COLUMN

Time to seize the initiative

PRAFUL BIDWAI

New Delhi should enlarge the window of opportunity opened by Islamabad's ceasefire offer by taking some bold unilateral measures; now is the time to be ambitious and generous.

THERE are three ways of looking at the surprise - and very welcome - announcement by Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali of a unilateral ceasefire across the Kashmir border, which has since come into effect. The first is the cynical view that the ceasefire makes a virtue out of necessity: in the winter, there is very little infiltration across the Line of Control anyway, and virtually no exchange of artillery fire. Even in Siachen, troops move away from the heights. Pakistan made this offer not because it is sincere about improving relations with India, but primarily because it is under pressure from Western governments to sever its links with Islamic extremists, and firm up its support for the "war on terrorism".

Recent statements by numerous Western leaders and commentators, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair - significantly, during U.S. President George Bush's visit to Britain - bear this out. Blair bracketed Kashmir with Palestine and Chechnya as a site of terrorism. On this view, the least that Islamabad can do is to (pretend to) distance itself from the jehadis and appear to reciprocate India's recent overtures. President Pervez Musharraf himself is acutely aware of the Western view that Pakistan is dragging its feet on fighting extremists.

On November 20, Musharraf reportedly told senior Pakistani journalists that the world has started doubting Pakistan's sincerity in conducting the "war on terrorism" and that it expects Islamabad to "do more" against jehadi extremists - on pain of punishment from the United States. So compulsion largely explains the reason for Islamabad's surprise offer. The Indian response should be minimalist and basically sceptical: play along, but do not expect much from the ceasefire; use it to continue building a border fence in Jammu while the guns fall silent along the entire border comprising the 778-km LoC, the 150 km Actual Ground Position Line and the 198-km International Border.

The second view holds that there is something genuinely positive and earnest about Pakistan's offer. It was made in good faith. Besides Western pressure, Pakistani leaders are guided by two considerations. They are keen to make the coming Islamabad summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) a success. They know its failure would entail heavy costs in the middle and long term. Pakistan can no longer hold out on a South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA). If SAFTA does not happen, India will turn its back on SAARC and intensify efforts to reach free-trade agreements (FTA) with South-east Asian and East Asian countries, as well as make bilateral FTAs with some close neighbours, as with Sri Lanka.

Proponents of this view also hold that Pakistani policymakers are now exhausted with the covert military option in Kashmir. They realise that they cannot bleed India enough through secessionist militancy. India can absorb and live with the losses this "proxy war" inflicts. After the relatively successful Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi has won the approbation of the international community. This has altered the India-Pakistan equation, especially as regards Kashmir. Pakistan thus must execute a change of stance and explore the cooperative route.

Advocates of this view expect, or at least hope for, a major, decisive, breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations, which goes way beyond the ceasefire extending into the summer. Defence Minister George Fernandes seems to be among them. (Some even espouse a "Big Bang" strategy: a high-level summit to resolve issues dramatically.) Fernandes told mediapersons in Raipur on November 26 that the cessation of military operations could lead to a permanent solution of the Kashmir issue. There "are enough reasons to believe that it could take them (the two countries) to a final solution as it was implemented after serious thought."

This view demands a strong response from the Vajpayee government, with an emphasis on beginning a state-to-state dialogue, preferably via the Track-II route and informal discussions. Between the two main components of the India-Pakistan bilateral agenda, its proponents give a higher priority to the task of transforming relations than to normalising them and enforcing confidence-building measures.

The third approach holds, unlike the first view, that while Western pressure is one factor behind Pakistan's offer, it is not the only one. Unlike Musharraf's proposal, voiced in August and then more formally in September at the United Nations General Assembly— which made a ceasefire conditional on India ending its "repression" in the Kashmir valley - Jamali's announcement is unconditional. It is driven by a desire to take the process of reconciliation forward.

But unlike the second view, this argument holds that Pakistani leaders are yet to make a paradigm shift in their outlook. Voices of "moderation" among them, which want to give non-military approaches a chance, have grown louder. But they are by no means dominant. (Nor, for that matter, are they dominant in India. Hawks and cynics remain powerful and numerous in both Establishments.) Much distance remains to be covered before a proposal or dialogue towards negotiating a Kashmir solution can come on the table.

So one should not expect dramatic changes. Rather, India must work for them - with a positive, generous and non-cynical approach, and yet without illusions. India must go beyond reciprocating the ceasefire, and explore possibilities of full reconciliation and transformation of the India-Pakistan relationship.

This third approach, which this writer favours, is both gradualist and comprehensive, but it does not throw caution to the winds. It recognises that state-to-state exchanges have to be supported and boosted by civil society-level interaction and people-to-people contacts both to generate pressure on policymakers and the bureaucratic apparatus and to break down communication barriers and misunderstandings.

This does not argue that a transformation of India-Pakistan relations, or minimally, talks aimed at it, must await the full normalisation of relations prior to a particular date: December 2001, May 1998 (when the two overtly crossed the nuclear threshold) or 1989, when the azaadi movement erupted, which Pakistan began to exploit. The two processes can go hand in hand. But there is nothing automatic about them, nor is their success guaranteed. They are fragile and vulnerable to domestic, bilateral and extra-regional developments.

However, one must not minimise the significance of the ceasefire - militarily, and especially, politically. Militarily, it gives the two states yet another chance to end the wholly ludicrous, grossly wasteful, and strategically irrational confrontation at Siachen, the world's highest-altitude conflict on which each poor country spends something like Rs.3 to 5 crores a day - only to sacrifice the lives and physical and mental well-being of hundreds of their soldiers, more of whom die from frostbite than from gunshot wounds at heights such as 20,000 feet where the wind velocity can reach 150 kmph and temperatures minus 50°C. India squandered precious opportunities to resolve the issue and has scored self-goals (like Pakistan) by prolonging the military engagement.

If a Siachen resolution establishes a simple principle - do not do something patently wasteful and irrational just to spite your adversary - then that principle can be applied to other situations, including maritime boundary demarcation, treatment of fisherfolk straying into each other's waters, information-sharing on military preparations and exercises to eliminate misunderstanding, reduce risk and defuse crises, and so on. This is a worthy goal insofar as it reverses the shameful legacy of India-Pakistan hostility in its most irrational, absurd and internecine (mutually destructive) aspects.

Jamali's ceasefire offer marks a welcome break in the action-reaction pattern which has characterised Pakistani responses to Indian overtures ever since Prime Minister Vajpayee held out the "hand of friendship" from Srinagar on April 17. Jamali's November 23 statement locates the ceasefire in a larger context of openness - to discuss some of India's confidence-building proposals of October 22. In effect, Islamabad has delinked a discussion of India's proposals from a dialogue on the "core-issue" of Kashmir. Thus there can be some real progress in discussions on resuming and strengthening communication links, including a Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus.

Jamali's statement bears sharp contrast to the original response to India's October 22 proposals by Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokkar. This was marked by suspicion and a point-scoring approach. For instance, Khokkar brought the United Nations into the bus plan, offered assistance to widows and other victims of Indian security forces' activities in Kashmir, and "countered" the Sindh-Rajasthan link and Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus by proposing a Lahore-Amritsar bus service.

He could not have been unaware of India's aversion to such a role for the U.N., nor of the patent absurdity of asking New Delhi to incriminate itself for its actions in Kashmir. The provenance of the Lahore-Amritsar bus idea is even more shady. It was made, reports The News International, by a hawkish Senator as a "blatantly Sikh-specific" counter-proposal to outmanoeuvre India.

One must hope that the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus gets started soon. Going by all accounts, it will have a dramatic impact on both sides of the LoC. The All-Parties Hurriyat Conference's Maulana Abbas Ansari has welcomed it. Lord Nazir Ahmed, himself of Mirpuri origin, and now a Labour peer in Britain, told me that the bus would be a virtual sensation in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

The long-term effect of citizen-level exchanges should not be underestimated. Ultimately, the kind of visceral hostility which marks India-Pakistan relations cannot be sustained without the worst suspicion about each other's motives and character at the citizens' level - themselves rooted in downright ignorance or rank prejudice.

If the notion of a composite, plural Kashmiri identity is to play a role in the eventual resolution of the Kashmir problem, as it should, such contacts and exchanges are indispensable. The bus could be a major step in the process. The fact that its 170-km route runs through Baramulla and Uri, two areas of high infiltration, is an added bonus.

India's initiative must not stop at the 12 confidence-building proposals. New Delhi should extend the agenda to include nuclear risk-reduction measures (NRRMs) and other outstanding issues covered under the old 2+6 formula. NRRMs are special because, of all the countries in the world, the nuclear danger is highest in India-Pakistan. The temptation to resort to nuclear brinkmanship will enormously complicate India-Pakistan relations so long as they have nuclear weapons. The least that can be done is to reduce the risk of their use as an immediate first step.

Sooner or later, India will have to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan. It must do so in a climate of goodwill. The best way to create this climate would be to announce a number of unilateral measures irrespective of whether Pakistan reciprocates them or not. For instance, India gains nothing by detaining Pakistani nationals who have overstayed their visa terms, long after they have served their prison terms. This is akin to hostage-taking, which is morally repugnant and violates international law. India should unilaterally release all such detainees.

Again, there is no reason why India should wait for Pakistan to match the list of goods which it has identified for free trade. It can announce more tariff concessions, especially those it is offering to Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Another imaginative step would be to organise a goodwill delegation from Jammu and Kashmir to visit Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. This will help break down psychological barriers. An even bolder measure would be to declare a one-year moratorium on missile test-flights, which could be extended if Pakistan reciprocates.

If measures like these are combined with talks in good faith with the Hurriyat, they could furnish the basis for breaking the impasse in India-Pakistan relations. Their peoples surely deserve a respite from the 56-year-long hot-cold war, itself intimately tied up with venal domestic politics, and especially, communalism.

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