Author: K P S Gill
Publication: Asia Times Online
Date: January 14, 2004
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FA14Df02.html
It would be tedious to list
how many times India and Pakistan have "agreed to talk", and the disastrous
record of failure and recurrent violence. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee noted rightly at the South Asian Association for Regional Summit
Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad last week: "History can remind us, guide
us, teach us or warn us. It should not shackle us."
It is, however, not history that
"shackles" India and Pakistan to violence in Kashmir, but ideology: the
unrelenting ideology of extremist Islam that underlies the creation and
existence of Pakistan - expressed in the two-nation theory that holds that
Muslims and non-Muslims cannot coexist within the same political order
- and that fuels the jihad factories that continue to feed the supply lines
of terror across much of the world. This ideology, and no other legal or
historical entitlement, is the basis of Pakistan's "claim" on Kashmir;
this again, is why the violence does not end.
Cynicism, however, is not a particularly
productive perspective, and it is useful to examine how the rhetoric of
the unscheduled joint Indo-Pakistan press statement, which hijacked the
agenda at the SAARC summit, is to be assessed. What, realistically, should
be our expectations from the current peace process?
An examination of the harsh realities
of the ground in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) provides insufficient evidence
of a radical discontinuity with past trends in terrorist violence. Violence
did, of course, decline in year 2003, as compared to 2002, even as 2002
represented a decline against 2001 (Total fatalities, 2001: 4,507; 2002:
3,022; 2003: 2,542). This downward trend is overwhelmingly seen as a consequence
of a radically altered international context, and the increasing difficulty
of managing the internal contradictions of the situation in Pakistan. There
is sufficient evidence in the actions and statements of the Pakistani state
and its leadership which demonstrates no fundamental change in ideology,
perspective or strategic intent.
Nevertheless, for those who focus
intently and exclusively on the "ground realities", it is at times useful
to remember that sentiment itself is part of this ground reality. And there
are many, particularly in the English language press in India and Pakistan,
who believe that the sentiment has changed in South Asia, and that there
is a genuine desire for peace and coexistence between the people of the
two countries. Little of this was evidenced in the commentaries of the
various Pakistani "experts" who were allowed to swamp the Indian media
during the SAARC summit, and who exhibited no dilution of the rigidity
and stridency of their positions.
Nor, indeed, does the average Indian
believe that there is a possibility of a lasting peace between the two
countries, given the track record of the past over five and a half decades.
Indeed, with the large number of security personnel who have been dying
in action against the Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in J&K, anger against
Pakistan is high particularly among the rural population, from where most
of India's soldiers are drawn. With each returning coffin, stories about
those who die are repeated in the villages and in marketplaces across the
countryside, and these have deeply influenced the thinking of common folk.
There are, of course, some voices
for peace in Pakistan, and the new "doves" are most voluble in the English
language media. But what is, again, ignored, is the sentiment of the masses,
which finds more accurate expression in the vernacular press. Thus, writing
after the Islamabad summit, one commentator in the Urdu daily, Nawa-e-Waqt,
fumed: "We took a u-turn in Afghanistan to please America; we got our old
friends killed by the Americans, and also killed them ourselves; but the
whole advantage is going to India, and we are being pushed against the
wall ... we are going to take another [u-turn] on Kashmir, then, perhaps,
our atomic program (God forbid) will also be sacrificed to the u-turn.
After so many u- turns, what will the people get?"
The author's "solution", in brief,
was a "thousand cuts", an old theme in the strategic community in Pakistan.
These are sentiments that have been widely repeated in the Urdu media in
that country. The assembly lines of the jihad, moreover, are still to be
dismantled in Pakistan, and for the average Pakistani, the country's nuclear
arsenal still remains its primary national asset, reflecting the degree
of perversion the national psyche has undergone.
But the strategy of a "thousand
cuts" against India has failed, and will hopefully fail wherever else it
is tried. The truth is, there have been very significant transformations
in South Asia, though the most momentous of these may not be the ones that
the euphoria of the "peace process" carries our attention to.
For one, President General Pervez
Musharraf, it must be explicitly recognized, has for some time now been
in dire need of relief. The international pressure - particularly after
a continuing succession of disclosures relating to Pakistan's role in nuclear
proliferation in North Korea, Iran and Libya, as well as on the potential
leakage of such technologies to non-state terrorist entities - was becoming
unbearable. There is, at present, almost a report, editorial or article
a day in some of the most prominent American newspapers focusing on Pakistan's
transgressions, both in connection with nuclear proliferation and international
terrorism, as well as on Pakistan's deceit and duplicity with regard to
its purported "cooperation" with America in the global "war against terrorism".
Internally, moreover, a range of economic and political pressures have
been acting on Musharraf, and these peaked in two apparent attempts at
assassination, which seem to have shaken the dictator's confidence in staying
the course on Pakistan's enterprise of strategic overextension and sponsorship
of terrorism.
Under the circumstances, unfortunately,
the deal at Islamabad has virtually let Pakistan off the hook, abruptly
restoring a legitimacy that had steadily been eroded over the past more
than two years. Indeed, the case that India had built against Pakistan
over this period has virtually been dismantled through this single action,
and it would be possible (though he may not choose this course of action
in the immediate future) for Musharraf to continue his support to terrorism
in J&K, even as he projects himself as the first target and victim
of terrorism, creating an impenetrable veil of "credible deniability" that
will only be gradually worn away by repeated and extreme transgressions.
Worse, it is now clear that even if there are major acts of terrorism on
Indian soil and their source identified to be located in Pakistan, the
possibility or legitimacy of any strong reaction by India - including the
suspension of talks and "confidence-building measures" - has substantially
been eliminated. Musharraf would simply argue, as he has in the past, but
more credibly now since his position has in some sense been validated by
a "peace process" with India, that these are lawless jihadis, acting without
any official support, and that Pakistan and he personally were also targets
of the same extremist elements.
In this, it is useful to understand
the degree to which India has yielded its past position, starting from
the "hard line" adopted during Operation Parakram. The prime minister had
said that there would be no negotiations until Pakistan demonstrably ended
support to terrorism and stopped cross-border infiltration; until the infrastructure
of terrorism in Pakistan had been dismantled; until those who were on India's
"list of 20 most wanted" had been handed over by Pakistan. Not one of these
conditions has been fulfilled. But India has entered into talks with Pakistan
now.
Clearly, both parties in the process
are, in the main, buying time, and there is little by way of a concrete
strategy for resolution. The most significant element in this process,
in fact, is not any possible set of "solutions" that may be defined, but
essentially the passage of time and the possible de-escalation of violence
in the region while the two countries engage in confidence-building measures.
Eventually, Kashmir will be resolved, not by good intentions and neighborly
values, but by the necessity of changing circumstances in a world that
is growing impatient with terrorism.
There is now at least some evidence
of fatigue and fear in the Pakistani leadership, and an increasing conviction
that the adventurism of the past is not only unsustainable, but would,
indeed, attract extreme penalties. The very existence of Pakistan is, today,
under threat. This, and not the absurd and artificial "formulae" that have,
from time to time, been proposed for the resolution of the "Kashmir issue",
is the key to the future.
K P S Gill is the publisher, South
Asia Intelligence Review; president, Institute for Conflict Management,
a non-profit society set up in 1997 in New Delhi committed to the evaluation
and resolution of problems of internal security in South Asia.
