The Indo-Pak peace process has been buffeted by certain recent incidents. But, despite the motivated provocations, General Pervez Musharraf and Dr Manmohan Singh have held firmly to their declared objectives.
The terrorist bombings in the bazaars of New Delhi last month came on the eve of talks in Islamabad aimed at opening up the LoC. The Indian delegation in Islamabad went into a sullen huddle until it was nudged by New Delhi to complete its mission and return home. This ‘soft’ response followed a strong statement from General Musharraf condemning the ‘terrorist’ incident. More significantly, General Musharraf explicitly offered to help India investigate the crime and pin down the terrorists. This stopped India from immediately accusing any particular Pakistan-based jihadi groups of complicity in the bombings or demanding that the Musharraf government take action against them. Much the same sort of nuanced response was forthcoming a couple of weeks later from India following the suicide attempt on the life of the new chief minister of the government of Indian-held Kashmir in which at least five people died.
Both countries are struggling to keep the process on track, often having to juggle with contradictory positions and tackle new situations. This is best exemplified by their mutual stance on opening up the LoC and ‘softening’ the ‘divide’. For instance, when Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, India’s prime minister in 2003, offered to open up the LoC at several points, the unthinking response in Islamabad was not terribly encouraging. Indeed, it was even suspected that the Indian proposal might be geared to making the LoC a de facto ‘border’ with Pakistan. Hence the long drawn out negotiations over which ‘documents’ travelers from both sides would be obliged to carry. Clearly, even at that time, the Indo-Pak dialectic was largely a sum zero game. If one country proposed something, the other was obliged to discern some hidden agenda and reject it. But now we have General Musharraf boldly asking for a complete “demilitarization” of both Kashmirs and free movement for Kashmiris across the LoC. In the old paradigm, the Indians would have looked askance at this proposal, suspecting it of being insidiously linked to Pakistan’s old stance of rejecting the LoC as a “sacrosanct” political and geographical feature. Equally, an acceptance would have implied a contradiction with India’s old position that the LoC was an established “dividing line” between the two countries rather than a controversial one between two communities. Similarly, on the Pakistan side, the UN-only approach has been officially abandoned in favour of exploring a multiple-option agenda. In other words, an acceptable and welcome level of “reinterpretation” is developing on both sides.
The bus service between the two countries is being beefed up with new routes and greater frequency. ‘Moderate’ Kashmiri leaders from India have been allowed to cross the LoC and visit Pakistan – Mr Yasin Malik is here for the second time in three months – while Islamabad hasn’t shed any tears about the isolation of the hardliners in Srinagar. The same leaders have also had meetings with the Indian prime minister, a long outstanding demand. The remarkable thing is that an increasing number of opinion-makers in Pakistan want the opening of a trade route across the LoC and the border at Amritsar. Until recently, Islamabad was insistent on linking progress on trade liberalization – which benefits India more than Pakistan because it will lead to a huge trade surplus for India with palpable movement on the core issue of Kashmir. But now the Pakistani government has unilaterally allowed Indian foodstuffs to be imported in order to combat the inflationary pressures at home – which shows that there are benefits for Pakistan too beyond the cold statistics of the trade equation. More significantly, in pursuit of the same self-serving objective, the Pakistani commerce ministry has quietly decided to allow the import of dozens of consumer, industrial and intermediate goods from India. These developments square with India’s desire to normalize relations and build trust before coming to grips with the Kashmir dispute.
The earthquake has raised the question of transforming a national calamity into an international opportunity to build trust and peace. It is therefore unfortunate that the Indian offer of helicopters for relief was spurned by Pakistan for purely military reasons and equally regrettable that India could not bring itself to allow neutral Russian or Arab pilots to fly them. Pakistanis are also upset about the lack of an appropriate response from civil society in India. Perhaps the terrorist bombings of civilians in Delhi has something to do with it. Now comes the unsettling news that India’s pro-peace foreign minister, Natwar Singh, has been stripped of his portfolio for dubious involvement in the UN oil-for-food program. If he is incapacitated, the peace process would naturally slow down. Equally, if jihadi-inspired terrorist attacks in India continue to rock tactical or strategic assessments, there could be pressure on Islamabad to deliver on the anti-jihadi agenda, something that General Musharraf may not be in a position to do quickly.
The Indo-Pak peace process is moving into unexplored territory. Restraint and wisdom will have to be exercised by both sides to keep it on track.