Resumption of INDO-PAK peace process

[Syed Gohar A Shah]

For almost ten months after November last year’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the peace process between India and Pakistan that began in January 2004 remained disrupted. New Delhi wanted Islamabad to hand over the alleged culprits of Mumbai attacks and guarantee that Pakistani soil will not be used for terrorism in India. The Pakistani government, on the other hand, remained firm that the alleged culprits of these attacks—including eight members of the banned group, Jama’at-u-Da’awa, an affiliate of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, against whom criminal charges were filed in February—will be tried in local courts, and that the country is ready to cooperate with India to prevent future cross-border terrorist attacks. At Sharm el-Sheikh, Prime Ministers Yousuf Raza Gilani and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were able to resolve such differences on terrorism.
The Joint Statement released after the two prime ministers’ meeting on the sidelines of the NAM summit in the Egyptian sea resort on July 16th is being interpreted differently. The government in Pakistan is claiming it as a victory, while the ruling Congress Party leadership, especially Prime Minister Singh, has come under severe criticism from the Opposition led by BJP for disrupting the “national consensus.” Interestingly, Pakistani claims of victory and Indian charges of loss pertain to the same two issues mentioned in the Joint Statement; i. e.; de-linking of the “composite dialogue” from terrorism; and the reference to threats in Balochistan. To be precise, the Statement said (a) “both prime ministers recognized the fact that dialogue is the only way forward, adding that action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed;” and (b) Prime Minister “Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas.”
Pakistani leadership may have a cause to celebrate, but only to the extent of its success in the resumption of the peace process on a premise that should have agreed upon by the two countries’ leaderships the moment they started the “composite dialogue’ back in 2004: that any instance of terrorism whether it takes place in India or in Pakistan, will never derail the peace process. At the time, we had a military regime in Pakistan and New Delhi was led by the BJP. Both President-General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had then on several occasions declared the peace process to be “irreversible.” However, as we saw in later years—in the aftermath of the respective terrorist bombing incidents on Samjotha Express and commuter trains in Mumbai—the process was reversed each time by New Delhi.
As for the reference to Balochistan in the Joint Statement, it is as vague as the follow-up sentence of Indian prime minister agreeing to resolve “all outstanding issues.” The Joint Statement does not at all mention the Kashmir dispute and the water issue—the former will continue to fuel terrorism as long as it remains unresolved and the later is increasingly being perceived in Pakistan as a future “life and death” issue that can even cause a nuclear war between the two countries. Given that, even if the peace process has resumed, at least in the shape of frequent interaction between Indo-Pak foreign secretaries in coming months, its future viability cannot be guaranteed fully when real issues such as Kashmir and water are not categorically listed nor was any joint commitment made to resolve them.

The criticism that the Indian leader has received in Indian parliament and from the Opposition for agreeing to resume dialogue with Pakistan is reflective of the broader dilemma facing Indian ruling elites as well as a significant section of Indian public opinion vis-à-vis the issue of terrorism in South Asia. This dilemma revolves around the following question: If Pakistan has come to be the world’s foremost victim of a wave of terrorism that knows no borders, then how is it possible that India will not be at least its peripheral victim? That is why we can safely argue that perhaps the most important outcome of the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting is the de-hyphenation of terrorism from the composite dialogue. This provision of the Joint Statement will ensure the “irreversibility” of the peace process, which was its founding idea in the first place. However, even if we presume that the dialogue does begin in coming months as promisingly as it did during the three years after January 2004, the leadership of the two countries this time will have to go beyond taking merely cosmic steps such as CBMs and resolve their key unresolved disputes, especially Kashmir and the worsening water issue.

Regards,
Syed Gohar Altaf
M.Sc International relations.

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"War is a continuation of political activity by other means"

Clausewitz in his magnum-opus "ON WAR"