Process is substance
LEON Trotsky once declared: “Process is substance; the end is irrelevant.” In politics and statecraft, the outcome of negotiations is largely determined by the process adopted. Process defines the agenda, modalities, linkages and pace of any negotiation or interaction. The final result is determined by the process and relative power of the parties.
Great power prodding, and discreet diplomacy, produced the Paris prime ministerial encounter between Pakistan and India. This, in turn, resulted in the Bangkok meeting between the national security advisers (who talked of terrorism) and, separately, between the two foreign secretaries (who discussed Kashmir, peace and security and other issues, according to Pakistani reports). This clever diplomatic stratagem to meet the conditions for talks of the two sides has broken the ice and enabled the Indian foreign minister to attend the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad and for the Indian prime minister to participate in the Saarc summit (unless things go off the rails again.)
However, it is not yet clear if agreement has been reached to resume the Composite Dialogue (renamed the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue) whose agenda of two main issues (Kashmir and peace and security) plus six other items was agreed during the last PML-N government. This has vital implications for the outcome of Pakistan-India negotiations.
The agreement on the Composite Dialogue process was itself the result of years of diplomatic struggle between Pakistan and India. New Delhi finally agreed to talk about Kashmir and peace and security when faced with the last Kashmiri insurgency in the 1990s. The agenda of the Composite Dialogue does not include terrorism.
For all intents and purposes, Pakistan has accepted India’s ‘role’ in Afghanistan.
It appears advisable for Pakistan to keep the discussions with India on terrorism separate from this process for several reasons.
One, the agenda of the dialogue acknowledges the primacy of Kashmir and peace and security. This should not be diluted.
Two, including terrorism in the Composite Dialogue agenda risks linking Kashmir with terrorism. Pakistan has always held that Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination cannot be equated with terrorism.
Three, in Pakistan’s view, terrorism is a temporary phenomena arising from the rise of extremism and India’s support for the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s attacks against Pakistan and for the Baloch insurgency.
Four, Pakistan cannot expect to achieve its objectives of ending Indian support for anti-Pakistan terrorism through bilateral talks with New Delhi, especially since the Indians, with Western support, have succeeded in portraying Pakistan as a sponsor of ‘Islamist terrorism’ and placing it on the diplomatic defensive on this issue.
In the negotiating process on terrorism, Pakistan’s aim should be to refute the Indian propaganda about Pakistan’s ‘sponsorship’ of terrorism and secure understanding that India’s threat to almost automatically resort to the use of force in response to a future terrorist incident is a recipe for another general Pakistan-India war.
The answer to halting India’s reported terrorist intervention from Afghan territory lies not in persuading New Delhi but in compelling Kabul. Pakistan has much greater leverage with Afghanistan than with India. Unfortunately, so far, Pakistan has been unable to exercise this leverage very effectively.
Pakistan facilitated the first direct talks between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban. These were sabotaged when information about Mullah Omar’s demise was revealed by the Afghan intelligence agency. Pakistan’s prime minister has repeated the offer to make every effort to resume the inter-Afghan dialogue even though President Ghani has not asked Pakistan to do so.
Emboldened perhaps by the divisions within the Afghan Taliban and assurances that US-Nato forces will stay on in Afghanistan, Ghani and anti-Pakistan elements in Kabul have denigrated Islamabad’s gestures, while continuing to level accusations against it for sponsoring the Taliban. Ghani has asserted that Pakistan would bring to the table only one faction of the Taliban and Kabul would talk to them if they accepted the Afghan constitution and other conditions. No talks will be possible or successful under such conditions.
The Ghani government has become trenchant on other issues as well. Ghani has demanded better treatment of Afghan refugees — after decades of Pakistan’s generosity in hosting them. He has linked Pakistan’s desire for transit to Central Asia to Islamabad’s agreement to open transit to India; Pakistan should demand transit to Central Asia in exchange for providing Afghanistan’s trade transit across Pakistan.
Pakistan should first define a clear strategy and process for dealing with Afghanistan. Islamabad’s support for promoting reconciliation between Kabul and the Afghan insurgency should be directly linked to action by the unity government, especially its intelligence agency, to eliminate TTP safe havens in Afghanistan and halt its cross-border attacks against Pakistani civilians and soldiers. Unilateral gestures will only lead to additional unilateral demands — as witnessed in Islamabad during the last few days.
In the endeavour to appear reasonable (mainly to the West), Pakistan has ended up enhancing another process which impinges negatively on its own strategic interests: the so-called Heart of Asia conference. This process was initiated by Turkey in 2011 as a means of securing its involvement in the negotiations relating to Afghanistan which, until then, were restricted to Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours Pakistan and Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council. This initiative was actively supported by the US as a means of bringing its other friends into the Afghan process, especially India.
It is thus ironic that Islamabad, pursuing the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ approach, played host to this conference and is so happy that the Indian foreign minister was able to participate. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan has accepted India’s ‘role’ in Afghanistan on its own soil. Surely, the Indian foreign minister must have been ecstatic to come to the conference.
To add insult to injury, the beneficiary of this process, the Afghan president, did not confirm his participation until the last minute. He finally justified going to the conference by asserting “this is not Pakistan’s conference, it is Afghanistan’s conference”.
Clearly, Pakistan’s diplomacy needs to clarify its strategic objectives and agree only to processes where these objectives can be advanced, or at least not negated. Unless, of course, Islamabad believes, like Trotsky, that the end is irrelevant. Trotsky’s end was not pleasant.
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.
Source: Process is substance
Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2015