The time is ripe for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to travel to Pakistan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has achieved a lot in his four years as prime minister. The country has witnessed an average growth rate of 8.6 per cent, probably the highest in its post-independence history, his government has passed several landmark legislations—the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Forest Rights Act. He has negotiated a path-breaking international agreement that will end the technology and nuclear materials embargo on India. There has been no incidence of mass violence, such as that in Gujarat in 2002 during the rule of the NDA. Neither has there been any major security lapse like the Kargil incursion during its watch. With the massive loan waiver and pay commission handout, the UPA government at first signaled that it was set for general elections, but now is seems that they are likely to take place on schedule in 2009.
So, the PM has one full year in office remaining. What should he do? The legislative impulse has run dry, so he can dole out more sops, but with inflation around, that would be a Sisyphean labour. He can brood about the Indo-US nuclear deal and how the Left has blocked his efforts to further liberalise the economy. Or he can travel to Pakistan.
A visit by an Indian Prime Minister has been overdue by at least two years. This is a most opportune moment for such a visit. There is parliamentary majority, if not consensus at home, to ensure that any forward movement with Pakistan will not get gridlocked, as in the case of the nuclear deal. That the new elected government in Pakistan, too, is ready to do business with India from the point where President Pervez Musharraf left off, points to a significant measure of consensus there as well.
There is a new government and a new mood in Islamabad. It comes at the end of an intense phase of political turmoil, one in which India did not figure as a villain. The process has weakened the baleful influence of the Pakistan army in relation to India and shifted the equilibrium against fundamentalist forces in the country. Because of this, the government does not feel it necessary to tailor their political suit to the army's cloth. Time and again, civilian leaders felt compelled to adopt postures at the behest of the army, or with a view of keeping on the right side of the generals. The situation has now changed to the point where the civilians feel compelled to maintain a healthy distance from the army.

Sir Creek

But what really makes for a compelling case for a prime ministerial visit now is the remarkable fact that though Pakistan was wracked by intense political turmoil in the past year, the India-Pakistan peace process— begun in January 2004—maintained its momentum. Through last year the fourth round of the composite dialogue continued apace. There were important gains on the Sir Creek issue, forward movement in opening up air services between the two countries as well as cross-border movement of people and trade.Through traffic at Wagah has increased trade volumes enormously.In May, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will go to Pakistan to wrap up the fourth round of dialogue and set the stage for the fifth.
The two sides now need a fresh impetus to resolve their larger problems. Such a push can only be accomplished at a summit level meeting. There are two issues that can reach closure almost immediately— Siachen and Sir Creek.
The tenth round of talks on Sir Creek were held in Islamabad in May 2007. They were based on a joint survey of the area that took place earlier that year. During the ninth round, in December 2006, Pakistan had already agreed to settle the maritime boundary using the internationally accepted “equidistance method”.
These are major developments, since it means that the two countries are now dealing with a common set of data which could make it easier to determine a mutually acceptable baseline point—the last point where the land boundary ends and the maritime boundary begins. This, in turn, will be the key to working out a mutually acceptable maritime boundary, the lack of which leads to hundreds of fishermen of either side being arrested by the authorities on both sides. But the issue has gained salience because there are expectations that the sea bed contains gas and oil reserves which neither side can exploit till the boundary is fixed. There is another reason why Sir Creek needs quick settlement. The UN Convention on Law of the Seas deadline ends in 2009, and if the two countries cannot submit a joint document certifying their maritime boundary, they will not get the opportunity to extend this boundary from the current 370 to 650 kms under a UN plan.

Siachen

Agreements in 1989 and 1992 would have created a zone of disengagement in the Siachen region. But the process has been stuck because Pakistan does not want to authenticate the positions their forces occupy. Afraid of a Kargil-like move where Pakistanis disputed the Line of Control in Kashmir— even though its coordinates were jointly determined by surveyors of both sides— India has been balking. The Pakistanis can be persuaded to accept the Sir Creek model and accept a joint survey to authenticate the positions of the two sides. The Pakistanis were not willing to authenticate the positions earlier because contrary to their claims, their army held no positions on the glacier. With the architect of Kargil in the dog-house, India can move to settle the Siachen issue without fear of Pakistan reneging.

Kashmir

On the Mother of all Issues—Kashmir—too, there has been movement, albeit more subtle.The recent visit and meetings of Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah with the new Pakistani leadership indicates how times have changed. Equally significant have been the remarks of PPP leader Asif Zardari that the issue could perhaps be placed on the back burner. Kashmir no longer sells well in domestic Pakistani politics.
Yet, this should not lull India into any sense of complacency. New Delhi needs to continue a serious and substantive engagement with Pakistan and the Kashmiri parties to resolve the problem once and for all. Though the UPA government has done a lot in this area, much more needs to be done to reach a closure on this debilitating issue. Unfortunately, when negotiations with Islamabad slowed down in 2007, New Delhi perceptibly slackened its efforts towards a settlement with the Kashmiri parties. This was needless and short-sighted.
The bottom line today is that the India-Pakistan situation offers a tailor-made opportunity for a breakthrough. One that will not be based on some quick calculation of electoral gain or any personal "place in the history books" syndrome, but solid and patient diplomacy going back four years and an earnest desire for peace on both sides of the border.

This article was first published in Mail Today April 10, 2008

Martial Artist

Despite his failings, Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf remains part of the solution, not the problem. The article was first published in Hindustan Times March 21, 2007

Events seem to have unexpectedly shown up the growing faultlines in Pakistan’s polity.

In the last year, President Pervez Musharraf’s government has faced significant setbacks in Waziristan and Balochistan, but images of unrest and upheaval in Islamabad and Lahore last week have brought up long suppressed questions: just how fragile is the General’s hold on power? What is the best way of handling him, or a situation arising from his ‘unplanned’ removal?

Pakistan’s neighbours, and indeed the world community, have important stakes in its stability, security and prosperity. They are vitally interested in the ability, or otherwise, of its government to contain and eliminate powerful forces of Islamic radicalism that pose a global threat. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s reported confession reveals that the 9/11 conspiracy was masterminded from Pakistan and several of the July 2005 London bombers had Pakistani links. As for India, it says it has a mountain of evidence of Pakistani complicity, some of it official, in scores of acts of terrorism in the country.

Our short answer to the first question is that Musharraf’s regime is reasonably sound and will remain so as long as the Pakistan army, the self-appointed custodian of the Pakistani State, remains solidly behind him. It may, however, be compelled to change its shape and become more overtly military. The regime only appears fragile because we are witnessing the collapse of the democratic façade around an essentially military government. After ousting elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf used various political devices to construct this house of cards. Since countries of the West and India felt it was in their interest to deal with the General, he faced little international scrutiny or criticism.

But the true nature of the regime has always been evident and has notable landmarks — the sacking of Supreme Court Chief Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui for not backing the coup in 1999, the unceremonious ouster in June 2001 of President Rafiq Tarrar so that the General could occupy that office, the over-the-top April 2002 referendum, where an alleged 97 per cent voters endorsed his rule, the dismissal of Supreme Court judges who voted against his usurpation and now, the rendering of another Chief Justice “non-functional”.

So far, the General has sailed close to the legal wind — he had the Supreme Court (after purges) endorse the coup, held a referendum to underline it and got the National Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment to legalise it. But in seeking another five-year term, without shedding his uniform, Musharraf is being impelled to move on a different path. He is not sure whether the National and Provincial Assemblies that will be thrown up by the elections later this year will again endorse his presidency, so he is seeking a mandate from the outgoing ones. Being elected twice by a single set of assemblies does appear to be gratuitously illegal, and anticipating a challenge, he acted against Chief Justice Chaudhry in advance.

None of this is much of a surprise, or occasion for shock, for the average Pakistani. But the outside world, which for its own reasons upheld the pretence that it was dealing with a democratic government, is now beginning to comprehend that the emperor indeed has no clothes. But this does not really bother the governments that Pakistan is dealing with, including those of India and the US. What concerns them is Pakistan’s failure to contain and eliminate the rising militancy along its western borders and to check fundamentalist groups operating within. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is on record this week saying, “If these forces are not stopped in 2007, they are going to try to take on the State of Pakistan itself.”

The problem is more complex than just the alleged military incapacity of the Pakistan army. Support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir has had, and continues to have, an important link with the army. After 9/11, Musharraf undertook a U-turn on supporting the Taliban and in January 2002 and 2004, he pledged to crack down on terrorist groups targeting India. Washington has repeatedly acknowledged the role Islamabad has played in hunting down al-Qaeda leaders. India cannot ignore that since November 2003, a very useful ceasefire is in place along the Line of Control and infiltration into Kashmir is markedly down.

Yet in both Washington and New Delhi, there remains a sense of frustration at the General’s zig-zag approach to combating radicalism. Alarm bells have begun ringing ever since it appeared that the Taliban, allegedly headquartered in Pakistan, are back in business. Facing the spectre of a civil war in Waziristan and Balochistan, Pakistan professes to be chary of pressing these regions harder for fear of a blowback. But the reasons for the Pakistani failure go beyond its alleged inability to militarily act against the Taliban, or crack down in Waziristan. It lies in the unchanged world view of significant sections of the Pakistani establishment who still see, what they call, ‘sub-conventional’ warfare as a means of checking India, and maintaining Afghanistan as a depth area towards this end. So the problem is that the Pakistan army has no real strategy to combat Islamic radicals and, as Sun Tzu has pointed out, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”. This defeat will be in no one’s interests, least of all India.

So, how do we handle the Musharraf situation? Instead of focusing only on immediate deliverables like military aid or solutions to India-Pakistan disputes, there is need to maintain a longer view on projects such as the systematic dismantling of the Pakistani jehadi machine, its ISI connections, radical madrasas, fund-raising charities and so on. This action can be best accomplished by a Pakistani government, be it military or otherwise, rather than any outside force. But there is no reason why concerted international pressure cannot be maintained to keep Pakistan on the straight and narrow path.

A second goal must be the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. Last May, the two exiled leaders, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, met in London and signed a ‘charter for democracy’ ahead of the 2007 elections. But it will take much more than a charter to set things right in Pakistan. Restoring democracy is not just a matter of getting Musharraf and the army to stand aside and restore the 1973 Constitution. The army, Bhutto and Sharif need to collectively work out ways to recapture the space that has been surrendered to the extremists because of their three-way quarrel. There are some straws in this wind in Bhutto’s refusal to commit her party to exploit the current anger against Chaudhry’s dismissal.

India’s role in all this is perhaps most complex. Indians need to overcome their Schadenfreude because the radicalisation of Pakistan cannot but have the most negative fallout here. Recent terrorist attacks indicate that pockets of extremists, inspired and aided, by their Pakistani counterparts, have taken root in some Indian Muslim communities.

In these projects, the General can be an ally, without necessarily requiring pressure or appeasement. But most certainly, we need to perceive him being part of the solution, rather than as the problem. Sounds simple, but it is not.

Terror's Twisted Turn

An attack on a train in the Indian heartland, killing mainly Pakistani passengers traveling to Lahore is a sign that terrorism is mutating into a more virulent form. This article was published in Hindustan Times February 19, 2007

On September 11, 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that “Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism”, that terrorism was a threat to both nations and, thus, made it incumbent on them to work together to tackle the issue.

Immediately, a minor firestorm erupted in New Delhi. The BJP’s spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, described the statement as “disturbing, worrisome and untimely”.

Whether or not the PM was conscious that he was speaking on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is not clear. He was en route to Brazil and thereafter would go to Cuba and meet President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the NAM summit.

Singh acknowledged that “As far as the past is concerned, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has certainly been a fact of life.” But he pointed out that when former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Musharraf signed the joint statement in 2004, “[it] was in a way tacit recognition of ground realities and their solemn agreement to move forward in the reverse direction”.

The significance of his remarks became apparent in Havana where the PM and the Pakistani President agreed to “put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations”. This formulation was seen as a major development. It represented the distance moved by the two sides since the joint statement of January 2004. At the time, the onus had been on Pakistan to ensure that no part of “territory under its control” would be used for terrorist acts against India.

The Havana decision was denounced even more strongly, with a clutch of former diplomats and intelligence officials joining the BJP in terming the move as tantamount to a sellout. Yet, five months later, the logic of this arrangement is tragically apparent. The Samjhauta Express may have been an Indian train, and Sunday’s attack on it took place on Indian soil. But those who carried it out knew that the bulk of the victims would be Pakistani nationals, and Muslims. This is as clear a declaration of war on both countries by the as-yet-unnamed groups of terrorists as any. This had better be understood.

The incident has brought out three points. First, terrorists will not hesitate to attack any target, be it Pakistani, Indian, Hindu or Muslim, to achieve their aim of preventing normalisation of India-Pakistan ties. The Samjhauta Express attack is a continuation of tactics witnessed in Malegaon,when on September 8, terrorists, including a Pakistani national, triggered bombs at a Muslim congregation on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat that killed 37 people.

Second, terrorists remain a step ahead of the authorities in planning and executing their horrendous acts. While in the cases of Malegaon and the Mumbai train blasts, the police have caught a number of suspects, they are yet to lay their hands on any significant masterminds.

Third, terrorists have now attained a great deal of sophistication in choosing their targets and weapons. At first sight, the difference between the Samjhauta attack, and that on Mumbai’s local trains was in the sophistication of the devices used in the latter strike. However, the attackers knew what they wanted, not so much a blast, but a fire which would spread in a speeding train and achieve the end of killing people. And they achieved it by placing bottles of an inflammable liquid with a simple pipe bomb linked to a timer.

Critics of the government’s strategy of working with Pakistani counterparts have not quite kept pace with the changing dynamics of terrorist violence in its epicentre, Pakistan, or the impact on the neighbouring regions of Afghanistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh. As Singh pointed out, Pakistan has certainly played a major role in lighting the fires of terrorism in the region. There is enough evidence in the writings of courageous Pakistani journalists, which suggest that elements of the Pakistani system continue to support some groups in the name of the freedom struggle in Kashmir. Yet, fact is that Pakistan is itself teetering on a slippery slope.

Of late, there have been a spate of suicide bomber attacks in and around Islamabad. On January 26, a terrorist killed himself and a security guard at a hotel where the Indian High Commissioner was to host a reception. On February 6, a suicide attacker blew himself up in the car park of Islamabad airport, injuring 10 people. Nine days later, on February 17, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Quetta court, killing 17 people and wounding 37.

Ever since 9/11, the draconian US-led counter-terrorist operations have led to the mutation of Pakistani terrorist groups. Older ones like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-e-jihad-e-Islami have gone underground and newer ones like the Jundullah have emerged with deep links to the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan’s biggest failure has been its inability to control the Waziristan region. American officials now say that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been able to re-establish significant control over their worldwide network and create a new infrastructure of training camps in this tribal region. Over the past year, insurgent tactics from Iraq have migrated to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings have increased five-fold and roadside bomb attacks have doubled. Last Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry charged that on February 16 Sunni terrorists with Pakistani links had struck at the south-eastern city of Zahedan — through which logistical aid to Afghanistan is routed.

At first sight, the simplest thing would be to pressure Musharraf to attack the camps in Waziristan and elsewhere. Washington is afraid that strikes on camps, leading to civilian casualties would weaken not just his position, but also that of the Pakistan army, already battered by its de facto retreat from Waziristan last year. New Delhi is aware of the pressures on the General and would work with him rather than pillory him. The Iranians, too, have declared that they would seek to work with Pakistan to contain the problem.

In recent testimony to a Congressional committee, Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Pakistan, acknowledged that Pakistan’s ability to address the terrorist challenge is limited. The Pakistan army has suffered substantial casualties in taking on the Taliban and Waziri tribals; Pakistani society has been battered by the continuing sectarian strife.

India’s calculation, as that of the US and other nations, has to be based on whether the situation will improve or deteriorate were Musharraf to leave. This has to be an entirely pragmatic calculation, devoid of any sentimentality, or for that matter ill-feelings about his role in Kargil, or past Pakistani support of terrorism. Yet, there are things Musharraf can and must do — get the democratic opposition in Pakistan on-board and resist the temptation to retain the ‘freedom fighter’ option in Kashmir.

Just last week, it was announced that the first meeting of the new Indo-Pakistani anti-terror mechanism will take place in Islamabad on March 6. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the mandate of the mechanism would be to consider counter-terrorism measures and regular and timely sharing of information.

Whatever this may mean, it’s clear that we need more cooperation rather than less. Till now the terrorists have been one step ahead of those who are seeking to check them. The countries of the region need to dramatically reduce their trust deficit in each other and enhance their efforts of tackling a phenomena which constitutes nothing less than an existential threat to them.