Report From Karachi OBSERVER FINDS PEOPLE ARE TOTALLY COMMITTED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30857, 16 September 1965, Page 16

Report From Karachi OBSERVER FINDS PEOPLE ARE TOTALLY COMMITTED

• By

PETER PRESTON.

ln the ■■Guardian.'’ Manchester.)

(Reprinted b« arrangement.)

Driving the thousand-mile length of West Pakistan, as I have just done, is a nerve-racking experience. The country’s best roads are single metalled strips, so that each encounter with other traffic turns into a test of will. Cai* and bus bear down upon each other, horns blaring wildly. At the last minute somebody gives ground and swerves into the dirt track at the side. Sometimes it is your driver who funks it, sometimes the bus or lorry. Sometimes—as wrecked hulks by the wayside testify—nobody swerves. The rule of thumb is that life is cheap and brake linings expensive.

India and Pakistan have been performing the selfsame test over Kashmir for 18 years, always swerving at the last second. Now at last with sad predictability the collision has come. The war game must be played through, barring miracles with all its terrifying—possibly disastrous —consequences. The latest dice with death is born out of a deep and abiding Pakistani frustration.

Here in Karachi, every person able to grasp the basic issues or even the basic emotions is totally committed. There is no question of trumped-up feeling. If you talk politics with any Pakistani you talk Kashmir and you talk to a man who cares utterly and completely'. What is this relatively tiny territory of four million people to a subcontinent of nearly six hundred million? It is everything. Crisis Forced The current and possibly ultimate round of the struggle began with considerable delicacy. Discontent among Kashmiris fostered the “freedom fighters” trained-by whom noone can say definitely—with

the aim of forcing a limited crisis in Kashmir and a drastic reappraisal of the whole position. There was, 1 am sure no thought of total war, as the thousands of people now digging trenches in towns the length and breadth of Pakistan will testify. But the delicate balance of force backed by iron diplomacy was too subtle for what Pakistanis regard as India’s divided and diffuse leadership. Whatever one thinks of Pakistan’s knife edge exercise the simple fact is that it has brought a desperate riposte totally out of keeping with the scale and aim of the original murky initiative. But there is no going back now and no swerving. Temperament dictates a collision. Pakistan is a State dedicated to Islam. This religious philosophy is at the root of

its present inevitable stance. One Pakistani told me: “We would rather die than give way now. We would rather all die. If we lost there would be nothing to live for." Could Indian Forces take Lahore? Only, he said, if they were prepared to wipe out three million people. Could India win the war? A palpable impossibility. Pakistan’s vast wild areas would be impossible to subdue. Guerrilla battles would be never ending. Tragedy And Futility

Thus while Pakistan remains firmly behind its soldier-President to man this war, nobody can win it. It is hard to believe that Pakistan, with its limited resources, could ever in turn conquer the sub-continent. This sure knowledge underlines the tragedy and futility of the whole ancient struggle. The tragedy is forced home upon one by everything one sees. Military officers with Sandhurst training talking endearingly about chaps going over the top. An old toothless soldier from British days going through his by-the-right-quick-march sergeant-major routine in a dusty village street. The refugees beginning their ritual wanderings again. Memories of British rule—corn flakes, eggs to order, even porridge far out in a decrepit hotel —combined with a single faith and a singular relish for battle. It is eerie to hear the sirens wail again, not over London but over some higgledy town with its myriads of people scuttling around in total darkness. These are fine and friendly people. Everywhere 1 have gone—in a trench near the front line or a hamlet in semi-desert —I have found help, smiles, and fortitude. It is impossible emotionally to square this with the corpses lying reeking in the foothills of Kashmir or the bewilderment as the bombs fall. The combination is too heartrending to convey in any words I know. Pakistan’s Objective Can anything be salvaged at the eleventh hour? Here and now an immediate guarantee of a Kashmir plebiscite might serve. But more bombs on Rawalpindi or Karachi, more dead civilians, and Kashmir itself will fade from the scene, bypassed by the fury of events. All the millions of foreign aid. all the long cam-

paign against poverty will be lost before this loosing of elemental passions. The only things left of importance will be the number of American. Russian, British, and French tanks poured into the subcontinent. One tries not to be alarmist. One tries, like U Thant, to say that the situation is serious and let the massive understatement speak for itself. One tries to blot out the possibilities of Chinese intervention. But the simple fact is that Pakistan will not stop now unless she achieves the limited objective for which she started. All pressures and all international appeals must work on the basis that there can be no return to the old status quo. It need not necessarily be assumed that a Kashmir plebiscite would mean Kashmir s ioining Pakistan. Kashmir is in some ways the Switzerland of the subcontinent, a beautiful, independent land which might opt for its own freedom Pakistan. I think, would accept this reluctantly and leave Kashmir to the tourists, the fishermen and the golfers who conie to play on the world's highest course. Haze Of Bitterness

Pakistanis see. or think they see. the Indian difficulty, albeit through a haze of hit. terness. They think that Kashmir independence might set crumbling the whole fabric of India. But the principle is inviolable nevertheless. Every newspaper insists upon it not because news is managed but because if you talk to them every journalist believes it. Summing up, it is now irrelevant to apportion the long-term blame or praise. Day-to-day considerations are the only relevant ones for a subcontinent which only lives from day to day. Thus, pragmatically and sadly, one feels that the initiative for a ceasefire must come from Delhi. U Thant's visit there is absolutely critical. But an initiative must come quickly. Otherwise the vultures gorging themselves in the dusty Kashmir plain will be joined by the professional scavengers of international politics and there will be no more to say.

The mood of Pakistan, emerging from years of frustration over Kashmir, is effectively conveyed in this article sent to the “Guardian” Manchester on September 10 by Peter Preston from Karachi.