20.10.2013 The Indo-Pak peace paradigm
With an under-performing government, an opposition hinged on majoritarian fundamentalism and a shrill electronic media, Pakistan bashing remains the most potent point-scoring plank
By Asma Khan Lone
The Kafkaesque reality of the Indo-Pak relationship plays out once again as the region advances towards a political re-alignment. A milieu symbolised by cross-LoC violations, bureaucratic wrangling, diplomatic reticence and proxy bids in Afghanistan delineate the course for the foreseeable future. With a determined leadership at the helm, somewhat mellowed by the exigencies of its domestic threats, Pakistan’s forthcoming overtures fail to find the requisite response in India. An array of factors prevails.
A confluence of myriad dynamics, the current contours of India’s Pakistan policy spell a ‘toughened’ approach. An election year and its attendant arithmetic form the immediate momentum for the ‘casus belli’. Unlike the recently concluded election in Pakistan where the Indo-Pak hostility hardly figured in the campaign trail, the jingoist rhetoric looms large on the Indian electoral horizon. With an under-performing government, an opposition hinged on majoritarian fundamentalism and a shrill electronic media, Pakistan bashing remains the most potent point-scoring plank India’s answer to Pakistan’s political Islam?
Events such as the furore over the tit-for-tat beheading of soldiers along the LoC (why not the uproar on past such occurings) and the ill thought-out hanging of Afzal Guru earlier this year form the corollary to the approach of keeping sentiments simmering and in response whetting nationalist credentials. The revised statement of the defence minister over the killing of Indian soldiers along the LoC in early August betrayed the duress to compete with the ultra-radical posturing of the main opposition party ‑ BJP.
The hardened posturing of the Indian prime minister for a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart on the sidelines of an upcoming UN General Council meeting in New York further belied the compulsion to compete with the histrionics of the far-right especially in the light of the meeting eventually taking place.
Notwithstanding the Indian propensity to play to the electoral gallery developments within Pakistan also stoke the trending radicalism. The attack on the Indian consulate in Afghanistan earlier last month was perceived as the handiwork of Pakistan-based militants in tandem with Pakistani intelligence agencies.
According to sources in India, “It was Pakistan’s way of signaling to India”. Marking Pakistan’s Defence Day on September 6, 2013, Hafiz Saeed, head of Jamaat-ud Dawah, openly led an anti-India rally in Islamabad. The sensitivity attached to Hafiz Saeed and his brazen show of power in Pakistan’s capital didn’t go down well in India. Then there’s the Damocle’s sword of the Pakistani military undermining the civilian government’s accomplishments with India, if for nothing else, to destabilise the government domestically. The revival of the NSC by the new Pakistani dispensation is a step towards allaying such fears and extending the impression of a unified approach. It, however, fails to cut the ice in India.
Developments in neighbouring Afghanistan also cast a long shadow, hardening positions in both countries. India fears a raised level of violence on its territory once the US departs from Afghanistan after the 2014 drawdown. There already exists the perception of an alignment between the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Haqqani group in Afghanistan against Indian targets. The receding US presence, and with it the restraint on the outfits, could well extend the liaison into mainland India.
An assumption finding credence by the admission of a veteran LeT member to Reuters earlier this year: “Jihad is being stimulated and various militant outfits are cooperating with each other under one umbrella”. The alienation in Kashmir, which India cared less to address over the course of the ‘last decade’ (2003-2013), provides fertile grounds for such an enterprise.
Already the violence is up in Kashmir with 103 militant-related violent incidents being recorded in the first eight months of this year against 57 such incidents occurring in the corresponding period of 2012. Ceasefire violations across the LoC are also up by 80 per cent from last year. Against this backdrop, India elects to follow a ‘wait and watch’ policy towards Pakistan.
Pakistan too is wary of extended Indian influence in Afghanistan which it views as part of its larger design of ‘strategic encirclement’ of Pakistan. It perceives India’s juxtaposition with a hostile Karzai government, in particular its assistance in training the Afghan National Army, with suspicion. Pakistan conceives such moves as directed at destabilising its western border, further undermining its efforts against the homegrown terrorists in the adjoining Waziristan region.
It has reservations regarding the perceived Indian interference in its restive Balochistan province through its various consulates in Afghanistan. It further perceives India’s foot dragging on peace with Pakistan as a link in the scenario wherein stability on its eastern front will enable it to better focus on its western border and hence India’s resistance to move forward with Pakistan.
The recent ‘revelations’ by the former Indian Army Chief V.K Singh regarding the ‘foreign operations’ undertaken by the controversial ‘Technical Services Division’ only fuel such perceptions. The emerging contours of the new proxy battlefield in Afghanistan are evidently shaping into another caustic conflict between both the neighbours, aggravating the already acute security dilemma.
Recent books by leading western academics and policy-makers such as Stephen Cohen and Bruce Reidel also underline the prognosis as did visiting US dignitaries to Delhi Joe Biden and John Kerry by stressing the need to resume the stalled peace process. Against this backdrop, the accentuated track two gambit between both the countries betrays the imprints of a ‘nudge’ by western powers towards engagement between both the neigbours. Such ‘facilitation’ is, however, an anthema to New Delhi and it remains keen to both underplay and undermine it.
The Fidayeen attacks in Jammu on the eve of the Manmohan Singh-Nawaz Sharif talks on the sidelines of the UNGA meeting in New York further undercut any substantive engagement. Like the Mumbai attacks proving a basis for blunting the momentum of the ‘Obama thesis’ in 2008, there are parallels being drawn how in the wake of the rising western interest in the region once again, India is searching for pretexts to circumvent renewed forward movement with Pakistan.
Any ‘photo opportunity’ like the New York meet is only a means of relieving (nagging) US pressure. Unlike Pakistan where there exists an extended public opinion for peace with India, there is no parallel peace constituency in India.
asma_sgl@hotmail.com