TARIQ, ali - The Duel

by Ali, Tariq

  Military pacts and aid came together and would soon be followed by military dictatorships. In September 1954, Pakistan publicly declared it had become a willing tool by joining the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization together with Thailand and the Philippines. Other Southeast Asian countries included the United States, Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand. Exactly one year later, in September 1955, Pakistan joined another Western outfit known as the Baghdad Pact, which included King Faisal’s Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Britain. Naturally, all this took place without the benefit of a single general election in Pakistan. Public anger could not be registered democratically. A U.S. Senate report, “Technical Assistance: Final Report of Committee on Foreign Relations,” published on March 12, 1957, confirmed what many Pakistanis were beginning to suspect: “From a political viewpoint, U.S. military aid has strengthened Pakistan’s armed services, the greatest single stabilizing force in the country [my italics—TA], and has encouraged Pakistan to participate in collective defense arrangements.”

  IN JULY 1959, General Ayub, now firmly in control, agreed to the establishment of a top-secret U.S. military base in Badaber, near Peshawar. The aim was to spy on the Soviet Union. In May of the following year, the Russians downed a U-2 spy plane that had taken off from Peshawar and captured the pilot, Gary Powers. When the United States denied the spy flights, the Russians produced the poor pilot. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, entertaining General Maxwell Taylor at a banquet in Moscow, reportedly clambered onto the table in a rage and shouted, “You Americans are like dogs. You eat and shit in the same place.” Khrushchev later addressed a press conference at which he announced that he knew where the plane had taken off from and that Peshawar was now a Soviet target, marked with a red circle. I remember well the panic that gripped the Pakistani military establishment, not to mention the brave burghers of Peshawar, some of whom hurriedly left the city. It was empty rocket-rattling, but it highlighted Pakistan’s dependent status. A few years previously, the acting foreign minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had asked the U.S. embassy whether he could visit the base. He was politely told it was out of bounds, but that the base commanders would be happy to serve him coffee and cakes in the cafeteria. Decades later a general could write about how “Pakistan felt deceived because the US had kept her in the dark about such clandestine spy operations launched from Pakistan’s territory,” but this was pious nonsense. Ayub Khan knew perfectly well that the USAF base was not a rest and recreation stop for crews en route to the Far East.

  Following the U-2 incident, policy makers in Washington (always more concerned with India) suggested to Ayub Khan that the best way to safeguard the subcontinent against Communism was to set up a “joint defense” system. The general agreed and suggested this to the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had carefully kept India nonaligned in the Cold War. Nehru’s response was a clear rejection. “Joint defense against who?” he asked frostily.

  Ayub had done as he was asked, and his reward was an official state visit to Camelot in 1961, where he was given the red-carpet treatment, reserved for special clients. A presidential yacht transported him to Mount Vernon with the Kennedys. Later he addressed a joint session of Congress, saying, “The only people who will stand by you in Asia are the people of Pakistan—provided you are prepared to stand by them.” This was not completely accurate, and the use of the word people enraged many back home. He was a dictator who had denied citizens the franchise, so they felt he had no right to speak for them. There was much anger and many poems written.

  The following year India suffered a heavy defeat in the mysterious Sino-Indian border war launched by China to regain disputed territory that was of little significance. The short war was actually intended as a shot across Soviet bows via its Indian friend and was, in fact, the first real indication of a serious rift between the Soviet Union and China, though few interpreted it as such at the time. For the United States it was a case of “unprovoked Communist aggression” on the part of the Chinese. The United States and Britain began to provide the Indian armed forces with the latest weaponry. Ayub was livid but impotent. Not till a decade after Beijing’s public break with Moscow did Washington begin to think seriously about cultivating China. And here Pakistan would prove extremely helpful as a go-between, a role its leaders always relished.

  When it became obvious even to Ayub Khan that the United States would never back Pakistan militarily in any conflict with India, he began to get slightly nervous. Public opinion had been opposed to the security pacts for some time. After the Pakistan-Indian war of 1965 the United States stopped its military aid to Pakistan. This shook the military-bureaucratic regime to its core. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the foreign minister, was sacked for demanding a new turn based on bilateral relations. He would later explain his position thus:

  Each of Pakistan’s multilateral and bilateral military commitments became useless the moment the United States unilaterally terminated military assistance to Pakistan. With the removal of reciprocity, the agreements became void ipso facto. Notwithstanding this incontestable position, the Government of Ayub Khan, committing dereliction of its elementary duty to the people of Pakistan, refused to renounce the agreements. It chose to endanger the security of Pakistan without an iota of corresponding protection. It cannot be forgotten that Pakistan assumed the liabilities of the Cold War in return for military assistance and political support on Kashmir. The military assistance ended three years ago and the political support went earlier. The United States’ position on Kashmir began to shift imperceptibly since the first Sino-Indian conflict of October 1959. This was established beyond doubt when Pakistan took the dispute to the Security Council in 1964. The United States imposed an embargo on the delivery of military equipment to Pakistan when the country was struggling for its survival against an aggressor five times its size. For three years a complete ban was placed on the sale of weapons and spare parts to Pakistan. The government of a country in three military alliances had to run from pillar to post in search of armaments and spare parts, from black market centers and notorious arms peddlers. Throughout this difficult period, Ayub Khan refused to free the country from the burden of these obsolete alliances. On the contrary, he permitted the United States’ base in Peshawar to operate until the expiry of its lease in July 1969. Not even those countries which are the pillars of NATO would find it possible to assume such onerous one-sided military obligations on behalf of the United States or any other country.*

  As this lengthy extract reveals, even in his most radical phase when he was out of power, Pakistan’s most intelligent and least provincial political leader was obsessed with the idea of India as a primary enemy. This had formed the cornerstone of the country’s foreign policy since 1947. It affected how the country functioned internally and produced a warped political culture. During a lengthy conversation with Bhutto in the summer of 1969 at his Clifton residence in Karachi, I questioned him about this, pointing out that playing on national chauvinism did not advance any progressive cause. This was soon after the 1965 war with India, which he had strongly pushed for. “How else do you think we’re going to get rid of this bloody army which rules the country? Defeat in this war weakened them. That’s why the big movement succeeded.”* Bhutto was capable of extreme forms of cynicism, but did he actually believe this? I don’t know. Privately he was a great admirer of Jawaharlal Nehru’s and had read all his books, one of which he referred to in his death-cell memoir. Perhaps he understood at some level that Jinnah had created a state but not a nation. Pakistani nationalism was incredibly weak, and Bengali, Pashtun, Sindhi, and Baluch identities were much stronger. Bengal would soon be detached, but the others remained. The only way of forging a Pakistani identity was by identifying an enemy. India or “the Hindu.” It was crude, but largely ineffective outside the Punjab. Even there many were ready for a different message from the stale chauvinism and the constant sloganizing that “Kashmir is in danger” mouthed by most politicians to garner cheap support.
And so “anti-Indianism” became a substitute for any genuine anticolonial nationalism, a problem India never had to confront. Despite the vast number of ethnicities, languages, and varied cultural traditions, with a sense of their own epic literature and place in the region, there was never any serious problem about the people considering themselves Indian, with a few temporary exceptions—Sikhs in the Punjab, tribals in Nagaland—resulting from the political stupidity of the ruling elite.

  Reading speeches made by Pakistan’s first batch of bureaucrats-turned-politicians, one is struck by a permanent “inferiority complex” in relation to India. To counter the latter, they avoid mentioning that Pakistan has only a brief history. Instead they hark back to the Muslim warriors of the early medieval period and sometimes the Mogul emperors, though these were never a good role model for young Pakistan since religion mattered little to the emperors and even the pious Aurungzeb—the last of the great Moguls—preserved an imperial army led by Hindu generals and did not attempt to make the mosque the center of state power. And so Pakistani history was never written as a common history with the rest of India till 1947, but as a crude separatist account of Indian Muslims and their glorious past.

  As the United States moved closer to India after the Sino-Indian border war in 1959, Pakistan made a concerted effort to develop friendly relations with China. Ayub Khan’s trip to Beijing in 1964 prefigured Richard Nixon’s a decade later. The “mass welcome” laid on by the Chinese went to Ayub’s head, and long after he had been driven out by a genuine mass upsurge in his own country, he would watch home movies of his China triumph. Washington was not too pleased, but found the relationship useful, and Pakistanis working for the CIA were sometimes used to spy on China, including at least one pilot, known to me, who flew PIA passenger flights to China. The friendship was instrumental for both sides, and Pakistani bureaucrats and government ministers were often debriefed in Washington. The poet Habib Jalib joked in a long satirical poem entitled “Adviser” in which the eponymous hero says to the president:

  This is what I said to him:

  “China now our dearest friend

  On it does our life depend

  But the system that there prevails

  Do not go near it,

  Salute it from afar

  Salute it from afar”

  In time the Chinese system too would be turned upside down, becoming a model for Asian capitalism and making a wholehearted embrace extremely desirable for Pakistan. Throughout, the cold war with India remained a constant. The official view that India rather than the structural crisis inherent in the Pakistani state since its foundation had led to the explosion in East Bengal remained embedded in official thinking, hardening into the basis for policy making. But it was impossible to ignore that in 1971 neither China nor the United States helped “save Pakistan,” as had been predicted by some and hoped by others. They let it bleed. What was the dominant view in India?

  Is it the case that the triumphalist Indian leadership was planning to eliminate West Pakistan as well? There are divergent views. The first is that of Indira Gandhi, the Indian prime minister at the time, as divulged to the author during a lengthy off-the-record discussion in 1984, some months before her assassination.

  After a formal interview for a book on India that I was working on at the time,* Mrs. Gandhi turned to me and said, “Now my turn to ask you some questions. I’ve read your new book [Can Pakistan Survive?]. You know these generals and how they think and operate. I am being told by my people here that Pakistan is preparing a surprise attack on us in Kashmir. What do you think?” I was taken aback. The first thought that went through my mind was that a preemptive strike by India was being considered. I was blunt in my response, pointing out that with Pakistan heavily involved in running the mujahideen on behalf of the United States, it was inconceivable that they would want to open up a second front. It would be so irrational that even if some blowhards in the high command wanted to, it would immediately be vetoed by Washington. She persisted with her questioning, and I, in turn, refused to accept that any such plan existed or was possible. I had used the word irrational a great deal and she turned on me.

  “I am amazed that someone like you thinks that generals are rational human beings.”

  I burst out laughing. There was a certain irony. I, with a near hydrophobic horror of military dictators, had been put in the position of “defending” the Pakistan army.

  “But this would be so irrational that it would be insane,” I replied. “It would mean a state and its generals deciding to commit suicide. They will not do that, and I say this as someone who is completely opposed to them and am still persona non grata because of my views on what they did in Bengal.”

  The discussion then took an amazing turn.

  “Let me tell you something,” she said. “And this is about our generals. After Pakistan had surrendered, General Manekshaw walked into this very office and saluted me.”

  Mrs. Gandhi, like Zulfiqar Bhutto, was a good mimic, and her description was very diverting. What she then described surprised me a great deal. After the salute Manekshaw asked her whether the military high command had permission to “finish the job.” This meant crossing the border and taking West Pakistan. Given the demoralized state of the Pakistan army, the outcome was preordained unless the Chinese and the United States entered the conflict.

  “This being India,” Mrs. Gandhi continued, “I thanked the general and said the cabinet would consider the suggestion.”

  She then summoned an urgent cabinet meeting.

  “When I reported the military request, the ministers were initially very excited and many of them were prepared to go along with it. When the meeting began, I was alone. When it ended, I had a unanimous vote for an immediate cease-fire. I tell you this to show you that in India too generals can be very irrational. In Pakistan they run the country.”

  I repeated what I had said earlier, and discussion on this subject ended. She then told me that the Israelis had offered to carry out a lightning strike against Pakistan’s nuclear reactor provided they could use an Indian air force base. “I turned down this offer. I told them we can do it ourselves if we wanted.”

  Our conversation concluded with her talking about Bhutto and his visit to Simla to sign the peace treaty after the war in Bangladesh and how nervous he had been. She asked after his children and asked me to convey her warm regards to Benazir.

  “You know, I was in prison myself when they hanged Bhutto. It upset me a great deal. Had I been prime minister, I would not have let it happen.” Mrs. Gandhi seemed very sure on this front.

  The next day I was invited to an “off-the-record” discussion at the India International Centre, where I was staying with twenty or so people, mainly civil servants, intelligence officials, journalists representing the Soviet and American lobbies, etc. “We hear you had a very interesting discussion with our prime minister yesterday,” said the chair. “That’s what we want to discuss.” For two hours they tried to convince me that I was wrong and that Pakistan was preparing a strike in Kashmir. I remained patient, explaining at great length why this was impossible given the Afghan involvement and given that General Zia was extremely unpopular in the Sind, Baluchistan, parts of the Frontier, and sections of the Punjab. Zia could not afford any crazy war that he would lose. That is why he was desperate at the moment for some form of rapprochement and kept turning up in India uninvited on the pretext of watching cricket matches. Most of the spooks present were not convinced, and finally I told them that if India wanted a preemptive strike against Pakistan, I couldn’t stop them, but they should think up a better excuse since nobody in the world would believe India had been attacked first.

  This story has an amusing footnote. Back in London several months later, I described this conversation to Benazir Bhutto. She listened carefully, then asked, “But why did you tell them that our generals weren’t preparing an attack?” At that moment she reminded me most of her father. She too thought the best
way to break the military’s grip on politics was by helping them to be defeated in a war.

  I recalled my Delhi conversations most vividly when I heard that Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards in October 1984. It later emerged that one of them had visited Sikh training camps in Pakistan. For though no frontal assault was being prepared, the desire for revenge among sections of the military never evaporated. Mrs. Gandhi’s internal problems with the Sikh community were of her own making, and Pakistan took advantage of Sikh discontent by training Sikh terrorists. Could it be that the CIA and the DIA had obtained information from their agents inside the Indian establishment suggesting that the Indians were seriously considering a “preemptive strike” against Pakistan? This would certainly have destabilized the entire Afghan operation, not to mention the military dictatorship in Pakistan. A high-powered secret decision might have made Washington get rid of the Indian prime minister using Sikh hitmen trained in Pakistan. That certainly was the view of senior civil servants in New Delhi, who told me that the internal report submitted to the new prime minister linked Pakistan to the assassins and had not been made public for fear of creating a new war fever.

  Further evidence in this vein was offered to me on a trip to Pakistan in 2006. On the flight back to London I encountered an old acquaintance. I had first spotted him in the departure lounge at the airport, surrounded by uniformed policemen as I waited to board the PIA flight. He took a seat not far from me in the business class, which was virtually empty. I was buried in a novel when he came and stood near my seat. We exchanged salaams.