Indo-Pak Talks:
Is There a Bottom Line for Pakistan
By
Husain Haqqani
SOON
AFTER the talk of another round of talks between India and Pakistan
surfaced in the media, a senior Pakistani academic in the United
States wrote to me, ‘‘Supposing the Indians say to
us, okay, let’s talk. What do we intend to say to them that
we haven’t already said and which they haven’t brushed
aside?’’
In
many ways this represents the dilemma of India-Pakistan negotiations.
The absence of dialogue causes tension, spiked now with the prospect
of nuclear confrontation. But dialogue usually ends with both
sides sticking to stated positions, with little scope for a substantive
breakthrough.
Negotiations
usually involve reconciling maximum demands — what one side
says it desires, with its minimal expectation, what it will settle
for. Most observers agree that India’s maximum demand is
that Pakistan gives up its claim on all of Jammu and Kashmir,
and its minimal expectation would probably be that Pakistan accept
the status quo without further violence and a de facto partition
of Kashmir along the line of Control.
India
would like Pakistan to stop ‘‘being a thorn in its
side’’. An Indian negotiating team would try to secure
more than the minimum and would probably settle for less than
the maximum. But in Pakistan’s case, there has never been
much discussion of a ‘‘bottom line’’ national
position on the Kashmir conflict. Pakistanis feel that they were
cheated at the time of partition, when a contiguous Muslim majority
state was not allowed to become part of Pakistan. There is a desire
that a UN-sponsored plebiscite be held in the Jammu and Kashmir
State that ‘‘sets right that original injustice and
paves the way for Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan’’.
But
that is a maximum position. Attempts at different times to try
and define alternatives to that position have all been declared
by the country’s establishment as running contrary to the
national interest. In the days before a new round of India-Pakistan
talks, perhaps there is scope for discussion and debate within
Pakistan to define alternative negotiating positions for a future
Pakistani negotiating team.
When
India and Pakistan tested their nuclear weapons in 1998, some
experts expressed the hope that there would be no further wars
between them. Nuclear wars served as a deterrent to war between
the US and the Soviet Union and it is a widely held view that
the prospect of nuclear annihilation creates a ‘‘balance
of terror’’ that in turn forces protagonists to talk
to each other. India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons but
do not have in place any of the other elements of deterrence.
They
do not have clearly identified ‘‘red lines’’
the crossing of which would result in a nuclear strike. There
are no arms control talks, no detailed doctrines and no hotlines
to guard against triggering accidental nuclear clashes. Given
the geographic proximity of the two, their reaction time in case
of a missile attack is barely a few minutes. And neither side
can nuke the other without having to bear some of the fallout.
Deterrence
has already failed in part between India and Pakistan since their
nuclear tests, the Kargil clash being an example of a non-nuclear
conflict between them. Relations between the world’s other
nuclear powers have never been characterized by such frequent
confrontations. Pakistan’s military-dominated decision-making
process has resulted in combinations of short-term military and
diplomatic moves without a well-thought out end game.
As
pointed out by retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan, Pakistan’s
military adventures have been launched in the ‘‘hope
that world powers would come to our rescue, intervene, bring about
a cease fire and somehow help us achieve our political objectives.
All our past wars with India have been fought for no purpose (and)
we have suffered humiliation as a result.’’
Rounds
of negotiations have been no different. Pakistan has called for
talks but has gone into talks without alternative negotiating
positions. The Indians have ended up digging in their heels, making
negotiations a zero-sum game as well. A feeling of insecurity
against a much larger and hostile neighbor was the original source
of Pakistani apprehensions about its nationhood. The emphasis
on seeking to ‘‘complete’’ Pakistan by
acquiring Kashmir, which in the Pakistani psyche should have been
part of Pakistan in the first place, is directly related to this
sense of insecurity.
But
over the years, structures of conflict have evolved, with the
Pakistani establishment as the major beneficiary of maintaining
hostility. The possession of nuclear weapons has given the Pakistani
elite a sense of invulnerability and has increased its willingness
to consider options of unconventional warfare. The environment
of the global war against terrorism restrains Pakistani support
for Islamic militancy in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
But
in the absence of a sustained peace process, and fulfillment of
mutual commitments such as those made by Musharraf last year about
curbing militancy, there will always be room for new tactics that
prolong the conflict and attempt to alter the status quo.
Pakistan’s
domestic politics has also become a major factor in its relations
with India and vice versa. The Pakistani establishment does not
trust the leaders of Pakistan’s two major political parties
— Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz
Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League. Since the 1999 coup d’etat
that brought General Musharraf to power, the military has attempted
to rewrite Pakistan’s constitution and restructure its polity
— the fourth such attempt in Pakistan’s relatively
short history as an independent nation.
The
exclusion of Bhutto and Sharif from the political process has
benefited the Islamist political parties. Their political power
makes it difficult for politicians and intellectuals to advocate
a settlement with India. An Islamist leader recently declared
publicly that ‘‘killing Hindus’’ was ‘‘the
best approach to the 56-year-old dispute between Pakistan and
India over Kashmir.’’
The
rise of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism in India is feeding the
religious frenzy in Pakistan while the political gains of the
Pakistani Islamists have empowered India’s religious hardliners.
The clash of these rival religious sentiments is hardly conducive
to rational discourse aimed at seeking long-term friendship. Still,
it would be in India’s interest to help Pakistan gain sufficient
confidence as a nation to overcome the need for conflict or regional
rivalry for nation-building.
The
international community, especially the US, could increase pressure
for restoration of civilian rule in Pakistan, paving the way for
a constitutionally mandated civilian government to resume the
Lahore peace process. In Kashmir, India could start a process
of political inclusion that would help identify credible Kashmiri
partners in restoring peace. Pakistan would need to back away
from its deep involvement with the Kashmiri political opposition
to pave the way for an inclusive political process. Dialogue among
Kashmiris from both sides of the LoC would also help ease the
Kashmir situation.
As
things stand, however, there is potential for further Indo-Pak
conflict. India believes it can maintain the status quo in J&K
with its superior military force while Pakistan continues to bleed
India and demand talks without having worked out what it would
seek in these talks short of demanding the cessation ion of all
of Kashmir.
The
two sides need to recognize the difference between isolated rounds
of talks and a peace process aimed at creating lasting peace.
The
writer is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace
