Parliamentarians in India
Freshly added dispute over waters can only be resolved if India and Pakistan become close enough through free trade.
An understandably emotional delegation of Pakistani parliamentarians returned from India saying good things that may help in sorting the bad atmospherics created by some elements that form the political orthodoxies in India and Pakistan. In Patna (Bihar), Pakistani Anusha Rehman said: “We have crossed borders to bring forth the message of love”, after which, it is reported, “all eyes in the room welled up”. This has happened in the past, too, with no realistic follow-up. The pattern is repeated so often that the world outside South Asia has stopped taking these samples of emotional hyperbole seriously.
At the risk of being proved wrong once again, one may look at the latest sample with some optimism for the reason that the Pakistan Army is in a mood to relent with India in order to better fight the Taliban. The Pakistani delegation was a cross-party affair and one could hear certain variations on the theme even in what looked like a uniform strain of good will.
The more important representatives of the powers that be in Pakistan’s democracy were delegation leader Senator Jahangir Badar, Haji Adeel of the ANP and Khurram Dastgir of the PML-N. From the Indian side, the major interlocutors were Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha and Congress politician Mani Shankar Aiyar.
The main emotional thrust was behind the demand from both sides for the easing of a tough visa regime between the two countries. They repeated the same concessions leaders have voiced in the past — this was the fourth visit by the delegation — allowing cross-border travel in personal vehicles, discontinuing police reporting to avoid harassment of travellers and visa-free access to educationists and senior citizens. We know that plans for a liberal visa regime have been scuttled in the past by the Pakistani side, while India continues to make granting of visas more difficult through tough procedural measures. One way of not allowing any meeting to decline into the past jurisprudence of negative relations is by avoiding reference to the bilateral disputes that have emerged either from wars or have been manufactured to trigger more wars. But the conservative element in the Pakistani delegation had to touch base with the party line on India.
Mr Dastgir, who is easily the most educated man in his party, played safe by reiterating a view that may have been superceded by his leader Nawaz Sharif’s more open-minded approach to India. Mr Dastgir stated: “Besides the issue of visa regime, health, education, economy, trade, Sir Creek, Wullar Barrage, Kashmir, Indian’s infiltration via Afghanistan (sic!) were also discussed in detail.” Remember, elections are around the corner and you don’t want to lose the conservative vote. There is no doubt that the conservative PML-N will clinch the final peace with India. Aware of this, Mr Sharif took the brave step of recommending unilateralism on the question of Siachen amid a howl of protest from his supporters. The truth is that if you want to remain stuck in the rut of confrontation, try to front-load disputes in any discussion with India.
The West will call this exchange of delegations a confidence-building measure (CBM). It may fund such visits in hopes of getting India and Pakistan to agree to a process that has unfolded successfully in Europe after two bloody world wars. People in the West, who set a lot of store by CBMs among rival states, are bemused by the fact that they simply have not worked in South Asia.
The fact is that the so-called disputes have been created around the core issue of Kashmir to prevent a direct approach to dispute resolution. The accretions to the core issue have become so solidified that they have assumed a life of their own. It is, perhaps, too late to adopt a disputes-first approach. The freshly added dispute over waters, earlier reflected in the Wullar Barrage quarrel, can only be resolved if India and Pakistan first become close through free trade and treat the water crisis as a regional crisis, not a bilateral dispute.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 28th, 2012.
At the risk of being proved wrong once again, one may look at the latest sample with some optimism for the reason that the Pakistan Army is in a mood to relent with India in order to better fight the Taliban. The Pakistani delegation was a cross-party affair and one could hear certain variations on the theme even in what looked like a uniform strain of good will.
The more important representatives of the powers that be in Pakistan’s democracy were delegation leader Senator Jahangir Badar, Haji Adeel of the ANP and Khurram Dastgir of the PML-N. From the Indian side, the major interlocutors were Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha and Congress politician Mani Shankar Aiyar.
The main emotional thrust was behind the demand from both sides for the easing of a tough visa regime between the two countries. They repeated the same concessions leaders have voiced in the past — this was the fourth visit by the delegation — allowing cross-border travel in personal vehicles, discontinuing police reporting to avoid harassment of travellers and visa-free access to educationists and senior citizens. We know that plans for a liberal visa regime have been scuttled in the past by the Pakistani side, while India continues to make granting of visas more difficult through tough procedural measures. One way of not allowing any meeting to decline into the past jurisprudence of negative relations is by avoiding reference to the bilateral disputes that have emerged either from wars or have been manufactured to trigger more wars. But the conservative element in the Pakistani delegation had to touch base with the party line on India.
Mr Dastgir, who is easily the most educated man in his party, played safe by reiterating a view that may have been superceded by his leader Nawaz Sharif’s more open-minded approach to India. Mr Dastgir stated: “Besides the issue of visa regime, health, education, economy, trade, Sir Creek, Wullar Barrage, Kashmir, Indian’s infiltration via Afghanistan (sic!) were also discussed in detail.” Remember, elections are around the corner and you don’t want to lose the conservative vote. There is no doubt that the conservative PML-N will clinch the final peace with India. Aware of this, Mr Sharif took the brave step of recommending unilateralism on the question of Siachen amid a howl of protest from his supporters. The truth is that if you want to remain stuck in the rut of confrontation, try to front-load disputes in any discussion with India.
The West will call this exchange of delegations a confidence-building measure (CBM). It may fund such visits in hopes of getting India and Pakistan to agree to a process that has unfolded successfully in Europe after two bloody world wars. People in the West, who set a lot of store by CBMs among rival states, are bemused by the fact that they simply have not worked in South Asia.
The fact is that the so-called disputes have been created around the core issue of Kashmir to prevent a direct approach to dispute resolution. The accretions to the core issue have become so solidified that they have assumed a life of their own. It is, perhaps, too late to adopt a disputes-first approach. The freshly added dispute over waters, earlier reflected in the Wullar Barrage quarrel, can only be resolved if India and Pakistan first become close through free trade and treat the water crisis as a regional crisis, not a bilateral dispute.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 28th, 2012.