Cascading developments on Saturday (Aug 22 ) apropos the congenitally jinxed, first ever India-Pakistan NSA (National Security Adviser) level meeting to be held on Monday (Aug 24) reached a predictable conclusion after the press conference addressed by Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj earlier in the evening. Late at night a terse statement from the Pakistani Foreign Office in Islamabad noted : “Pakistan reiterates that the scheduled NSA-level talks cannot be held on the basis of the preconditions set by India.”
The NSA meeting which had been agreed to by both sides in early July in Ufa, on the sidelines of the SCO Summit when the Indian and Pakistan Prime Ministers met, was differently interpreted by both countries as soon as the principals returned to their respective capitals. For India the meeting was limited to terrorism and the need to minimize the exchange of ordnance across the border – for which other meetings were to be scheduled.
On the Pakistani side the Ufa outcome was interpreted more expansively to include all issues including Kashmir. The dissonance was compounded when Pakistan played what might be called the ‘Hurriyat’card at the last minute and insisted on meeting with the Kashmir separatist leader prior to the NSA meeting.
Even as PM Modi was being pilloried by his domestic critics for diluting his position on talks and terror , the Pakistani insistence on meeting with the Hurriyat was the proverbial final straw. It led to the Sushma Swaraj press conference where the red line was firmly drawn – and inevitably, this was followed by the announcement from Islamabad calling off the Sartaj Aziz visit to Delhi.
While emotive nationalism was on display over the NSA meeting – particularly in the audio-visual medium, the sequence of events post Ufa are reflective of the arid zero-sum game that the troubled India-Pakistan bi-lateral relationship has become.
The Ufa announcement itself was a surprise move by PM Modi – for there was little in the public domain to justify the change in Indian position when it reached out to PM Nawaz Sharif. Delhi not only mooted and agreed to the NSA and DGMO level meeting – but indicated that the Indian PM would visit Pakistan for the SAARC Summit in 2016.
Yet in the six weeks after Ufa there have been two terror attacks ( Gurdaspur and Udhampur) and one of the perpetrators , a Pakistani national who has been captured alive has revealed a familiar linkage with terror training camps linked to the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) that was behind the November 2008 attack on Mumbai.
Notwithstanding these provocations, the Modi government prudently chose to stay the course and go ahead with the NSA meeting – but drew the line over the Hurriyat meeting. In retrospect it must be added that the embarrassing flip-flop over placing the Hurriyat leadership under house-arrest and then inexplicably releasing them – only to later detain them in Delhi was intriguing and could have been avoided.
But soon the Modi team seemed to regain control of the plot and the Sushma Swaraj public statement was a commendable exercise in clarity and political confidence when she invoked not only the spirit of Ufa – but that of Simla in 1972. Dialogue is the preferred and more equitable option – and both nations had committed at Simla that ALL issues including Kashmir would be dealt with in a bi-lateral framework.
The central question now is where do India and Pakistan go from here ? The breakdown is a messy punctuation in the diplomatic trajectory for both sides and the policy makers on both sides will have to undertake an objective review of the near future.
For the Indian side, the aborted NSA experience ought to compel a holistic review of India’s approach to engaging with Pakistan. The contextual backdrop of regional developments and the tacit support being accorded to Islamabad by countries such as China, the US and other benefactors cannot be ignored. On the domestic front, the need for a bi-partisan consensus that would evaluate the policies adopted from the Narasimha Rao era to the current times and the status of the Hurriyat in particular is imperative. Personally one would support the quarantining of any separatist faction and the political and media space accorded to the Hurriyat should be shrunk.
Such a review would draw attention to a silver lining in the bleak bi-lateral history. The Musharraf years saw the value of a quiet back-channel engagement and it appeared that a tentative modus vivendi was a possibility. But the myth of Sisyphus is the abiding leit motif of the troubled Indo-Pak relationship and this hope was short-lived after General Musharraf fell foul of his own constituency in 2007.
The case for reviving a variation of this kind of engagement – either Track II or back-channel - with the security professionals on both sides merits serious consideration. For instance engaging with the former Pakistani FIA Chief – Tariq Khosa who provided a candid account of the 26/11 Mumbai attack – and his peers - over terrorism related issues ; or with the retired Pakistani army top-brass on security related matters may offer some modest possibilities.
Some initiatives do exist – but are not robustly supported by their governments and this area merits attention to create an environment wherein the chequered engagement can resume.
Till recently the Rawalpindi-Muridke combine seemed oblivious to any external suggestion or persuasion to re-orient its radical ideology cum support to terror orientation. However the post Mullah Omar fiasco and the public anger in Kabul over the duplicity of the Pakistan deep-state have led to a subtle shift in the global perception about the uncritical support to Pakistan.
The nuance in the US’ Pakistan policy by way of linking financial support to compliance in other areas and the empathetic welcome accorded to PM Modi in the UAE are some of the indicators.
Building a larger cluster of nations that will support the democratic and law abiding constituency in Pakistan even while tethering the rogue elements is the larger imperative. But claiming any kind of victory over Saturday’s fiasco would be more pyrrhic in the long term.
(Bhaskar is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi)
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