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There are other groups like this, building bridges of hope among young
people, but here is one I’d like to highlight, which has had good luck from its
visionary gardening: Seeds of Peace @ http://www.seedsofpeace.org/ Opening in South Asia: India and Pakistan's
vision of prosperity is desperately needed in the Middle East. OpEd by Fareed
Zakaria, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2004 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11577-2004Jan12.html Hostility between
India and Pakistan has become one of those facts of geopolitical life one
simply accepts, like the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Except
in South Asia there has been neither genuine peace nor even a peace process.
But things may be changing. India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met last week and, in Musharraf's words,
made history. Yes, it's the beginning of a long road; much could go wrong and
both sides remain inflexible on Kashmir. But suspend disbelief for a moment. In
substance and style, the two countries have moved farther in the past 10 days
than in the preceding 10 years. This is big news, and understanding why it
happened yields big lessons. First, give the
leaders their due. Vajpayee and Musharraf have pushed for a rapprochement over
the opposition of their bureaucracies. Vajpayee's important peace overture, a
speech in Srinagar last April 18, was read in advance only by his three closest
advisers. Musharraf is similarly driving policy with a few aides and over the
groans of much of the Pakistani establishment. Both leaders have
evolved. As a general, Musharraf was a provocateur, planning the infamous
military operation at Kargil in 1999. But the general is becoming a leader.
Despite his many stops and starts, Musharraf has done more to battle extremism
and promote reform than any Pakistani leader in the past quarter-century. The
recent attempts on his life demonstrate that at the very least the extremists
think he's fighting hard against them. For his part, Vajpayee
has consolidated his position, decisively winning a power struggle against his
hard-line deputy prime minister, L.K. Adavani. As the prime minister approaches
his last election and last term (he is 79), he wants to leave a legacy. For
Vajpayee, a decent man with honorable instincts, what better accomplishment
than a resolution of the 50-year-old tensions between India and Pakistan? But the focus on
personalities does not tell the whole story. The backdrop to last week's events
involves not just two people but two major
shifts in the global landscape: the
rising costs of terrorism and the benefits of globalization. For 15 years now
Pakistan has found a cheap and effective way to fight over Kashmir -- by
helping Kashmiri militants in their terrorist tactics. Sept. 11 changed that
game. It stigmatized terrorism and gave India a crucial ally on this issue: the
United States. Suddenly Pakistan found that supporting terror had become costly
indeed. But something equally
important has happened in South Asia over the past 15 years. India has been
transformed by a market revolution. Globalization has come to every part of the
country, whether in the form of a call-center job, a Chinese-made toy or American-inspired
television shows. Suddenly Indians want to compete. And they are. Last year
India's economy was the second fastest-growing in the world, at 7.4 percent.
Its business leaders speak confidently of becoming global players in their
fields. In this Indian future, a continuing cold war with Pakistan is a drag. During the same
period, however, Pakistan went down a different path, one of radical Islam and
domestic dysfunction. The results? In 1985 its per capita gross domestic
product was 6.5 percent higher than India's; today it's 23 percent lower. Its
birthrate is soaring at a frightening 2.8 percent, while India's is 1.7 percent
and dropping. Thirty percent of Pakistan's economy is consumed by its military. Musharraf has broken
Pakistan's fall. And he realizes now that to modernize Pakistan he needs peace
with India. But the country is proving hard to turn around; the rot has set in
deep. And yet, as Shekhar Gupta, one of India's smartest pundits, has noted,
peace will be a success only when Pakistan is a success. Here is the lesson: To
stop a country from encouraging conflict, place high costs on such behavior.
But to truly change, that country must also see a positive future. This is what
is lacking in the Middle East. Arab countries that fund and foment terrorism
should know that the costs of doing so have risen. But they must also see a
vision of prosperity -- and grasp it as India has. So far, too few Arabs
believe they can master this globalized world. Last week, however, we
had one small, encouraging counterexample. It turns out that Libya's decision
to renounce its nuclear program was crucially pushed by Moammar Gaddafi's son
-- trained at the London School of Economics -- who urged his father to help
Libya rejoin the world and the world economy. The
father could see only the stick. The son also saw the carrot.” |
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