Despite all the calibrated contradictions between India and Pakistan, Imran Khan’s wish for talks will be fulfilled after the 2019 elections. Terror and talks will go together
by Ashok Mehta
For those who are intrepid optimists, giving Pakistan Prime
Minister Imran Khan a chance to prove he can do more to better India-Pakistan
relations is a fair bet. After all, he has been handpicked by the Army and the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played no small role in installing him as the
Prime Minister. Khan claimed that Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa and he
are on the same page. The Kartarpur corridor confidence building measure (CBM)
is an Army-approved Khan’s first step awaiting an Indian response which will be
followed by Khan’s promised additional steps, whatever those might be. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi compared Kartarpur with the fall of the Berlin wall,
adding: “Kartarpur will not be a corridor but a reason to bring people
together.” The two Sikh Ministers he sent were equally euphoric, especially
Union Minister for Food Processing, Harsimrat Kaur, who said that Kartarpur was
a perfect way to start a “new beginning.” But spoilers are on both sides. Union
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was quick to guillotine hope with her
famous one-liner: “Terror and talks cannot go together.” Similarly, Swaraj
killed an earlier agreed meeting on the sidelines of UNGA of a conversation
between Indian and Pakistan Foreign Ministers in reaction to media outrage over
beheading of a soldier and Line of Control violations. Both incidents were
missed opportunities to test Khan’s strategic autonomy under Bajwa’s watch.
Linked to the resumption of bilateral dialogue is
Islamabad’s yearning to hold the 19th Saarc summit, which was postponed in 2016
following the Uri attack, and rejected by Swaraj citing lack of conducive
environment (read Pakistan’s backing for terrorists). The killing of 19
soldiers in the Uri attack was not due to any ingenious or suicidal terrorist
action but was accidental, caused by the careless storage of gas cylinders
which engulfed the tent in which they were sleeping. During the Vajpayee-led
NDA Government, even after a major terrorist attack on Parliament in December
2001 —which led to Operation Parakram — Vajpayee did not skip the 11th Saarc
summit in Kathmandu in January 2002, where the then Pakistan Prime Minister
Pervez Musharraf shook hands even as India’s armed forces were on full-scale
deployment, ready for war. India’s attempts to isolate and punish Pakistan have
seen the re-energising of sub-regional groupings, like the Bay of Bengal
Initiative for Multi Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec),
which includes Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and
Bhutan. According to a World Bank report, ‘Glass Half Full: The Problem of
Regional Trade in South Asia’ (by Sanjay Kathuria), the formal trade between
India and Pakistan could be $37 billion but is only $2 million due to a variety
of surmountable barriers. South Asia, as a region, is locked down by
India-Pakistan tensions and an upswing in relations between the two nations
would benefit other Saarc countries too.
In conformity with Modi’s muscular policy — surgical strikes
et al — his Government has become the first one to not engage in official
dialogue with Pakistan since it started in 1996. Except for the likes of Mani
Shankar Aiyar of uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue fame and Sudheendra
Kulkarni, who have suffered repeated indignities at the hands of Hindu goons,
the majority of soldiers, diplomats and intellectuals are on the side of no
dialogue with Pakistan as it attracts the law of diminishing returns, coupled with
doses of despair and frustration. Still, there are those who hang around in
fatigued Track II simply because the official track is closed. The 26/11 Mumbai
attacks, whose perpetrators have gone unpunished and are being mainstreamed,
marked the turning point in the dialogue process, especially after India and
Pakistan came breathlessly close to agreeing on the four or five point Kashmir
formula during the single-window Musharraf regime, which turned out to be a
flash in the pan. Ten and six years of Generals Musharraf and Ashfaq Parvez
Kayan had upset the collegium of Corps Commanders, disturbing the channel of
promotions. The Generals agreed to replace the era of direct with proxy rule,
thereby obviating international and domestic costs. This mechanism gave rise to
new terminologies — elected Government and establishment (deep state).
While the last two elected Governments completed their term,
their Prime Ministers were prevented from doing so by showing them as corrupt
and incompetent, to establish the indispensability of the Army as the ultimate
custodian of Pakistan’s core values and national interest. The established
democratic tenet of civilian-political control of the military was reversed to
military (judicial and NAB) control of the political class, which the recent
elections have commendably demonstrated with the Army’s choice of Prime
Minister.
In and outside Pakistan, the question that is inevitably
asked is about altering the behaviour of the military: Who will do it and how
will it be done? This is considered un-doable. At one time, the Americans were
the only ones who could have achieved this but the Army was their strategic
ally. After plastering Pakistan with abuse and freezing military aid, US
President Donald Trump has been forced into seeking help from the Generals for
the peace process in Afghanistan. The Chinese are best placed to influence
behavioural change but will not oblige. Neither the US nor China will mess
around with a nuclear-armed Pakistan, umbilically tied with terrorist proxies,
making Pakistan the most dangerous state. Cross-border jihad and terrorism will
pose a perennial threat to India — while keeping alive the Kashmir dispute-
which even a 100 surgical strikes (not feasible without escalation) will be
unable to counter.
For Pakistan, India is an existential threat, even more so
after the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and National Security Advisor
Ajit Doval threatened a counter jihad and evaporation of Balochistan if there
was another Mumbai. Pakistan’s military is the defender of faith and bulwark
against Indian machinations of its further break-up following the creation of
Bangladesh. Cross-border terrorism is Pakistan’s low-cost high-gain revenge
against India’s splitting of Pakistan.
So, why should Gen Bajwa and Imran Khan want an on-and- off
dialogue with India when status quo is suitable? Reason: To keep up the optics
of good neighbourliness, enhance and benefit trade relations with the fastest
growing economy, resume conversations on Kashmir without necessarily aiming to
find a solution (of a mothballed Kashmir) and even seeking India’s help in
Afghanistan. In short, without diluting the threat from India, which dilutes
its primacy in civil-military relations, cherry-pick items for talks which
benefit Pakistan. Regulating the tap of terrorism as Musharraf did is the price
Rawalpindi is willing to pay. Despite these calibrated contradictions, Khan’s
wish for talks with India will be consummated mid-2019 after the elections.
Terror and talks will then go together.
(The writer is a retired Major General of the Indian Army and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the revamped Integrated Defence Staff)
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