New India-Pakistan
Dialogue to be a Bottoms-Up Affair
By
Martin Sieff
WASHINGTON: The leaders of India and Pakistan have cautiously
but hopefully agreed to start a new dialogue between their traditionally
hostile nations. The well-being of one-fifth of the human race
may depend on them getting along better than when they first met.
For Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and President
Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan took an instant dislike -- and worse,
distrust -- to each other when they first met in July 2001 in
the historic Indian city of Agra, home of the fabled Taj Mahal.
A
year of dangerously escalating tensions between the two nuclear-powered
giant nations of South Asia resulted from that failed meeting
of the minds. It is striking that the new dialogue both leaders
have now approved will begin as a "bottom up" one with
relatively junior diplomats and officials preparing the way rather
than with a flashy and ambitious top-level summit such as the
ill-fated Agra meeting. And experience suggests it is far better
this way.
Musharraf and Vajpayee make a striking "study in contrasts."
Both rose representing hard-line nationalist constituencies. But
both have been led by the responsibilities of high office to take
broader perspectives on the problems they face.
Vajpayee
built up his Hindu nationalist Bharata Janata Party into the leading
political movement in his giant nation of a billion people, the
second most populous nation in the world, indeed, in human history,
and the largest successful democracy of all time. Musharraf, born
in New Delhi in 1943 before the catastrophic fission that split
apart predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan from the former
British Raj in 1947, spent his entire career rising in the ranks
of Pakistan's military.
Vajpayee
is used to the endless discussions, horse-trading and compromises
of democratic coalition-building politics. Musharraf seized power
in a military takeover three and a half years ago and went on
to make himself made president of his own vast nation. Pakistan
is far smaller than India but, with about 150 million people,
it has almost certainly already outstripped Russia to become the
fifth most populous nation in the world.
Both
nations are now openly nuclear-armed. India developed its own
nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Pakistan was greatly aided
in its missile technology and development by its historic ally
China.
The
two countries have fought three major conventional wars since
becoming independent 56 years ago, in 1947, 1966 and 1971. Millions
of people died and countless millions more on both sides became
penniless, brutalized and destitute refugees when the British
pulled out disastrously fast at under the direction of their last
viceroy of India, the late Louis Mountbatten, in 1947. The hatreds
sown at that terrible time continue to spout today.
But
India-Pakistan historic tensions have most of all been kept alive
by the flashpoint issue of Kashmir. The northern province, known
as Jammu and Kashmir, is overwhelmingly Muslim but has been controlled
by India since 1947. Muslim guerrillas backed by Pakistan have
for more than a decade waged one of the most bloody guerrilla
insurrections in the world to try and drive India out.
The
Pakistanis, including Musharraf, claim the majority Muslims in
Kashmir are brutalized by the Indian military. India counters
that its army is fighting merciless terrorist fanatics who slaughter
entire villages of other faiths.
The
violence in Kashmir continues to this day. Between 35,000 to as
many as 80,000 people may have been killed there in Muslim guerrilla
and terror attacks and fierce Indian security forces retaliations
and crackdowns over the past 12 years. But the acquisition of
nuclear weapons by both giant nations has given a new dimension
of threat to their conflict over Kashmir.
As
both countries have vast, impoverished majority populations, they
have not so far had the resources to develop survivable second
strike nuclear capacities or hardened missile silos to prevent
their nuclear missiles from being wiped out by the other side
in some surprise preemptive attack.
That
means that the threat level between is comparable potentially
to the hair-trigger tensions between the United States and the
Soviet Union in the 1950s and early '60s, before the combination
of détente and second strike nuclear delivery systems removed
the temptation -- or feared threat -- for either side to launch
a preemptive nuclear strike to render its arch foe defenseless
at a single blow.
The
Clinton administration accorded a high priority to trying to negotiate
phased nuclear disarmament between both nations. But because its
efforts were grounded in misty idealism and not practical realpolitik,
it failed miserably.
The
Bush administration got off to a poor start. But the high-powered
and exceptionally discreet shuttle diplomacy of Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage in the spring and summer of 2002 is
credited by many South Asian diplomatic insiders as having averted
the otherwise probable outbreak of a full-scale war that could
have all too easily gone nuclear.
Any
resolution of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan looks
impossible in the foreseeable future. The failure to agree even
on a joint statement at Agra in 2001 suggested that. Still, the
encouraging tone of official statements from both New Delhi and
Islamabad over the past week suggests that both governments are
now in a more conciliatory frame of mind.
The
much-increased U.S. clout in the region following the lightning
elimination of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in less than four
weeks may also generate leverage conducive for concessions on
both sides.
Previously,
neither Musharraf nor Vajpayee wavered from their incompatible
core positions. Musharraf pledged never to give up the struggle
to what he called "freedom" for the people of Kashmir.
Vajpayee continued to insist that Pakistan had to give stop its
support for "violence and terrorism being promoted in the
state (of Kashmir) from across the its borders."
Musharraf,
a veteran of previous wars against India and efficient, ambitious
armed forces officer, also delivered a chilling warning to the
Indian people during his July 2001 visit to Agra.
"I
cannot live in this make-believe world, he told Indian newspapers
editors at a breakfast meeting there, "I cannot live in this
illusion," referring to India's continued full control of
Kashmir."
But
since then, especially as Muslim fundamentalist power has grown
closer to home in his own Pakistan, he appears to have come to
the conclusion that surviving and mastering the instability in
his own house is a more immediate priority than confronting India,
and that diplomatic compromise may alleviate the conditions of
the Muslim majority in Kashmir more effectively than any recourse
to war.
Vast
issues remain at stake in South Asia. The threat of nuclear war,
like a colossal, glittering, cosmic sword of Damocles, continues
to hover menacingly over 1.2 billion human beings in two of the
largest nations on earth.
Everyone
who wishes them well can only hope and pray that Musharraf and
Vajpayee will put aside their clashes since Agra and remain committed
to their new determination to avert the catastrophe that threatened
both their peoples.
The writer is a Senior News Analyst of UPI based in Washington,
DC
