Beyond skirmishes on the LoC-II

The Composite Dialogue, from its genesis at Male till now

The first part of this two-part article appeared on Monday under the title Beyond skirmishes on the LoC-I.

After the 2008 elections in Pakistan brought into power President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party, which was also committed to peace with India, the progress achieved through the backdoor channel could not be pursued further as India did not have faith in Zardari’s most positive overtures. The Mumbai tragedy then derailed the process for years and it was revived only after a long time.

This period witnessed a paradigm shift in Pakistan’s position from sticking to Kashmir as a ‘core issue’ to moving ahead in other areas, including trade. The cabinet headed by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani approved the proposal in 2012 to grant the MFN status to India and further liberalizing the visa regime. The responsibility for the failure to sign the accord on Kashmir agreed between Manmohan Singh and Gen Musharraf and partially wasting the opportunity to move ahead with President Zardari lies more with the Indian prime minister. He was too cautious to seize a historic opportunity for a cause that has otherwise been dear to him. Once again, he has floundered in response to Prime Minister Sharif’s positive overtures, knowing well that those who were responsible for the Mumbai mayhem are most possibly behind the LoC provocation – perhaps not exactly the Pakistan army, which is too busy with the principal threat to Pakistan’s security (by its own creation, the terrorists or jihadis) and preoccupied with the fight going on in the border regions of Pakistan-Afghanistan.

It must be noted that India’s threshold of patience broke down after Pakistani terrorists’ enacted bloody mayhem in Mumbai for over two days in front of live cameras and shouting reporters and anchors with gruesome live footage aired round the clock. The urge for peace after decades of animosity gave way to revenge and venom. It was the most difficult challenge for the Manmohan government to keep patience under tremendous public pressure. On the other hand, Pakistan continued to fumble by first getting into denial mode, initially not even accepting the identity of the sole surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab, and then dragging its feet over the investigation and not showing persistence in the trial of the attack’s alleged handlers and planners, even as the fifth anniversary of 26/11 draws nearer. Post-26/11, India is struck with its legitimate demand for some visible movement in the trial of the Mumbai carnage accused being tried in Rawalpindi.

If the core issue for Pakistan was Kashmir, holding back forward movement on any other count, even keeping SAARC hostage to bilateral disputes for decades, it is now India that insists on its core issue of cross-border terrorism and says that the dialogue process and terrorism cannot go together, even though it has been insisting on people-to-people contact and the liberalization of trade. Quite cynically, the two sides have continued to rotate rigidity and flexibility with equal ease as and when the other side shifts to the other end of the spectrum. It seems the subcontinent’s bilateral diplomacy is an instrument for keeping perpetual stalemates with snail-pace movement to allow some modicum of civility while keeping them within the outmoded national consensuses and precluding any out-of-the-box thinking. Rather than moving in a spiral mode, the talks have been fated to move in the same vicious circle. Whatever progress is made in a round is not concluded on crucial issues in round after round of talks and is invariably reversed. What is quite disgusting is that the parties renege on their promises and go back to square one as a new process is initiated. Even if some breakthroughs are made, as between former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi on Siachin and between Gen Musharraf and Mannmohan Singh on Kashmir, these are not taken forward and ratified. This shows, perhaps, that keeping conflict simmering and airing animosities suits the genius of conflicting nationalisms and powerful establishments living in regional Cold War times regardless of the aspirations of peace and amity among the peoples of the subcontinent.

Pakistan and its powerful establishment must realize the folly of creating a highly intractable, devious, violent and divisive mass of terrorist and extremist outfits as an instrument of its foreign and security policies in the misconception of creating ‘strategic assets’. These over six dozen religiously extremist, sectarian and violent organizations have now turned into self-perpetuating monsters who have their own worldview, means of living, and anarchist agendas and are ideologically committed against the nation-state. Invariably, all of them, including the large chunks of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, have become autonomous and turned their guns against their erstwhile masters. Instead of remaining the ‘strategic assets’ of the Pakistani security establishment, they are freelancers in the market of global terrorism. Indeed they fight among themselves over sectarian and factional dividends of warfare and expand their fiefdoms at each other’s cost across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions and beyond. But they agree to subvert the Pakistani state, its constitution, democracy and all state institutions and are mostly aligned with Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. The strategy to use them to keep and create ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and run subliminal warfare in India or ‘liberate’ Kashmir has backfired. Internal terrorism and religious extremism has become the principal security threat to Pakistan’s existence, as Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has been repeatedly insisting and rejecting any justification whatsoever for the existence of this phenomenon.

Given the possibility of the destabilization of at least the south-eastern Pakhtun belt of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of most of the US-led ISAF troops from Afghanistan in 2014, Pakistan is left with no option but to clear its own territory of all kinds of terrorists without harboring the misconception of good or bad Taliban if it wants to preempt the Taliban’s surge from swaying its own Pakhtun belt and mainland Pakistan. All terrorist sanctuaries have to be wiped out and the writ of the state has to be extended to every nook and corner of Pakistan’s territory. This will require cooperation with the international community for a smooth transition and reconciliation in Afghanistan on the one hand, and a historic peace agreement with India and the installation of a comprehensive, uninterruptible and productive institutional framework, including the highest levels of security mechanisms to jointly fight terrorism, to resolve all differences peacefully and promote all-sided cooperation in the best interests of the South Asian region.

On the other hand, India and its no-less-powerful establishment that must shed its old fixations about Pakistan and the baggage of Partition, and understand objectively how Pakistan is embroiled with its own contradictions and trying to find a way out of the mess it has created over the last few decades. Instead of jumping to join any move against Pakistan or exploiting any opportunity to pay back in the same coin, as in Balochistan or across the Af-Pak border to cause trouble in Pakistan’s backyard, India must offer Pakistan a quid pro quo—helping Pakistan keep its north-western frontier stable coupled with a joint strategy to keep Afghanistan stable in exchange for an end to India-specific terrorism and conflict on the eastern border, including a settlement over Kashmir as envisaged by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Musharraf.

The ISAF’s withdrawal of forces in 2014 from Afghanistan demands a regional consensus to keep Afghanistan peaceful, united and stable. It can, for narrow tactical gains, also offer numerous possibilities for proxy wars by regional players, the Central Asian states, India, Iran and Pakistan in particular. Given the historic rivalry between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan could become yet another destabilizing arena of sub-continental stupid rivalry. But that must be avoided so as to not let a more horrendous specter engulf the broader South-Western and South Asian regions. Instead of excluding India, Pakistan must bring it on board and the latter must appreciate the sensitivities of Pakistan on its South-Western border. This will require a strategic dialogue both at the highest political and military levels, covering all aspects of strategic equations and the legitimate interests of both countries. Time is running out: both sides must abandon the old paradigms of animosity and bury the hatchet. The year 2014 will throw up the greatest challenge for peace and cooperation: will there be statesmen on both sides who will take hold of the opportunity and not squander it?

The writer is secretary-general of the South Asia Free Media Association and editor of South Asian Journal.