Author: M K Rasgotra
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 9, 2002
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=14418
Introduction: A thaw is out of sight
as long as khaki continues to call the shots in Islamabad
With or without dialogue, an India-Pakistan
rapproachment is not in sight: the prospect is one of cold peace while
General Pervez Musharraf remains at the helm in Islamabad.
My personal acquaintance with the
history of India-Pakistan confrontation over Kashmir during the last half
century-the wars, the debates in the UN Security Council, the mediatory
efforts of UN Representatives Graham, McNaughton, Dixon and others, Pakistan's
failure to implement the Moscow-brokered Tashkent Agreement (1966) and
its violations of the Simla Accord of 1972-leads me to the conclusion that
there is going to be no quick or easy solution to this problem. An inherently
complex territorial issue has been made intractable by Pakistan's periodic
recourse to violence and war in the name of Islam against a country with
a larger Muslim population than Pakistan's. Do the rulers of Pakistan ever
pause to think what their jehad is doing to the psyche and standing of
the 150 million Muslim citizens of India?
By virtue of accession, confirmed
by the State's popularly elected Constituent Assembly, Jammu & Kashmir
is a part of India. There is no legitimacy to Pakistan's presence, through
acts of aggression, in PoK, Gilgit and Baltistan; it therefore feels obliged
to resort to war and violence every now and then to keep alive its "cause".
Besides, the 700-strong military for a comparatively small country needs
a conflict situation to justify its costly existence. Pakistan's military
rulers do not want to recognise the reality that feelings on Kashmir in
India are, at least, as strong as they are in Pakistan.
But they will have to learn that
while issues between the two countries have to be discussed, India will
not be dictated to under threat of terrorist violence. No elaborate confidence-building
measures are needed for the resumption of India- Pakistan dialogue. One
single act of honesty and neighbourly decency on Pakistan's part_stoppage
of infiltration of armed militants into Kashmir_will, in due course, lead
to dialogue. But the dialogue is not going to end in India ceding Kashmir
to Pakistan. The future of PoK and the Northern Territories is also an
open question.
With India's decision to re-deploy
troops back to peace stations, the threat of war has disappeared for the
present. The state elections have changed the political landscape in Kashmir.
We have to wait and see whether the new government in Islamabad will draw
the right lessons from this vital development and abjure the policy of
violence and confrontation vis-a-vis India. If that happens, the two countries
can move forward to a non-belligerent relationship which may, in due course,
permit calm deliberation and constructive discussion of all problems between
them.
The prospect of genuine peace will,
however, remain bleak while General Musharraf remains in control of Islamabad's
policies. He launched the attack in Kargil and displaced Nawaz Sharif because
he and his army felt threatened by the prospect of peace opened up by the
Lahore Agreements of February 1998. Yet, he keeps asking for dialogue with
India! For a serious dialogue to solve problems, trust in the adversary's
peaceful intentions is an essential pre- requisite. Furthermore, a propagandistic
approach of the kind he deployed at the Agra Summit, for domestic purposes,
can only lead to disaster.
The new government in Islamabad
will need time to settle down, and New Delhi also needs time to determine
whether it has the inclination and the capability to terminate the jihad.
If the outlook is positive, a low-profile process, preferably a covert
one, can be initiated to find durable peace. But there need be no hurry
about it and there should be no question of meetings at the SAARC summit.
Meanwhile, the Government must firmly
reject all pressure from Washington and elsewhere for dialogue as a means
to avoid nuclear holocaust in South Asia. The threat of a nuclear exchange
between India and Pakistan had no credibility at any time. It has none
now. Pakistan has, on occasion, issued threats of resort to nuclear first
use against India, but its rulers know what, in such an event, lies in
store for them, their country and people. The central points in India's
draft nuclear doctrine are no first use and, in the event of nuclear attack,
instant and massive retaliatory strike. With good reason, India has taken
in its stride Pakistan's self- comforting warnings of nuclear war and the
recent confrontation at the very brink of war seems to have helped evolve
Pakistan's nuclear thinking in the right direction. General Musharraf said
recently that nuclear weapons are only for deterrence, not for war. He
must also realise that nuclear weapons cannot be used as a license for
terrorism. The real danger lies elsewhere and the world community should
focus attention on Pakistan's barter of nukes for missiles and the access
religious fanatics enjoy to its nuclear establishment.
For the moment, Pakistan's President
is in a sulk. He has not responded to India's offer of resumption of overflight,
he has not designated a new High Commissioner for New Delhi. He described
as a 'sham'' the Kashmir elections that were hailed the world over as a
free and fair exercise in democratic governance. He has not delivered on
the commitments he gave in a speech on January 12 this year. Indeed, he
has reiterated his ''moral, diplomatic and political support for the freedom
struggle in Kashmir'', which we know to be a euphemism for arming, training
and financing cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. He scoffs at India's grant
of MFN status to Pakistan and has no intention of reciprocating it. He
abhors the very idea of trade and economic cooperation with India in the
SAARC framework.
So what then is the worth of that
high sounding 'Association for Regional Cooperation'? SAARC is moribund
because Pakistan has blocked implementation of the decisions of its summits
on all important matters- terrorism, SAPTA, SAFTA etc. It's time to wind
up SAARC and strengthen trade and cooperation with other more willing neighbours
bilaterally or on a sub-regional basis. In these circumstances, it is preposterous
even to think of the Indian Prime Minister going to Islambad for the SAARC
summit.
(The writer, a former Foreign Secretary,
is the president of ORF Institute of Asian Studies)
