Not yet, says Mustafa Qadri. But it’s the Kashmir issue, not terrorism or Afghanistan, that’s still the biggest bar to a breakthrough.
Both nuclear armed, and with one of the most militarised borders in the world between them, India and Pakistan have one of the most entrenched of modern rivalries. But as high-level diplomacy recommences, there’s hope now that the subcontinent’s two largest nations may just be back on the long road to normalised relations.
Yet while few question the necessity of normalisation, the road ahead is riven with obstacles to lasting peace between two nations that have fought four wars and countless indirect skirmishes.
India’s main gripe has long been that Pakistan is not, in its view, doing enough to remove a jihadist infrastructure that it says is used to target Indian interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan. According to Indian Defence Minister AK Antony, Pakistan has yet to close 42 ‘terrorist training camps’ that it says fuel attacks against India in both regions. Senior Pakistani officials, for their part, have responded with vocal public claims of an Indian hand in the recent spate of bombings that have rocked major cities (India vehemently denies this, and the claims are treated sceptically outside Pakistan).
With such a climate, it has become easy for politicians in both countries, particularly those on the right, to score easy political points with jingoistic diatribes against their neighbour—hardliners and political opportunists are eager to ‘remind’ a frustrated populace that their neighbour is the root of all evil.
It doesn’t help, of course, that there’s strong anecdotal evidence to suggest India and Pakistan have supported violent insurgencies in each other’s territory. Although militancy in India emanating from Pakistan is what hit the headlines again following the Mumbai attacks, several Indian commentators speaking off the record to The Diplomat claimed Pakistan had anyway also been supporting a widespread Maoist insurgency in India’s rural heartland.
Pakistan, too, is insecure over India’s alleged involvement in recent bombings, and its long time support for indigenous separatist militancy in the restive province of Balochistan, a large and resource rich area that borders Iran and southern Afghanistan. In an apparent admission of sorts, Indian authorities agreed to a reference to Balochistan in a joint statement issued by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari at Sharm el Shaikh. The reference was condemned by many sections of the Indian press and right-wing opposition parties as a costly ‘blunder.’ In neighbouring Pakistan, in contrast, the reference to Balochistan was celebrated as a welcome admission.
‘[Indian Prime Minister] Singh wanted to give something to [the civilian government of Prime Minister] Gilani,’ says Indian analyst Kanti Bajpai, who believes Singh’s acknowledgment over Balochistan was an attempt to build confidence with Pakistan’s democratically elected government, rather than an admission.
Singh’s approach has been widely heralded by less impassioned observers like Bajpai and journalist Kamran Shafi, himself a trenchant critic of Pakistan’s military excesses who routinely receives death threats. ‘Dialogue must remain spearheaded by the elected governments of both nations,’ Shafi says.
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Marc
No nation has ever risen to super power status while entangled in petty border disputes/quibbles. US cajoled,traded, and aided its two major and immediate neighbors into friendship. Russia absorbed weak ones and reached a workable detente with major ones like China, Finland. By dragging its feet over conflict resolution with Pakistan, India is denying itself a pliant and useful muslim neighbor that can be a gateway to riches of central asia and caucasia and beyond. Any such expansion of two-way overland trade and energy pipelines, railways will enhance India’s credentials as an Asian superpower with a far wider reach from East Asia to Central Asia, Caucases/Caspain basin even Eastern Europe. Relinquishing/bartering a small vale (kashmir) full of angry muslims for such an over-arching role would show other big powerful nations that India has arrived to the table with smarts and foresight. Insisting on occupying a small valley full of hostile inhabitants while expending enormous military and diplomatic resources portrays India as a petty, obsessed regional suzerain with no strategic plans beyond anti-pakistan posture. So what will it be India?
Ram Sharma
That Hindustan is “denying itself a pliant and useful Muslim neighbor that can be a gateway to riches of central Asia and caucasia and beyond” is just some one’s pipe dream. Even if these two nations were performing bhangra together,Pakis would always be a thorn for Hindustan. Pakis have sold their arse to China. America and West have kept this failed state afloat by generous financial and military aid. Under the circumstance, Pakis have no incentive for economic development. If Pakis were economically progressive, what has kept them from that “pie in the sky” riches of Central Asia ? Also Paki ruling thugs have ensured their throne by being rabid anti Hindustan and at the same time feeding crap about Hindus to the brain dead populace. Same story is being played out in the Middle Easy between Arabs and Israel.
Daulat Ram
Pakistan can shout as long as it likes, but it is NOT going to get Kashmir.
Period.
Dev Kumar Dutta
No, Kashmir is not the main issue or the “core” issue. It never was. The main issue is sectarian which is as simple as the eternal differences between the subcontinent’s native Hinduism and alien Islam. No Indian except the likes of Manmohan Singh, Kanti Bajpai and some other so-called neo-liberals believe that Pakistan will stop its terrorists from attacking targets in India. Solution to the dispute in Kashmir? What dispute? The UNSC recommendation for plebicite? Well, India has dumped it into the dustbin of history and the only dispute that remains is the return of POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) to India. The ethnic cleansing of over half a million native Hindus from the Kashmir valley by Pakistan-backed Islamic terrorists. The return of this entire population to their homes is the main issue in Kashmir as far as India is concerned. Trade between India and Pakistan? That’s a laughable matter under the present circumstances.
Ashoka Chakra
Solutions are:
1. Convert the LOC into an international boundary. This would make both countries equally unhappy, and won’t solve the problem of Jihadis in Pakistan since both countries have sworn to its citizens to hold onto the whole of J and K, and especially for Pakistan, its enmity with India is its sole rationale for existence.
2. Convert J and K into a mutually administered territory. This concept, steeped in Nehruvian idealism and ironically propounded by Benazir Bhutto before the Jihadis killed her, is just as impractical as the first one. Both countries will try everything in their power to take over J and K by stealth, ultimately leading to a full out war.
3. Complete the partition. Accept the fact that the countries were divided along religious lines. Divide J and K into its three regions, with Kashmir going to Pakistan and Ladakh and Jammu staying with India. And with the countries now completely divided along religious lines, Muslims in India would have the choice of converting to any Indian religion (Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism) or migrating to Pakistan.
4. Revoke the partition, and accept that it was a British blunder for which both countries have paid a dear price. This is unlikely, given the brainwashing that has gone on for 60 years with very deep hatreds.