It is difficult to see how India and Pakistan can get out of this cul-de-sac we have designed. Coping mechanisms are not simply matters for discussion between Governments; they have to be translated urgently into the lives of villages in both countries
Satyabrata Pal
NAWAZ SHARIF seems to be drowning in the clutches of a giant squid, the COAS, Imran Khan, Tahirul Qadri, the Taliban, the economy all tentacles wrapping themselves around him.
The Government of India appears to have decided that sending the Foreign Secretary to Islamabad now would be a waste of time, but to use the Hurriyat as an excuse is not only unworthy, giving its worthies an importance they neither have nor deserve, it lays down a precondition for talks with which Pakistan cannot comply. When we reach a settlement over Jammu and Kashmir, which came agonisingly close during Musharraf’s tenure, Pakistan will abandon the Hurriyat, whose demand for azaadi is as much anathema to it as to us. Till then, though, it must maintain the fiction that it supports their aspirations; “consulting” them is a ritual of anticipatory expiation, a charade with which everyone has played along, until now.
Since Pakistan cannot give up its meetings with the Hurriyat without losing face, there will be no talks for the foreseeable future. We are sanguine about this because, even if the talks had taken place, we intended to talk only about terrorism. We have made this our core concern vis-à-vis Pakistan, and since the civilians with whom talks are held do not control the terrorists, a hiatus in talks is neither here nor there. A view seems to be gaining ground that there are more muscular options available, should terrorism again rise above a threshold. Are there, and should terrorism be our core concern with Pakistan? Data for the last five years, collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, shows that in 2009, 721 Indians died in terrorist attacks, 759, 429, 252 and 304 in the next four years. These lives should never have been lost, but in 2013, when terrorism killed 304, the National Crime Records Bureau reported that 8,083 women were murdered for dowry. Terrorism is by no means the largest shadow looming over our lives.
The Portal’s figures also show that very few of the deaths from terrorism can be attributed to Pakistan. Of the 304 victims in 2013, 159 were killed by Left-wing extremists, 95 in Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland in the festering insurgencies that the rest of India ignores, and 30 in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. In J&K, where Pakistan’s terrorists operate, they killed 20 civilians. (The same year, they killed 3,001 innocent Pakistanis.) This pattern has held steady for five years.
Nor indeed do we have viable sanctions backed by force. In the nostalgia over Parakram, we forget that it failed at an insupportably high cost. The Economic Survey for 2003-4 reported that “FDI peaked at $4.74 billion in 2000-1 and declined thereafter to $3.73 billion in 2001-2 and further to $3.57 billion in 2002-3”. FII, which dropped to $0.3 billion in 2002-3, made “a sharp recovery to $7.2 billion in April-December 2003”. The drying up of investment was directly related to foreign fears, as was the sharp drop in international tourist arrivals, which fell by 6 per cent in 2002, recovering with a 13 per cent growth in 2003, once the crisis passed. The World Bank estimated that India’s GDP growth was 4.9 per cent in 2001. It dropped to 3.9 per cent in 2002, rebounding to 7.9 per cent in 2003, once the crisis had passed. Parakram brought us no security; it cost us at least 2 per cent of GDP growth. A reprise would be even more costly.
In contrast, the Bank estimated that Pakistan’s economy grew from 2 per cent in 2001 to 3.2 per cent in 2002 to 4.8 per cent in 2003. Pakistan was (and is) immune to pressures, since for two decades now, it has survived on international aid; it has almost no investment or tourism, and trade is a small percentage of its GDP, which grew in the crisis because donors were either afraid to cut off aid or increased it, as some Arabs did, to keep it from falling apart.
So if a conventional military option is ruled out, what options do we have? Almost none if we see the challenge only as terrorism out of Pakistan, but this is not the only or the gravest threat to our security. There are other dangers brewing which can overwhelm both countries if we do not tackle them together, and these will not wait for us to resolve our differences over the Hurriyat and terrorism. Huge numbers of Indian citizens are more at risk from these than from terrorism.
For instance, seismologists estimate our region is shortly due for an earthquake of a magnitude that in the past has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Much of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and eastern Gujarat, contiguous to Pakistan, are Zone-IV areas, where severe earthquakes are likely. Patches of J&K and the Rann of Kutch, right on the border, are in Zone-V, where very severe earthquakes are likely. Almost all of PoK is in the same zone as J&K, with a substantial circle centred on Muzaffarabad in Zone-V. It is entirely possible, as was the case when the last major earthquake struck J&K, that populations on both sides of the LoC will be hit. There, and across the international border, access to areas cut off by a major earthquake in one country might be easier from the other. It makes sense, therefore, to urgently negotiate disaster-relief protocols, which would include cross-border rescue and emergency relief.
These are precautions that our government owes the lakhs of its citizens who live in these highly vulnerable zones. It would also be politic: nothing lessens hostility more than a supposed enemy coming to help in an hour of need; the aftermath of the earthquakes in Turkey and Greece in 1999, when they did just that, showed how dramatically this can mould public opinion.
Agriculture is another key area where, for India’s own security, we must work closely with Pakistan. An ILO survey in 2013 of employment in Pakistan’s Punjab, which is its bread-basket and its industrial heartland, found that from 2007-08 to 2010-11, the percentage of the work-force employed in agriculture had gone up, from 43.44 per cent to 45.39 per cent. This confirms that industry has stagnated, and agriculture become crucial to its survival. Unemployment is high in Pakistan, but the ILO found that unemployment levels among Punjabi youth were 2.5 times higher than among adults. That is a recipe for domestic turmoil, which will not be contained within its borders.
Even if our worry is terrorism, the L-e-T, the J-e-M and the Punjabi Taliban recruit from the unemployed and unemployable rural youth of the Punjab. Ajmal Kasab and his fellow murderers were all from this background, which will yield an endless line of recruits. Helping Pakistan revive its agriculture is a hedge against this, and there is much we can do. Water management is an obvious and crucial example. Pakistan’s farmers, like ours, are profligate with water. Indiscriminate irrigation has made huge tracts of formerly fertile land saline and led to water stress. We share this problem. The UN’s Water Development Report 2014 shows the Indus and Ganges basins both under stress. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, published in April this year, which concurs, recommends “integrated coordination” for water management between countries that share a river basin, including the Indus and the Ganges. The Indus Waters Treaty does not provide for this; we have to go beyond it.
It is as essential to work together to mitigate the broader economic impact of climate change.The Fifth Assessment Report warns that “there could be a decrease of about 50 per cent in the most favourable and high-yielding wheat area” in South Asia, and rice production would plummet. This would devastate Pakistan. The Report notes that in India, “the estimated countrywide agricultural loss in 2030 of over $7 billion that will severely affect the income of 10 per cent of the population could be reduced by 80 per cent if cost-effective climate resilience measures are implemented”.
For India, it would be very hard to absorb losses of this order; for Pakistan it would be impossible, plunging it into a chaos from which we could not insulate ourselves.We must explore coordinated adaptation and mitigation measures, cooperating on the coping mechanisms that we will both need. These are not simply matters for discussion between Governments; they have to be translated urgently into the life of villages in both countries. This is, without hyperbole, a matter of life or death.
On these, and a host of other problems, we cannot wait for the Pakistani army to change its attitude to India and terrorism to end, or for Pakistan to end its pasodoble with the Hurriyat. Both countries are at the mercy of forces infinitely more powerful than an army, and which are marching to deadlines which States cannot control. We have to forge common solutions to enormous common problems. Invoking shabby excuses not to do so, not even to talk about them, does our citizens no service.
The writer is former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan
We can’t talk to them the same old way any more
The moot point is that the decision to cancel the talks with Pakistan sends a clear and unambiguous signal that it will not be business as usual. It should be quite clear to all, that the current Indian government is not going to be guided by past practices.
Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty
PRIME Minister Modi has bitten the bullet and called off the Foreign Secretary-level talks between the two countries, scheduled for August 25 in Islamabad, after the Pakistani High Commissioner went ahead with meeting one of the so-called Kashmiri separatist leaders in the High Commission premises in New Delhi.
The Pakistani High Commissioner was told beforehand by the Indian Foreign Secretary to avoid meeting the self-appointed Kashmiri separatist leaders, as this would be a needlessly provocative interference in India’s internal affairs. The High Commissioner ignored this advice, no doubt under instructions from Islamabad. The decision to cancel the scheduled talks came swiftly, as soon as the meeting ended.
The contrived outrage of the so-called Kashmir separatist leaders and their mentors and financiers based in Pakistan will fool no one. For Pakistan and these so-called Kashmiri leaders, Jammu and Kashmir remains disputed territory and Pakistan is a party to the dispute. Tut-tutting by commentators and analysts criticising the decision, ignore the fact that the BJP government will not let its Pakistan policy meander along the well-trodden path of yesteryear. The argument that such meetings have been taking place for the last 25 years and, therefore, should be ignored is no longer par for the course. Nor is the assertion that these separatist leaders do not represent the people of Jammu and Kashmir. If they do not, where is the need to humour them and hold talks with them?
Forcing a choice
The past practice of holding talks with these so-called separatist Kashmiri leaders was an attempt to bring all disgruntled people into the tent, It leaves Pakistan having to make a choice between the ritual of holding meaningless talks with the so-called separatist Kashmiri leaders and talking turkey with the Indian government. The Indian government’s decision to cancel the Foreign Secretary-level talks crosses a Rubicon and lays down a new threshold for the future, further complicating the minefield that characterises India-Pakistan relations
Those who are surprised by the decision to cancel the talks, ignore the fact that Prime Minister Modi made the first move to reach out to all neighbours, by inviting their leaders to the swearing-in ceremony. It was a gesture of immense significance and potential for India’s neighbourhood policy, particularly for Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif understood the message when he accepted to attend the swearing-in ceremony and also eschewed the option of meeting the Kashmiri leaders. This time round, Pakistan has failed to read the fine print. The current political scenario in Pakistan is getting murkier by the day. Nawaz Sharif is facing a formidable challenge from cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and the Canadian-based cleric Tahirul Qadri. The Pakistan Army, the ultimate power centre and arbiter of all security policies and relations with India, is embattled on two main fronts – fighting the jihadists in the north-west border region and holding on to its plummeting public image as the defender of the state. Jihadist attacks on military installations, Karachi airport, suicide terrorist strikes killing and maiming innocents, the hunting down and killing of Osama bin Laden by American Special Forces, hosting the Afghan Taliban and a host of terrorist outfits have seriously dented the credibility of the Pakistan Army.
Struggle for power in Pak
The struggle for power being played out in Islamabad has led to the Army trying to re-assert its dominant role in India-Pakistan relations and set terms for dialogue with India, undermines Nawaz Sharif’s instincts, as a businessman, to reach out to India to further trade and other economic initiatives. The Army and its jihadist allies do not want to move away from the policy of perpetual hostility towards India, unless India bends on Kashmir. Their raison d’être is firmly rooted in anti-India and anti-Hindu rhetoric without which they face an existential problem. This policy also pays dividends as external powers like the USA and China find it convenient to manipulate Pakistan, in their quest for geo-political advantage and leverage vis-à-vis India.
In this environment, it is arguably quite appropriate to cancel the talks because no breakthrough, in any case, was expected. The dialogue between the two Foreign Secretaries would have been a fruitless reiteration of each other’s position. The only possible outcome would have been an agreement to meet again. This is not worth expending effort or political capital at this stage and the decision of the Indian government clearly reflects this thinking. The Indian government’s irritation was rising with more than 50 ceasefire violations, not just across the Line of Control (LOC) but also across the International Border (IB), ever since the announcement scheduling the talks. Another factor is the forthcoming election in Jammu and Kashmir where 87 seats in the Assembly are at stake, 46 in the Muslim dominated Valley, 37 in the Jammu and four in Ladakh. The prelude to elections in Jammu and Kashmir has always led to Pakistani attempts to undermining the elections which strengthens the Indian case that the people of Jammu and Kashmir have delivered their democratic verdict via elections. Pakistan, its paid agents and jihadi proxies in Kashmir find elections an anathema. Its undercuts the self-seeking role of the Kashmiri separatists leaders and further rolls back the fading hope of a referendum as per UN resolutions on Kashmir. Delhi’s tough stance on UNMOGIP, an anachronistic relic of history born out of the womb of the 1948 UN Resolutions, is also relevant in the build-up to the decision to cancel the talks.
Discarding the status quo
These developments do not mean that talks with Pakistan will go into a deep freeze. The Indian government will wait for a more propitious time to re-open talks. Meanwhile, Pakistan has to mull over how to play the ball in its court. If it persists with the sterile status quo of the past, then the prospects for normal relations with Pakistan will be bleak and India will be better off concentrating its energies on other neighbours, where prospects of progress are much brighter on the bilateral track. It would be better to wait and see whether Pakistan’s domestic politics creates the space for breaking out of its erstwhile India policy. It should be quite clear to all that the current Indian government is not going to be guided by past practices. Its decision on scrapping the Planning Commission is an indication that more such decisions can be expected. The comfort of the status quo is a luxury that has been discarded. A new model can now be crafted to deal with the vexed issue of India-Pakistan relations.
The writer is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs and was the last Indian Consul-General in Karachi
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