India-Pakistan détente — an elusive goal?

No peace dividend without reducing trust deficit

Finally, foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are to meet next month. After BJP’s hardliner Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ascendency to power in May, this is considered a progress of sorts.

Nawaz Sharif was criticised at home by hardliners that he should not have taken the trip to New Delhi on the invitation of Modi to attend his oath taking ceremony. The bilateral meet on the sidelines of the meeting, however, was somewhat of a disappointment, especially for those who were expecting an immediate breakthrough.

Sharif was criticised at home for not even mentioning the ‘K’ word (Kashmir dispute) in the meeting. The statement read after the meeting by the newly inducted Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh spelt out New Delhi’s wish list, failing to even mention Islamabad’s concerns.

The fact that perennially estranged neighbours have decided to resume bilateral dialogue can be construed as somewhat of a vindication of Sharif’s strategy of engaging Modi from the outset.

But despite the resumption of the dialogue process there is little room for optimism. The unsavoury history of India-Pakistan relations is fraught with more setbacks than progress. Expectations are so low that even when the two nuclear states are talking it is construed as a thaw.

Modi never minced his words about dealing sternly with Pakistan once in power. However, during the latter part of the election campaign when the candidate Modi, realising that the Congress party, led by the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, was going to lose its shirt in the general elections, toned down his rhetoric about Indian Muslims and Pakistan.

Since becoming prime minister he has been ominously circumspect about making comments about relations with Pakistan. This perhaps gives hope to Nawaz Sharif that this is again his Vajpayee moment.

Sharif had mistakenly assumed in February 1999 that after Vajpayee’s Lahore bus diplomacy a solid foundation for cordial India-Pakistan relations was established.

Sharif had mistakenly assumed in February 1999 that after Vajpayee’s Lahore bus diplomacy a solid foundation for cordial India-Pakistan relations was established. But Pervez Musharraf, his recalcitrant army chief at the time, sabotaged the whole process by launching the disastrous Kargil misadventure.

This time around Sharif is on the right track in trying to go the extra mile to improve relations with New Delhi. In certain ways the time is more opportune than in 1999.

For starters, at the time our leadership was in denial about the looming existential threat from homegrown terrorist outfits and from across the border in Afghanistan. Now Islamabad is in a state of war with terrorists of all hue and colour.

Distinction between the so called good and bad Taliban is no longer relevant. All types of terrorists are fair game for the security forces and US drones. And both the civil and military leadership, albeit much belatedly, is on the same page.

Unlike the 1990s, we hear less and less about the Indian RAW being the perpetrator of terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The present military chief General Raheel Sharif is more focused on his job to eliminate the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) sanctuaries.

However, his predecessor General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani was reluctant to move against the Taliban. He often told his US interlocutors that, “Pakistan cannot wish away its enemies”, and that, “You (the US) may have the watches, but Taliban have the time”.

When an officer penned an article in the army’s journal, the Green Book, that terrorism was an existential threat for the military more than India, Kayani distanced himself from the officer’s remarks by claiming that these were the officer’s personal views, not reflecting any change in the India-centric security paradigm of the military.

It will be an extreme kind of naiveté to claim that General Sharif holds different views about the Indian threat than Kayani. India policy is an institutional bedrock of the Pakistani military, which can only be tweaked with, but not changed. It takes two to tango. India will have also to change in order to facilitate its smaller neighbours doing the same.

In this backdrop secretary level talks can hardly lay the foundations of a stable peace regime between the two belligerent neighbours. Much hope is being pinned upon the expected Nawaz-Modi summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in September. However, as things stand, the two sides remain embroiled in diplomatic tit-for-tat. An example of their priorities can be seen in India’s demand for speeding up trials of Bombay attack suspects, while Pakistan wants progress on the Samjotha Express attack investigation.

Before that happens, Sharif should take the military leadership on board to evolve a consensual India policy. Otherwise dialogue with the Indians will remain a one step forward and two steps backward process.

New Delhi is keen that Pakistan grants it much delayed MFN (most favoured nation) status. Pakistan’s foreign secretary has pledged that “Islamabad is working on it”. Leaving aside a few vested interests, MFN is a win-win situation for both the countries.

Another issue literally close to Pakistan’s heart is the water issue. New Delhi has been successfully, albeit illegally, building water storages as an upper riparian.

India is bound to bring up the issue of what it terms as cross-border terrorism perpetrated by so called non-state actors. In this context New Delhi wants JUD’s (Jamaat-ud-Dawah) Hafiz Saeed being brought to book by Pakistan. Islamabad, however, consistently maintains that there is not enough evidence to nab him.

Obviously the issue cannot be addressed without an institutionalised mechanism in place. This is not possible unless both countries abjure use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

It is unrealistic to expect India to implement UN resolutions on the festering Kashmir dispute. It has caused two wars in addition to triggering the Kargil conflict, but is no closer to resolution.

The BJP is committed to abrogate the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir in the Indian constitution. Such a move will have disastrous consequences. Hence some kind of closure on the Kashmir issue is fundamental to cordial India-Pakistan ties.

Another issue literally close to Pakistan’s heart is the water issue. New Delhi has been successfully, albeit illegally, building water storages as an upper riparian. But Pakistan, thanks to its poor legal representation at international fora, has been losing a good case simply by default. Unless water issues are resolved in good faith through mechanisms under the Indus Waters Treaty, they would remain a major bone of contention between the two water and energy deficient neighbours, possibly leading to water wars in the future.

Sharif has never hidden his penchant for going an extra mile for cordial relations with New Delhi. In this sense the ball is squarely in Modi’s court.

Whatever road he takes on India-Pakistan’s relations would determine the fate of teeming millions of the subcontinent, abjectly living under the poverty line. It is claimed that Modi is an economic visionary who is determined to perform a miracle by reviving the staggering Indian economy. Without cordial relations with Pakistan, this goal will be difficult to achieve.

On the flip side, apart from Modi, there are enough hardliners in the BJP to beat war drums even louder and flex India’s indomitable military might against Pakistan. This will have disastrous results for the nuclear-armed neighbours.

To avoid mutually assured destruction (MAD) there is no alternative to peace. Nonetheless, there can be no peace dividends without reducing the trust deficit between the two neighbours. This will remain an elusive goal without out of box thinking by leadership — civilian and military — of both countries.