Anwar Ahmad

The manifest mutual benefits of an Indo-Pak rapprochement put this objective beyond debate and add a maddening irrationality to their continuing conflict. Caught in this paradox, even as horrendous devastation threatens the two antagonists, their roads to peace do not converge. Both blame each for causing and prolonging the conflict and, thus, advise the other to be "realistic." And, for each, realism carries a different connotation. These divergent perceptions and expectations tinge the rationale for a just and lasting peace with pessimism.

The "pragmatists" argue that the orthodox conflict resolution mechanism dictates that the intractable issues be deferred. Thus, while "freezing" (or Taiwanising) Kashmir, a beginning be made with the less contentious issues. Then, in the fullness of time, amid mellowed animosities and a greater mutual stake in the peace dividend creating more room for flexibility, Kashmir can be taken up.

The "idealists" argue that if the contentious core issue is settled first, the other 'irritants' would resolve themselves. On the other hand, if the emotive Kashmir issue continues to simmer, even lesser agreements can come unstuck. Recent Indian threats to scuttle the 40-year-old Indus Water Treaty is a case in point. Thus, sacrificing short-term gains ought to build up a burden heavy enough to compel, ultimately, a single-stroke to cut the Gordian knot.

Enjoying greater territorial and power advantages, India naturally prefers the "pragmatic" process, while many in Pakistan see it as a continuum of its policy of incremental absorption of Kashmir. Pakistan, thus, favours the Kashmir-first approach or, at least, a simultaneity of Kashmir with the other irritants. While Kashmir-first is anathema to the Indians, simultaneity is acceptable and the likely course when Indo-Pak talks do resume. But without some progress, if not a breakthrough, on Kashmir, these could breakdown again - unless Pakistan lets Kashmir drag.

Which, then, is the best way forward? The Oslo process agreed upon by Israel and the PLO had become the touchstone for the proponents of both arguments. The "pragmatists" had cited it as an illustration of how the bitterest of enemies can negotiate peace around the most intractable issues. The "idealists" had deferred judgement until the contentious issues were resolved.

Oslo had envisaged an exchange: Israel would get peace, in return for Palestinians getting back their land (West Bank and Gaza) captured by Israel in 1967. The inflammable issues of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, East Jerusalem and return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel were deferred for the final round.

The process had many critics, including the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said. And, sure enough, it began to unravel as soon as the hard-line Likud Party, led then by the pugnacious Binyamin Netanyahu, came to power. He read new meaning into the agreed texts - that the Palestinians would get 45-50% of their land and not the 90% they expected. To put East Jerusalem beyond debate, Israel began expelling the remaining Palestinians and building new settlements around the city. Meanwhile, the US, the "neutral" guarantor, vetoed UN resolutions condemning Israeli atrocities.

Soon enough, a suicide-bomber rocked Tel Aviv and, suddenly, after 20 years of travelling on it, the bumpy road to peace had reached a flaming dead-end. The return of Ehud Barak-led Labour Party failed to repair the damage. In fact, the ill-fated effort at Camp David by Israeli premier Barak and US President Clinton, both politically beleaguered at the time, to squeeze more concessions out of a bone-dry Yasser Arafat invited the demon called Ariel Sharon. Palestine was already aflame when September-11 gave him a freer hand to impose his blood-soaked "final solution."

The lessons of the Oslo disaster are obvious. In an unequal power equation, deferring the core issue works to the advantage of the powerful in the short-term. But, by driving the weak to desperation, it explodes in the end.

India thought it had resolved the Kashmir issue by "cutting Pakistan to size" in 1971. Turned out that Pakistan found other means to balance the equation. After September-11, the rules have been changed again. But if the problem remains, it will again mutate into a more virulent form. Reality, therefore, has to be faced. Thus, while returning to the composite dialogue already agreed to, Kashmir needs the emphasis it deserves. To retain a role in the resolution process, the Kashmiri resistance should declare a ceasefire - bound to a timeframe in which India must reciprocate. Had this been done immediately after December-13, Pakistan could have been spared some discomfiture and, possibly, the need to ban the resistance groups. Nonetheless, a ceasefire even now should place on India the onus of halting its bid to kill every non-Kosher Kashmiri. It should also leave India with no excuse for not returning to the table, and pulling back its troops from the borders. Pakistan could add pressure by unilaterally withdrawing its forces. Continued Indian mobilisation would, then, look silly.

In fact, free as it is of any grand global designs, Pakistan has far more to gain from peace. It needs, therefore, to unilaterally opt out of the self-defeating and increasingly unsustainable military contest with India. A cohesive and prosperous Pakistan will be a far greater deterrence than a fractious, impoverished but nuclear-armed one. There is too much economic inequity within to play into India's hands and be distracted from redressing it.

Pakistan's legally and morally strong Kashmir cause has suffered because of its internal follies and frailties. It has handed India the opportunity to package itself as a mature, stable, liberal, secular and democratic ally of the West (and, of course, a bigger market) against an unstable, undemocratic, irresponsible Pakistan which sponsors violent Islamic revisionism and, ominously, has a finger on the nuclear button. Much of this can, and should, change if the Musharraf speech is followed by concerted action.

There is soul-searching to be done in India too. After falling flat in the Kolkatta overkill, it should have realised the limits of the convergence of its interests with the US in squeezing Pakistan. Even another expended Agni missile has not diverted attention from the Kolkatta credibility fiasco, or provoked Pakistan into handing the BJP any more brownie points for the UP polls. Its mobilised troops have also started yielding negative returns, the US-advised removal of the "over-zealous" Gen Kapil Vij indicating again the limits of their joint gameplan against Pakistan.

India needs also to ponder why it has fallen from the Gandhian ideals to the "Warning March" of VHP fanatics, why its Republic Day was celebrated under siege and, above all, the message of its president that removing the injustices to the "lower castes" and women is the democratic response to terrorism. Like Pakistan, India's real war also lies within - against the growing socio-economic inequalities. For the RSS boss K S Sudarshan to declare China untrustworthy and Bangladesh an "enemy country" and the Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to demand that Bhutan be fenced-off against terrorist incursions only diminish Indian's stature. So also does the anti-India animus in Nepal, Sri Lanka and, of course, Pakistan.

On Kashmir, The Economist (January 19) quotes Sumit Ganguly, a teacher at the University of Texas, Austin, that the "insurgency stems from democracy's success in raising popular expectations and its simultaneous failure to build institutions to meet those expectations." This, it concludes, is the nub of the problem as most Indians believe that "their democratic constitution, applied faithfully, could provide the liberation Kashmiris seek; to most Kashmiris, that constitution is a prison."

It refers to prime minister Vajpayee's promise that Kashmir's next election will be free and fair - a confession at the highest level of the fraud and rigging that drove the Kashmiris to desperation and militancy. Anticipating a decline in the militancy, India would now strive to co-opt some separatists into the electoral process.

But these efforts, The Economist writes, are undermined "by India's failure to understand how deeply the separatists mistrust it and how vulnerable they are to reprisals by Pakistan and - should they settle too cheaply - the scorn of Kashmiris themselves. None trusts India's election commission to guarantee the fairness of the forthcoming vote; most want foreign monitors to do that job, a condition they know the Indian government will reject."

This stalemate can only be broken by tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris. India would err gravely in concluding that, having pushed it back from supporting the militants, it has excluded Pakistan from the conflict. Pakistan has, in fact, been helped into casting off the militant Albatross and allowed to regain the moral ascendancy. It can now interact with a wider spectrum of the world and Kashmiri opinion.

The writer is a freelance columnist

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