The Neighbour from Hell - India-Pakistan Summit – Yesterday Once More

Prabhat P Shukla, 

Joint Director, VIF

The run-up to the summit between the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers had seen a serious debate on the wisdom or otherwise of such high-level contact. The way events have unfolded, it is clear that the sceptics had it right. But this is too serious a matter for any “I told you so” kind of gloating. Instead, it is time to take stock and see where developments are heading. This essay is one contribution to such an effort.

First, we need to be clear about what we are dealing with. For quite long now, we have accepted it as fact that Mian Nawaz wants peace with us – this is an image he has fostered with care, and has distanced himself from the hostile actions that have emanated from Pakistan. This applies principally to the Kargil adventure, where India gave him a free pass, even though the evidence did not warrant any such generosity. In point of fact, it is questionable whether he is indeed the man of peace he is portrayed as being.

Ever since Mian sahib came to power in June this year, we have seen a number of negative developments on the political and diplomatic side, which are directly traceable to him. The first is the National Assembly resolution on Kashmir. This was piloted by the PML-N, and not only called for a settlement on the basis of the UN Resolutions, but declared that Pakistan would continue to extend political, moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiris. Nothing unusual for Pakistan, but this Prime Minister has repeatedly said that he wishes to pick up where he left off in 1999, when he was overthrown by Gen Musharraf. The 1999 Lahore Declaration that he signed did not mention the UN Resolutions – and that was one of the major breakthroughs of the Lahore meeting.

Secondly, it is Mian sahib’s Government that has finally put paid to all hopes that Pakistan will give MFN treatment to Indian exports. This, from a man who is sold to us as a business-minded leader – even the previous Government was more forthcoming on the issue. The issue has now been linked to the state of political relations between the two countries. In short, it is not on the agenda any longer. It is worth repeating that, in and of itself, this is not an issue that will affect our trade, piffling as it is. No, the issue is Pakistani refusal to honour its solemn international undertakings. Under WTO, it is obliged to extend MFN treatment to Indian exports – no conditions attach to this. But it is disregarding this obligation, secure in the knowledge that no Government till now has troubled itself on this account.

Third, at the UNGA session this year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif again raked up the Kashmir issue, and once again linked it to the UN Resolutions, forcing the Indian Prime Minister to take a firm stand on the issue and emphasising the centrality of the Simla Agreement. It is worth stressing that Musharraf had ended the practice of referring to the UN Resolutions, and this had been continued by President Zardari in his initial years in power. However, he had re-started making reference to the UN Resolutions, so Nawaz Sharif genuinely had the choice of not raking up the Resolutions, but elected to do so.

All of this is to be seen against the backdrop of the continuing freedom of operation given to Hafiz Saeed to incite hatred and violence towards India. The PML-N Government in Punjab continues to provide funding for his tanzeem, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Our Prime Minister did raise this issue in the New York meeting, according to press reports, but was fobbed off with the usual – and unconvincing – response that the JuD was a charitable organisation. For good measure, Nawaz also raised the issues of Baluchistan and water-sharing – comparatively newer issues that will keep relations from improving even if, by some miracle, there is some forward movement on Kashmir.

All of this suggests that we need to re-assess the attitude and role of Nawaz Sharif. It has been almost axiomatic that he seeks friendly relations with India. True, there is evidence for this in the statements he has made, but the public pronouncements of former President Zardari were also of a similar tenor. The problem is not in saying that he, or some other leader, wants friendly relations; the challenge is to match their deeds with their words. And as we have seen, on issues like Kashmir, or even MFN, let alone curbing terrorism, there is no difference between the different leaders.

This is also the right time to address another mistake the Indian side frequently makes. This is the suggestion that the civilian leaders want good relations but the Army and the ISI block them. Historically, this is certainly false. We know that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was far more hawkish towards India than was Ayub. In the late 1980’s, and especially after the Kashmir troubles began in late 1989, Benazir was as hostile towards India as any military leader was. It is Mian Nawaz who has played Artful Dodger, and managed to insinuate that the Army in Pakistan was creating all the trouble – and we have eagerly seized upon this version. This is not meant to absolve the Pakistan Army – not at all; but the reality is that all segments of Pakistani society, the military and civil bureaucracy, the politicians and the tanzeems are committed in equal measure to two issues: Kashmir, and revenge for the humiliation of 1971.

The failure of the New York meeting has become apparent more quickly than one would have expected. It now turns out that even as the talks were taking place, armed intrusions by the special forces of the Pakistan Army were taking place across the Line of Control. This only provides confirmation, if any were needed, that talks are not the answer to the challenge we face from Pakistan. And certainly we do not need talks at the political level, until there is some reasonable ground for believing that there is a genuine change of policy on the part of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

More important, we need to determine what the Pakistani strategy is for the coming months and years. The stepped-up pattern of military action comes alongside growing and open incitement from the likes of Hafiz Saeed. There are well-documented intelligence reports suggesting that there will be more active encouragement inside Kashmir of terror groups sponsored by Pakistan in the future. The aim is to keep Indian forces occupied in Kashmir, giving the Pakistanis and their Taliban proxies a free hand in Afghanistan as the western forces begin their draw-down. What is more, there is no longer any attempt on the part of the Pakistani establishment at concealing their intent; the terrorist groups are openly proclaiming their plans, presumably secure in the knowledge that the Government in Delhi will do nothing about the threats brewing in Kashmir and in the neighbourhood.

What we need therefore, even at this late stage, is to come to a common understanding that talks alone will never deliver the goods. Surely, by now, we may conclude definitively, that all the justifications given in advance of the New York meeting that talks were the only way to find a solution were wrong.

What is more, the country was kept in the dark about the military activity on the LoC and indeed across the border, so as not to raise questions once again about the unwisdom of the meeting itself. It raises the legitimate query – what is the Government thinking? It is quite remarkable that there is no explanation whatsoever from the Government for all the blunders it has committed, from the Joint Anti-terror Mechanism to the Sharm el-Sheikh statement to its own broken promises to the Indian people that talks and terror cannot go together. We never hear anything from the Government as to why it is behaving the way it does, what results we may expect from these policies, and when.

It is not yet too late to face the facts, abandon the current appeasement, and recognise that some hard decisions have to be taken. The security situation in the neighbourhood is worsening from our standpoint, and we need to be prepared for all contingencies.

A Visit that can Wait

Kanwal SibalMember Advisory Board, VIF

The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, while publicly expressing his keenness to visit Pakistan, has also voiced his expectation several times that the outcome would be substantial. It was earlier speculated that by something “substantial” he had agreements on Siachen and Sir Creek in mind. While he still thinks Sir Creek is doable, the hope for an early resolution of the Siachen issue has receded. Although some progress was made in past talks, the issue has become complicated because of Kargil and the increased presence of China in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Now “substantial” means some credible progress by Pakistan in bringing to justice those responsible for the Mumbai terror attack. From the facts of the prime minister making his wishes known and Pakistan ignoring them even as it continues to press for his visit, one can infer that Singh is more keen on making the visit than Pakistan is in facilitating it by giving him a minimum face-saving reason to do so.

At one level, there is nothing exceptional in heads of State and government visiting one another. This is happening all the time in international diplomacy. So why so much fuss about the opportuneness of prime minister’s visit? In the case of India and Pakistan, though, the decision whether to make a visit or not has an exceptional context.

India has long suffered from terrorism at Pakistan’s hands, without this deterring it in the past to reach out to Pakistan at the prime minister’s level as Atal Bihari Vajpayee did in 1999. Kargil followed. In 2001, Vajpayee invited General Pervez Musharraf to Agra but the initiative failed because Pakistan did not offer a clear-cut commitment on terrorism. In 2004, Vajpayee went to Pakistan for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit and obtained a carefully worded commitment from Musharraf to prevent terrorism born on Pakistan’s soil from being directed against India. A spate of terrorist attacks nevertheless followed, but India did not interrupt the ongoing dialogue in the hope that Pakistan would at some stage abjure such acts in its own interest.

The dialogue collapsed, however, with the enormity of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai orchestrated by the Inter-Services Intelligence-jihadi groups nexus. Again, after a gap, India persuaded itself that the no-dialogue option was not sustainable and that the compulsions of geography — which Pakistan disregards — dictated that India begin talking to Pakistan again.

Four years have elapsed since the Mumbai attacks and two rounds of dialogue have been held, but without any tangible move by Pakistan to try those guilty of the Mumbai attack. Pakistan has used the excuse of complex legal procedures and an independent judiciary to explain the inordinate delay in doing so. 

Meanwhile, to drive home to India the futility of its demand, it allows Hafiz Saeed, the purported mastermind of the Mumbai massacre, to engage freely in his anti-India jihadi tirades. That it is unwilling to be put on the defensive on Mumbai is indicated by its insistence on drawing a parallel between a meticulously planned terrorist action by Pakistani nationals on Indian soil with official Pakistani complicity and an isolated action by local Indian terrorists on Indian soil without any official connivance.

Worse, Pakistan’s foreign minister insults reality and decency by pretending that terrorism is no longer an issue between India and Pakistan and advising us to be realistic and not emotional about the Mumbai trial. Now, if the prime minister of India says that he will go to Pakistan only if Pakistan demonstrates its sincerity by trying those responsible for Mumbai and the foreign minister of Pakistan is “appalled” that we raise the terrorism “mantra of the past”, this “old time” stuff, as she calls it, where is the meeting ground between the ways in which he and the Pakistani leadership see the issue? Our concessions to Pakistan on terrorism, so that the bilateral dialogue can continue, have unfortunately led to these scornful remarks by its foreign minister. If the prime minister were still to go, Pakistan would have diplomatically humiliated India finally on the terrorism issue.

To put the matter of the visit in perspective, our prime minister has been meeting Pakistan’s president and prime minister quite regularly in India or in third countries during international meetings, whether at Ekaterinaberg, Sharm el-Sheikh, Thimphu, New York and, most recently, Tehran. So, contact at the highest political levels is being maintained. Our expectation has been that this willingness to engage with Pakistan would encourage it to bring the pernicious and dangerous issue of terrorism to a political closure bilaterally, as terrorism has the potential to wreck the dialogue process if a Mumbai-like attack is repeated. As it happens, Pakistan has succeeded in blunting India’s case on terrorism even as the United States of America, ironically, has increasingly exposed Pakistan’s duplicity on the issue. If the prime minister were to go to Pakistan under these circumstances, we would have allowed the latter to deny us the only deliverable we seek from it.

Apart from bilateral dimensions of the terrorism issue, there is the international dimension. With religious extremism spreading in the Arab world and organizations with a violent political past acceding to power in hitherto “moderate Islamic states”, not to mention the current street frenzy against the US unleashed by a film, India has to remain vigilant about the impact of such developments on the popular spirit in the region, linked transnationally through religion and ideology with happenings beyond.

As a sign of the maturing of democracy in Pakistan and its polity outgrowing its India obsession, Pakistani commentators had noted that India had not figured as an electoral issue in the last general elections there. If so, why should the prime minister’s visit at this juncture play electorally in favour of the civilian government, especially President Asif Ali Zardari’s, in any significant way? India, in fact, has never been in a position to influence internal developments in Pakistan to suit its interests. We should discard any illusions in this regard.

While Zardari, no doubt, has relatively congenial views on India, they do not get reflected sufficiently in policymaking. Pakistan’s president, highly embattled politically, is hardly in a position to deliver on substantive issues. In any case, the civilian government cannot escape responsibility for the lack of progress on various issues that bedevil our relations, apart from trade where different dynamics are at play. Let us also not forget that it is not the military that created Pakistan but civilian politicians. Civilian politicians were fully complicit in Pakistan’s Afghanistan adventure, the unleashing of terrorism in Kashmir, the country’s clandestine nuclear and missile exchanges with North Korea and the anti-Indian thrust of the China relationship. We should not entrap ourselves into the civilian good guys versus the military bad guys equation.

Elections are due in Pakistan latest by February 2013. Before that, a caretaker government will take over. For practical reasons, the timing of a prime ministerial visit at this juncture would therefore be ill-advised. For those who advocate that he visit Nankana Sahib on November 28 and his village at Gah should remember that Guru Nanak’s jayanti will be celebrated next year too and Gah will not be effaced from the map in the years to come. So, let’s wait for Pakistan to deliver on terrorism first.

India Thinks Chimera is for Real

Satish Chandra

Distinguished Fellow,VIF

Despite repeated rebuffs by Pakistan, New Delhi continues to entertain the belief that the troublesome neighbour will soften up with sweet diplomacy. What else explains the need for India’s Foreign Secretary to mouth the untruth that Pakistan wants to be constructive?

While having little to show by way of a concrete and tangible outcome, the recently held India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary level talks are nonetheless significant in terms of providing indicators of the likely timbre and trend of the relationship between the two countries in the months ahead.

A critical analysis of the media interaction of the Foreign Secretaries and the joint statement issued after their talks would lead to the following conclusions.

Discussions on Jammu & Kashmir were held as required but they did not yield any result other than an agreement to continue the talks. It would appear that even the four-point ‘Musharraf proposal’, which was being explored through the back channel, no longer enjoys much traction.

Pakistan has refused to acknowledge that it was in any way involved in the Mumbai attacks despite the additional corroborative evidence made available to it by way of Abu Jundal’s revelations. It also did not provide any credible assurance that it would bring the perpetrators of those attacks to justice expeditiously. The best that it could come up with was that it was prepared to engage in a joint investigation, which naturally India did not take up. Indeed, on his way back home the Pakistani Foreign Secretary made out to the Indian media that no evidence on Abu Jundal had been shared with him by his Indian counterpart.

However, the Secretaries agreed on certain issues, such as the convening of meetings of the expert-level working group on nuclear and conventional confidence building measures and the convening of another meeting on July 19 at Islamabad to maintain peace along the Line of Control so as to streamline and strengthen travel and trade arrangements. They also decided that the two sides should work for the early signing of the already finalised bilateral visa agreement as well as enhance media and cricketing exchanges. Finally, both leaders agreed that the India’s Minister for External Affairs will visit Pakistan in September 2012.

Despite the slim pickings from the aforesaid talks and the heat generated by the Jundal disclosures, both Secretaries went out of their way to paint an unrealistically rosy picture of the discussions. On his part, the Pakistani Foreign Secretary stated that the exchanges had been “substantive”, were held in a “cordial atmosphere” and over the years the level of cooperation on terrorism between India and Pakistan had “improved”. While it is understandable that Pakistan should wish to give a positive spin to its relations with India, given that it is in the dog house, it was strange to see our own Foreign Secretary doing likewise, albeit on a slightly lower key. Was there any reason for him to state, “There is a determination on both sides to take forward our dialogue with an open mind and a constructive spirit”, when this is manifestly not the case?

The convening of the Foreign Secretary level talks amidst such bon- homie despite the lack of any meaningful forward movement, and the scheduling of the Indian External Minister’s visit to Pakistan in September 2012, in the immediate backdrop of Abu Jundal’s corroborative disclosures regarding the ISI’s involvement in the Mumbai attacks, is a clear indicator that India will continue to engage Pakistan, whether or not the latter brings to book the perpetrators of those attacks. Indeed, it would be fair to extrapolate that even if there were to be another major terrorist incident in India, aided and abetted by Pakistan, it is highly unlikely that the Government would go beyond verbal protestations.

India’s pusillanimous approach vis a vis Pakistan is based on two factors. First, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lacks the will to take stern measures against Pakistan and to penalise it for its involvement in terrorist actions against India. He appears to be convinced of the logic of what he signed on to in July 2009 at Sharm el-Sheikh with his Pakistani counterpart, that dialogue is the only way forward and that action on terrorism should not be linked with the peace process. Both processes must proceed independently.

Though in the wake of the upsurge of popular criticism following the enunciation of this approach at Sharm el-Sheikh, Mr Singh put on hold the resumption of the composite dialogue and made it contingent on forward movement in addressing India’s concerns on terror, this was only a temporary adjustment. Throughout 2010, steps were taken which gradually led to the resumption of the composite dialogue process the following year even though Pakistan did absolutely nothing to address India’s concerns on terrorism.

As a result, today India is in the strange position of being engaged in broad-based discussions with Pakistan on all bilateral issues at a time when Islamabad not only refuses to bring to book the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, but is actively involved in terrorist activities directed against India, which can at any time result in another 26/11.

Second, Mr Singh is keen to visit Pakistan, and for that an aura of normalcy in the relationship is critical. This is being sought to be achieved by creating a false sense of positivity in bilateral interactions and by refraining from taking any punitive steps against Pakistan.

The danger of such a weak approach is that it will only encourage Pakistan to continue its use of terrorism as a policy against India. The only way in which New Delhi can get Pakistan to seriously consider addressing India’s concerns on terrorism is by penalising it. Regrettably, India has never done so and is, therefore, in a sense responsible for Pakistan’s persistent delinquency in this regard.

The dangers posed by the Prime Minister’s desire to visit Pakistan arise from the requirement that such an exercise must be a ‘success’ or put in another way, marked by a number of agreements. But conclusion of the latter would come at the cost of major concessions by India. Pakistan, particularly in its dealings with India, is not known for it’s proclivity to go the extra mile in making settlements.

Accordingly, in the event of Mr Singh’s visit to Pakistan, as speculated, towards the end of this year, one should be prepared not merely for much bonhomie but also for sell-outs on issues like Sir Creek and Siachen, appropriately sweetened by economic goodies.