A Hijacking that Spells Trouble

India and Pakistan are once again engaged in a bitter game of accusations and counter-accusations, which bear ill for peace and stability in South Asia. Benazir Bhutto expalins

KASHMIRI militants successfully hijacked an Indian airliner from Kathmandu last month. It was one of the most successful hijackings in recent history. Lasting less than a week, the Kashmiri hijackers forced India to succumb to their demands and release Kashmiri militants held in Indian jails.

Whilst the world celebrated the end of one century on December 31, 1999, the Indian government glumly gave in to the demands made by the Kashmiris militants. They had little choice. The families of those on board besieged the Indian government and forced its hand. The internal pressure was so grave that the Indian government was compelled to reverse its earlier hardline stance not to negotiate with the hijackers.

The hostages have returned home and the hijackers have disappeared into the hills of Afghanistan where the plane had landed. However, the hijacking has cast a pall over the relations between India and Pakistan. Both countries are once again engaged in a bitter game of accusations and counter-accusations, which bode ill for peace and stability in South Asia.

India was quick to blame Pakistan for the hijacking. It claimed, at one stage, that the hijackers had travelled by Pakistan's national airliner to Kathmandu with arms, transferring unchecked to the Indian airliner from the transit lounge. This was never proved. Pakistan, in turn, accused India of seeking to exploit the hijacking for partisan political purposes. Pakistan retaliated quickly to the Indian accusations of sponsoring terrorism. To make its displeasure known, it cancelled trade with India.

This may not work. The time is to reduce tensions, not exacerbate them. The hijacking may have ended. The phase of its repercussions has only begun.

The new row clearly indicates that India, humiliated over the hijacking, will make every effort to retaliate. That retaliation will take the form of a new international campaign to declare Pakistan a terrorist state.

The hijacking could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan. It was just beginning to come out of the shadow of last spring's Kargil crisis when the two countries nearly went to war. Pakistan's new military ruler had been keen to send messages of goodwill to India, even reducing troops symbolically at the border. But India found it hard to trust the general whom they viewed as the mastermind of the Kargil conflict.

That distrust has deepened to the detriment of South Asian stability. The downswing in relations between the two countries takes place against the on-going discussion on the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Both countries have separately declared their intention to sign the treaty but are yet to do so.

Despite calls from the Pakistani opposition to sign the treaty in May 1998, following the nuclear detonations by both countries, Pakistan chose not to do so. The delay has put Pakistan into a corner. Pakistan, with its focus on India, needed a much smaller nuclear capability than India, with its focus on China and Pakistan. Were India to undertake a series of fresh tests, it would put pressure on Pakistan. To respond in kind would be damaging internationally. Not to respond would be the public failure of the policy of parity-to do what India does.

Pakistan already faces a host of difficulties. The country is being run by an unelected and unrepresentative regime. The major political forces in the country, capable of uniting the people, have been marginalized. The Constitution has been suspended, the Parliament silenced and the judiciary threatened with "accountability" (a euphemism for corruption) if it does not toe the line.

More ominously, the economy refuses to respond to the measures taken for its revitalization. The new regime has been unable to come up with an economic policy that could give confidence to the market or bring in foreign investment. Take away the numerous statements of goodwill towards foreign investors and one is left without a policy. This regime, like the one it replaced, is banking on IMF loans rather than the entrepreneurial skills of its people to turn the economy around. Meanwhile, unemployment continues to grow. Daily, scores of government employees are laid off, increasing social dissatisfaction and threatening discontentment. To ward off the discontentment, the regime keeps arresting people on unproven charges of corruption to offer hope to the people that money from "corrupt" elements will soon flow in to fuel the economy.

This is a dangerous policy. India understands the internal difficulties that a politically divided Pakistan faces as it teeters on the verge of fiscal bankruptcy. Under pressure from the West to resume dialogue with Pakistan, India has seized the hijacking as the stick with which to beat Pakistan.

The hijacking succeeded in putting the Kashmir dispute again at the centre of international relations. There are many who will argue that daring actions are needed to awaken the world and only a threat of a potential nuclear conflict can force the international community into action. Certainly, the international media and the world politicians come into play every time there is a danger point. Witness the international focus on Kashmir when India and Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, or the G-8 interest when the Kargil fighting broke out in 1999 and the renewal of interest, though on a smaller scale, over the hijacking.

Yet, this is a dangerous argument. And an even more dangerous route. It has been tried for the last fifty years and failed to resolve the differences between the two countries. It has led to the disintegration of Pakistan in 1971 and the humiliation of the unilateral withdrawal from Kargil in 1999. India and Pakistan need to take a leaf out of the Middle East. There, intractable problems are being resolved through dialogue and discussion. The latest round of talks between Syria and Israel should be an eye-opener for the subcontinent.

But can a military ruler, bogged down in a difficult domestic situation, obsessed with hunting internal enemies through special laws and special courts, give peace the attention it deserves? Can he have the foresight to take advantage of President Clinton's South Asian visit to make possible a breakthrough in Indo-Pakistan relations?

No one knows the answer to that yet, perhaps not even the general himself. But in that answer lies the outcome of the worsening relations between two nuclear-capable states. They nearly brought about a nuclear confrontation last spring. And last month's hijacking could culminate once again in a dangerous, potentially nuclear confrontation.

The author is former prime minister of Pakistan. This piece was first appeared in The Dawn of Pakistan.