The Information War

Pakistan has lost the diplomatic war in Kargil. It may slowly be losing the ground war too. But if New Delhi does not stop treating the media, and the foreign media in particular, as enemies, it is most certainly going to lose the information war. In the long run, this may prove more costly for India than the other two.

Those watching bbc over the last four weeks must have noticed that despite the G-8's rejection of Pakistan's claim that it has not crossed the LoC, it still refers to the invaders as 'what India claims are Pakistan-backed militants ' . These remarks are invariably coupled with film clips that show Pakistani guns  replying' to Indian artillery barrages which, the correspondent tells you, have killed so many civilians and driven so many more from their homes. It takes several days of viewing for the suspicion to dawn that the clips were all shot at the same place and time. But since the Indian establishment hasn't helped a single foreign journalist to go to Kargil or Dras, much less to the bottom of the ridges where the fighting is, bbc has nothing else to show.

A more serious lapse is the neglect of the world's print media. The Pakistani government understands its importance. That's why both information minister Mushahid Husain and foreign minister Sartaj Aziz make themselves available whenever the foreign media ask for them. India cannot gain a hearing abroad until its spokespersons too enter into a dialogue with the foreign press.

But this seems to be the last thing on anyone's mind. To cite one example, in a recent Washington Post issue, its correspondent Pamela Constable described a visit to Khargam in Kashmir where villagers claim the army set fire to the entire village after it discovered and shot two militants who were hiding in it. So far, other than letting the army issue a routine denial that this was not deliberate, and claiming that the houses caught fire in the crossfire between the militants and the soldiers, the government has done nothing to investigate Constable's allegation. Enquiries reveal that the army unit that flushed out the militants did  over-react', and that the village was probably torched as a warning to others not to harbour militants. But opinion within the government is unanimous that this is not the time to start an investigation.

The government couldn't be more wrong. To see just how much damage the media can do to a country, one has only to recall how nato's war in Serbia began. Endless repetition by the media that 200,000 to 300,000 Croats and Bosnian Muslims had been killed and 20,000 to 60,000 women raped by the Serbs helped to create the term  ethnic cleansing' and brand the Serbs as genocidal war criminals. When the violence began to escalate in Kosovo, nato members with Bosnia fresh in their minds refused to stand idly by.

But while there was ethnic cleansing in Bosnia there was no genocide or mass rape. For, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has found after detailed analysis that taking Serbs, Croats and Muslims together, in all about 30,000 to 50,000 civilians and combatants lost their lives.

nato's onslaught in Kosovo was also triggered by a Serbian raid on a village outside Prekaz, in central Kosovo, in February '98, which they either would not or could not explain, and in which 52 people were killed. But news reports citing the Kosovo Liberation Army (kla) gave the number as 70. They also (correctly) reported that entire families had been killed as the Serbs blasted the houses and torched what was left. Much later, it emerged that this wasn't an exercise in sowing terror among the Kosovars, as claimed by US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, but an expedition to capture or kill Adem and Hamza Jashari, the leaders of the oldest wing of the kla, and other adult members of the Jashari clan who were all its members.

The raid  went wrong' when those who surrendered were killed by the Serbian forces. But by the time all this emerged, nato had already begun to bomb Yugoslavia. One can only wonder what would have happened if the Yugoslav government had explained the raid's purpose to foreign correspondents, candidly admitted that those involved had violated human rights and ordered an investigation with the purpose of punishing the perpetrators of the crime.

The similarities to Khargam are uncomfortable. Two  guest' militants took shelter in Khargam, none of whose inhabitants seemed prepared to inform the authorities. When the army got wind of their presence, they launched a cordon and search operation. Although Constable's report does not mention it, the army must have sustained casualties in the initial burst of firing with which the militants greeted its approach. The anger generated by that and the fact that the village chose to remain silent led to its burning. The crucial difference between Khargam and Prekaz was the fact that the Indian army evacuated the villagers before closing in on the militants.

But burning Khargam was a violation of human rights and should be investigated. New Delhi needs to remember that it has not only to live up to its international commitments, but to the expectations of the Kashmiris whom it wants to keep as willing citizens of India. Every such  over-reaction' undermines the position of Farooq Abdullah's government and of all mlas, and dissuades political activists in Kashmir from eschewing militancy in favour of democratic politics. There are mitigating circumstances on this occasion such as the thinning down of the army in the valley to divert troops to Kargil and the increase, by more than a thousand, in the number of  Islamic militants' in the valley over the past year. Both have raised the pressure on the security forces and hardened their attitude towards collaborators in the valley. But these pressures cannot be understood until they are conceded and openly discussed.