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Editorial: Next steps after evidence from India

The Indian Foreign Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said in a statement on Monday that India had handed over a dossier to Pakistan, claiming it incriminates “elements” from Pakistan in the Mumbai terror attacks, and has asked Islamabad to extradite those involved to face Indian justice. The Indian foreign secretary, Mr Shiv Shankar Menon, said the same day that under a SAARC convention, Pakistan “was obliged to hand over Mumbai attackers to India”. Mr Menon has further “interpreted” the SAARC convention thus: “[Pakistan can now] share the results with us and extend to us legal assistance so that we can bring the perpetrators to Indian justice. The assistance from Pakistan extends up to and includes extradition”. This assumes that Pakistan has now got to extradite to India persons that India’s interpretation of evidence flags as suspects. It also underlines an Indian understanding of the said SAARC convention which must be revisited for confirmation.

The SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of terrorism (1987) was signed as per decisions taken at the summit of the association in 1985. The text of the convention repeats its emphasis on the primacy of “national law” and limits cooperation among states within its ambit. It also refers to extradition in Article Three, Section Four in this manner: “If a Contracting State which makes extradition conditional on the existence of a treaty receives a request for extradition from another Contracting State with which it has no extradition treaty, the requested State may, at its option, consider this Convention as the basis for extradition in respect of the offences set forth in Article I or agreed to in terms of Article II. Extradition shall be subject to the law of the requested State”.

Barring any other bilateral agreement, the above text lays down a condition that becomes equal in force to extradition on the option of the “requested state”. That is, if Pakistan exercises the option of allowing extradition it can do so under the Convention. But Pakistan is certainly obliged under the Convention to cooperate fully in a case such as the Mumbai attack and carry out investigations under its national law in so far as it leads to suppression of terrorism in South Asia.

Since 1984, when the Convention was signed by the Pakistan foreign minister Mr Zain Noorani, Pakistan and India have been involved in mutual recriminations over the uprising in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir and have not leaned on the Convention for a resolution. A large body of circumstantial evidence accepted by the international community but not accepted by Pakistan, such as the 1999 hijack of an Indian airliner to Kandahar, have not attracted the articles of the Convention.

This time, however, the scene is different. Pakistan may have objected to the way India handled the Mumbai attack, leading to a bilateral “war of the medias”, but no one in Pakistan has expressed joy at what happened on November 26, 2008. In fact, the government in Islamabad is committed to offer full cooperation if India hands over “actionable” evidence under Pakistani law. Given the aroused public feelings in Pakistan, however, it would be difficult for a court in Pakistan to convict a person without thorough and conclusive evidence.

A much more “applicable” law, that of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee resolution, has obliged Pakistan to ban Jama’at-ud Dawa and put its leaders in jail. That this happened right after the Mumbai attack should make Pakistan aware of its deep significance. The international community is clearly and rightfully sympathetic towards India and remains so even after disagreeing with New Delhi’s attempt to threaten Pakistan with aggression. The truth is that by stepping back from war, India has increased the international pressure on Pakistan to clean up its act and go after the terrorists of whom there is no dearth in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s two important allies, America and China, want Pakistan to act in all sincerity to find out the truth about the origin of the Mumbai attack. The visiting US Assistant Secretary of State, Mr Richard Boucher, says quite plainly that “the Mumbai attackers have links that lead to Pakistan”. His counterpart in the Chinese Foreign Office, Mr He Yafei, has already been to Islamabad and requested Pakistan to “seek peace with India” even as China does not agree with India’s policy of threatening aggression against Pakistan.

Pakistan’s PPP government should be willing to do what is necessary. Its leader was assassinated by terrorists and its government is tottering under the threat of global terrorism that has made its home in Pakistan. Pakistani courts at the lower levels are not without understandable vulnerability against these terrorists whose threats are more credible than the police security provided to the judges. The world wants Pakistan to move honestly against those who have done the Mumbai attack on the basis of evidence available from India and from its own intelligence. This moment could be a decisive one in the history of Indo-Pak relations and could actually lead to a new peaceful beginning if both sides extend full cooperation instead of trying to score points by playing to the home galleries. *

Second Editorial: Bangladesh’s mirror image

Mrs Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh’s liberal -secular Awami League is the new prime minister who has to tackle high inflation and energy shortage, just like the PPP of Benazir Bhutto, except that Ms Wajed has not been assassinated. Her opponent Mrs Khaleda Zia of the rightwing Bangladesh National Party (BNP) has reluctantly shaken hands with her, promising not to repeat the politics of revenge of bygone years. Mrs Wajed has won 230 out of the 300 seats in the unicameral parliament of Bangladesh.

Who says Bangladesh has gas to throw way? The country’s power supply shortage is 40 percent which makes Pakistan look like a well-lit paradise. Severe gas crisis grips the country’s industry dominated by the textile value-added sector, a part of which is now closed because there is no power. The Awami League’s bad luck is that jihadi culture is on the rise and the clergy is stronger than ever before. Like the PPP in Pakistan, the Awami League will soon come under pressure from protesting citizens in Dhaka; and the BNP will go back to being hostile. Just like Pakistan. *

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