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Towards
a permanent peace
K
P S Gill
The
conflict over Kashmir is not, as is widely believed, a quarrel over
territory; it is, rather, an irreducible conflict between two
fundamentally incompatible ideologies.
There has been an
enormous burst of activity and accompanying euphoria since India's
Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, visited Srinagar on April 18
and made an offer of renewed talks with Pakistan over the vexed
Kashmir issue. The move has been greeted with a crescendo of
international approval, and has drawn enthusiastic responses from
the US as well, with Secretary of State Colin Powell declaring:
"All this is very, very promising at a time when we were
beginning to wonder whether or not we were not going back to the
potential of conflict."
More significant has been the response within Kashmir and in
Pakistan. While there are dissenting voices in the Valley - there
would be reason for suspicion if there were none - the political
response has been largely positive, even eager. As for Pakistan, the
sheer rapidity of the reactions has been remarkable. There is
currently little available intelligence on the background of Prime
Minister Vajpayee's offer, but the consensus in the popular media
appears to be that this was an off-the-cuff gesture, not a
well-thought-out and planned policy shift.
Nevertheless, the
character and velocity of responses from Pakistan, and the speed
with which a graduated peace process appears to be emerging,
suggests that the probabilities of substantial behind-the-scenes
activities preceding these developments cannot be entirely
discounted. This is borne out further by the timing of the
appointment of N.N. Vohra as the Centre's new interlocutor in
Kashmir, and several reports over the past months regarding the
creation of the groundwork for official-level talks between the two
countries.
Whatever be the case on this point, the fact is that the present
process has a far greater probability of success than any of the
preceding attempts, and the reasons for this are rooted in the
radical transformation of the geo-strategic context of Asia, the
impact of the US coalition campaign in Iraq, and the progressive
'denial of plausible deniability' by the international community -
and specifically the US - to Pakistan on its role in international
and cross-border terrorism.
Among the most
significant of these factors has been the humiliating defeat
inflicted on the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. This has sent a very
strong message to the extreme elements of political Islam, and to
the rogue states bound to this ideology and supportive of the
terrorist campaigns inspired by it. It has long been the position of
the Institute for Conflict Management that military defeat is
a critical element in the delegitimisation of the terrorists and
their state sponsors, and the defeat in Iraq has had an inevitable
impact on Pakistan and the Musharraf regime, as well as on at least
a segment of those who had thrown in their lot with the Islamist
extremists in the anticipation of a great and proximate victory.
For Pakistan, this
impact has been multiplied manifold by a number of secondary inputs,
including repeated and strong statements from the highest echelons
of the US leadership that - while they continued to appreciate the
country's assistance in apprehending Al Qaeda elements operating in
the country and 'cooperation on the war against terror' - had also
clearly confirmed Pakistan's role in supporting terrorism in
J&K, and had emphasized that the Musharraf regime had failed to
fulfill its promises and had not done enough on this count.
There has also been
a strong media buildup in the US - fuelling urgent speculation and
apprehensions in the Pakistani media and policy circles as well -
regarding the possibility of Pakistan becoming the next target of
American 'pre-emptive action', though this has been firmly denied by
US authorities.
Subtle signs of a
clear shift in the US policy have also emerged as, for example, in
the redrawing of the CIA's map
of Kashmir that earlier showed the entire area - both Pakistan
and Indian controlled Jammu & Kashmir - as a 'disputed
territory'. The recently revised maps - which would have gone
through an extended process of review by various Government
Departments, and would certainly reflect the consensus of the
present Administration - mark out the areas east of the Line of
Control (LoC) as the "Indian State of Jammu &
Kashmir", while the territories to the west are designated
"Pakistan-controlled areas of Kashmir", correctly
reflecting the position of the 1948 UN Resolution that it was, in
fact, only the "Pakistan-controlled" area that was in
dispute. The message to Pakistan cannot have been ignored by the
Musharraf regime.
There is, moreover, a growing awareness among Pakistani commentators
that the ongoing terrorist campaign cannot upset the status quo in
Kashmir, and a certain measure of pragmatism is now clearly
replacing the delusional strategic overreach that has dominated
Pakistani military thinking over the past decades.
Crucially, it is clear that, after Iraq, the US would like to see
peace in the Palestine-Israel conflict, and the conflict over
Kashmir. The shift in strategy on both these areas is now visible,
and the US is reportedly exerting extraordinary pressures on Syria
and Lebanon to stop covert support to Palestinian terrorist groups.
It is clear that parties in the conflict are now being forced into
isolation from the networks of their clandestine supporters in order
to facilitate a clear focus on the actual issues in the conflict,
with terror being pushed out of the negotiating equation. This,
precisely, is what the US would seek to secure on Kashmir.
With America's
unarguable status as the world's sole superpower, and the inevitable
impact of its policies on the economic and security future of this
region, US interests, perspectives and responses will certainly
weigh in on the decisions of the South Asian leadership. In any
event, Musharraf has tended to go along with America on all major
decisions since 9/11, and though he will be reluctant to be seen as
withdrawing too suddenly from his strident position on Kashmir -
"Kashmir is in our blood", as he put it - it is apparent
that, once the US position is stated clearly, he will fall
obediently in line. He may, of course, use the puppet Mir Zafarullah
Khan Jamali government, and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri,
as a front to make the more distasteful of about-turns, but
compliance would tend to be inevitable.
Lest all this appears to be a matter of course, it is important to
strike a note of extreme caution. The situation remains complex and
immensely uncertain, and there is no surety that the peace process
will last. Indeed, if another madcap military adventurist emerges on
the Pakistani political scenario, if a few fundamentalists run
amuck, or if renegade terrorists unwilling to comply with the shifts
in policy of their state sponsors in Pakistan engineer a few
dramatic strikes in J&K, the entire process could well be
derailed, yielding another cycle of escalated violence.
The greater danger in the present peace process, however, is that it
fails to address underlying character of the 'enduring rivalry', the
'intractable conflict' between the two countries. The conflict over
Kashmir is not, as is widely believed, a quarrel over territory; it
is, rather, an irreducible conflict between two fundamentally
incompatible ideologies - a pluralistic democratic ideology, on
India's part; and an authoritarian-fundamentalist-exclusionary
Islamist ideology that asserts that different belief systems cannot
coexist within the same political order.
A permanent peace
in South Asia will only result after one or the other of these
ideologies succumbs - and these are crucial to national identity,
consciousness, and even the existence of these two nation states. A
permanent peace is, consequently, contingent on Pakistan abandoning
the ideology of hatred and exclusion that lies at the very
foundations of its creation.
Failing this, the
only other option, as I have suggested before, is the de-nuclearisation
and de-militarization of Pakistan, or the creation of a tremendous
military imbalance in the region that makes it impossible for
Pakistan to engage in the military adventurism that has
characterized much of its independent existence.
K.P.S.
Gill is President, Institute for Conflict Management
which runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal and brings out a
weekly - South Asia Intelligence Review - courtesy which this
piece appears here.
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