Indo-Pak CBM blues

One has noted with some trepidation that many people who matter across the globe — and that includes the UN Secretary General, have resumed the erstwhile chorus of advising Pakistan and India to settle their issues through bilateral dialogue. There is a definite aura of deja vu about it! This calls for a pause for a bit of introspection.

The recent incidents across the LOC and the Indian establishment’s somewhat irrational reaction on other fronts have underlined once again the futility of a dialogue based on CBMs (confidence building measures) as against one aimed at the settlement betimes of the contentious issues between the two countries. We, as a nation, appeared to be afflicted with the debilitating disease that may be called, for want of a better appellation, CBMitis? Our relations with our neighbour appear to be stuck in a groove. And yet we are goaded to do more of the same. What is hard to understand is why the world insists that we immerse ourselves headlong in the sea of CBMs. Is not our cup already overflowing with them as it is?

It came to pass that we got so enamoured with this quest that at one stage in the past we went to the extent of advocating the cause of CBMs in the UN General Assembly. Our philosophy appeared to be: what is good for the goose should be equally good for the gander. It would perhaps be a wee bit impolite to butt in and point out to the powers that be that CBMs are at best the means to an end and should never be confused with the end itself. Over-obsession with CBMs could very well result in making the overall picture murky and obscure. It would be in the fitness of things to pause and take stock before we are totally engulfed by the make-believe syndrome.

While on the subject of CBMs between India and Pakistan, one may well be within one’s rights to pose the question as to what happened to the (once) much-vaunted back-channel diplomacy? In the words of a screaming headline in a newspaper some summers back, it (back-channel diplomacy that is) was “back to square one”. One has little choice but to respectfully beg to differ. How could the process possibly ‘come back’ to square one when it was never intended to leave it in the first place? The sorry state of affairs was that the two interlocutors appeared to have expended all their precious energy in merely marking time. The stage of leaping out of the starting blocks was apparently not part of their training lexicon. Such was the state of affairs that was!

Now that a new, and potentially dangerous confrontation is on the horizon, it may perhaps be in order to peep over the shoulder and try to assess the trail traversed so far. In so far as the so-called composite dialogue is concerned, any ‘movement’, if at all, was neither forwards nor backwards, but rather sideways, more like that of hermit crabs on the beach. The only difference is that the crabs in question at least have a definite goal in mind. In our scenario, this was the very thing conspicuously missing in the ‘composite dialogue’ process.

What is amazing is not so much the Indian tactics (one should be used to these by now) as the somewhat inexplicable optimism that had been oozed by our side over the past many years. Our spokespersons had often bent over backwards to give a positive spin even to India’s dubious assertions. The staggering number of CBMs notwithstanding, precious little appears to have been achieved in the nature of settlement of outstanding contentious issues.

If one has placed the aforesaid on record, it is merely in the hope that the policy makers of both countries will see through the simulation and dissimulation that have characterised their past conduct. Given the state of the world today, the two neighbours can ill afford to traverse the same distorted path again, much as some lobbies may wish them to do so. The name of the game is to steer clear of the snares strewn on the path marked out by the CBMs and get down to business! People on both sides stand to benefit from an era of peace. For this to come about, time may be at hand to expressly tackle the contentious issues rather than skirt around them. A switch over to the ‘settlement mode’ may be what is called for.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2016.

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