February 1, 2001Washington / Riyadh / Mumbai / LahoreRolling Briefs
The day after Vajpayee overruled his own cabinet, the corridor stopped being a bilateral experiment.
It became a regional signal.
In Washington, that signal was read as acceleration. In Riyadh, it was read as deviation. In Mumbai, it was read as insult. In Lahore, it was read as provocation.
Peace, in South Asia, always triggered a strange coalition of enemies.
Not because they loved war.
Because peace disrupted the business models that fed on fear.
Langley's Read
CIA Headquarters, VirginiaInternal Assessment Note (Restricted)
The CIA's South Asia desk didn't treat the Kartarpur festival as a religious event. It treated it as an operational variable—a crowd node, a media node, a legitimacy node. They watched it the way engineers watch a pressure valve.
A senior analyst summarized the problem in a sentence that would never appear in public:
"If Kartarpur works, Musharraf becomes harder to shape."
The station chief's cable was re-read. The same two lines were highlighted again:
"He wants measurable verification."
"He is building stakeholders."
Stakeholders were the danger. Militants could be infiltrated. Politicians could be pressured. But a hybrid coalition of diaspora donors, traders, and religious sentiment was harder to "manage" without visible coercion.
A deputy director asked the blunt question.
"Can we slow this down without looking like we slowed it down?"
No one answered directly.
But one analyst offered the real framework:
"You don't stop it," she said. "You widen the threat narrative around it—terror, trafficking, infiltration. You raise the cost of participation until caution becomes 'responsibility.'"
Another added, "And you let India believe they're participating because of our moderation."
The room agreed without needing to vote.
This would not be blocked with force.
It would be surrounded with risk.
Riyadh's Disapproval
Saudi Embassy Channel — Private Messaging Through Intermediaries
Saudi displeasure arrived the way it always did: politely, indirectly, through channels that could later deny they were channels.
A message came through a trusted intermediary in Islamabad—phrased as concern for "stability," "religious sentiment," and "unnecessary provocation."
It was not really about Kartarpur.
It was about precedent.
If Pakistan could publicly host a Sikh devotional festival and normalize cross-border religious access, then Pakistan's religious gatekeepers would no longer be the only moral interface with the Muslim world. It would signal independence from the ideological sponsorship model that had been carefully cultivated for decades.
Musharraf's aides summarized it in the only language GHQ respected:
"Riyadh is unhappy. They think you are loosening the clerical leash."
Aditya, inside, understood the deeper meaning:
They're not worried about Sikhs. They're worried about Pakistan discovering it can govern religion instead of being governed by it.
Mumbai's Rage
MumbaiOpposition Briefings / Street Reactions
Shiv Sena reacted exactly as expected: by turning devotion into betrayal.
Their spokesmen shouted on television that the corridor was Pakistan's "dirty move," that the festival was a "trap," and that any Sikh leader supporting it was "doing Pakistan's work." They framed the five-dollar fee as insult. They framed the joint market as smuggling. They framed Vajpayee's willingness as weakness.
It was not policy analysis.
It was identity theatre.
And it had an audience.
Other opposition voices joined in—some out of conviction, many out of opportunity. They sensed blood: if anything went wrong, they could claim they had warned the nation.
In Delhi, intelligence summaries began to show a familiar pattern:
Disapproval is becoming organized.
Lahore's Street Threats
PakistanReligious Hardliners / "Activist" Networks
In Pakistan, the backlash took the predictable shape of theology—because theology was the easiest banner to carry into the streets.
Mullahs thundered that Kartarpur was "opening gates to infidels." Some called it humiliation. Others called it infiltration. Some warned openly that they would "take the streets back."
But Musharraf's internal briefings were more precise than the mullahs' slogans:
Not all of these agitators were funded by foreign clerical money.
Some were being powered by a different kind of funding—cleaner, quieter, routed through NGOs and "civil society" fronts.
Aditya recognized the pattern: protests with logistics. Anger with transport. Chanting with printed banners that appeared too quickly to be organic.
Network agitation, he thought. Sponsored chaos.
And chaos needed only one good image: a crowd, a scuffle, a scream, a stampede, a stone thrown.
A single "incident."
The Preventive Move
That night, Musharraf did not call for devotees to come.
He did something that looked religious—but was actually administrative containment.
He planned a pilgrimage.
Not to Kartarpur first.
To Saudi Arabia first.
And then—unexpectedly—to the UAE.
Mahmood looked up from the schedule draft, startled.
"Sir," he said, "you're going to Riyadh now? With Kartarpur burning hot?"
Musharraf's reply was quiet.
"I'm not going for prayer," he said. "I'm going for permission."
Mahmood's face tightened. "From whom?"
"From the ecosystem," Musharraf replied. "If I neutralize clerical disapproval abroad, the street here loses oxygen."