Author: Amrita Abraham
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 20 2001
After the messy finale in Agra,
New Delhi and Islamabad are putting out separate versions about why the
talks broke down. The two stories take things right back to the beginning:
Pakistan will not acknowledge its role in cross-border terrorism and India
will not accept Kashmir as the core issue. If as a result the pendulum
swings too far back toward the heightened state of mutual mistrust that
has characterised India-Pakistan relations for decades, the situation on
the ground in Kashmir will worsen and it could be a long time before leaders
of the two countries meet again to pick up the threads of the dialogue.
Those would be the real setbacks.
Every India-Pakistan summit raises
hopes and Agra was different only in one respect. Media interest has never
been so intense and all-consuming (nor has the media itself become part
of the summit process as in Agra). Public enthusiasm consequently was exceptionally
high. There was bound to be a fall afterwards but the trick is to prevent
a fall all the way down to the bottom.
From General Pervez Musharraf's
standpoint Agra has been a considerable success. He may not have achieved
all he set out to but he has taken back a bagful of trophies. The All Party
Hurriyat Conference's loyalty is reinforced. Its compass, adrift since
New Delhi's November peace initiatives, has been stabilised again. Anyone
watching Mirwaiz Umar Farooq being grilled by the media before the Pakistani
high commissioner's tea party would have seen how vital it was for the
Hurriyat to be seen to be talking in private with Pakistan's military leader.
What was said at the meeting is irrelevant.
The symbolism of that hour-long
session was everything, confirming Pakistan had faith in the APHC, regarded
it as the authentic voice of the Kashmiri people and would consult its
leaders during the dialogue with India.
The trip has added centimetres to
the general's own stature at home and abroad. In Pakistan his stock has
risen as a result of the official honours done him in India, the media
scramble to record each word and action and the uncomplicated, warm public
response wherever he went. The hard right has no reason for complaint after
the broadcast of the breakfast session with Indian journalists which would
have been interpreted as the general standing firm on Kashmir.
Thanks to New Delhi's agreeing to
do business with him, he has gained more international respectability,
his usurpation of a second public office in Pakistan temporarily overlooked.
Going to Agra has boosted Musharraf's political career.
India? The gains are real if not
so obvious. The Vajpayee government may be feeling a little foolish at
allowing itself to be outmaneouvred in news management. But there was true
statesmanship in the restraint, generosity and accommodation shown during
the summit. More than anything else India invites trust: for calling for
talks in the first place and for the series of measures on behalf of ordinary
people announced before the summit. A great deal was also done to smooth
Pakistan's passage to the talks. That included agreeing to commence talks
without a fixed agenda and holding steady through provocations like the
meeting with the APHC.
The big risk now is to think Pakistan's
unhelpful behaviour - the hard line on Kashmir, APHC affair, breach of
confidentiality, games with the media, sudden request to do namaz at Jama
Masjid and so on - arises from the perception that India is weak. There
is a hint of such thinking and of a retreat from the Agra approach in the
MEA's statement that fresh talks will start from Lahore and not take into
account documents drafted this July. Action flowing from the fear of being
thought weak is never wise and in this case will undermine the trust being
built. The objective is to create some sort of sustainable dialogue process
using small building blocks. That takes time and patience. At the very
least, each side got some useful insights into the other's thinking in
Agra and those can be built upon. Only the next time the negotiating environment
should be different and the ground rules for media access should be agreed.
A major casualty in Agra is the
notion that Pakistani realism on political, social and economic conditions
in the country would facilitate peace negotiations. To some extent Musharraf
has been motivated by the multiple crises in Pakistan, and international
pressure, to look for an accommodation with India. But to think that the
combined weight of an economy on its knees, international isolation, breakdown
of constitutional and political machinery and destabilising rise of fundamental
forces within the country would be sufficient to drive the bilateral dialogue
forward is evidently reading Pakistan wrong. Musharraf himself urged a
different reading when he referred in Agra to what can only be described
as underlying psychological and emotional currents. He spoke of the responsibility
of a big country to ensure the ''dignity and honour'' of a small one, of
the historical ''hurts'' Pakistani people nurse, and so on.
One way of interpreting such language
is, emotions are raw when it comes to dealing with India. In that perspective,
Kashmir becomes a means of righting past wrongs. In saying Pakistani leaders
- even those who exercise absolute power - who do not take into account
these raw emotions will be brought down, the general is stating what all
his predecessors knew and lived by. However, the test of true leadership
is not to accept things as they are when those things harm the national
interest but to try and change them.
Building constituencies for peace
in Pakistan will not be easy. And yet the help India can offer through
confidence-building measures and economic cooperation cannot be accepted,
as the general explains it, because they are seen by the people as diversionary
tactics, as taking the focus off Kashmir. In addition to these dilemmas,
there is the fact that civilian and military leaders have used Kashmir
to prop up their regimes and divert attention from a variety of domestic
problems, including corrupt administrations and acute social and economic
inequality.
Agra teaches that there is goodwill
among Indians and Pakistanis. But they can quickly turn mistrustful and
in that mood are blinded by the many decades of violence between the two
countries. Peace prospects depend on their leaders being able to build
on the goodwill and reduce the mistrust.
