Public sentiment inPakistan is overwhelmingly for peace with India. The attrition of the decade-long Kashmir jihad has been on both India and Pakistan but statistics show that Pakistan has gone belly-up politically and economically while India has mixed high growth rates with a burgeoning of Hindu fundamentalism. Most Pakistanis welcome free trade with India when it is properly explained to them. Dr Ishrat Hussain, governor State Bank of Pakistan, acknowledged reality recently, “If direct trading relations are established between India and Pakistan, production costs will decline, consumers will benefit from cheaper products and trade within the South Asian region could expand by 10 % to 15 % within the next five years. There is a lot of trade taking place through third countries like Dubai in the UAE and Singapore. This raises costs. In the rest of the world regional trade is expanding and it is one of the major stimulants that insulates countries from global recessions”.
Despite such glimmers of rationality, hawkish wisdom would not have Pakistan talking to India but relying on international support to make it cough up Kashmir. To get international support, it says, highlight the Kashmir problem. Anybody who matters politically in Pakistan, and his aunt, has participated in this “highlighting” business at the cost of millions of dollar. The fact is that every time Pakistan highlights the Kashmir “cause” it loses international support. Last time General Musharraf did it at Kargil Pakistan became a pariah state. The other paradox is even more horrendous and should be prevented from casting its shadow on South Asia: every time the two countries talk peace they risk going to war. Mr Vajpayee’s Lahore visit led to Kargil; General Musharraf’s Agra visit led to India massing its army on the border with Pakistan.
Sanity is located outside South Asia. It is clear that the pressure on India and Pakistan to talk has come from the United States and Europe who think that the next Indo-Pak stand-off will lead to war which may quickly go nuclear. After the 2001 massing of Indian troops on the Pakistani border, there are many military experts who agree with this, but no one is willing to change his calcified approach to a problem that has held Pakistan back. However, given the world’s irresistible “encouragement”, India and Pakistan are being dragged to the talking table. In the meanwhile, confusion reigns in both New Delhi and Islamabad. Only an expert on the absurdity of Indo-Pak relations can see the method in this madness.
Mr Vajpayee made his famous speech about talks with Pakistan on April 18 but on April 19 added the “conditionality” of Pakistan stopping its “cross-border” infiltration. On the Pakistani side, the PM Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali said all the nice things he normally says but then called in the parliamentary opposition and agreed on a position on Kashmir that will foredoom the talks if they ever take place. Foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri stubbed his toe saying Pakistan wouldn’t mind starting free trade with India before the Kashmir dispute was resolved. The Foreign Office came on line the next day saying he meant only Pakistan trading gas with India from the trans-Afghan pipeline that may never be built.
The opposition that went to see PM Jamali came out of his office transformed. The “secular” political parties have suddenly become hawks although two of them were removed from power by turns for being soft on India. The acting boss of the PML-N Javed Hashmi promised the nation that he would not allow the Jamali government to settle the Kashmir dispute on the basis of the Line of Control. Mr Hashmi is standing in for former premier Nawaz Sharif who got Mr Vajpayee to travel by bus to Lahore and sign the Lahore Declaration. The MMA remains hawkish on India because its “muscle” (read jihadi organisations) comes from keeping the pot boiling in Kashmir. The Jama’at-e-Islami says it is getting ready to put up the kind of street fight it organised when Mr Vajpayee last came to Lahore. Is it possible that General Musharraf actually wanted to hear that?
Just as there are vested interests in Pakistan holding back Islamabad from committing the heresy of deviating from a failed policy, so in India, the Shiv Sena is telling Mr Vajpayee to organise his own cross-border terrorism against Pakistan and send in Hindu suicide-bombers to kill Pakistanis instead of talking to them.
The common man in Pakistan has lost interest in this pantomime. Textbook nationalism may make him mouth opinion that favours the hawks but the average citizen has borne the brunt of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy for too long and wants the economic noose around his neck loosened. Seen in the light of public sentiment and economic necessity, all the hawkish wisdom in Pakistan has become ridiculously paradoxical. We can only hope that while talking peace India and Pakistan will not be risking war.