The learning phase

Bilateral agreement is not to be touted as a unilateral success. The Indo-Pak example illustrates this perfectly.

(This article is the second of a three-part series)

Bilateral agreement is not to be touted as a unilateral success. Hardly had the Indian team left that the ruling junta in Islamabad declared “victory” for having convinced India to finally talk about Kashmir. Delhi predictably “clarified” that it had agreed only to discuss Pakistan’s support for the insurgency in Indian Kashmir. The composite dialogue, and along with it the peace process, was put on ice.

A few months later, in May 1998, the arch-rivals tested their nuclear devices. That obviously required a fresh review of the security environment. At the very least, some measures were needed to guard against either side sounding nuclear alerts in panic, when the other tested a missile, for example. Nuclearisation thus provided the two countries good grounds to revive the peace process. In February 1999, Bajpai, the then Indian prime minister, in a momentous gesture undertook a bus yatra to Lahore. The composite dialogue once again formed the bedrock of the agreement and was once again shelved when, some weeks later, Pakistani-backed militia was discovered on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil.

Later that year when Musharraf, the prime suspect behind Kargil, took power in a military putsch, resumption of dialogue looked even less likely. After a reasonable pause though, Bajpai invited him to Agra to give peace “another chance”. The talks were aborted when the two sides failed to agree on how best to slot their ‘core issues’ — Kashmir for Pakistan and terrorism for India — in the joint communiqué.

Post-9/11, the Indian parliament was attacked, allegedly by a Pakistan based group. India mobilised its forces but understandably stopped short of war. The risk of nuclear conflagration and third parties primed to restrain the two belligerents before they went over the brink was one of the reasons. Another constraint is less known. Even a conventional war between the two countries was very likely to end in an impasse. Since countries do not normally undertake major wars without a reasonable chance of achieving strategic objectives, during the last three decades India and Pakistan have not taken their conflicts beyond build-up on the borders and skirmishes across the LoC.

More importantly, if the war ended without causing major damage to Pakistan, it would have deprived India of a potent card that it had, so far, used to good effect: the threat of war. Indeed, Pakistan too, had at times ‘warned’ that if India did not settle the Kashmir dispute, the region could blow up in a nuclear holocaust. In the absence of any desperate resolve in Pakistan to back up these (not so veiled) threats, this argument was fast losing credence. Paradoxically, when the drums of war receded, both countries found that their threat cards had, under the law of diminishing returns, run out of steam. Now that the two adversaries had manoeuvred each other into a deadlock, it was time to revive their on-again, off-again peace process. The 2004 Saarc summit in Islamabad provided the right moment. Obviously, one had to ensure that the mistakes of Agra were not repeated.

The formula evolved in 1997 had survived the nuclear tests, the Kargil conflict, a military coup, the enormity of 9/11 and the standoff of 2002. This was proof enough that its design logic was essentially sound. Its strength lay in its inbuilt flexibility that was used, if we recall, by its founding fathers to overcome some serious compulsions of the two countries. In Agra, one may not have given it sufficient thought. In Islamabad, simply by inserting two clauses both sides were provided some solace —“reassure India that terrorism would not be supported from Pakistan controlled territory” and “expressing resolve to peacefully settle all issues, including J&K”.

The plan was now perfect. One still needed a bit of imagination on how best to launch it.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2010.