Tag: peace process

Why the Modi government must ignore Pakistan

High level engagement of Pakistan is a waste of diplomatic capacity and political capital

Pakistan’s decision to ‘suspend’ the peace process with India along with the ‘co-operation’ on investigating the terrorist attack on Pathankot air station came suddenly. It should, however, come as a surprise only to those who believe that Pakistan is a normal nation-state where the elected government is in charge of state policy. In reality, Pakistan’s government and the military-jihadi complex are two separate entities vying for control, with the latter usually having the upper hand and the last say, especially on foreign policy. [See Understanding the military-jihadi complex]

Here’s a deconstruction of the events since before Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Pakistan to attend Nawaz Sharif’s family function.

The Pakistani military establishment was clearly not in favour of the Nawaz Sharif’s overtures to India, and authorised attacks on the Pathankot air station in view of Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Pakistan in December 2015. Why would the military establishment do this? Because any reductions of tensions with India would not only reduce damage the military-jihadi complex’s interests but also strengthen Nawaz Sharif’s vis-a-vis the military establishment. A spanner had to be thrown into the works. This is not dissimilar to 26/11, which had the effect of halting President Asif Zardari’s conciliatory engagement of India.

However, what complicated matters for the army was Nawaz Sharif’s decision to ‘co-operate’ with India on the investigation of the Pathankot attack, and further getting Pakistani investigators to visit India to collect evidence. By this time, the Jaish-e-Mohammed and it’s leader Masood Azhar had already been identified as prime suspects in the case. If events were to take their course, in due course, Azhar or his close associates would find themselves under arrest, with the Pakistani authorities compelled to curb their movements (much like in the case of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi after 26/11). Such a move would tilt the domestic balance of power in favour of Nawaz, and Gen Raheel Sharif would have none of that.

So we had the drama of the ‘capture’ of an Indian spy in Balochistan and China’s blocking of international action against Masood Azhar at the United Nations. The claim that Kulbhushan Jadhav’s capture is cause to ‘suspend’ the peace process and halt the investigations into Pathankot is laughable: the Pakistani establishment has long been claiming that India is stirring the pot in Balochistan and has even presented ‘evidence’ to foreign officials of this. Whatever the facts of the Jadhav case, they do not present any compelling new information to cause Pakistan to walk out of the peace process. The drama only makes sense when seen as providing an excuse for the military establishment to move to protect its jihadi assets from scrutiny, investigation and punishment.

Much of this drama is Pakistan’s domestic politics. The military-jihadi complex put the civilian government in place and restored its own supremacy. New Delhi’s fault was to walk into these murky waters and end up with a terrorist attack and a red face after being played out by the Pakistani establishment. Mr Modi did well to try engaging Pakistan positively from the beginning of this term — where he erred was in believing that he could force the pace of relations. Unless New Delhi realises that there are two Pakistans, the civilian government and the military-jihadi complex, and has a policy sophisticated enough to engage both simultaneously, it will come a cropper.

But why bother? Pakistan is irrelevant to India’s development agenda. It is a distraction (See this article in OPEN). Instead of wasting limited diplomatic capacity and political capacity on the Pakistan project, it would be much more prudent for Mr Modi to ignore Pakistan, and let it sort itself out. New Delhi ought to invest in protecting the homeland from terrorist attacks, creating political conditions that will minimise its impact and cranking up the economic engines to achieve rapid growth. Mr Modi should practice the necessary art of ignoring Pakistan.

Related Link: Takshashila’s discussion document on the dynamics of engaging Pakistan.

Khuda Hafiz Pakistan

Walls are better than bridges

Nirupama Subramanian, The Hindu’s outgoing Islamabad correspondent, files her last report from the country (well actually, city) she covered for the last four years. Indians and Pakistanis, she concludes:

“cannot be friends as long as we continue looking at each other through the narrow prism of our respective states. Pakistanis must locate the Indian within themselves, and Indians must discover their inner Pakistani. It would help understand each other better, and free us from state-manipulated attitudes. In our own interests, it is up to us, the people, to find ways to do this.” [The Hindu]

The sentiment is genuinely heartfelt. Unfortunately, it contradicts the findings she lists earlier in the same essay.

First, she makes the fundamental error that the power of “the people” works in similar ways and extents in the two countries. A popular idea cannot be politically ignored in democratic India. Now unless she feels that crowds of Indian-loving Pakistanis (note: not India-loving Pakistanis) will storm the GHQ and change long-standing state policy, the argument that the Pakistani “people” matter (if and when they change their minds about India) is naive.

(As an aside, It is unfortunate that Ms Subramanian too succumbs to the tendency to do India-Pakistan “equal-equal” in order to appear objective. When both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh went against popular opinion to reach out to Pakistan, how can she justify her charge that the Indian political class cannot be entrusted to find the middle ground?)

Next, despite personal goodwill and individual friendships, will Pakistanis as a “people” ever abandon their hostility towards India? Ms Subramanian writes:

I would have heated debates with Pakistanis who consider themselves modern, enlightened, liberal and secular but would suddenly go all Islamic and religious when it came to an issue such as Kashmir, seeming no different from their ultra-conservative compatriots who protest against the clamping down on Islamic militancy in Pakistan as harassment of “brother Muslims.” They could tout jihad in Kashmir as legitimate even while condemning the Taliban who threaten their own modern, liberal lifestyle, despite the knowledge that the distinction between the two kinds of jihad, or the two categories of militants, is at best an illusion. [The Hindu]

To believe that it is possible for either the Indian state or the Indian people (acting as individuals or civil society) to perform psychotherapy on a national scale requires either conceit or naïveté. There is nothing in Pakistan’s social, economic and demographic indicators to suggest that endogenous change on a sufficient scale and pace is even possible. Colin Powell got it right in 2005 when he complained, self-servingly, that Indians were more concerned about the jihadis who infiltrated last week rather than Pakistan in 2020 “a nation of 250 million with a per capita income much lower than yours, literacy rate half of yours, a drying river-water system, dead industry, fundamentalism and nuclear weapons.”

Why do sensible, intelligent and well-informed people—like Ms Subramanian—routinely end up offering wishfulness as policy? Part of the reason is that there is an underlying presumption that “peace” is intrinsically a good thing and necessary for India’s development. If that presumption is challenged—there is another way for Ms Subramanian to sign off: Pakistan’s problems are its own, if it is lucky it will somehow solve them. The task before India and the Indian people is to make sure those problems don’t spill over any more than they already do. The solution might be to focus on building strong walls and well-guarded fences—not little bridges. Yes, Khuda Hafiz Pakistan.

Update: Nirupama Subramanian simply rocks in this interview with an ignorant-but-opinionated Pakistani television host. (linkthanks Nerus)

Why I support official talks with Pakistan

Talks will call the bluffs in Rawalpindi, Islamabad & Washington

The sudden and unexplained manner in which the UPA government offered to resume talks with Pakistan has injected a lot of confusion in the public discourse. The confusion—and the political & strategic costs arising from it—must be blamed on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A move as significant as the restart of official bilateral discussions should have been properly explained to the public by the prime minister. Dr Singh remains silent, as usual, leading a thousand blind men and women to describe the elephant as they sense it. What follows, therefore, is the account of Blind Man of Hindoostan #1001.

Talking to the Pakistani government is unlikely to achieve any substantial progress in bilateral relations. The Zardari-Gilani government is a joke. The military-jihadi complex under General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani does not perceive any accommodation with India as being in its interests. The Pakistani economy and society itself is in a tailspin, perhaps even a terminal decline. Even if India could find a party on the other side of the border with sufficient authority and credibility to engage in serious negotiations, it is unlikely that such a party can strike a deal. And if a deal were to be struck, it is likely to be repudiated by whoever comes next. Therefore, anyone who bases the argument for talks on premises like “Let’s give dialogue a chance” or “Because we must” or any other similar notion cannot be taken seriously.

The biggest threat to international security, not just India’s national security, is Pakistan’s military-jihadi complex. Pakistan cannot be at peace with itself, or with its neighbours, or with the world until and unless the military-jihadi complex is contained, dismantled and ultimately destroyed. This grand task is neither India’s alone, nor is India capable of engaging in it all by itself.

If US troops were not engaged in Afghanistan and if US President Barack Obama’s political fortunes did not depend on success in Af-Pak, there would be no reason for India to engage in pointless talks with Pakistan. But the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, and covertly in Pakistan, is an opportunity for India, as Washington faces the unpalatable reality of having to confront the military-jihadi complex. Of course, there is a chance that the Obama administration will chicken out. Even so, it is in India’s interests to deprive Pakistan and the United States of the fig leaves they might want to cover their own escapes. Pakistan cannot blame tensions with India for not fighting the taliban, and the United States cannot use the same excuse in case it fails to compel the Pakistani military establishment to deliver.

So let the foreign secretaries talk. Let them make a list of all issues they want to talk about. And let them then talk about those issues. Just as talks won’t stop terrorism, they need not stop whatever measures India is taking to counter the terrorism.

Honesty demands the risks be stated upfront. One risk is that the United States will lose its nerve, and that New Delhi will fail to compel Washington to act against the military-jihadi complex.

But the bigger risk is that these talks might place the Indian government on a slippery slope of making permanent concessions in return for temporary ones. The desire for a deal, and the place in history that might come with one, will tempt Indian decisionmakers to err on the side of wishfulness. The best way to manage this risk is for the BJP and other parties to remain alert and remain opposed to any concessions, not talks.

The Pakistanis might complain that this is a dialogue of the deaf, and that India is intransigent and that they will not be able to halt terrorism unless India yields to their demands. Let them.

The difference between Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh

Statesmanship and not

Much of the public debate over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bad wager at Sharm-el-Sheikh as been framed wrongly. It is not about the need for India to diplomatically engage Pakistan (although presenting a binary choice between war and talks, and advocating talks suits the UPA government just fine).

It is about how. Shekhar Gupta’s op-ed today inadvertently demonstrates what exactly was wrong with Dr Singh’s approach:

“Everybody wants to go to war. The armed forces are so angry. But ek samasya hai (there is a problem). You can decide over when you start a war. But once started, when it will end, how it will end, nobody knows. That is a call leaders have to take,” (Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee) said (in December 2001, after the jihadi attack on the Indian parliament), focusing entirely on his soup. Once again it was a statesman speaking rather than an angry Indian.

After almost 16 months of stand-off on the borders and coercive diplomacy when, as disclosed by Brajesh Mishra in an interview with me on NDTV’s Walk the Talk, an all-out war nearly broke out on two occasions, Vajpayee again made a dramatic “turnaround”. Addressing a crowd in April 2003 in Srinagar, he made yet another unilateral peace offer, to his own Kashmiris as well as Pakistan, and it yielded the Islamabad Declaration after a summit with Musharraf in January 2004. [IE]

In a situation not unlike the present, Mr Vajpayee moved unilaterally. Doing so meant that he could do it on his own terms. Doing so meant that he didn’t have to agree to the ‘price’ his Pakistani counterpart would ask for in order a joint statement. In Dr Singh’s case, the price paid was not only high, it was paid unnecessarily.

Notwithstanding this blog’s criticism (see a representative post) of the content of the ‘peace process’ that followed the Islamabad summit in 2004, it is undeniable that Mr Vajpayee’s move was real statesmanship. For all its faults, the direction and pace of the 2004-2008 ‘peace process’ was in India’s hands. Dr Singh’s move, in comparison, was a poorly conceived, badly managed and dangerously risky gamble. His own fate is in Pakistan’s hands.

Delhi, its honest rulers and their foolish gambles

The strategic consequences of Manmohan Singh’s vulnerability

So he stood his ground, and didn’t make use of the lifelines that were created for him by the foreign ministry.

Whether he intended it or not, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made himself personally vulnerable. Whether he intended it or not, his Sharm-el-Sheikh lollipop is a gamble: if there is another Pakistan-originated terrorist attack during his tenure, Dr Singh will be thrown to the dogs by his own party; if there isn’t one, as the phrase goes, Singh is King. Since the only people who can prevent a Pakistan-originated terrorist attack are the powers that be in Pakistan—whether it is Asif Ali Zardari, Yousuf Raza Gilani or the military-jihadi complex—Dr Singh’s fate is effectively in the hands of his Pakistani adversaries. Another terrorist attack during the UPA government’s second innings will certainly hurt India; but it will (okay, okay, it might) end Dr Singh’s prime ministerial career.

And just what will Messrs Zardari, Gilani and Kayani do when they realise that they have Dr Singh by the, well, jugular? In addition to using the Balochistan reference to obfuscate their culpability in the Talibanisation of Pakistani society, first they’ll rub their hands in glee: they suddenly have more than just ‘mutual interdependency’ without even having to build a gas pipeline and then blackmail India over it.

Second, they can—with genuine or faux sincerity—suggest that unless India makes concessions over Jammu & Kashmir and a number of other bilateral issues, it will be very hard to rein in the jihadis. Dr Singh’s gamble leaves him ever more vulnerable to this old blackmail. It does not matter if Messrs Zardari & Gilani can or cannot actually do anything about the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and it does not matter if they do anything about it or not, they will still be able to ask India to make progress on the composite dialogue to keep the ‘peace process’ moving.

Third, should another terrorist attack occur, Messrs Zardari & Gilani can first deny, then offer to investigate, then admit that it originated in Pakistan. And anyway, what’s a little terrorism between dialogue partners? In New Delhi, like they sacked the incompetent Shivraj Patil after too much damage had already occurred, the Congress Party might be compelled to seek Dr Singh’s resignation.

The only way Singh can be King is when there is no major terrorist attack. Only major concessions by India might prevent those attacks from happening. Marammat muqaddar ki kar do Maula, mere Maula!

On proof and its credibility

International relations is not a courtroom battle

Here’s a post from the archives on the matter of proof in international relations, written in August 2006 after a previous round of terrorist attacks on Mumbai. Things remain so much the same that there’s no need at all to write a new post.

A case of exploding myths

So what if Pakistan is misunderstood?

Commenting on Mohammed Hanif’s attempt to dispel ten myths about Pakistan, Dhruva Jaishankar writes (in an email):

Mohammed Hanif is clearly very smart, and his prose both entertaining and readable, but his attempt at overturning Indian myths of Pakistan also exposes some of the myths that Pakistanis—particularly upper-class, educated Pakistanis—have about their own country (for the record, I’m not suggesting that middle-class Indians aren’t sometimes similarly deluded).

It is absurd to think, as Hanif suggests, that the Pakistani establishment (I like your formulation—the “military-intelligence complex”) does not use terrorism, just because it is indeed fighting other terrorists on its northwestern frontier. That’s clearly a fallacious argument. Also, it’s not just Indian journalists that have reported terrorist training in major urban centres in Pakistan, as he claims (see Pearl, Daniel; Henry-Levi, Bernard; Coll, Steve). He also appears to admit, despite stating that it’s a myth, that Zardari doesn’t have the kind of control that Musharraf has. And while he’s right about India still being a poor country, that’s not the so-called myth that’s propagated—there are clearly marked differences between the natures of the two economies and consequently their overall healths during the global financial crisis. Finally, he cleverly equates R&AW with ISI, institutions that are clearly not analogous in terms of the power they hold in their respective countries and the resources to which they have access. All that said, he is right about Pakistan being a diverse country—something that is frequently overlooked—and the question of loose nukes, a threat which is often over-exaggerated in India, the United States and elsewhere. [TOI]

Dhruva is right on the ball. If Mr Hanif’s argument is that the Pakistani people are victims of a grand misunderstanding perpetrated by the media, then one wonders how he would explain public opinion rallying behind the military-jihadi complex at the drop of a hat—bringing the four year old ‘peace process’ down like a house of cards. Or is that a myth too?

That people in one part of the world nurture myths and stereotypes of other parts of the world is one of those facts of life. It need not become an international problem. What good people like Mr Hanif need to do is ask themselves, if not explain in op-ed columns, why a large number of their countrymen are so willing to condone, connive or be a party to a proxy war fought by their military-jihadi complex using terrorism for aggression and a nuclear arsenal for defence?

Trading for peace

Can Pakistan make the change?

While the crisis in Pakistan’s international and domestic politics gets a lot of attention, arguably the more worrisome one is the one enveloping its economy. To even attempt to address these crises, Pakistanis must change their mindsets towards India. Why, there is resistance to even accord India a most-favoured nation (MFN) trading status because many don’t like the sound of it. So it is good to see the Daily Times go all the way and argue for bilateral free-trade.

After decades of subordinating economics to politics we are now at a crossroads. The primary crisis in Pakistan is economic despite the fact that we keep distracting ourselves with other less relevant issues. The politics that has constantly overridden economics has not succeeded but it persists in our mental attitude. Arguments given above have long been refuted by circumstance; only those whose ideology was thus hurt did not care to take account of it. When the embargo was placed on imports from India under General Zia-ul Haq, the reason was political; and the economic wisdom of Dr Mahbubul Haq was defeated by a federal secretary who put forward the theorem that helping India profit from trade with Pakistan was a “betrayal of the Kashmir cause”.

The theory of not relying on Indian imports has been disproved over time, to the disappointment of the intelligence agencies. From Gen Zia’s 40 items we are now importing 1500, most of them strategic raw materials. And we have not been “let down” or become “dependent” on India in any negative way. On the basis of this experience, in fact, we would be well advised to create an “interest group” in India comprising exporters to Pakistan. (There is already a beginning of it in Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.) The intermeshing of economic interests is always more reliable compared to political compacts made when there is little mutual trust. On the other hand, the “profit motive” is blind to politics and endures beyond the alarums of war and finally compels states to allow peace to prevail “for profit”.

Pakistan has signed free trade area (FTA) agreements with Iran, China, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, but no increase in Pakistani exports to these countries has occurred because of the unstable situation in Pakistan. Therefore, it is hardly valid, on the basis of this “trade imbalance theory”, to block trade with India. Imports of Indian raw materials and some other items are attractive because transport costs are relatively low across the border. If the increase in Indian imports is expected to be 30 percent, it will displace the import of the same volume of more expensive imports from elsewhere. This will help Pakistan cut its manufacturing costs and reduce the level of inflation. In fact, the whole theory of trade is built on the notion of comparative advantage and there is much advantage to Pakistan in trading with India. [DT]

Dropping more cash from helicopters

Change should not be another word for more of the same

Jim Hoagland’s piece on how the US should transform its Pakistan policy gets it exactly, precisely right.

And it is the case with the campaign promises of John McCain and Barack Obama to unleash ever-larger flows of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Pakistan as a way of bringing stability there and to win the global war on terrorism. They, too, would drop cash from helicopters to calm fears.

That same approach to Pakistan under Pervez Musharraf failed the Bush presidency, and it will fail new leaders in Washington and Islamabad as well. What is needed is a daring reformulation of U.S. policy toward South Asia.
…
Pakistan has created the world’s toughest foreign policy challenge. Its military and civilian governments have for decades profited from stirring tribal warfare in Afghanistan, then been too frightened of or complicit with their own fundamentalists to push for significant social change at home.

But Qureshi was persuasive when he outlined his determination to improve relations with India. His recent trips there convince him that the two nations must put aside hostility and help make each other rich: “We must capitalize on this opportunity.”

India’s growing economic power will leave its neighbor in the dust unless Pakistan becomes part of that prosperity. Pakistan’s future will be determined by its relations with India, not by increased U.S. aid or maintaining its support for tribal war in Afghanistan.

Recognizing and acting on that Indo-Pak reality — rather than perpetuating the illusion that the United States controls Pakistan’s fate — are the urgent tasks for new governments in Washington and Islamabad. [WP]

Clearly, the task is daunting because US policy must change Pakistani mindsets and attitudes. [See a review of Farzana Versey’s book at Pragmatic Euphony.] It certainly is a whole lot harder than dropping cash from helicopters. Moreover, as Joshua Foust writes, the dream of setting Pashtun tribes against each other is removed from reality, as it ignores the Islamist transformation of Pashtun society over the last three decades.

Change must come from within Pakistan. It is in the United States’ interests to make it happen. For India’s part, instead of focusing on peripheral, irrelevant projects like military lines on glaciers or bus services in Kashmir, a real peace process would strategically engage the sources of economic power across the border.