A little heavy on clichés
A chapter dealing with family history followed by a cursory review of the country’s political development leads the reader to the author’s experiences as foreign minister under Gen Pervez Musharraf from November 2002 to November 2007. The book provides insight into the way decisions were taken by the Musharraf cabinet, particularly regarding India. The author however leaves a number of significant blanks unfilled.
The autobiographical part provides a fairly lengthy account of family history along with family photographs. There are also brief anecdotal notes on some of the political figures who turned up at his illustrious father Mian Mahmud Ali Kasuri’s Fane Road residence. The chapter provides particularly valuable information about Danial Latifi, the idealist who along with Mian Iftikharuddin tried to give a progressive direction to the Muslim League which was a courageous though futile attempt.
While Kasuri is an insider he is also a partisan. He ignores to discuss some of Musharraf’s controversial policies formulated when he was a cabinet member. There is a silence in the book regarding certain deals by Musharraf that infringed national sovereignty. The handing over of Pakistan’s air bases to the US in return for aid being one. While some maintain there were three, at least one airfield was put under control of the US. Shamsi airfield remained with the US till it was taken back after the Salala affair in 2011.
There is again a display of ignorance about Musharraf’s policy regarding the drone attacks. According to Kasuri, “All I can say is that the operating assumption when I was foreign minister was that the government had not given permission for drone attacks”.
The first drone strike on Pakistan soil came in 2004 when Kasuri was the foreign minister, killing militant leader Nek Muhammad who was at the time in the bad books of the government. The army flatly denied he had been hit by a hellfire missile fired by a US drone. The statement from DG ISPR Shaukat Sultan said, “We have various means and a full array of weapons at our disposal. We have artillery that can fire with precision and we have helicopters with night vision capability which can fire guided missiles.”
There is again a display of ignorance about Musharraf’s policy regarding the drone attacks. According to Kasuri, “All I can say is that the operating assumption when I was foreign minister was that the government had not given permission for drone attacks”
On October 30, 2006, 82 people died when two missiles fired by a drone hit a seminary in Damadola village in Bajaur tribal region. The locals claimed they had seen a drone launching the attack. The ISPR claimed those killed in the dawn attack were all militants and denied that there had been any collateral damage. The operation, he said, was launched following intelligence reports that the seminary was being used as a training facility for terrorist activities. So this too was portrayed as an operation by the Pakistan army.
More than 85 per cent of detainees at Guantanamo Bay were arrested, not on the Afghanistan battlefield by US forces, but by the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan at a time when rewards of up to US$5,000 were paid for every ‘terrorist’ turned over to the United States.
The delivery of terrorism suspects to a foreign country to collect bounty was another issue Kasuri is silent about. In fact every official who spoke on the subject denied there was any financial reward for the services till the publication of “In the Line of Fire”, where Musharraf shamefacedly admitted it.
“We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of not doing enough in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan.”
There are two possibilities why Kasuri is silent over these affairs which have a bearing on the country’s foreign policy. A charitable explanation is that Kasuri was kept in the dark and he thought it inadvisable to try to discover the truth. The other possibility is that he knows the facts but prefers to keep silent.
The largest and the most significant portion of the book deals with Musharraf government’s attempts to reduce the tensions between India and Pakistan and to try to work out a solution of the Kashmir issue. Earlier, Musharraf had himself played the most damaging role in heightening tensions with India.
Musharraf did not make a secret of his displeasure over Vajpayee’s visit to Pakistan in 1999. To sabotage the move aimed at improvement of relations between the two countries Musharraf launched the ill-conceived Kargil operation soon after. In 2001 there was a terrorist attack on the Assembly of the Indian controlled Kashmir followed by another one on the Indian Parliament. The two led to a highly costly eyeball to eyeball confrontation which continued for a year and a clash was averted only after hectic efforts on the part of countries friendly to both.
The importance of the book lies in the details it provides about how a backchannel was set up to suggest an out-of-the-box solution of the Kashmir issue. Also details of the four point formula devised after the backchannel exchanges. The formula was in fact spelled out briefly by Musharraf himself in an NDTV interview in December 2006.
The account of how the peace talks started reveals that the credit for the revival of dialogue goes to Vajpayee. Kasuri frankly concedes this. “What brought the two countries back from the brink and ushered in a phase of CBMs between two countries was Vajpayee’s announcement at a rally in Srinagar on 18 April 2003 that India was willing to extend a ‘hand of friendship’ to Pakistan.”
As a reciprocal act the Pakistani government finally agreed to offer a number of CBMs to India. Subsequently Vajpayee visited Pakistan in 2004 and held a meeting with Musharraf. An uncritical Kasuri often tends to make a mountain out of a molehill. For instance the subchapter that narrates the event is pompously entitled as “The handshake that changed history.” The description flies in the face of the facts as subsequent events amply bear out.
Kasuri can be tiresomely hyperbolic which indicates a lack of sense of humour. There are several statements that reveal the writer’s euphoria but are unrealistic to the extent of being funny. One is the subheading “Great Leap Forward — Sonia Smiles at Last!” Another is “Crossing the Rubicon: The Bus Service Across the LoC. This is also called the “Fall of the Berlin Wall”. Yet another “Irreversibility of the Peace Process”. A subchapter is entitled “I invite Natwar to Nathia Gali, where Ayub Khan had invited Nehru.”
The book has an entire chapter on ‘the role of personal relationships in diplomacy.’ Kasuri tries to create a perception of close understanding, even informality, between the then Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh and himself. He devotes several pages to his meetings with Singh which he claims were highly satisfactory.
Interestingly Natwar Singh’s autobiography “One Life is Not Enough’ contains only one sentence about Khurshid Kasuri! This was not dictated by paucity of space as the book published in 2014 is spread over four hundred plus pages. And what Singh said about Kashmir too indicates that Kasuri’s effusions on the subject need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Here is the quote:
“In the summer of 2004 I went to Pakistan, and held a discussion with my counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, on all aspects of Indo-Pak relations, including Kashmir. There was no common ground on Kashmir.”
While Kasuri led himself to believe that he was playing a crucial role in bringing Pakistan and India together the policy was in fact being devised by the army with inputs from FO hawks. Kasuri was there because an articulate person was needed to defend the policy at home and abroad and to bring back his assessment of the Indian thinking from meetings held with them.
This should have become clear to Kasuri when Musharraf delivered a hawkish address at the 2005 UNGA. Kasuri was flabbergasted. His explanation is incredible, “If truth be told, the fact is that neither the president nor I had seen the draft prepared by the Head of our Permanent Mission in New York, Ambassador Munir Akram one of our most outstanding diplomats and an expert in UN affairs but a hardliner on India.” Imagine a head of state delivering his address at the UN without knowing about its contents beforehand!
More than 85 per cent of detainees at Guantanamo Bay were arrested, not on the Afghanistan battlefield by US forces, but by the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan at a time when rewards of up to US$5,000 were paid for every ‘terrorist’ turned over to the United States
It was after the “handshake that changed history” that a major terrorist attack took place in India. The serial train bombings in Mumbai on 11 July 2006 left about 200 people dead leading to a strong reaction in the neighbouring country. This was a year before Kasuri was out of the job.
Were there differences within the Pakistani establishment over the issue? Was the framework for a Kashmir settlement Pervez Musharraf’s personal hunch? While three army officers including DGISI, VCOAS and COS to the president were part of the group presided over by Musharraf that also included the foreign minister and foreign secretary the matter was never discussed in the national security council or in the corps commanders meeting. After all Kashmir has been a highly sensitive issue for the army which has fought a number of wars over it.
Had the proposed agreement enjoyed the Pakistan army’s backing, it would not have collapsed like a house of cards on account of the judicial crisis in Pakistan. The PPP government that took over in 2008 was all out for improvement of ties with India. Kayani, who had attended meetings on the Kashmir issue, had by then become the COAS. But then came the devastating terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 with the entire edifice of the composite dialogue crashing down.
Pak-India talks could not be revived till 2011. The Indian demand to bring the perpetrators of Mumbai terror to justice was never seriously addressed. Another attempt to improve the relations made by the PPP administration failed because of the increasing border incidents in January 2013.
Why is it that whenever any positive development was likely to take place in Pak-India relations, a terrorist attack, a serious border incident or a Kargil war occurred to foil it?
To sum up, Musharraf’s Kashmir plan depended too heavily on engagements at the bureaucratic level and on Musharraf’s personal initiative. No attempt was made to prepare public opinion. The matter was never put up before the National Assembly. Everything remained in files which continue to gather dust despite “the Great Leap Forward,’ “the handshake that changes history’, “Fall of the Berlin Wall” and “Irreversibility of the Peace Process”.
Neither a Hawk Nor a Dove
Written by: Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
Published by: Oxford University Press, 2015
Pages: 896; Price: Rs2,450 (Hardback)