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COMMENTARY
A skeptic's take on
Indo-Pak relations
By B Raman
Since January 2004, there has been a wind
of change in India-Pakistan relations, for which
credit has to be equally shared by Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, the former prime minister, and Manmohan
Singh, the present, who has just marked a year in
office. Rhetoric has given place to seeming reason
and confrontation to conviviality. Allegations and
accusations against each other have given way to a
more civilized and meaningful debate on the
parameters of good neighborly relations.
The channels of official communication
between the two countries, which had been kept
open at both the best and the worst of times
before the National Democratic Alliance government
came to power in 1998, had got clogged up,
particularly after the Kargil conflict of 1999 and
the jihadi terrorist attack on the Indian
parliament on December 13, 2001. The cobwebs
clogging up the channels have since been removed,
and the channels have once again been functioning
as they ought to between two neighbors - and as
they used to before 1998. Meetings between
officials of the two countries to discuss
long-standing differences and issues of common
interest, such as a gas pipeline, have become so
frequent as to seem routine.
Exchanges of
visits at the non-government level, which used to
be a normal occurrence before 1996, have once
again resumed. However, the exchanges are still
largely confined to the two Punjabs. Leaders and
people of Sindh, the North-West Frontier Province
and Balochistan, who used to visit India regularly
before 1996 to meet friends and relatives,
participate in conferences and cultural events and
meet political leaders, have still remained
largely uninvolved in the increasing
people-to-people contacts. One need not despair.
If the Punjabis are there, the non-Punjabis can't
be far behind.
The newfound political
maturity in Delhi and Islamabad is reflected in
their bold decision to extend the benefit of
people-to-people contacts to the Kashmiris on both
sides of the Line of Control (LoC). This is a good
example of calculated risk-taking for mutual
benefit. Even the ground situation relating to
cross-border terrorism is showing incipient signs
of a possible change for the better. The ceasefire
across the LoC, more than a year old, has held.
Pakistan has given up its obstruction of the
construction of an anti-infiltration fence by
India. Consequently, even according to the
admission of the Indian government, cross-border
infiltration by trained jihadi terrorists has
registered a 60% decrease.
There has been
no major act of jihadi terrorism in Indian
territory outside Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)
since the August 25, 2003, twin blasts in Mumbai.
However, organizations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LET) have not given up their efforts for reviving
their activities in the Indian territory outside
J&K, as seen by the unearthing of LET modules
that had planned operations in Dehra Dun,
Bangalore and other places.
Bloody
terrorist incidents continue in J&K. Innocent
civilians continue to die. But there has been no
spectacular attack in recent months, barring odd
ones such as the terrorist strike in Srinagar in
April, on the eve of the inauguration of the
Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service linking the
Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir.
Pakistan has changed its tactics, but not
its strategy of using terrorism to gain control of
J&K one day if it is not able to do so across
the table. The terrorist infrastructure in
Pakistani territory is intact. So is its command
and control. The only change that has occurred
since January 2004, when President General Pervez
Musharraf made his commitment during talks with
Vajpayee not to allow acts of terrorism from
Pakistan-controlled territory, is that the use of
terrorism has been largely confined to Kashmir and
comes in calculated doses. It is no longer
indiscriminate.
There is an undeclared
national consensus on the wisdom of keeping up
with the present policy of groping for genuine
peace to replace the present seeming peace.
Genuine peace demands a change of attitudes and
mindsets as well as introspection - more in
Islamabad than New Delhi, more in the general
headquarters in Rawalpindi than in the Federal
Secretariat in Islamabad.
Are there signs
of such a change? Manmohan Singh seems to think
so, as seen from his positive observations when he
briefed senior Indian editors after talks with
Musharraf in New Delhi in April. Vajpayee did the
same after his famous bus journey to Lahore and
talks with Pakistan's then Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif in February 1999. India let its guard down.
It let itself be mentally demobilized against a
long-standing adversary. In just six months,
Vajpayee's illusions came down like a castle made
of cards.
Is Manmohan Singh living in a
world of reality or has he mistaken a mirage for
reality? After having been in power for a year, he
shares with Vajpayee the credit for giving a
forward momentum to India-Pakistan relations. Will
the momentum take us on the road to a golden era
of peace or to another bout of dashed illusions,
recriminations and bitterness? Only an astrologer
can hazard an answer to such questions. An analyst
can only point to the pitfalls ahead. He may be
proved wrong in his skepticism, but it does not
mean that skepticism needs to be ignored and
treated with derision.
When General
Charles de Gaulle came to power in France in 1958,
he undertook a total revamp of the country's
external intelligence agency. He asked his staff
officer to prepare for him a short list of persons
who could be considered for appointment as the
intelligence chief. His staff officer then asked
him: "Mon General, what type of people would you
like me to suggest?" De Gaulle thought for a while
and replied: "Mon Capitain. Get me a list of good
pessimists. It is dangerous to have optimists in
the intelligence profession. I want a good
pessimist, who will keep warning me all the time
of the dangers ahead, even though I may not heed
his warnings."
I am an intelligence
professional to my fingertips. Pessimism is in my
blood. I find it difficult to shake off this
pessimism despite all the seemingly good things
that have taken place in Indo-Pak relations under
Manmohan Singh.
B Raman is
additional secretary (retired), cabinet
secretariat, government of India, and, presently,
director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai,
and distinguished fellow and convener, Observer
Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. Email:
itschen36@gmail.com
(Copyright 2005 B
Raman) |
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