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Method behind Pakistan's peace
initiatives
By Ramtanu Maitra
The volley of peace initiatives between New
Delhi and Islamabad during October and November has
puzzled many political analysts around the world. Two
questions are asked most: Are these proposals for real?
And why now?
The sequence of events is as
follows. The first salvo was actually fired in May, by
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee before his
three-nation tour of Germany, France and Russia.
Vajpayee said that India wanted to start talks with
Pakistan "as soon as possible", but also made it clear
that for a meaningful dialogue, cross-border terrorism
should end and the terror infrastructure be dismantled.
Then, on October 22, Indian External Affairs
Minister Yashwant Sinha offered a 12-point peace package
to Pakistan. One of the proposals was the immediate
resumption of sporting contacts, namely, cricket. The
others are equally practical: more road, rail and ferry
connections between the two nuclear-armed states and a
bus route between the two halves of disputed Kashmir;
fresh talks on air links; cooperation between coastguard
forces to reduce unnecessary arrests of fishermen; and
more diplomats in each other's capitals.
Without
responding to this proposal, one way or the other, a
week later, Pakistan made a counter-proposal of 13
items. Soft proposals such as the restoration of
sporting ties in all fields, including cricket, were
endorsed without any hitch. But changes were sought in
the case of some confidence-building measures. For
instance, on India's proposal for a
Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus link in Kashmir, Pakistan
Foreign Secretary Riaz A Khokar told a press conference:
"We welcome the start of a bus service between
Muzaffarabad and Srinagar, but since Kashmir is a
disputed territory, checkposts in the area must be
manned by UN forces and people of both sides must carry
UN documents."
On November 23, Pakistani Prime
Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, in his address to
the nation on completion of the first year of his
government, announced a unilateral ceasefire along the
Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed state of
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) between India and Pakistan,
beginning with the holy Muslim day of Eid (November 26).
Formally, India has welcomed this response, but has, at
the same time, urged Pakistan to stop cross-border
infiltration to make the ceasefire worthwhile. In a
statement, the Ministry of External Affairs said that
the government of India had earlier proposed a ceasefire
along the actual ground position line in Siachen in the
high altitude northern section of the LoC.
In
addition to the ceasefire along the LoC, Jamali also
expressed his willingness to start a bus service between
Srinagar - the summer capital of the Indian part of
J&K - and Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani
part of J&K; to start a ferry service from the
Pakistani port of Karachi to the Indian port of Mumbai;
to revive air links between the two countries; and to
open the Khokhrapar-Munabao railroad route, between the
province of Sindh in Pakistan and the Indian state of
Rajasthan, which was closed following the 1965
India-Pakistan war. All these proposals, except the
ceasefire proposal, were among the 12 peace proposals
offered to Pakistan by Sinha on October 22.
Then, on November 24, Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf announced that Pakistan would
permit the restoration of flights to India and permit
Indian airliners to fly over its landmass. Vajpayee
reciprocated the gesture on December 1.
Confidence-building
measures
Gamesmanship notwithstanding, as of this
writing, the ball is still in play. But to attempt to
forecast any major outcome from this dizzying
give-and-take between New Delhi and Islamabad would be
frustrating. There is nothing in the statements of
either side that indicates that these measures - one may
call these confidence-building measures (CBMs) - will
lead in any way to the resolution of the
five-decades-old, high-profile Jammu and Kashmir
dispute. In fact, the resolution of such an old and
historic conflict cannot be brought about through CBMs,
but can be achieved only through political processes.
In India, political leaders over the years have
somewhat prepared the citizenry to accept the LoC as the
international boundary, although New Delhi, in a public
forum, would demand the whole of Jammu and Kashmir. In
Pakistan, however, no effort has been made to lead the
population toward a resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir
problem. The attitude expressed by the Pakistani
establishment makes it clear that Islamabad cannot
settle for anything short of possessing the whole of
Jammu and Kashmir. There exists, however, a minority who
would accept an independent Jammu and Kashmir, as long
as no segment of it is part of India.
For the
billion people of India, and particularly those who live
in the eastern and southern part of India, Kashmir is a
minor issue. But in Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir is a
central issue, the bread and butter of the military that
has run the country for most of its existence since
1947. No political leader could open his or her mouth
while in power on matters concerning Jammu and Kashmir
or, for that matter, Afghanistan, without taking formal
permission of the army top brass.
Most
Pakistanis sincerely believe that India is a mortal
threat. They are also convinced that most Indians,
particularly those who live in northern and eastern
India, have not yet reconciled to the fact that Pakistan
is a sovereign nation-state. By engaging itself in two
wars and maintaining for most of the period a
Pakistan-centric foreign policy, India has further
helped to convince Pakistani citizens that it is their
army alone which can protect the nation from the
aggressive machinations of India.
What
triggered the offer?
But there are interesting
developments in the region that help account for
Jamali's offer of a ceasefire, and that may ultimately
create a real basis for ending the India-Pakistan
standoff. As long as the Cold War had divvied up the
world into "us" and "them", and Pakistan was part of
"us" (a group of anti-communist Western allies) and
India was part of "them", Pakistan was not doing too
badly - politically or financially, at least on the
surface. At that time there was less poverty in Pakistan
than in India. At the same time, the good grace of the
Western allies, the high-quality education of a small
elite, a highly-competent bureaucracy and army and a
smaller population base, made Pakistan a somewhat stable
nation. Pakistan could be confident that it would be
looked after by the allies, and that it would be left to
handle its relationship with India as it wished.
But those days are long gone. Pakistan is now
under attack from umpteen nations for harboring
anti-West terrorists and spreading a dangerous form of
religious fundamentalism. On December 5, a special
United Nations team arrived in Pakistan to hold
negotiations on putting sanctions on companies that have
links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, press agencies
reported. A seven-member UN committee met Pakistan
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat to discuss
detecting and sanctioning companies linked to Osama bin
Laden's terrorist network.
Pakistan's exuberant
participation in the proxy war on behalf of the
Americans against the Soviet army in Afghanistan during
the 1980s brought endless bounty, and also a basket full
of problems. The bounty vanished within a decade,
creating more problems, which continue to grow bigger
and bigger. The bounty that came in the form of cash and
weapons for a short period of time did little to help
most Pakistanis. Instead, problems came in the form of a
regular supply of drugs and lawlessness and the
nurturing of a highly-potent armed mercenary wearing
religious garb.
Pakistan's financial situation
took a headlong dive in the 1990s. The trade imbalance,
foreign debt and lack of real economic growth made it a
dangerous nation. Anyone who followed then US president
Bill Clinton's whistle-stop visit to Pakistan in 1999
will recall how insecure Washington thought Pakistan was
at the time. The events of September 11, however,
changed that situation. Washington, now eager to get
Islamabad's help to eliminate al-Qaeda and the Taliban,
pardoned some of its debt, put some money into
Pakistan's bankrupt financial system and urged the
International Monetary Fund-World Bank and countries
such as Japan to put some cash into Pakistan.
Writing in Dawn newspaper on April 29, 2002,
Irfan Shahzad said: "Pakistan was able to get [in the
post-September 11 days] an impressive re-profiling of
its entire bilateral debt, amounting to over $12 billion
in December for a long duration of 38 years and with 16
years as grace period. No doubt it was a huge breathing
space ... The following statistics give us a true
picture. Pakistan owes a massive $38 billion to the
developed world, the IFIs [International Financial
Institutions] and commercial banks, and the people of
Pakistan have only one thing on the mind: complete debt
write-off ... "
Pakistan is getting poorer
economically and depending increasingly on hand-outs.
Illiteracy, never low, is growing rapidly. The middle
class, having first handed over responsibility of the
nation to the army, has now found it is even more
difficult to fight the religious fundamentalists:
although a small minority, they are highly volatile.
A different India
India, on the other
hand, has gotten out of most of its lethargy and has
taken advantage of the post-Cold War environment. With
large and capable manpower reserves, India is now
economically a power to reckon with in Asia. Militarily,
it has moved way ahead of Pakistan, and there is no
doubt that in the coming days the gap will grow faster
than ever. Almost all Western nations and others are
eager to sell military hardware to New Delhi, while a
few are in the process of joint research and development
ventures to manufacture high-technology military
hardware to sell to third parties. In May, 2001, US
deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage was in New
Delhi offering collaboration to India on the US-planned
national missile defense.
It was reported on
November 24 that India and US are set to sign a
breakthrough agreement on sharing classified military
research data. The Master Information Exchange Agreement
will mark the beginning of a new phase that would be
far-reaching in bilateral defense relations, officials
involved in negotiations said.
More important,
perhaps, is the fact that Indian military and technology
development did not occur in a vacuum. Although many
large problems remain unsolved, India is seemingly
confident. The economy is growing almost as fast as
China's. Relations with other Asian countries are
improving. India could scarcely contain its delight when
the US classified Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian mafia chief,
as a terrorist. Islamabad denies that he lives in
Pakistan, but the US Treasury Department has published
his Pakistan passport number and a home telephone number
in Karachi - although he has not been seen in that city
for some time.
India's new regional
outlook
India has sent out an even more powerful
message, that it is now ready to widen its economic ties
beyond the West and its immediate neighborhood. Its
economic ties with Sri Lanka and Thailand are growing.
The Indo-Sri Lanka free trade area has given a fillip to
mutual trade. The more recent Comprehensive Economic
Partnership Agreement spanning trade, services and
foreign direct investment will advance this further. A
land bridge has been proposed across the 21-kilometer
Palk Straits separating the Indian sub-continent from
Sri Lanka. This could also carry transmission lines to
hook up Sri Lanka to India's Southern Region Electricity
Grid, with the Koodankulam nuclear power plant cluster
serving as a base load station, Indian energy expert B G
Verghese pointed out recently.
India already has
an agreement with Thailand and Myanmar to build a Dawei
(Tavoy)-Kanchanaburi road link for ocean-cum-overland
inter-modal transit from Indian ports. There is now a
new Indo-Thai agreement to link the Andaman Sea and the
Gulf of Thailand with an oil/gas pipeline, and to link
Port Blair of the Nicobar Islands with Phuket in
Thailand in a tourist circuit. Vajpayee told the leaders
of Vietnam recently that he will be working toward
connecting New Delhi to Hanoi by railroad. These
initiatives could mark the beginning of the
ASEAN-plus-three (China, Japan, South Korea) - plus-one
(India) vision of a larger Asian community.
All
these developments underline the strategic importance of
India's island territories, more particularly the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which command the Malacca
Straits and the sea lanes that carry vast quantities of
Gulf oil to Pacific destinations. The Andaman and
Nicobar Islands place India in close proximity to the 10
ASEAN countries.
But India has also gone beyond
its "Look East" policy. It has added a "Look North"
element by concluding the India-China agreement on
Sikkim-Tibet trade, and by establishing the North-South
Corridor from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Russia. Now, both
Sinha and Vajpayee have promised to link up the
North-South corridor with Afghanistan, through Iran, and
Tajikistan, through Afghanistan.
Vajpayee, the
first-ever Indian prime minister to visit Tajikistan,
visited Dushanbe in November to sign bilateral
agreements on establishing a joint anti-terrorism group
and an Indian military presence at Tajikistan's Ayni air
base, which Indian engineers are developing. The Indian
military presence in Tajikistan will consist of Indian
infantry together with Indian Air Force combat aircraft.
Tajikistan is agreeable to providing India a useful
foothold in the region, from which it can protect its
energy interests and project its influence further into
Central Asia.
India, long a backer of the
Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, has aggressively
developed a huge presence in that country. Since the
summer of 2002, according to noted Pakistani journalist,
Ahmed Rashid, India has provided civilian airplanes,
buses and hospital equipment and promised to equip and
train the new national army. It has opened consulates in
Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and Kandahar and Jalalabad
close to the Pakistan border.
For years, the
military leaders of Pakistan, with the help of many
Western Cold War warriors, had convinced themselves and
their population that India was a disintegrating nation.
By bleeding India in the state of Jammu and Kashmir
through encouraging insurgency, the disintegration of
India would be assured, they calculated, and Pakistan
would not have to live with a strong and large adversary
along its eastern borders. Meanwhile, the military
expenditure of the Pakistan army to keep up with Indian
military growth ballooned Pakistan's foreign debts, and
Islamabad became the whipping boy of the IMF-World Bank
duo in the 1990s.
Even the post-Cold War
economic and strategic initiatives of India did not
create sufficient incentive for Pakistan's military
leaders to take a second look at their India policy.
What perhaps did the trick, or started a process of
re-thinking in Islamabad, has been the steady
improvement of India-China relations.
The
China factor
Pakistan, a very close ally of
China, used to indulge itself with the illusion, also
held by many like-minded Western and Eastern
geopoliticians, that India and China could at no level
develop a friendly economic and security relationship.
Their China-India border dispute - a legacy of the
British Raj - that was seriously exacerbated by the 1962
India-China border clash, was not resolvable, the
argument went.
India and China would remain
mortal enemies, Pakistani military leaders believed, and
as long as Pakistan maintained close, friendly relations
with Beijing, India would remain unsure and constrained.
Now this, too, has changed. Following the Indian prime
minister's historic visit to China in June, both New
Delhi and Beijing have put much importance on resolving
the border dispute. The two sides appointed special
representatives - National Security Adviser Brajesh
Mishra on the Indian side, and Senior Vice Minister Dai
Bingguo on the Chinese side - with the explicit mandate
to negotiate the framework of a boundary settlement from
a political perspective. They have already met once, in
October. If there is any need for more evidence that
both are ready to resolve the border issues, one has
only to listen to what Sinha said at a public gathering
in New Delhi on November 22.
Sinha told the
gathering that New Delhi and Beijing must attempt to
resolve all outstanding bilateral disputes "without
postponing the tough decisions for the next generation".
In addition, in his address to the combined conference
of the Indian military commanders on November 1,
Vajpayee said resolution of the boundary problem with
China would release India's "military and financial
resources" and was therefore a "strategic objective".
And in achieving this objective, Vajpayee suggested,
India must be prepared to take pragmatic decisions - a
euphemism for big concessions on territorial claims of
the past.
It has become evident to the Pakistani
military leaders that India is no longer an
inward-looking nation fearful of disintegration, but is
confidently ready to deal with China on the thorniest
issues and, at the same time, preparing the population
to make concessions to settle the vexatious border
dispute. These developments, and the bleak future that
stares Islamabad in the face, perhaps explain the new
olive branch that premier Jamali has held up.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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