on-one session between Prime Minister Singh and President General Pervez Musharraf at the United Nations in New York on September 24. After their parley Singh declared that any proposal to resolve the Kashmir dispute would be acceptable so long as it was not based on religious division or the altering of India's boundaries. Remarkably, the first condition reflected the view of Congress Party leaders before independence. And the second condition was the reiteration of the position Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had publicly adopted in 1955.
2

Unknown to the rest of the world, Singh and Musharraf agreed to encourage the secret talks that had been initiated between their respective national security advisers—Tariq Aziz and Jyotindra Nath Dixit—with a mandate to hammer out a detailed document on Kashmir. Aziz and Dixit started meeting secretly in hotels in Dubai, London, and Bangkok almost every other month.

In October the Singh government allowed a group of Pakistani journalists to visit Indian Kashmir. To their astonishment, they were free to interview anybody they wished. In June 2005 Delhi would permit a delegation of the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference to travel to Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

On October 25, in an informal address at a breaking-the-fast dinner during Ramadan, Musharraf invited debate on the alternatives to the plebiscite in Kashmir. He saw the need for it because Pakistan was unprepared to accept India's proposal to transform the Line of Control (LoC) into the international border, and India saw no need for a plebiscite as envisaged by UN Security Council Resolution 47 in April 1948. He argued that Jammu and Kashmir consisted of seven regions with different languages and sects, with two—Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas—being with Pakistan and five with India.
3
He proposed that the linguistic, ethnic, religious, geographic, political, and other aspects of these regions be reviewed to find a peaceful solution to the Kashmir problem.
4
A tidal wave of protest rose in Pakistan. Musharraf back-pedaled. He explained that his statement was not a substitute for the official position about holding a plebiscite, which—in reality—he had abandoned almost a year earlier.

However, Musharraf's public retraction did not derail Aziz's clandestine talks with Dixit. Following the death of Dixit in January 2005, his job went to Satinder Lambah, India's former high commissioner in Pakistan.

On March 10, 2005, Singh informed the lower house of Parliament that he had invited Musharraf to Delhi to watch a cricket match the following month. “I must say that nothing brings the people of our subcontinent together than our love for cricket and Bollywood cinema,” he said.
5
Singh was referring to the One Day International (ODI) between India and Pakistan on April 17. Musharraf agreed.

After the ODI at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in Delhi on April 17, Singh declared that that the “peace process [between India and Pakistan] can no longer be reversed.” Musharraf outlined the agreed-on guidelines for the process: “India's insistence that no boundaries can be redrawn; Pakistan's refusal to accept the Line of Control; and the two countries' agreement that borders must become less important.” In pursuit of the last option, he referred to the bus service that had been started between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capital of Azad Kashmir, ten days earlier. Following his parley with Singh, the two of them agreed to increase the frequency of the bus service and also let trucks ply the route in order to boost trade. The news was warmly welcomed by Kashmiri families on both sides of the LoC.
6

On October 8, a 7.6 Richter scale earthquake, with its epicenter near Muzaffarabad, wreaked havoc in the region. It killed as many as seventy-nine thousand people, including at least three thousand in Indian Kashmir, and rendered two million homeless. Following an appeal by the Azad Kashmir government for cooperation with India to improve relief, Musharraf agreed to open the LoC temporarily. India reciprocated. This was the first instance of Delhi and Islamabad cooperating actively in disputed Kashmir.

In an unprecedented move, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, based in Pugwash in Nova Scotia, Canada, sponsored a seminar, “Prospects for Self-Governance in Jammu and Kashmir, and Present Status of Cooperation and Communications Across the LOC,” in Islamabad in March 2006. It was attended by serving and former officials of Azad Kashmir and several leading Pakistani journalists, as well as officials of assorted political parties and organizations from Indian Kashmir.

Inaugurating the seminar, Musharraf proposed step-by-step demilitarization combined with self-governance as a practical solution to the Kashmir dispute. This, he argued, would make the LoC irrelevant—and with it any redrawing of borders. Demilitarization would be a huge confidence-building measure and, by providing relief to Kashmiris, would help undercut support for militants.
7
His proposal failed to get off the ground
primarily because the policy makers in Delhi figured that the reduction of security forces in Indian Kashmir would allow the separatists to broaden their popular base.

In any case, Singh knew as well as Musharraf that hard-knuckle bargaining was going on in the secret meetings between Lambah and Aziz in five-star hotels far from Kashmir.

In his book
In the Line of Fire: A Memoir
, published in September 2006, Musharraf formalized his ideas into a four-point program. One, identify the regions of Kashmir that need resolution. Two, demilitarize the identified region or regions and curb all militant aspects of the struggle for freedom. Three, introduce self-governance in the identified region or regions. Four, most importantly, have a joint management mechanism with Pakistani, Indian, and Kashmiri members to oversee self-governance and deal with residual subjects common to all identified regions as well as those beyond the scope of self-governance. Describing this plan as “purely personal,” he recognized the need for selling it to the public by all the involved parties.
8

By late autumn of 2006 the Aziz-Lambah negotiations had inched forward to the point at which Musharraf felt it was time to test popular opinion. In his interview with Delhi-based NDTV in early December 2006, he outlined a four-point plan. One, Pakistan would give up its claim to Indian-administered Kashmir if people from both regions had freedom of movement through open borders. Two, neither part of Kashmir could become independent, but both could have a measure of autonomy. Three, there would be phased withdrawal of troops from both sides of the LoC. Four, a “joint mechanism,” consisting of representatives from India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, would be formed to supervise the issues affecting people on both sides, such as water rights.
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Musharraf's Downfall

In the final analysis, on the Kashmir issue what mattered most at the official level in Islamabad was the opinion of the top generals, including Lieutenant General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, then director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate. Since Musharraf continued to be the chief of army staff (COAS), it was tricky for his subordinate commanders to disagree with him even in private.

So when the secret document between Aziz and Lambah was finessed by early 2007, Musharraf presented it formally to his twelve corps commanders, including his vice COAS, General Muhammad Yusaf Khan, and Foreign Minister Kasuri, for review.
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Soon after, the attention of the Pakistani elite turned to the spat between Musharraf and the independent-minded chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. When Musharraf suspended Chaudhry as the chief justice on March 9, the latter challenged his order in the Supreme Court. Popular protest broke out in the streets in which the major opposition parties of Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan People's Party; PPP) and Muhammad Nawaz Sharif (Pakistan Muslim League–N; PML-N) joined hands. On July 20, ten of the thirteen judges ruled that Chaudhry should be reinstated. When Musharraf refused to do so, the protest intensified. At the same time, following the military's July 10–11 storming of the Red Mosque complex, a bastion of jihadists in Islamabad, Islamist terrorists began a violent backlash.
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In desperation, Musharraf declared an emergency on November 3, soon after winning the most votes in the provincial and national legislatures in a controversial presidential election. He suspended the constitution and Parliament, and placed all judges under house arrest. But any protection he achieved by this ploy would prove temporary.

In Delhi, though profoundly interested in devising a peaceful solution to the long-running Kashmir dispute, the Indian interlocutors had to ponder three major unknowns. Did Musharraf have the generals on board on this vitally important issue, which had played a central role in raising the prestige and budget of the military since the birth of Pakistan? What was the likelihood of Musharraf being overthrown by his military high command, as had happened to General Ayub Khan in 1969? What were the chances of the post-Musharraf regime, military or civilian, abiding by the provisional deal struck with Delhi by Musharraf?

The answer to the first question came on November 28, 2007. On that day Musharraf was compelled to resign as the COAS on constitutional grounds before being sworn in for a second term as civilian president. (On the eve of his resignation as the COAS, Musharraf promoted Kayani to that post.) The answer to the second poser came on August 18, 2008. The poor performance of his Pakistan Muslim League–Q in the general election in February 2008 was a barometer of Musharraf's rapidly declining popularity. With the PPP's Yusuf Raza Gilani becoming the
prime minister, he had a powerful political adversary to contend with. By resigning as president on August 18 he spared himself the ignominy of impeachment by the National Assembly, which was dominated by two anti-Musharraf parties in the aftermath of the general election in February. As stipulated in the constitution, the Speaker of the Senate, Muhammad Mian Soomro, became the acting president.

Pakistani Jihadists Strike Back

The slow but definite movement toward a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute unsettled the jihadist organizations in Pakistan, particularly the Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) and the Harkat al Jihad Islami (Arabic: Movement for Islamic Jihad; HuJI). Though formally banned in 2002, the LeT had continued to exist under the guise of an Islamic charity. The LeT's Indian cohorts succeeded in carrying out three bombings in Delhi, killing sixty-one people, in October 2005. Such an audacious terrorist attack in the Indian capital foreshadowed yet another period of soured relations between India and Pakistan.

Finding that Musharraf had resolved not to let Pakistan-based jihadist groups export terror to India, LeT and HuJI leaders decided to sponsor a self-sufficient Indian jihadist organization. They achieved their objective by coopting young Indian Muslims with expertise in extortion, ransom, and bank robbery. Such gangs existed in Mumbai and Kolkata. Also, with Dubai, populated largely by South Asians, emerging as a thriving financial center and entrepôt, the earlier, tenuous links between organized crime in Pakistan and India, involved partly with money laundering, strengthened. The end result was the establishment of the Indian Mujahedin (IM) in 2005. IM terrorists targeted markets and movie theaters, as well as Hindu temples, to maximize fatalities. They resorted to sending highly provocative emails containing abusive comments on Hindus and Hinduism to intensify Hindu-Muslim tensions.

Sixteen synchronized bomb blasts on July 26, 2008, in Ahmedabad killed thirty-eight people. Five minutes before the explosions, the IM emailed a fourteen-page document, signed by “Al Arabi Guru al Hindi,” to the media. It contained several verses from the Quran along with an English translation. “O Hindus! O disbelieving faithless Indians!” ran the text. “Haven't you still realized that the falsehood of your 33 crore [330 million] dirty mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb, mute
idols are not at all going to save your necks, Insha Allah [God willing], from being slaughtered?”
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This was a reference to the Hindu myth that there are 330 million gods and goddesses; Islam forbids worship of idols, icons, or images. The IM's bombing campaign would reach a peak in September 2008, two months before the LeT-sponsored terrorist attacks, planned in association with an ISI officer, in Mumbai on November 26.