SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 4, No.28, January 23, 2006

Practiced Rituals of a Tactical Peace
Kanchan Lakshman
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution

As each new round of talks between India and Pakistan approaches, there is a frenzy of analysis of potential ‘breakthroughs’; a number of ‘new formulas’ – invariably tired rehashes of a communal partition of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) – are pulled out of the void and discussed breathlessly by ‘experts’; there is great and natural excitement in the media.

Also Read J&K: The Wrath of the Lashkar - Praveen Swami Jihad after the Quake - Kanchan Lakshman

The talks come and go. Terrorist killings in J&K, and sporadically in other parts of the India continue, even as Pakistan complains bitterly about the slow pace of ‘progress’ towards the goals it seeks to secure on the negotiating table, having failed to achieve these through a vicious campaign of terrorism over 17 years.

The third round of the ‘Composite Dialogue’ process between the two countries, inaugurated by Foreign Secretary level talks at Delhi on January 17-18, 2006, was no different, and, while pro forma diplomatic platitudes were naturally voiced in the Joint Statement released at the end of what is increasingly becoming a practiced ritual, there was little sense of any forward movement.

There was, nevertheless, a subtle shift of tenor suggesting particularly that the stakes had abruptly been raised. The troubles in distant Balochistan found a place in the talks, as Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan carped about India’s ‘interference’ – the Indian External Affairs Ministry had earlier issued a statement criticizing the excessive use of force, including air power and artillery, against largely civilian targets in the troubled province – but was firmly rebuffed, as India asserted its right to express such concerns, and denied any interference in the province. Pakistan – as has routinely been the case in the past – once again raised the issue of ‘self-governance’ and ‘self-determination’ in Kashmir. This time around, however, someone on the Indian side rediscovered a spine, and refused to roll over: these were excellent ideas, it was agreed, and self-governance should be made available to the people of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), including Gilgit-Baltistan, at least in the measure that they are already available to the people of the Indian State of J&K. The subject was not raised again.

Before the talks commenced, Khan had stated, on January 16, at Islamabad, that the objective of the Delhi talks was to see “how to push the peace process forward”. At the end of the talks, the Joint Statement was couched in evasive and meaningless generalizations: “The two Foreign Secretaries, with the objective of promoting a stable environment of peace and security, agreed to mandate the two experts groups to continue consultations on security concepts and nuclear doctrines to develop measures for confidence building in the nuclear and conventional fields aimed at avoidance of conflict.”

In realistic terms, it is clear that the process is headed nowhere and there is every likelihood of an eventual breakdown, transient or permanent. The reasons are not far to seek. First, the peace process remains, in substantial measure, tactical rather than substantive, with Pakistan in particular treating the negotiations as a parallel instrument to terrorism to exert pressure on India. Further, the hiatus between the rival positions on Kashmir is unbridgeable, and it is unsurprising, consequently, that the two sides are yet to commence substantive discussions on this issue. The restoration of communication links, people-to-people exchanges, Track Two diplomacy and a range of confidence building measures (CBMs) have all gone smoothly and have largely been successful. The Indian High Commission in Islamabad, for instance, issued 90,000 visas to Pakistanis in the year 2005 in comparison to 60,000 in 2004, a reflection of rising popular bonhomie. In particular, the bus services (Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Amritsar-Lahore) and coordinated relief efforts in the aftermath of the October 2005 earthquake have been received well by people of both the countries. The ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), however, remains a cause for concern, with over 1739 terrorism related killings and a continuous stream of infiltrators across the Line of Control (LoC) and international border, though the secular decline in levels of violence, which commenced after the 9/11 attacks in the US, has been sustained – albeit only marginally between 2004-2005. 521 civilians and 218 security force (SF) personnel died in terrorist violence in J&K in year 2005.

Worse, terrorist attacks by Pakistan-backed groups have occurred in places as far as Delhi and Bangalore. Furthermore, arrests and seizures connected with Pakistan-backed terrorist groups across India, outside J&K and the Northeast, numbering at least 62 modules during the 2004-05 period, indicate the level of penetration and subversion. These modules have been neutralised in locations that extend from Uttaranchal in the North, to Andhra Pradesh in the South, and from Gujarat in the West to West Bengal in the East. Official sources indicate that, between 1998 and 2003, security agencies had neutralized more than 180 Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)-backed terrorist modules across the country (excluding J&K and the Northeast), who had been tasked to target security and vital installations, communication links, and commercial and industrial centres, as well as to provoke instability and disorder by circulating large quantities of counterfeit currency and by drug trafficking.

The future of the dialogue process amidst such a situation of sustained violence and subversion, can only be uncertain. Despite General Pervez Musharraf’s repeated commitments not to let Pakistani soil be used for terrorism directed against India, little has been done, and there is overwhelming evidence of continued state support of – or, minimally, tolerance of high levels of activities by – a number of terrorist groups in Pakistan. The growing power of these groups was particularly evident in the aftermath of the earthquake in PoK, when the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), in its new garb as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, emerged as the most prominent organization in relief operations. Reports indicate that General Musharraf had, in fact, called up LeT chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed immediately after the quake, and emphasized Islamabad’s reliance on the jihadis, both for relief operations and temporarily for ‘defense’ along the LoC, in view of the massive damage the Pakistani Army infrastructure had suffered. India’s patience cannot be eternal on this count, and Delhi rightly reminded Islamabad about the January 6, 2004, Joint Statement in which President Musharraf had given an assurance that he will not allow any part of the territory under Pakistan’s control to be used for terrorism against India.

The bottom-line is that, even though the varied CBMs currently operational between the two countries have strengthened processes of 'emotional enlistment', they do not, in any measure, alter India's and Pakistan's stated positions on the Kashmir issue. They do little, consequently, to change the fundamentals of the conflict in and over Kashmir. There is also the greater danger of the CBMs acquiring a life of their own, with the perpetual postponement of any discussion on ‘substantive issues’. This is something that has been posited as a desirable option, on the model of the ‘freeze’ that has been imposed on the border disputes between India and China. But a comparable ‘freeze’ on the Kashmir issue is not a viable concept between India and Pakistan – particularly in view of the centrality that has been ascribed to Kashmir within the political ideology that dominates Pakistan.

The counterfeit movement that was sought to be imposed on the process by General Musharraf’s proposals, through the media, on de-militarisation, self-governance and joint management in J&K, can also lead nowhere. As repackaged versions of another communal partition, these have been flatly rejected by New Delhi. The Indian Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, while briefing the media on January 18 disclosed that he had reiterated to the Pakistani side Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that the redrawing of boundaries or territorial readjustments were outside the scope of a settlement between the two countries, though any proposal short of these could be considered, and India remained committed to whatever was required for free flow of people, goods and ideas on either side of the LoC.

With a multiplicity of fronts opening up internally, President Musharraf is increasingly being painted into a corner. Projecting an ‘uncompromising attitude’ on the issue of Kashmir may, within this context, appear politically attractive in the short run. But Pakistan can ill-afford any escalation of tensions on its eastern borders today, and this is abundantly clear to New Delhi. Islamabad’s inability to manage its internal crisis appears slated to worsen in the immediate future. As a country, in Stephen Cohen’s words, “which is fading away into insignificance", Pakistan is still carrying too much baggage to the negotiating table. Unless it rids itself of the excess weight of its irrational ambitions and current geopolitical over-reach, its eclipse will be the more certain, and the more proximate.