Untold Facts

India’s belated turnaround

The Indian proposal to Pakistan for open-ended talks at the level of foreign secretaries to discuss all outstanding issues is a belated admission by New Delhi that its refusal to engage in a dialogue with Pakistan more than a year after Mumbai has been hurting Indian interests more than it is harming Pakistan’s. Reflecting this recognition, Indian officials have uncharacteristically been quite civilised in their language and tone towards Pakistan recently, and especially since the proposal was made.

India has so far shown reluctance to agree to the Pakistani proposal that the old format of “composite dialogue” should be revived, but the last word has not yet been said. When the two foreign secretaries get together later this month, the major task before them will be to prepare the ground for a meeting between their prime ministers at the sidelines of the SAARC Summit in the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu on April 26 and 27. If things go according to plan, a formal resumption of bilateral dialogue will be announced at this summit.

Manmohan Singh’s willingness, if not keenness, to start the dialogue process with Pakistan was evident also at the Sharm el-Shaikh Summit last July, at which he agreed to de-link the issue of talks from that of terrorism. But Manmohan Singh was made to backtrack by the unexpectedly strong backlash which came not only from the opposition BJP but also from within his own party and the Indian foreign policy and security establishments.

More than half a year since then, the Manmohan Singh government has now launched another diplomatic initiative to resume dialogue with Pakistan. He has a difficult balancing act to perform. He has to convince Pakistan that the talks will be not only about terrorism but will cover other issues of interest to it, while assuring domestic public opinion that the focus will be on terrorism and that progress on other issues would be linked to action by Pakistan on punishing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack.

According to Prime Minister Gilani, India has been forced to the negotiating table because of world pressure. This is a mistaken view. True, Washington has been urging Delhi to relieve pressure on Pakistan’s eastern borders to enable the Pakistani army to concentrate more on the fight against terrorists on its western borders. But Delhi’s readiness to resume talks, despite its unhappiness over what it sees as lack of action by Pakistan against terrorists who seek to target India, is founded in India’s own calculation that its wider interests and goals are better served by restarting a dialogue with Pakistan. There are several reasons for this.

First, India recognises that its “coercive diplomacy” towards Pakistan has failed. In 2004, when India last resumed talks after a terrorism-related suspension, it extracted a price: a commitment from Musharraf that he will not permit any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support terrorism in any manner. This time, India initially demanded a bigger price: a dismantling of the “infrastructure of terrorism.” Since then, India has been scaling down its demand. On Feb 3 Foreign Minister S M Krishna said that Pakistan’s readiness to accept Ajmal Kasab’s confessional statement as evidence to prosecute the planners of Mumbai was a constructive signal and that India “should be quite satisfied with Pakistan taking a few steps to investigate the Mumbai attacks.” This is a far cry from the demand made in 2008 by M K Narayanan, then India’s national security adviser, for “destroying” the ISI.

Second, India has been rattled by the recent US readiness to take the Taliban on board in an eventual Afghanistan settlement and by Karzai’s offer to hold talks with their top leaders. India was virtually alone in opposing the endorsement given by the London Conference to the plan to win over the Taliban. Besides, there is the emerging recognition by the international community that Pakistani concerns about Indian domination of Afghanistan are not without foundation and will have to be taken into account.

Delhi’s fear is that it would be marginalised if a peace process which eventually gives the Taliban a share of the power were to take hold. One of India’s great strategic minds has now even proposed that Manmohan Singh should invite Karzai and Zardari for a trilateral summit on Afghanistan.

Third, India is keen to enter into talks with the “moderate” faction of the APHC on the grant of autonomy to Kashmir. But since Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who heads this faction, lacks broad support within Kashmir for such a deal, he is reluctant to take the political risk of negotiating with Delhi without at least the tacit understanding of Pakistan that Musharraf was prepared to give him.

India would also like autonomy talks with “moderate” Kashmiri leaders to proceed in parallel with backchannel talks with Pakistan on a “non-territorial” settlement of Kashmir which were initiated under Musharraf. The deal he was negotiating with Manmohan Singh would have sanctified the division of Kashmir along the Line of Control in return for self-governance in different parts of the divided state. Manmohan Singh sought to revive these talks soon after Musharraf’s ouster from power. This was the “good news” Zardari promised to the nation in his first press conference after taking over the presidency.

Left to himself, Zardari would have followed in Musharraf’s footsteps. But after the Kerry-Lugar fiasco and the NRO judgement, he is not in a position to bypass the foreign ministry and the military establishment in policy-making on issues of national security. In a welcome departure from past practice, the government’s response to the Indian offer of talks has been prepared after careful deliberation involving all the institutions concerned.

The position taken by Foreign Minister Qureshi on Musharraf’s backchannel deal with Manmohan Singh on Kashmir is particularly welcome. On Feb 7 he rejected repeated claims made by his predecessor Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri that the Kashmir dispute had been close to settlement through backchannel diplomacy under the Musharraf regime. Qureshi said that if the previous government had been negotiating with India on any such proposal, it was a “secret” between some “selected individuals.” It had never been debated in the government and there was no record of it in the foreign ministry. If Qureshi’s statement means that the government has now decided to repudiate the deal that Musharraf was negotiating, it is probably the most sensible foreign policy decision that this government has taken.

Qureshi also said that though backchannel diplomacy was important, disputes between nations were always resolved through formal talks. Since this government has also named former foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan as its envoy for talks with India, it owes an explanation to the nation on where it stands on the question of backchannel diplomacy. Was our emissary’s meeting with S K Lambah last November in Bangkok a “secret” between “selected individuals” like those under the Musharraf regime, or was it a part of formal talks? And if it was wrong for Musharraf to negotiate through the backchannel, why is it right for this government to do the same?

Qureshi was right, though, in cautioning that a Kashmir settlement was unlikely during the tenure of the present government. That is not a tragedy because a settlement in the present international environment would be based on the status quo, which is what the Kashmiri people have been fighting against all these years. They have suffered a lot but they can wait because time is on their side.

After a long period of militancy, the movement for azadi has now entered a new phase. It has become a deeply rooted and broad-based political movement that cannot be suppressed indefinitely through brute force. Our policy should aim at generating international pressure on India to allow this movement to operate at the political level, while promoting links between the people in the two parts of the state through increased trade and travel across the Line of Control. The rest will follow.

Author: Asif Ezdi

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service.
Source: The News Pakistan