Unless Pak-India
Dialogue Begins, All Steps Will Be Useless
By
Mani Shankar Aiyar
ONE
KNOWS Atal Bihari Vajpayee has a horror of the number 13, not
because Hindutva has suddenly taken to Christian superstitions
but because his first term as prime minister lasted thirteen days
and his second thirteen months. Does that explain why his latest
package to Pakistan contains 12, not 13 steps?
In themselves, none of the 12 is to be faulted. They are all good,
and some - such as the proposed Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, the
Karachi-Mumbai ferry, and the Munabao-Khokrapar link - are innovative,
imaginative.
But
several others, such as again playing cricket and other sport,
the restoration of air links, and the resumption of the Samjhauta
Express, are merely an attempt at reviving what we had so foolishly
cancelled ourselves. Does, then, the offer add up to a bold new
direction - or is it as bogus as Vajpayee's "hand of friendship"
speech at Srinagar on April 18?
For
make no mistake about it, the Srinagar speech was not a peace
offering so much as a political Alzheimer's. Vajpayee just forgot
to mention the two preconditions he had till then insisted on
as the indispensable precursor to dialogue-stopping cross-border
terrorism and dismantling the infrastructure of terror.
While
Pakistan and the world exulted, Vajpayee's advisers got him to
repeat pre-condition No.1 in his press conference next day (April
19) even before he left Srinagar, and by the time we in the Lok
Sabha got him to lay an official statement on the table of the
House, he had restored his second pre-condition as well.
So, in the end, his Srinagar speech was no more than a tired repetition
of what Vajpayee - and his lesser colleagues - have been bleating
about for ages, of a piece with the confusion and contradictions
which have marked six years of the NDA's failed attempts at constructively
engaging the Kashmir dissidents on the internal track of dialogue
as much as of their botching every attempt at constructively engaging
Pakistan on the external track.
On
the internal track, after the prime minister's meaningless offer
three years ago of talks with our domestic Kashmiri discontents
"insaniyat ke dayire mein" - "within the framework
of humanity" (what did he mean? That there is no humanity
within the framework of our Constitution?) - there has been no
progress whatsoever in moving towards a solution on the path of
dialogue.
Instead,
the central government has changed its interlocutors more often
than a nanny changing the baby's nappies. At the root of our continuing
problems in the Vale lies the total failure of the internal dialogue
- it is the absence of any political initiative to overcome our
domestic problems that creates the fertile field in which cross-border
terrorism thrives.
The
NDA, in Kashmir, like the Americans in the world at large, look
upon terrorism as aberrant violence to be snuffed out by state
violence. They do not understand, as their chums the Americans
do not understand, that terrorism is not gratuitous violence;
it has causes.
Whether
justified or not is not the question, there are always underlying
causes to terrorism and these have to be addressed if the sparks
which light the fire of terrorism are to be doused.
As for the external front, the NDA's inability to comprehend the
connection between the persistence of cross-border terrorism and
the failure to get the India-Pakistan dialogue going is once again
underlined by Vajpayee's failure to announce the Thirteenth Step
- which must be dialogue.
Shockingly,
the Lahore Declaration contains no reference to "cross-border
terrorism", thus giving the Pakistanis the ready argument
that if in February 1999 "terrorism" included "cross-border
terrorism", then what is the current fuss, in the context
of structuring the dialogue, over the semantics of Terrorism vs
Cross-Border Terrorism?
Vajpayee
nonsensically stated once that cross-border terrorism is a post-Kargil
phenomenon. No, sir, cross-border terorism began when the so-called
"raiders" from Pakistan swept across the J&K frontier
in October 1947. And ever since the V.P. Singh government bungled
the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case in December 1989, we have lived
with aggravated Pak-sponsored cross-border terrorism.
Wisdom
will dawn when we squarely recognise that Jaswant Singh's failure
to include "cross-border terrorism" in the draft Lahore
Declaration is what so lowers our credibility when we insist on
cross-border terrorism ending before we begin talking substance
with Pakistan.
In
any case, the point now at issue is less whether we are prepared
to open the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway than whether there is
any prospect of structuring the India-Pakistan dialogue.
The
NDA has rendered the dialogue hostage to Pakistan ending cross-border
terrorism and dismantling the terrorist network. Pakistan will
do no such thing of its own volition. We tried last year to hector
them into submission - and ended with egg on our face, our jawans
being recalled from field stations after ten long months with
not a shot fired.
Our
diplomatic moves too - such as recalling our high commissioner,
cutting high commission staff, cancelling overflights - have come
back to haunt us, leaving the Pakistanis quite unfazed.
The moves were so ill-thought out that it is we who suffered much
more than Pakistan. For Pakistan is more than happy to live without
people-to-people contacts.
It
is our diplomacy that is based on people-to-people contact being
a desirable thing in itself besides, perhaps (a big perhaps) bringing
the Pakistani people around to persuading their government to
seek an accommodation with us.
That leaves us with the Americans to pull India's Pakistani chestnuts
out of the fire. Apart from such pious hopes constituting a flagrant
transgression of the bilateral provisions of the Shimla Agreement,
the NDA's naivete in jumping on to the 9/11 bandwagon in the expectation
that in American eyes this would make us the "good boys"
and the Pakis the "bad guys" has simply not worked.
It
is Musharraf who has become Busharraf; not Vajpayee who is hailed
as Bushpayee.
Hence, the need for the 13th Step - dialogue. Unless we address
the eight broad issues agreed upon at Murree, Vajpayee's 12 steps
will be no more than a transitory propaganda coup. The billion
and a quarter people of India and Pakistan deserve more than media
spin.
