M B Naqvi

The writer is a well-known

journalist and freelance columnist

mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

Two much delayed conferences of South Asians in Kathmandu in the first few days of the new year - one of the South Asia Free Media Association's second congress and the 11th Summit of the SAARC heads of State or Governments - produced documents that are long on rhetoric and rather short on substance and have left a feeling of dissatisfaction. True, both moots were seen as successes for the mere fact that they took place; old reasons for postponing them still exists as for all of these years in one case and over one year in the other.

The SAFMA convention was as usual characterised by the Indians and Pakistanis pre-empting much of time and attention by their mutual wrangling and hair-splitting. Delegates from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the host nation, Nepal, fretted and were annoyed. The hovering threat of an Indo-Pakistan war, probably nuclear, certainly provided an urgency for these two people's mutual concerns, though it is hard not to notice the fillip side of this necessary dialogue: delegates on both sides were reflecting a strange combination of symbiosis with their respective government's stances and a jingoistic nationalism. There was little of genuine dialogue between them; instead there was much talking at each other, with plenty of innuendoes and thinly veiled aspersions while crucially important issues of the profession in all these countries were largely ignored. The final declaration occasioned the usual wariness between the Indians and Pakistanis over using certain formulations that is redolent of the official positions of New Delhi and Islamabad, agreeing only on platitudinous phraseology.

The SAARC Summit was of course the main event. Everyone wanted a breakthrough in the interminable confrontation between India and Pakistan that has stunted the growth of SAARC. In point of fact no breakthrough occurred. But there was a slight easing up between the two embattled governments: both their Foreign Ministers and government leaders could meet and talk (though not 'negotiate'); the same set of publicists who had approved the earlier bellicosity of their governments are now singing praises for the open-heartedness and moderation shown by the two Summiteers in extending and reciprocating the two hand shakes. What does it amount to?

To repeat, no breakthrough on any substantive issue between two Subcontinental nuclear powers occurred. Only tough persuasion by Colin Powell, Tony Blair and others has succeeded partially insofar as their leaders could show civilities in public. Presumably they have shown readiness to defuse some of the military tension on their borders. Hopefully they would, sometime in future - probably after the middle of next month when current electioneering in India ends - resume their bilateral dialogue on all contentious matters, as President Pervez Musharraf puts it.

The worst thing that has happened is that Vajpayee government found only a certain way of punishing Musharraf's Pakistan; this was by way of snapping the road, rail and air links between the two countries, halving the diplomatic representation of both countries in each other's capitals and of course making threatening military moves. As one had occasion to say, this Indian initiative has not hurt the military's leadership in Pakistan; instead it has enabled it to consolidate its rule through calls for closing of ranks to resist the expected Indian aggression. All politics in Pakistan is on ice for as long as the threat of war lasts.

Who suffers from these measures? Certainly not Pakistani generals. Only the poor common Pakistanis, mostly from divided families, or petty traders who travel between the two countries, especially by rail and bus. It is not known how this would affect the postal services between the two countries. Obviously the move is intended to counter the slowly growing people-to-people contacts that aimed at stable peace and reconciliation between the two peoples. To the Musharraf government, it is not even a tap on the wrists; to the rulers in this country these would seem like a new year's gift.

Anyhow, it does look as if the resumption of this bilateral dialogue will take time and the military tensions are not likely to wholly dissipate for some time. And what will happen when the war will no longer seem imminent? Everything will not become hunky dory. The two governments will still be far from having normalised relations between the two civilised countries; what has obtained between them is a strictly controlled normalisation process that began with the Simla Pact in 1972; the two had far from ordinary ties when the new semi breaking off of ties came on Dec 27.

All that is essential here to say is that the two people deserve to live in peace and to cooperate fully in bilateral as well as regional frameworks, with maximal opportunities for cultural exchanges, with free people-to-people contacts and of course trade and economic mutual help. The two countries have militarised their societies through fomenting a xenophobic and militant nationalisms; a more people and peace friendly politics is called for. But over and above all else, the growing threat of nuclear war has to be removed once and for all through a wholly non-nuclear regime for South Asia.

The SAFMA meeting too has excoriated the militant, xenophobic and jingoistic nationalisms that are being promoted by many South Asian states. Free media are largely an aspiration. Even direct government controls are not yet a thing of the past in most SAARC countries. The press free from direct government orders in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is not free from official manipulation through bribes, intimidation and high-pitched propaganda. The latter is based on, and promotes, a malignant kind of nationalism; apparently simple patriotism is not enough for most South Asian states. What the media in the region have to do is to revert to their old adversarial role of questioning every move by their governments. Their main job is to mirror facts and to make free or independent comment on them; no more and no less. In this way, media too should operate sans frontiers, quite like the doctors. Being the fourth estate of a given realm is a snare - that suits only the entrepreneurs, MNCs and George Soroses of this world. Let media people investigate the various manipulating influences that today impinge on the so-called free media.