A Forgotten Incident

It was a few days past the fifty seventh year of Pakistan's independence. PNS Talwar, an Agosta class submarine, the first one of its kind to be constructed in Pakistan, had been cruising in its operational deployment area in the Arabian Sea for the past two months. Its operational orders were to observe the gatherings of the Indian navy ships in Mumbai, for the start of the annual Indian navy war games coded named "Sea Urchins" and shadow this task force. Should this deployment turn out to be a prelude of an amphibious attack against Pakistan's eastern seaboard, Talwar was to act as a picket screen giving real time intelligence to general headquarters in Islamabad. Tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad had been increasing ever since the Indian army's élite alpine brigade had tried to attack and capture Skardu and thus, had sought to cutoff and isolate the whole of northern areas from Pakistan. It was intent of the Indian attack to push the Pakistani army back to the 1947 partition lines and in the process secure the whole of Kashmir for itself.

The attacked had failed, because unknown to the Indians, a group of Pakistani special forces were playing host to SAS troops from New Zealand. Both groups were finishing off a scheduled joint training in high altitude warfare when the attack happened. The Indian plan was to coordinate an airborne landing with a ground attack. The ground forces were to go in first and capture the airfield at Skrudu and the airborne was to land later and consolidate a beachhead in Pakistan's northern areas. Since the weather was always so difficult to forecast, it was decided to go ahead with the ground element first. The Indians, prior to launching their attack, had send a forward team to scout the approaches to Skrudu, but as fate would have it this team had stumbled on a detachment of the Kiwis, ironically preparing to ambush the Pakistanis. The Indian intelligence knew of the joint training, but not where they were being held. Mistaking the New Zealanders for the Pakistanis in the pre-dawn darkness, the Indians opened fire and managed to kill one New Zealander SAS trooper and wound three others. Unable to return fire, because they were not carrying any live rounds, the Kiwis radioed Skrudu and informed the northern headquarters of Pakistani army of what was happening. Using the coordinates of the New Zealanders' transmissions, Pakistani artillery had managed to triangulate the positions of the Indians and had fired a quick salvo from their 155mm howitzers. Their element of surprise lost and the Pakistani army alerted, the Indians withdrew to their lines and called off the attack.

Since then the Pakistanis had reinforced their forces in the north with three heavy brigades of infantry, a regiment of armor and had moved in a squadron of the newly inducted FC-1 fighters, from Sialkot to Muzaffarabad. To gain additional intelligence on the Indians, an Orion of the Pakistani Air Force was on a twenty four-hour combat patrol over the area and was running racetrack patterns over the Siachen and Boltoro glaciers, sniffing for Indian intentions. The Indians, in turn, had moved two infantry divisions, supported by an armored strike brigade, composed of Israeli built tanks, and a wing of Sukhoi 35 and Mirage 2000 fighters into the area. In the plains, the Pakistani units had moved to their war time deployments and were eyeball to eyeball with the Indians across the international boundary. There were occasional firefights and artillery exchanges, as each side reminded the other of its existence. The fast attack boats of the Pakistani navy had dispersed into the open sea and were maintaining a vigil over the sea-lanes to Karachi and Gwadar, insuring that the assets of the Indian navy would not interdict them.

Tensions all along the border were fraught with a potential for the worst. The fact that the Indian army's western command had gone to a war footing did not help the situation either. While the armies of both nations waited for war and death from a nuclear incineration, the diplomats were busy earning their salaries by down playing the rhetoric of their elected employers. The United Nations' security council, in a symbolic gesture, had called for a special session to discuss the crisis, but everyone knew that the real mediation, if it was to happen, would come from the United States and China, the new regional superpower. China had already tabled a resolution, in the United Nations, holding India responsible for the crisis and was now actively engaged to defeat a bill that would have granted New Delhi a seat on the security council. Wellington, still angry over the unprovoked attack on its soldiers, had dispatched the Indian high commissioner back to her native soil with the instructions not to return any time in the near future. In another move that was calculated as an insult towards the Indians, the New Zealand government had allowed the Pakistani military access to a pair of its satellites to provide real time intelligence to the Pakistanis, in hopes of preventing an accidental war. The Indian government was formally informed of the decision in case it missed the subtlety of the rebuke.

The Russians, mean while still playing catch up with economic bankruptcy, had gone ahead with a shipment of mid-life avionics upgrades for India's fleet of MiG 27 and 29 fighters, in a deal signed months before the present crisis had flared up. This had severely irritated the American congress which, in its time honored tradition of knee jerk reactions to international problems, had imposed an unilateral embargo on both India and Pakistan and was urging the European Union to do the same. While the Europeans debated this as a quid pro quo for keeping the Americans troops in Macedonia, to prevent a war between the Greeks and the Turks, the French realized a foreign policy opportunity with a financial windfall. Paris offered Islamabad a line of credit if it would opt for French weapons systems instead of the American ones. The French motivation behind this was not altruistic. The French knew, fully well, that most of the Arab nations' military forces, specially their airforces, were trained by the Pakistanis and since these nations mostly employed French made weapons, it made sense for the instructors to be proficient in similar weapon systems themselves. Besides, the Pakistanis were always partial towards French aircraft and in the interests of homogeneity, the Arabs could always subsidize Pakistani arm purchases.

The real reason, however, was for the French to drive a wedge in American arms sales and steal some business from them in the process. The French were still hallucinating from delusions of an imperial grandeur and were still, anxiously, waiting for Napoleon Bonaparte to usher in a revival of l'glorié francais. Paris still considered itself as the quintessential cultural capital of the world and bitterly resented the fact that the universal beacon of civilization was not the illé d' Paris, but an awful golden arch. To the French, it was the symbol of American ingratitude for all they had done for those colonial upstarts a few generations back. This was despite the fact that the Americans had rescued the French from the malaria invested swamps of Panama; the wrath of a German general named Ludendorff and a place called Dien Bien Phu, not to mention the folly of a treaty known as Versailles. The French still thought the Americans owed them something. Just what the Americans owed the French, only the French knew that and they were determined to keep the secret to themselves. Recently, the French had been bridling under the American pax economica and were seeking to break free from its insufferable constraints. The French hated to be a member of an American club and abide by anothers' rules when they could have their own club. It was with these deep-seated feelings that the French offered Islamabad to be a founding member of their new club.

Pakistan's reaction to this was one of sheer incredulity. It had long been the official position of Islamabad that it had gone nuclear to compensate the imbalances in the conventional force structures and had the Americans not undermined its conventional defensive structures, it would not have felt its security so undermined. The French were using a similar argument, that is a nuclear war in South Asia still could be avoided if the Pakistanis were given a capability to offset the Indian superiority in conventional arms. They also were suggesting that French arms sales to Pakistan instead of risking a war would prevent one and therefore, should be seen in the best interests of world peace itself. The Japanese government had this found logic attractive enough to ask Washington to finally resolve the F-16 issue with Pakistan, but Washington was not interested in resolving the problem. It was interested in another problem. An enterprising American reporter had chanced upon the senate majority leader, in the company of another man, in a fashionable Georgetown pub and self-important talking heads of the news shows were debating the now mortified senator's sexual tastes. The Americans were too preoccupied with this new scandal and were too verbose, amongst themselves, to listen to the problems confronting the world.

As the American politicians dragged skeletons out of each other closets, the Pakistani armed forces, specially the airforce, was encouraging, but more likely yelling at the government to take advantage of this French offer. The government was still optimistic of either getting the planes or the money back from Washington. After all, the Americans had repeatedly promised they would act on the matter and while the governments in Pakistan had waited for the Americans to do something, an entire new generation of Pakistanis was entering the work force. They too remembered the American promises and blamed the Americans for their duplicity as they stood in lines to get work visas to immigrate to the United States. The airforce had its eyes on the new Typhoon fighter and it was lobbying the government for it. The officers of the Pakistani airforce were telling the government that Pakistan had no hopes of, realistically, winning back its money since it could not afford to hire Johnny Cochran to plead its case. In this they were supported by the seasoned Pakistani diplomats, based in America, who agreed with the airforces' assessment of the situation and intoned that Johnny Cochran would not even return their calls. This was especially true, they added, after he found out what the retainer was supposed to be. Besides, they all argued that the F-16As, owed to Pakistan, would never be returned, because Larry Pressler was still alive. According to them, many congressional people owed him favors for keeping their wives ignorant concerning their interns' many responsibilities. The Pakistani navy, eager to get some crumbs for itself, threw in its support behind the airforce and informed the government that it needed French assistance to run its new submarine force. According to the navy, the operations manuals for the billion dollar vessels were printed in French and still needed to be translated. The problem was that the navy could find any qualified translators since they were all working for the United Nations where the pay was better and the fringe benefits included free cable. It could use the money, the rationale went, to hire some Frenchmen to translate the manuals. Since they wrote it, they would know what they were translating the reasoning went.

All of this amused the army who had not seen the airforce so excited since Alam confirmed the fact to the world that the Pakistani airforce could fly and fight at the same time. While the airforce seemed to fly off in a delirium of bewilderment at the governments' inability to exchange its dollars for euros and the navy was still trying to make sense between French feminine and masculine nouns, the army was looking forward to visiting Paris . The army saw in the French offer an opportunity that could not be missed. It was the collective opinion of the army leadership that once in France, they could all get a group discount on the Eurorail pass and thus, benefit from an European vacation subsidized by the French taxpayers. Furthermore, while having lunch at St. Cyr, they might as well conduct some business and try to buy some Euro Tiger attack helicopters for the army's aviation units. The generals of the army also had discovered, by chance, that the atmospherics of the region allowed them to receive Indian radio broadcasts and these broadcasts were jamming their radars into incoherence. To get the upgrades that would allow them to differentiate between the signatures of enemy planes and some popular Indian song, they could use the French technology themselves. With this in mind, it joined the other services into demanding that the government should opt for the French hardware. None of the concerned parties seemed to care that the French weapons, when they would finally arrive, would be too late to alter the conventional make up of the forces in the present crisis, but the idea of freshly painted new toys appealed to everyone.

The generals were of the opinion that the question of being either indebted to the Americans or the French was immaterial, as long as Pakistan was indebted to someone. The government's indecision in this matter, they complained, was creating the impression that the country was self-sufficient in its defense requirements and that was depressing the arms merchants the world over. Considering that its job security was in question and that before the Pakistani armed forces conquered Pakistan, the government decided to act in its interests and thus, gave its approval to go ahead with the French offer. Citing the fact that Pakistan was a parliamentary circus gone awry, the government informed the services that there would be debate on the matter. It could not act, its logic suggested, without the full cooperation of its coalition partners. This caused the armed forces to desperately search for their antacid tablets, because they knew that what would come next could not even if dreamed up by Monty Python itself. The uniforms of Pakistan dreaded discussions of national security by the legislative bodies simply because the debate had an unnerving habit of degenerating into a series of theological maxims that no one could understand.

As predicted, and feared by the military, the debate on the issue took on a patriotic flavor. One group of legislators, calling itself the Patriot's Patriots, clashed against another group that referred to itself as the Patriots' Patriot for the Patriots. The basic argument being shouted was whether or not such a shift of alliances would benefit Pakistan, but would it allow access to the French television broadcasts too. That would have been unthinkable. Since Pakistan considered itself to be the embodiment of Islam, much to the annoyance of Saudi Arabia, it thought of itself as a version of France in the Islamic sense. It was against all foreign influences that might corrupt the true essence of Islam and make it more cosmopolitan in its outlook. To allow something like that was considered to be an act of heresy punishable by a deterrence of close-minded insanity. Another theme being hotly debated was one of historic proportions. It was the informed opinion of many that Pakistan should ally itself with France, because since France had never ruled India, it would not see the Pakistanis as former subjects as the British did. Consequently, since the British were friends with the Americans, many Pakistanis harbored an inferiority complex of the Americans. The French, it was rationalized, would reciprocate Pakistani insecurities, because they too suffered from a similar syndrome. The voices in opposition to this argued that, history not withstanding, since most of Pakistani students went to America to learn it would be harmful to their education if it was interrupted. Since higher education in France was taught in French, they would have to learn French and this way would be discriminated against, because they would speak French with a native accent. As one or two brave souls mentioned, a lot of Pakistani students were about to get their residency papers in the United States and it made no sense to jeopardize the chances of Pakistanis (including the legislators) to move to America. Thus, the debate reached an acrimonious state where it was decided, in the interests of all, to accept the French offer, because the alternative was to keep on debating and miss the premier of Baywatch.

While these crucial discussions were taking place in the halls of power, the people of Pakistan were, as usual, oblivious to the forces affecting their future. The people of Pakistan are a pragmatic and stoic lot who had long ago resigned themselves to the fact the gods, who ever they might be, are sadistic in their humor. After suffering one crisis after another and still wondering why they were still here, the people of Pakistan are rarely surprised when things do not work, but in this case they were horrified. Much to their chagrin, they discovered that despite all the inequities in life, the Pakistan television was still working and they would be able to see live, from Madrid, Spain, the one day cricket match between India and Pakistan. The match was being broadcast, in Spanish, as a courtesy of the Basque separatists, to their Kashmiri friends, who paid had for the transmission. Pakistani people did not care what language it was being commented in, as long as there was riot between the Indians and Pakistanis, watching the game in Madrid, and the stadium was burned down in the process. No self-respecting sub-continental could leave the premises as he found them. It was a matter of pride to them that they were the most hated and ridiculed group of people on the face of the earth. Once, that honor had belonged to the Poles, but with dogged stupidity they had put the Poles and others like them to shame. The Pakistanis were entrepreneurs in their ability to make the most out of nothing. To them anything free was heaven send and it was against their nature to refuse such an offer. If a murderer was offering free tickets to his own execution, the Pakistanis would take those tickets and sell them, thus making a tidy profit for themselves. With this in mind, they all looked forward to the cricket match.

In keeping with the national honor that was at stake, both the armies of India and Pakistan, agreed to a temporary truce so they could watch the game too. The soldiers in both the armies knew they might be killed any day and it made perfect sense if they knew what they were killing each other for: questionable calls by the umpires in Spanish. Since there was a shortage of television sets near the front lines, both sides decided to pool their resources. The Indians had domestic color sets while the Pakistanis had imported color sets. This set off a minor fight when the Indians suggested that the Pakistani army was soft and the Pakistanis retorted that the Indians were technologically inferior. To satisfy everyone, the television sets were equally distributed amongst the opposing armies. In the logistics involved in this most serious distribution of military resources since the partition, there was a foul up as the wrong remote controls were handed out. This caused further problems as each side blamed the other for deliberately provoking a crisis. This was considered to be a serious charge and the commanding officers from both armies held a joint conference to diffuse the imminent outbreak of hostilities. During the course of discussions, it was discovered by the participants that they had similar regimental histories from the time of the British, but it was decided to prevent this information from leaking out. It was really difficult to kill someone who agreed with you and that made it personal, the very anti-thesis of neighborly relations. Also, if the men found out this common affinity, they would be loath to fight and that would be a waste of all those immaculately maintained divisions. Therefore, in the interests of all concerned, it was decided to operate the television sets manually as to create an even playing field and it was encouraged to urge the men to believe in their own dissimilarities. After all, it was easier to believe a lie than accept the truth. It had been this way for a long time and it made no sense, especially in a military mind, to go against the traditional way of thinking.

During the telecast of the game there was a shot, beamed to all the televisions in India and Pakistan, of an Indian actress sitting next to a Pakistani sharing a laugh. This set off gossip columnist speculating if there was a latent romance involved and two were secretly planning to get married. Knowledgeable sources both in India and Pakistan (said to be ISI), confirmed that such was the case, because the pictures of both had appeared on the internet, in a site maintained by a Congolese, months before the match. Since the Congolese probably did not know where India or Pakistan was, nor did he\she give a hoot, it was a piece of unbiased reporting that both India and Pakistan could agree upon. In coming to grips with this news story, the attention of the press in India and Pakistan was focused on this at the expense of the generals who found themselves issuing communiqués to empty rooms and an different press corps. No one in Pakistan seemed to care if there was going be a war. All they cared about was if the actress, in question, had done any love scenes in the past so they could judge the Pakistani's interest in her for themselves. As far as the Indians were concerned, they just wanted to know if the travel restrictions would be eased if the wedding was going to be in Pakistan. In this entire irrelevancy, life continued to move ahead and the prospects of war were relegated to the back pages. There was a certain charm to the sordid details of the affairs that minimized the martial valor of divisions willing to die for a people who were indifferent to their

benefactors. By some universal truism, the people were more interested in the mundane than they were in the sublime. Life was a series of routine forays into tedium and apathy with an ever-receding destination and the people of the sub-continent, who had been running to stand still, just did not have the time to stop and look at life. Life depressed them and they wanted to forget life for a while. They wanted to live in an idiot's paradise where, unlike the reality that confronted them, they could alter the perceptions of their own mortality. It was more interesting to play the game than being merely pawns in it. If they were going to die, at least they were going die with visions of a more compatible life.

It was this indifference to life, coupled with a harsh reality of its insignificance that made the people seek refuge away from the burdens of oppression that had enslaved them. It was the remarkable tenacity of the people, who lived in that part of the world, to have an unwavering faith in the impossible that they moved beyond, in the quest of life, away from the probable. It was really disappointing, for the war gods that were, to plan a war that no one was interested in. Playing the game without an audience was dispiriting and not worth the effort thought the ones who mattered in their own ideals. Sensing that the crisis was being diffused by a lack of interest and finding it hard to compete with sex, the demigod generals of doom, on both sides, agreed to newer pastures in another time at another place. No one bothered to inform the crew of PNS Talwar of this development in the latest Indo-Pak crisis. A couple of days later, the commanding officer of the submarine got a flash message, from naval headquarters in Karachi, informing to him return to base. It seemed the crisis was over and the captain was grateful that he still had a home to return to. On the voyage home, the crew debated the reasons why the war was averted and in the end they decided it did not matter as long as they were alive.

The captain, standing watch one night as the Talwar cruised on the surface, saw the stars; Orion's Belt and Mars in the distance and thought that he still would time to teach his son the art of balancing a bicycle. The vessel still was one day's journey away from Karachi and yet the sea looked, unaltered for millenniums, strangely surreal. Once they docked in Karachi and came ashore, to their amusement they found all the Pakistanis watching a Spanish rerun of a cricket match. They all looked at each other with raised eyebrows and wondered if the world had really gone absurd during their time at sea. It had, but then again it had always been this way and no one had really noticed it, because they all were caught up in the peculiarities of a phenomena called life. The captain wondered if during his time at sea the world had changed, but then decided that he had changed and the world had remained just the same. Though he could not fully explain it, he knew that something inside of him was different. Exactly what he was not sure and doubted if he could fully understand it. As he prepared to leave the base, he was greeted a sunrise, but this time it was more vivid than he could ever remember it to be. A smile crept across his face as he marveled at its endless powers of renewal and walked away, as if to renew his own life, to a place where his son was waiting for him.