Author: K.P.S. Gill
Publication: Outlook
Date: May 5, 2003
URL: http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20030505&fname=kps&sid=1
Introduction: The conflict over
Kashmir is not, as is widely believed, a quarrel over territory; it is,
rather, an irreducible conflict between two fundamentally incompatible
ideologies.
There has been an enormous burst
of activity and accompanying euphoria since India's Prime Minister, Atal
Behari Vajpayee, visited Srinagar on April 18 and made an offer of renewed
talks with Pakistan over the vexed Kashmir issue. The move has been greeted
with a crescendo of international approval, and has drawn enthusiastic
responses from the US as well, with Secretary of State Colin Powell declaring:
"All this is very, very promising at a time when we were beginning to wonder
whether or not we were not going back to the potential of conflict."
More significant has been the response
within Kashmir and in Pakistan. While there are dissenting voices in the
Valley - there would be reason for suspicion if there were none - the political
response has been largely positive, even eager. As for Pakistan, the sheer
rapidity of the reactions has been remarkable. There is currently little
available intelligence on the background of Prime Minister Vajpayee's offer,
but the consensus in the popular media appears to be that this was an off-the-cuff
gesture, not a well-thought-out and planned policy shift.
Nevertheless, the character and
velocity of responses from Pakistan, and the speed with which a graduated
peace process appears to be emerging, suggests that the probabilities of
substantial behind-the-scenes activities preceding these developments cannot
be entirely discounted. This is borne out further by the timing of the
appointment of N.N. Vohra as the Centre's new interlocutor in Kashmir,
and several reports over the past months regarding the creation of the
groundwork for official-level talks between the two countries.
Whatever be the case on this point,
the fact is that the present process has a far greater probability of success
than any of the preceding attempts, and the reasons for this are rooted
in the radical transformation of the geo-strategic context of Asia, the
impact of the US coalition campaign in Iraq, and the progressive 'denial
of plausible deniability' by the international community - and specifically
the US - to Pakistan on its role in international and cross-border terrorism.
Among the most significant of these
factors has been the humiliating defeat inflicted on the Saddam Hussein
regime in Iraq. This has sent a very strong message to the extreme elements
of political Islam, and to the rogue states bound to this ideology and
supportive of the terrorist campaigns inspired by it. It has long been
the position of the Institute for Conflict Management that military defeat
is a critical element in the delegitimisation of the terrorists and their
state sponsors, and the defeat in Iraq has had an inevitable impact on
Pakistan and the Musharraf regime, as well as on at least a segment of
those who had thrown in their lot with the Islamist extremists in the anticipation
of a great and proximate victory.
For Pakistan, this impact has been
multiplied manifold by a number of secondary inputs, including repeated
and strong statements from the highest echelons of the US leadership that
- while they continued to appreciate the country's assistance in apprehending
Al Qaeda elements operating in the country and 'cooperation on the war
against terror' - had also clearly confirmed Pakistan's role in supporting
terrorism in J&K, and had emphasized that the Musharraf regime had
failed to fulfill its promises and had not done enough on this count.
There has also been a strong media
buildup in the US - fuelling urgent speculation and apprehensions in the
Pakistani media and policy circles as well - regarding the possibility
of Pakistan becoming the next target of American 'pre-emptive action',
though this has been firmly denied by US authorities.
Subtle signs of a clear shift in
the US policy have also emerged as, for example, in the redrawing of the
CIA's map of Kashmir that earlier showed the entire area - both Pakistan
and Indian controlled Jammu & Kashmir - as a 'disputed territory'.
The recently revised maps - which would have gone through an extended process
of review by various Government Departments, and would certainly reflect
the consensus of the present Administration - mark out the areas east of
the Line of Control (LoC) as the "Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir",
while the territories to the west are designated "Pakistan-controlled areas
of Kashmir", correctly reflecting the position of the 1948 UN Resolution
that it was, in fact, only the "Pakistan-controlled" area that was in dispute.
The message to Pakistan cannot have
been ignored by the Musharraf regime.
There is, moreover, a growing awareness
among Pakistani commentators that the ongoing terrorist campaign cannot
upset the status quo in Kashmir, and a certain measure of pragmatism is
now clearly replacing the delusional strategic overreach that has dominated
Pakistani military thinking over the past decades.
Crucially, it is clear that, after
Iraq, the US would like to see peace in the Palestine-Israel conflict,
and the conflict over Kashmir. The shift in strategy on both these areas
is now visible, and the US is reportedly exerting extraordinary pressures
on Syria and Lebanon to stop covert support to Palestinian terrorist groups.
It is clear that parties in the conflict are now being forced into isolation
from the networks of their clandestine supporters in order to facilitate
a clear focus on the actual issues in the conflict, with terror being pushed
out of the negotiating equation. This, precisely, is what the US would
seek to secure on Kashmir.
With America's unarguable status
as the world's sole superpower, and the inevitable impact of its policies
on the economic and security future of this region, US interests, perspectives
and responses will certainly weigh in on the decisions of the South Asian
leadership.
In any event, Musharraf has tended
to go along with America on all major decisions since 9/11, and though
he will be reluctant to be seen as withdrawing too suddenly from his strident
position on Kashmir - "Kashmir is in our blood", as he put it - it is apparent
that, once the US position is stated clearly, he will fall obediently in
line. He may, of course, use the puppet Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali government,
and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, as a front to make the more
distasteful of about-turns, but compliance would tend to be inevitable.
Lest all this appears to be a matter
of course, it is important to strike a note of extreme caution. The situation
remains complex and immensely uncertain, and there is no surety that the
peace process will last. Indeed, if another madcap military adventurist
emerges on the Pakistani political scenario, if a few fundamentalists run
amuck, or if renegade terrorists unwilling to comply with the shifts in
policy of their state sponsors in Pakistan engineer a few dramatic strikes
in J&K, the entire process could well be derailed, yielding another
cycle of escalated violence.
The greater danger in the present
peace process, however, is that it fails to address underlying character
of the 'enduring rivalry', the 'intractable conflict' between the two countries.
The conflict over Kashmir is not, as is widely believed, a quarrel over
territory; it is, rather, an irreducible conflict between two fundamentally
incompatible ideologies - a pluralistic democratic ideology, on India's
part; and an authoritarian-fundamentalist- exclusionary Islamist ideology
that asserts that different belief systems cannot coexist within the same
political order.
A permanent peace in South Asia
will only result after one or the other of these ideologies succumbs -
and these are crucial to national identity, consciousness, and even the
existence of these two nation states. A permanent peace is, consequently,
contingent on Pakistan abandoning the ideology of hatred and exclusion
that lies at the very foundations of its creation.
Failing this, the only other option,
as I have suggested before, is the de-nuclearisation and de-militarization
of Pakistan, or the creation of a tremendous military imbalance in the
region that makes it impossible for Pakistan to engage in the military
adventurism that has characterized much of its independent existence.
(K.P.S. Gill is President, Institute
for Conflict Management which runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal and
brings out a weekly - South Asia Intelligence Review - courtesy which this
piece appears here.)
