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The Pakistanis don’t really care about the resumption of the dialogue process

It is hardly a secret that the Prime Minister has fought a lonely battle with his party to put the peace

process with Pakistan back on track. Congressmen do not believe that there is much hope of any lasting peace as long as Pakistan backs terrorists and go to great

lengths to dissociate the party from the government’s peace initiative.

 

   Even within the Cabinet, many ministers are sceptical about Pakistan’s sincerity. A.K. Antony is known to have reservations about talking to Pakistan. P. Chidambaram has been openly leery of Pakistan’s motives (one reason why the PMO spends so much time briefing against him these days). And even Pranab Mukherjee is said to be less than enthusiastic about the resumption of dialogue.

 

   Different people have different objections but in essence what it boils down to is this: India cannot afford to trust Pakistan till it takes action against those responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

 

   It is to the Prime Minister’s credit that he has behaved like a true statesman, facing political opposition and ignoring personal unpopularity in pursuit of a goal that he believes is in India’s best interests. Manmohan Singh has always held that a peaceful resolution of the India-Pakistan dispute is not only essential but that it is a pre-requisite for India’s emergence as a great power.

 

   The Pakistanis know all of this. Their position, repeatedly expressed in interactions with the international media and to their American mentors, is that they are willing to talk but that it is India which refuses to come to the negotiating table. Further, they have always taken care to distinguish between Manmohan Singh, who they see as a dove (even Salman Bashir went out of his way to praise him at his press conference on Thursday), and the rest of the Indian establishment.

 

   Given this background, you would expect that the Pakistanis would do everything possible to strengthen Manmohan Singh’s position and to prove the sceptics in India wrong. After all, if Manmohan Singh can demonstrate to his party that talks will yield results, then the peace process is more likely to resume.

 

   So, why has Pakistan done the exact opposite? Right after we agreed to foreign secretary-level talks, the Pakistani government treated this as a huge victory, declaring publicly that India had ‘blinked’, suggesting that Pakistan had stared us down.

 

   Then, the Pakistani foreign minister went off to Beijing and invited the Chinese to involve themselves in the resolution of the India-Pakistan dispute. The Pakistanis knew that such a move was guaranteed to incense India – New Delhi had reacted with anger to a mention of the dispute in the statement issued by President Obama when he met the Chinese leadership some months ago. Moreover, the resumption of talks was predicated on the belief that the dispute could be settled bilaterally with no third-party involvement.

 

   Next, a few days before the talks were scheduled to be held, the Pakistanis allowed Hafiz Sayeed – the man New Delhi regards as the mastermind of the Bombay attacks – to address a rally in Lahore, where he promised ‘many more Mumbais’ and incited the gathering to wage jihad against India.

 

   Sayeed’s organization is supposed to be banned. There are laws in Pakistan which make it a crime to incite violence. So, it would have been an easy matter to prevent the rally from going ahead or from, at the very least, taking some action against Sayeed after the rally was held. But Pakistan did absolutely nothing.

 

   The talks themselves, from all accounts, yielded no breakthroughs but were conducted in a civil atmosphere and seemed to set the stage for a resumption of the dialogue and perhaps for a meeting between Manmohan Singh and the Pakistan PM at the next SAARC summit.

 

   After the talks, the Indian foreign secretary held a press conference at which she gave a brief and measured summary of the discussions. In contrast, the Pakistan foreign secretary chose to be needlessly provocative at a long press conference where even the most innocuous question received a long reply.

 

   The Pakistanis are aware of how sensitive the issue of bringing the 26/11 masterminds to justice is in India. So, it cannot be an accident that their foreign secretary not only dismissed the events of 26/11 by arguing that such things happened all the time in Pakistan but also ridiculed India’s attempts to present a case against Hafiz Sayeed. The Indian dossier, he said, contained no evidence, only literature.

 

 "The real challenge before India, therefore, is to find a way of check-mating Pakistan while managing Washington’s demands."

   There was more in a similar vein. Kashmir was the core issue that had to be settled. India should stop lecturing Pakistan. Islamabad had photographic evidence of India’s support to terrorists who operated out of Afghanistan and created havoc in Pakistan. And so on.

 

   In the manner of the Agra summit, where inconclusive but generally well-mannered talks were torpedoed by General Musharraf’s televised breakfast with editors, this press conference had the effect of angering the Indian foreign office. Within hours, a senior official had briefed the media to claim that the Pakistani foreign secretary took orders from the army.

 

   Whatever gains that could have accrued from the morning’s talks were deliberately sabotaged at the evening’s press conference.

 

   So, here’s the big question: if the Pakistanis are keen on talks and they know how difficult it has been for Manmohan Singh to get his government to agree to a resumption of the dialogue, then why were they acting in a manner that was calculated to make the Prime Minister look like a fool and to strengthen the position of the hawks and the sceptics?

 

   There is only one answer possible: the Pakistanis don’t really care about the resumption of the dialogue process.

 

   The only reason the foreign secretaries met in New Delhi was because the Americans pushed the Pakistanis just as hard as they pushed Manmohan Singh to return to the negotiating table. The Pakistanis know what India wants – action against terrorists – and are not prepared to grant it. Equally, they know that India will not yield any ground on the one issue they care about: Kashmir.

 

   Their presence at the talks was a cynical act of calculated hypocrisy. They are quite aware that they had nothing to gain from a dialogue. Their strategy is entirely different. As the Americans search for an honorable exit from Afghanistan, Pakistan will offer to guarantee stability in that troubled country and to keep anti-American forces from taking control of Kabul and Kandahar again. In return, the Americans will have to turn the screws on India.

 

   Pakistan reckons that Washington has no choice but to accept this arrangement. So, all it has to do is to sit back and wait for events to unfold. In the interim, it will go through the motions and play the game the way America thinks it should be played: by making the right noises about fighting terrorism and demonstrating a willingness to talk peace with India.

 

   All of this has disastrous consequences for India. After the nuclear deal, we are so deeply in hock to the Americans that our room for manoeuvre is severely constricted. And yet, we cannot agree to compromise our national interest only because Uncle Sam has got himself into a jam in Afghanistan.

 

   The real challenge before India, therefore, is to find a way of check-mating Pakistan while managing Washington’s demands. It is all very well to hold secretary-level talks. But nothing will come of such a dialogue. The terrorism will not stop. And the Pakistanis will not yield an inch.

 

   My worry is that by focusing so much on creating a mood for talks we are taking our eyes off the ball. The game will not be played in the conference rooms of Hyderabad House. It will be played in the mountain passes of Afghanistan as the Pakistanis try and sell India down the river.
 

CommentsComments

  • navin 18 Mar 2010

    One rotten apple has destablized the entire continent. First it was afghanistan and now India. India has always been an easy target for terrorist, Where you can kill people at will, get away with it and then blow a trumpet that we have inflicted damage . They feel insulted if their cricketers are rejected in IPL but they dont feel ashamed when innocent civilians are killed at Taj.

  • joti 05 Mar 2010

    I admire Vir Sanghvi lateral views on various issues/subjects however this one seems hackneyed.When will the indian Media outgrow its notion that US pressures India in its foreign policy especially when comes to dealing with Pakistan. Indian Has earned it place in the world and it does not require any pandering to US or any other country. We are long overdue for some fresh analysis such matters.

  • Rajen Kaushal 01 Mar 2010

    Basically, India and Pakistan are at situations which can be altered militarily only or India exert pressure on Pakistan internationally to vacate illegally occupied Kashmir or get some economic sanctions imposed on Pakistan to make him buckle.

    Otherwise, there is no point of talking on situations which cannot be moved forward anymore and tax payers money should not be wasted anymore if anything concrete cannot be achieved.

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