Author: Ayaz Amir
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 18, 2001
Introduction: No. Muashrraf's main
agenda is a quest for security against an overbearing neighbour
Kashmir is important for Pakistan
and President Mushrraf not least because the UN Security Council resolutions
calling for a plebiscite there remain unfulfilled. But Kashmir does not
define Pakistan just as Taiwan does not define China.
The Kashmir dispute has poisoned
the sub-continent and caused bad blood between India and Pakistan. But
while President Musharraf feels passionately about it, Kashmir is not the
end-all or be-all of his foreign policy. To assume that it is, only panders
to the Indian prejudice that Kashmir is an obsession with General Musharraf
and there is nothing that India can do about it. On the bedrock of such
simplicities have India-Pakistan relations foundered for the last 50 years.
Pakistan tried to force the issue
in 1965, but after the armies of both countries had fought each other to
a standstill, leading to the signing of the Tashkent Declaration, the Kashmir
issue, effectively, was put on the backburner. There it remained for full
23 years: 1966-89. The 1971 war had nothing to do with Kashmir. The Shimla
Accord confirmed the status of the Kashmir dispute as something best kept
in a state of hibernation.
For the duration of the Bhutto period,
1972-77, and then for the eleven and a half years of General Zia-ul-Haq,
Pakistan stopped making even pro forma noises about Kashmir. Indian hawks,
often a more fearsome lot than their Pakistani counterparts, could do well
to remember this history.
The reawakening of the Kashmir dispute
into something live and urgent as more an Indian than a Pakistani feat.
India had enough time to change the loyalties of the Kashmiri people, to
win them over and integrate their sympathies firmly in the Indian Union.
If it failed to do so, how is Pakistan to blame? Was Pakistan responsible
for rigged elections and National Front corruption in Kashmir? Not the
ISI's machinations, but a history of neglect gave birth to the 1989 uprising.
Pakistan tried engineering an uprising
in occupied Kashmir in 1965 but failed miserably. Now that a resistance
struggle had developed on its own, on the strength of Kashmiri anger and
alienation, should President Musharraf have closed his eyes and pretended
that nothing of the kind was taking place?
If Kashmir was an obsession with
President Musharraf rather than something he wanted to settle on the basis
of give-and-take, he would not have spoken of the need for both India and
Pakistan to go beyond their stated positions.
What was President Musharraf trying
to do at Agra? Not trying to wrest Kashmir from India but merely searching
for a form of words, or call it a formula, that could have enabled both
countries to leave the past behind and move forward. When the crunch came
it was India which sought counsel from fear and locked itself into a cupboard.
A reference in the joint statement to Kashmir's disputed status and to
the necessity of solving the dispute would not have meant the unravelling
of India. Both countries have to grow up and behave more maturely if at
all they are to put together a new basis for peace in the sub-continent.
The central strand, the defining
motive, of President Musharrafs foreign policy has been the search for
balance and the quest for security against an overbearing neighbour. The
alliance with America, Pakistan's entry into CENTO and SEATO, and much
later the forging of a strong relationship with China can all be tested
against this touchstone. Kashmir does not drive President Musharrafs foreign
policy. India's intransigence over the issue merely reinforces the belief
in Pakistan that the basic tenets of its foreign policy are based upon
sound premises.
(Ayaz Amir is a columnist with 'The
Dawn', Karachi)