AT PENPOINT
Future historians will record that at a time when Pakistan was under threat of war from India, its traders and shopkeepers went on a one-day strike to protest the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. True, the strike had been converted by its convener, the Jamaat Islami, into one against India too, but originally the strike had been called over the Israeli ending of the ceasefire, and resumption of its slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
Meanwhile, there was another example of the covert cooperation that has developed between India and Israel, as a group of Israelis visited Indian-Occupied Kashmir shrouded in deep secrecy, for unknown purposes. It has long been noted that India and Israel seem to share notes on the respective illegal occupations of Muslim lands, Kashmir and Palestine.
The link between Palestine and Kashmir emerged only after Partition, but the link between Indian Muslims and Palestine goes back to the fall of the Khilafat. It is no coincidence that when the Khilafat Movement came to an end, its leaders, the Ali brothers, then held a Palestine Conference. They established contacts with Al-Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Not only did Al-Husseini visit the Subcontinent, but the All-India Muslim League tried to attend the Round-Table Conference on Palestine between September 1946 and February 1947. It argued that as the Zionists were able to bring delegations from as far away as South Africa, the other side should be represented by non-Palestinian Muslims.
It is also a little-known fact of diplomatic history that Pakistan played a key role in the Israel-Arab issue because the Arab delegations were more distinguished by their enthusiasm rather than their diplomatic ability, and were content to leave the heavy lifting of drafting and preparing talking points for speeches to the Pakistani delegation. They did not prove so helpful when it was Pakistan’s turn to need help over the Kashmir issue, and it was then that Argentina stepped in.
Both Pakistan and Israel came into existence as a result of British decolonization, with the major difference that while Pakistan was hived off from India, Israel took over the major portion of the land in the Palestine Mandate. What was left over, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip being taken over in 1967.
The decolonization in both cases was accompanied by widespread massacres. It was the turn of Indian Muslims first, particularly in the Punjab, where the largest exchange of populations in history took place. In 1948, the Palestinians were then turfed out of their homes, to make way for Jewish settlers. Palestinians remembered it as AN-Nakba, or the Catastrophe. It was a good name for what had happened in East Punjab.
However, there was a difference. If West Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs got a country, so did East Punjabi Muslims. Palestinians, on the other hand, only got refugee camps. Now even the ones in Gaza are no longer a refuge.
The reports are coming in of increasing atrocities in the West Bank, making it seem that the ceasefire (now broken) was to gain time and forces for the West Bank. Apart from increased raids, there have been Israeli bombings for the first time after a long time.
It is no coincidence that Israel has water disputes with its neighbours over the Jordan, and part of the clashes that occur between Palestinians and Israeli settlers are over water for their farms.
To the extent that nobody is asking questions about why India is interfering with the IWT, and to the extent that the international community seems to be asking both countries to keep the peace, and not India alone, their diplomats seem to have succeeded. After all, the world powers want to believe such a large market, especially when it portrays itself as the world’s largest democracy.
Kashmir was seen as the first example of the British leaving behind a problem. Pakistan and India, neither of which had even written a Constitution for itself, went to war in 1948, because the Maharaja of Kashmir refused to accede to Pakistan, even though it was an overwhelmingly Muslim state in population. Perhaps most importantly, it was the font of all the five rivers that made up the Indus Basin. Though he was from an urban background, he was lawyer enough to realise that water was something over which peasants would fight.
India first tried water terrorism just after Partition, when it stopped waters to Pakistan at the time of wheat sowing. The two countries almost came to war, and it was only the intervention of the international community that got India to respect the rights of the lower riparian. The BRB canal was dug then so that water from the Indus could be diverted to the area irrigated by other rivers. This was done by voluntary labour, not just by East Punjabi refugees, but, for example, by college students. Perhaps more importantly, the crisis led to the negotiations which ultimately culminated in the Indus Waters Treaty.
As India under the BJP sees itself as bigger than an ordinary state, and as it seems to wish for the kind of exceptionalism that the USA has arrogated to itself, it does not like to be bound by the requirements of the IWT. That is what was observed by Defence Minister Kh Asif, based on earlier experience as Water and Power Minister, that India chafed at having to submit its plans for using the Indus headwaters, and at the consequent inspections. He was probably being polite, and did not mention the specific plans that were being blocked by the IWT. India has a huge and growing population, and a corresponding appetite for water. What plans the Indian government cannot be foreseen, but it seems that the usurpation of the rights of the lower riparian are a part.
That has implications for the relations between Pakistan’s provinces. KP and Sindh have objected successfully to the Kalbagh Dam, and most recently Sindh has protested successfully against the taking off six canals from the Indus. So far the disputes have been within Pakistan, but what will happen when there is an international dimension?
There are parallels to the position of the Brahmaputra, whose headwaters arise in China, which then flows through the Indian North-East into Bangladesh, and only then to the sea. At this point, it should be noted that China will probably not want any further complications with the USA’s regional policeman.
It may be noted that the Indian move is in line with the Russian doctrine of maskirovka, or deception, which it used at the time of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Indian strategists are inspired by the lessons learnt in the years of close cooperation with the USSR. The USSR had intended to precede an attack on Western Europe with a maskirovka which included strategic, diplomatic and political components.
In short, a false-flag operation. The best example was the Nazi operation which it used to invade Poland and set off World War II. The Nazi government killed some of its own prisoners, dressed in Polish Army uniforms, claiming that they had attacked Germany. While the Phulgam attack was staged by the Indians, the maskirovka has not been successful.
India probably does not appreciate the cost it will pay in the future. A failed maskirovka was probably the wrong thing to use after the exposed assassination in Canada, and the failed one in the USA.
The world remains unconvinced. One reason is that no evidence of Pakistani involvement has been produced. Indeed, no narrative, no matter how far-fetched or ridiculous, has been given, which could explain how Pakistan was responsible. The world is being asked to believe what India says, just because it says so. It may or may not be a failure of Indian diplomacy, but no one seems ready to believe them.
To the extent that nobody is asking questions about why India is interfering with the IWT, and to the extent that the international community seems to be asking both countries to keep the peace, and not India alone, their diplomats seem to have succeeded. After all, the world powers want to believe in such a large market, especially when it portrays itself as the world’s largest democracy.
