Dragonfire (15 page)

Hamid Khan collated his papers, which he had ignored for the last five minutes of his speech. He walked slowly down the aisle of the chamber, as if inspecting a guard of honour on a parade
ground, his hands clasped behind his back, the papers rolled awkwardly, holding them more like a swagger stick than the notes from a politician’s speech. Just before he reached the door, the
first cheer broke out, timid at first and far away. But within seconds it spread with clapping, then the shuffle of feet as member after member in the chamber rose to give the military ruler a
standing ovation. Khan stopped, looking around, clearly surprised at the reaction. He turned to Masood more for refuge than anything else. Masood had the door open. The bodyguards stepped back to
let the general through.

Khan turned back towards the chamber and held up his hand to speak again. The applause quietened. ‘Threats of sanctions from the West have only just begun. For a while, Pakistan will be
branded as a pariah state. The members of my government will be demonized as monsters. Pakistani money now in Western banks may be frozen. We will be denied visas. Those of you who manage to travel
abroad will be followed and spied upon. Every tool of the Western powers will be used to intimidate us. But ride through it, ignore the arrogance of the developed world, and we will find that the
sanctions will fade away.

‘No society has developed from poverty to wealth as a democracy. The repression of Victorian Britain was an appalling spectrum of suffering and human rights abuses. The apartheid and
racism of twentieth-century America is a blight upon that country’s history. Democracy has pulled Africa and South Asia into debt, humiliation and beggary. Autocracy in East Asia has created
wealth and self-confidence. We may have democracy, but not in our lifetime, although today the unashamed dictatorship of Pakistan has laid the first seeds towards creating a fairer, juster and
freer society than this country has ever had before.’

The members were still standing, but they had fallen quiet. Khan left the chamber in silence.

Back in the Prime Minister’s office, Hamid Khan picked up the green hotline telephone on his desk. ‘This is Hamid Khan in Islamabad,’ he said softly.
‘I would like to speak to the Indian Prime Minister, please.’

Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi

Local time: 1000 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 0430 Friday 4 May 2007

‘We haven’t spoken
directly before,’ said Khan to Hari Dixit.

Chandra Reddy happened to be with Dixit when the hotline call came through, and as the Prime Minister spoke he slipped transcriptions of Khan’s speech onto the desk, highlighting the final
section about the airstrikes and referendum. The tape recorders were on.

‘Only a solution to Kashmir can lead to permanent peace in South Asia, and this is the way to do it,’ Khan said. ‘I can only remind you that the original idea for a referendum
came not from us but from India in 1947.’

‘The UN resolution of 13 August 1948 specified that Pakistan withdraw from Jammu and Kashmir, which you haven’t,’ replied Dixit. ‘The second resolution of 5 January 1949
stated that people should be consulted about their future only after the withdrawal and after normalcy had returned. That hasn’t yet happened.’

‘The resolutions were overtaken by the Simla Agreement of 1972,’ Khan said. ‘But in any case, all this is long ago. Let’s press ahead without dragging up
history.’

Dixit interrupted. ‘The resolutions still stand.’

‘We must focus on the future and not the past.’

‘You have been organizing an insurgency in Kashmir for the past twenty years,’ Dixit continued, calling in every political and diplomatic instinct to prevent himself from slamming
down the phone. ‘Two days ago the Northern Army Commander and the Home Minister were murdered by the shooting down of their helicopter with a Stinger missile.’

Khan paused, then said: ‘I have only just taken power. Some things have gone further than I would have allowed.’

‘Did you order the Stinger attack?’

‘My information is that it was carried out by extremists, attached to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi guerrillas.’

‘Where did they get the missiles from?’

‘The Taleban. We have told the Afghan government that we will not tolerate another such incident. All Stingers in the hands of the Pakistan government are accounted for.’

Reddy, hovering behind, wrote
TIBET
in prominent capital letters and put it on top of the papers in front of Dixit. ‘And the attack on Dharamsala,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘We have a Pakistani suspect, caught with weapons.’

‘I know. But I can’t add anything. Let us start from yesterday. My intention, Hari, is to end conflict, not begin another one.’

‘Well, General,’ said Dixit, refusing to be drawn into a first-name relationship, ‘I will consult and get back to you within the day. But as you know, the Indian people would
be reluctant to permit the incorporation of Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan simply because the majority of the people there are Muslims. The impact on the Muslims in India would be dangerous and it
would threaten the secular basis of our society.’

‘Don’t talk about history again, Hari,’ said Khan. ‘India is no longer secular. It is a Hindu state and Pakistan is a Muslim state. Once you accept that, Kashmir will
solve itself.’

When Dixit ended the call, Reddy said: ‘We can’t accept, sir. It would be political suicide.’

‘I know,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘Let’s get out a statement saying that.’

New China News Agency, Lhasa, Tibet, China

Local time: 1300 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 0500 Friday 4 May 2007

Dateline: Lhasa

Recent disturbances in Lhasa and other areas of Tibet created by a handful of splittists have ended.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London

Local time: 0800 Friday 4 May 2007

It was highly
unusual for a senior civil servant, particularly one so closely involved in intelligence work, to call in a television presenter for a classified briefing.
But John Stopping, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, had been instructed to do so by the Foreign Secretary and was relieved, in part, to have known the presenter, Max Harding, from a
posting in Moscow nearly twenty years earlier. Stopping chose to meet in his office, not for a restaurant breakfast meeting as the Foreign Secretary had tried to suggest. He was suspicious of the
press and would never have agreed to be seen socializing with a journalist.

‘I understand you have the Chinese Foreign Minister, Jamie Song, as a guest on your phone-in show this morning,’ said Stopping, when Harding had sat down. ‘I wondered if you
might like some information with which to tease him?’

‘Like what?’ said Harding, who was equally concerned about being fed a line from the British government. Harding was the presenter of
Globe Talk
, a live interview and phone-in
show on BBC World Service Television. When his producer rang up the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place to ask if the Ambassador would come on the show, they called back half an hour later offering
Jamie Song in a satellite link from Hong Kong.

‘It will be a BBC exclusive,’ said the Chinese Press Attaché. ‘We have not approached CNN because we feel that China’s position will be better understood in Europe
than in the United States. You do not need to submit written questions and he will talk about anything you wish.’

Stopping spread a pile of satellite pictures on his desk. ‘These are surveillance photographs of Chinese military activities over the past few days, and, during a break in cloud cover,
pictures of what look like widespread disturbances in Tibet. You can’t use them on the programme and, frankly, without expert knowledge they won’t mean much to you.’

Harding stood up and picked up two photographs. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘We believe that the Chinese are using the raid on Drapchi prison in Lhasa to make an unnecessary show of force against India. We accept India’s explanation that a unit of the
Special Frontier Force ran amok. We hope that a line will be drawn under the incident and relations normalized. These pictures, however, show substantive troop reinforcements moving in right along
the border with India. They have become particularly active in the mountain areas towards Sikkim, where India and China have fought several skirmishes, and the route along which we expect Major
Choedrak and Lhundrup Togden are trying to make their escape.’

‘Is he still alive?’ interrupted Harding.

‘We assume so. If he had reached India or Bhutan or if the Chinese had caught him I am sure we would know. If your viewers can bear the geography lesson, mingle their thoughts on Tibet
with those of Kashmir, where Pakistan and India have been hammering it out for sixty years.’

‘The killing of the Western army commander and the Home Minister and the Indian airstrikes across the LoC?’

‘Yes. We think of Kashmir and Tibet as being on separate flanks of India. But if you look at the map they are frighteningly close to each other. Take in that and then look at the other
flashpoints along this border.’ Stopping moved to the coffee table and laid a detailed map of the region over it. ‘Starting in the west, this tiny pocket of land just north of the LoC
– fifteen thousand square miles known as Shaksgam Valley – was voluntarily given by Pakistan to China in 1965. The problem is that the territory was not Pakistan’s to give. The
whole of Kashmir is claimed by India and there are UN resolutions regarding it. Move a fraction east, and there’s this blob of wasteland in northern Ladakh called Aksai Chin, which China took
in 1959 when it was building a strategic highway between Xinjiang and Tibet. It’s about twenty-five thousand square miles, still under Chinese control, but claimed by India. These areas are
among the most difficult places in the world to fight a war. No possibility of moving troops through into Ladakh. No land communication whatsoever. It would be easier on the moon, I would think.
But if you look here on the map north of Chushul, east of Pangong Tso Lake, these shapes here are a column of tanks being moved closer to the border to threaten Indian positions.’

Harding was taking notes. ‘Give me the origins of the China–India border dispute in a nutshell.’

‘At the time, two bald men fighting over a comb. Or two young cockerels flexing their muscles. Look at it how you want,’ said Stopping. ‘In 1914, when China was in anarchy,
Britain signed a border agreement with the Tibetans. It’s known as the McMahon Line and stretches 1,360 kilometres along the eastern section of the border running from Bhutan to Burma. It was
also initialled by the Chinese representative at the negotiations, but never accepted by Beijing. The area directly south of the McMahon Line to what was the border of British India remains
disputed and makes up much of the new Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which India announced in 1986.

‘After the Communists came to power, China and India signed a friendship treaty, the Panchisila Treaty or the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. It was 1954, and Mao was too busy
consolidating his power to raise the border issue, although he steadfastly refused to recognize the McMahon Line. Then Chinese troops poured into Tibet, and by 1958, the friendship treaty was out
the window and the relationship had deteriorated into open animosity.

‘Then came the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the escape of the Dalai Lama to India, which overshadowed everything else. Mao was outraged. The next year, Chou Enlai, Mao’s trusted
moderate lieutenant, went to Delhi to thrash out a compromise. They were talking about territory where no sane human being would want to live. No oil. No minerals. Just national pride. The
negotiations stalled, and in September 1962 there were the first skirmishes. On 20 October China crossed the McMahon Line on the eastern sector of the border and went into Ladakh to the west in a
massive incursion; two days later the Indian army defences collapsed. Fighting continued for a month, then China withdrew back across the line. The Indian parliament passed a resolution saying that
India “would recover every inch of its sacred soil lost to China”. That vow hangs in the mess room of the Northern Command headquarters at Udhampur.’

‘This is a lot more than I can say on television,’ said Harding, looking up from his notes.

‘The Foreign Secretary didn’t instruct me to write your script,’ retorted Stopping. ‘Only to explain to you the backdrop of the conflict. And the nub is this. China was
not concerned about the geographical boundaries. As I said, the territory itself is worthless and inhospitable. It wanted India to abandon its recognition of the McMahon Line, which implicitly
meant it accepted the sovereign authority of Tibet. There’s been a lull since the ’62 war, but the issues are still there.’ He ran his hand along the border. ‘Along this
stretch, China claims this disputed area in Kashmir, and ten thousand square miles from the Karakorum pass. It also claims Arunachal Pradesh and does not recognize Sikkim as part of
India.’

‘One hell of a lot of areas of dispute between two nuclear powers,’ remarked Harding.

‘That is exactly the point the Foreign Secretary wanted you to understand.’

Foreign Ministry Building, Hong Kong, China

Local time: 1800 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 1000 Friday 4 May 2007

Jamie Song chose
to be interviewed in Hong Kong because it represented the modern liberal face of China. Like Tibet, Hong Kong was an autonomous region and an example to
the world. If you don’t fight the motherland, she will give you all you want.

The spotlight was harsh in Jamie Song’s eyes. He asked them to change its angle so that he could look straight at the camera without squinting. He had already changed from a swivel office
chair to a straight back, so he would not move inadvertently while in shot. He made sure the sound technician clipped the microphone on the outside of his tie, instead of concealing it underneath,
to lower the risk of rustling and interference. He held notes in case the cameramen were asked to do cut-aways to his hand. With nothing to hold, he could appear tense and nervous. With ten seconds
to air-time he brushed the lapels of his suit, specially chosen because it was hand-made in Hong Kong. He listened to the opening music and then to Harding’s introduction.