Slowly forwards

The need of the hour is to get the military on both sides into dialogue via the DGMOs at an early date.

Whilst there may be carping at the slow pace of change and movement on the part of the Nawaz Sharif government on some fronts, its slow and careful rapprochement with India is entirely correct. The adviser to the prime minister on national security and foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, has met with his Indian counterpart on November 12 on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Foreign Ministers meeting in New Delhi. Little of substance has emerged from the meeting and it never does, with official communiques being couched in the most anodyne of terms, but the fact that it happened at all and is now part of a continuum of contacts is of significance. There have been a series of incidents along the Line of Control (LoC) in recent months that had the potential to escalate but were eventually contained. Contained they may have been militarily, but the media on both sides of the border was quick to jump on nationalist bandwagons, this being particularly true of India, where an election is imminent.

The representatives of our respective governments agreed on the need to respect the ceasefire and the necessity of jump-starting the peace talks that are currently stalled. In large part, crafting a bilateral peace between our two states is bedevilled by the multi-faceted conflicts that separate us, the majority stemming from Partition. None of these conflicts or disputes, be they Kashmir or Siachen or the fallout from the Mumbai attacks — is susceptible to a single solution. To a degree, all are interlocked, and then linked in terms of whether either side wishes to address them or not to the internal politics of the country. Today, at the top of the Pakistan political leadership, there is the will to seek positive change. It is uncertain as to what the mood-music will be on the Indian side after its election, but the need of the hour is to get the military on both sides into dialogue via the Directors General of Military Operations at an early date. Identifying confidence-building measures that have public and political cross-border support is of equal importance. Conflict is not an option for either party.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2013.

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