What next for India and Pakistan?

Sceptics would probably be tempted to say “here we go again”. One more round of India-Pakistan talks, ending with the usual cliché that the discussions were useful and were held in a positive atmosphere. Many people will ask, what was the concrete outcome of the talks? They desire to see real progress in improving ties by resolving issues that have long bedeviled bilateral relations. The question that arises is: why is progress not being made?

The answer probably is that when you have two long-feuding countries like Pakistan and India, each with a strong national ego, and each having powerful hate lobbies waiting to denounce any compromise as a betrayal, it is not easy to make progress in negotiations. In any event, diplomacy is a slow grind and a waiting game requiring great patience and perseverance and given our history, it is clear there are no quick fixes and no dramatic solutions.

Basically, there are two approaches available to resolve problems between two countries: the path of confrontation and the recourse to negotiations. For the greater part of their history, Pakistan and India have tried the first approach resulting in wars, tensions, acrimony and crippling defence expenditures, but with little to show as progress, particularly as far as Pakistan is concerned. An uprising in Kashmir since 1989, dubbed as a “proxy war” by India, has not secured Kashmir for Pakistan. Kargil was unproductive in 1999 and brought the two countries close to war. Terrorist incidents in 2001 led to an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation lasting nearly two years. Any new intensification of militancy in Indian-occupied Kashmir will lead to a serious deterioration of relations, for which world opinion would probably put the blame on Pakistan. The situation could become even more explosive if there were any new Mumbai-like terrorist incidents inside India.

In actual fact, the acquisition of nuclear capability by both Pakistan and India has made war a suicidal option: a case of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Indeed, Pakistan is in no position to launch even a conventional war against India, given its economic fragility and internal disharmony. Nor would it be prudent, in the changed world scenario, to expect that traditional friends like Saudi Arabia or China would come to Pakistan’s rescue in the manner that they did in the past two wars with India.

So there is no real option left other than recourse to diplomacy and negotiations. The US, EU, Russia, China and others want us to resolve our problems through bilateral talks. Indeed, there is a degree of pressure on both of them to do so. The main preoccupation of the Great Powers at present is with the war against al Qaeda type terrorism in which they realise that Pakistan has a key role to play, and that any India-Pakistan tensions would divert the latter’s attention towards the eastern front.

With the horrors wreaked by the Taliban in Pakistani cities, it has become clear that it is as much in Pakistan’s interest as it is in India’s interest to eradicate violent extremism. India too must realise that the destabilisation of Pakistan would increase the menace of terrorism manifold, and that it is in India’s interest to strengthen the Pakistani government in fighting the extremists. Given this convergence of strategic interests, the most important requirement at this time is the need to dispel the trust deficit that seems to be the main impediment in improving relations between them. Both need to exhibit maturity: there has to be a willingness to understand each other’s concerns and sensitivities. This is where patient diplomacy has a key role to play.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2010