India, Pakistan peer into the
abyss By M K Bhadrakumar
Was it a military confrontation - the week
long India-Pakistan acrimony over bloody incidents
on the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir, which
resulted in the killing of four soldiers? Was it a
potential nuclear flashpoint? In retrospect, it
was more like a brawl - a noisy, disorderly
quarrel.
Indeed, it ended as abruptly as
it erupted and very little broken china is visible
as the two armies, which apparently went for each
other's jugulars, summarily pulled back. India
claimed Pakistani forces had killed two of its
soldiers and mutilated the bodies, while Pakistan,
which denied any wrongdoing, alleged Indian troops
crossed into its side (which India denied),
killing and injuring their soldiers.
To be
sure, a cleaning up operation is necessary but, fortunately,
no permanent fixtures have
been damaged on the dance floor - although the
waltz cannot resume as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile, what lessons can be drawn? At
least a dozen can be discerned.
First and
foremost, the fracas drew attention to a barely
visible aspect of the tenuous security situation
on the LOC, which, unlike the India-Pakistan
Boundary is an ill-defined line drawn up hastily
out of the defunct Cease-Fire Line even as the
1971 war ended with very many geographical
salients in the difficult terrain not easy to
defend for either army and where, therefore, a
constant, tenacious dogfight has been going on to
"straighten" the LOC for gaining unilateral
advantage.
The point is, it is utterly
futile to apportion blame and equally pointless to
isolate and dissect any particular incident,
howsoever gruesome it might be, as precisely where
discord erupted in violence. Have such brutal
incidents taken place in the past? The answer is
"yes", and both sides, it now transpires, have
committed abominable, unspeakable acts.
A
long-term solution lies in the LOC attaining the
sanctity of an international border, but then, it
is directly linked to the resolution of the
Kashmir dispute.
From the Indian angle,
the imperative lies in the stablilization of the
situation in Jammu & Kashmir for which a
durable ceasefire on the LOC and end to
cross-border filtration by the militants is an
absolute prerequisite.
From the Pakistani
viewpoint, on the contrary, keeping Jammu &
Kashmir in a state of controlled animation happens
to be a politico-military necessity. This is for
various recognizable reasons, some of which are
linked to Pakistan's internal politics and the
geopolitics of the region, while others would
relate to the flawed relationship with India.
Following from this, it is important for
the Indian side to remember that the famous
November 2003 ceasefire on the border announced by
the then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (and
which has largely held up until recently) was a
unilateral decision by the military dictator and
not the outcome of a negotiated bilateral
arrangement between the two countries.
If
a decade ago it suited Pakistan to unilaterally
opt for a ceasefire on the LOC and redeploy its
troops to the western front due to the emergent
situation of the war in Afghanistan (and the
growing tensions on the Afghan-Pakistan border),
there is a qualitative difference to the situation
today.
Unsurprisingly, there is gnawing
anxiety in the Indian mind whether today's
situation is going to be any less dangerous than
that of the late 1980s, when Pakistan "defeated" a
superpower and sent it packing home from the Hindu
Kush and thereafter reset its sights on India and
redeployed the militant forces of "jihadism", who
had by then become redundant but were raring to go
in search of new pastures.
Lest it be
forgotten, already by the end-1980s and early
1990s, J&K was bleeding profusely and a
"low-intensity war" was in full swing, with
Pakistan in full battle cry.
Suffice to
say, therefore, it will be exceedingly foolish on
India's part to lower its guard now that the
recent heightened tensions have subsided and the
guns have fallen silent on the LOC. The plain
truth is that there is no certainty whatsoever
that the lull during this week is going to be
enduring.
The best spin that can be given
is that the Pakistani army, which is credited to
be a professional army, couldn't have stooped to
the extent of mutilating and disfiguring the dead
bodies of Indian soldiers and therefore it must be
the handiwork of some "non-state actors".
That brings up an intriguing question: is
everything under control within the Pakistani
army? At the end of the day, there are no serious
takers on the Indian side for the thesis that the
Pakistani army was hoodwinked by the "jihadis",
considering that the LOC is a highly fortified
Maginot Line and the Pakistani army is indeed a
capable organization that is not easily taken in
by "jihadi" elements who are, after all, its
proxies.
Nonetheless, New Delhi would have
taken note that the Pakistani GHQ in Rawalpindi
did not react to a statement by the Indian army
chief General Bikram Singh, who warned of an
"aggressive" response to future ceasefire
violations.
In fact, Pakistani assurances
followed within 48 hours at the level of the
Director-General of Military Operations that
strict instructions have been issued to local
units to observe the ceasefire on the LOC.
Interestingly, Pakistani army chief General Ashfq
Kayani never once spoke through the entire week.
The signal seems to have been that nothing
extraordinary had happened on the LOC.
Of
course, uninformed Indian opinion might conclude
that Pakistan "blinked". But there is much more to
what happened than meets the eye. The confidential
exchanges at the top echelons of the Indian and
Pakistani military leadership have always been
meaningful, and both sides try to comprehend each
other's compulsions (even whilst disagreeing).
Suffice to say, the recent fracas has been
brought to end by the military leaders, at which
point politicians and diplomats are taking over.
However, it goes to the credit of politicians and
diplomats that they also may have created a legacy
by now in the current history of the
India-Pakistan relationship.
The point is,
neither side tried to "internationalize" the
recent tensions. The two major influences on
Pakistan - China and the United States - actually
advised the efficacy of the bilateral track. The
dialogue process remains open, too.
India's diplomatic voice consistently
sounded conciliatory even while the political
voice addressing the domestic audience spoke
stridently. In sum, the dialogue process may have
slowly, steadily begun kicking in despite the
serious shortfalls in its substantive outcome so
far.
Again, it wouldn't have escaped
notice in New Delhi that there has been a
near-complete absence of rhetoric or "war
mongering" on the part of the Pakistani
politicians and political parties. This is further
confirmation that the political discourse within
Pakistan has significantly transformed.
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
rightly placed this transformation within the
matrix of that country's democratization process,
and, more important, he underlined that India
needs to thinks of ways of taking the relationship
with Pakistan forward by addressing the
constituency that believes in democracy. The
outcome of the political struggle in Pakistan will
have great bearing for the India-Pakistan
dialogue.
All in all, the good thing is
that India and Pakistan peered into the abyss of
the future and decided they didn't like it. This
foreknowledge will serve a purpose if it gives a
new sense of urgency and injects new life into the
dialogue process. But it is too much to expect new
thinking at this juncture.
India's
capacity to influence the processes in Pakistan
remains limited, and if anything the political
priorities for the Indian leadership as the
general election in 2014 draws closer virtually
preclude the scope for taking major foreign-policy
initiatives. For Pakistan too, an assertion of
civilian supremacy in policymaking on issues of
core concern to India such as the dismantling of
the infrastructure of terrorism existing on its
soil is a long haul.
Least of all, with
the geopolitics of the region remaining as
complicated as they are at present, the easy route
for both sides will be to hunker down until things
gain greater clarity.
Ambassador M K
Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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