Peace with India

Indian peace delegation is the only way to make progress in India-Pakistan relations should be warmly welcomed.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s comments to an Indian peace delegation led by noted journalist Kuldip Nayar, that talks, and not war, is the only way to make progress in India-Pakistan relations should be warmly welcomed. That the prime minister’s remarks came just a couple of days after President Asif Ali Zardari’s speech to a joint session of parliament, in which he emphasised that dialogue is the best solution to the Kashmir issue shows that the government is fully committed in trying to make the peace process work. Good intentions alone, however, will not be enough to secure concrete results. Previous meetings between Prime Minister Gilani and his Indian counterpart, Dr Manmohan Singh, at Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2009 and Thimpu last year, were notable only for leading nowhere. Meetings at the lower levels have been similarly frustrating.

There is also reason to doubt intentions on both sides. A diplomatic cable recently released by WikiLeaks, quotes US Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, as saying that the Indian prime minister was isolated in his own government on the issue of talking to Pakistan. According to him, then national security adviser MK Narayanan was not supportive of talks with Pakistan, a position he says was shared by everyone in the government other than Dr Singh. It is not known if this is still the case, but Pakistan-bashing has always been the tool of choice for faltering Indian politicians. Even if Dr Singh does not go down that route, there is little hope of talks achieving much if one side does not believe in them.

In Pakistan the worry is always the military establishment, which has veto power on all major foreign policy decisions. As long it sees a financial and ideological interest in maintaining the status quo in Kashmir, a comprehensive agreement between the two sides seems out of reach. But that is where the people of both countries can come in. They can keep on lobbying and pressuring their respective hawkish civil and military establishments that a lasting peace, could in fact, transform South Asia from being one of the world’s poorest and most-deprived regions into a prosperous trading bloc. The Indian peace delegation headed by Mr Nayar said many good things, particularly on the strong need to take urgent confidence-building measures, and one can only hope that governments on both sides will heed them.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2011.