SACW 7-11 Oct. 2005 | On the Indo Pak Peace Process

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  - Dispatch 2  |  7-11 October,  2005

On the Indo Pak Peace Process

[1]   Indo-Pak relations - No breakthrough in sight (M B Naqvi)
[2]   One step forward, two steps back (Praful Bidwai)
[3]   Whither Peace Process? / The View From 
Srinagar / Settling the Kashmir Dispute (Radha 
Kumar)

______


[1]

Deccan Herald
October 11, 2005

INDO-PAK RELATIONS
NO BREAKTHROUGH IN SIGHT
By M B Naqvi

In the context of nuclear weapons, CBMs are 
inadequate and there can be no meaningful 
co-operation

Assessing the progress in the ongoing 
Indo-Pakistan dialogue is becoming tiresome. 
There is nothing new. There is the usual 
incremental advance. Both sides are determined to 
soldier on to the Third Round. This determination 
to go on talking is strange. Is it an effort by 
both sides to keep the Americans happy? But that 
may be unfair. The stoppage of bilateral dialogue 
means a return to an open-ended deadlock that can 
occasion war, conceivably nuclear. So let them go 
on talking.

Three reasons prevent settlement. First, Kashmir 
is actually insolvable. This land is linked to 
the honour, self-esteem and prestige of both 
sides. India would keep Kashmir State. Pakistan 
would take it. As it happens, Pakistan cannot 
wrest it. India is not prepared to even dilute 
its control. Kashmiris are now too alienated from 
both; left to themselves they would keep both out 
while expecting them to help them. But they are 
unable to win their right to be free. India is 
unable to win over the Kashmiri hearts.

The second major reason preventing settlement is 
the two rival nuclear deterrents sitting so close 
to each other. Atomic weapons are of use only to 
attack and that too pre-emptively. There is no 
defence against them. Period.

All talk of anti-missile defence boils down to 
slightly more accurate rockets that will 
ultimately be used for offensive purposes, when 
it is not a sales pitch for rocket manufacturers. 
Neither Islamabad nor New Delhi can really trust 
the other so long as there are nuclear-tipped 
rockets sitting in the other's arsenal.

Neither side can so lower the guard as to allow 
the citizens of the other country to swarm around 
them. A close friendship involves lots of 
cooperation, trade and tourism. Spook agencies, 
on both sides, are conscious of the other's 
capabilities and are always paranoid about open 
borders and free travel. Inside governments the 
securitywallahs always win over other departments.

The Pentagon would use nukes on suspected third 
world countries pre-emptively. That is their only 
use. No other use is possible. Thus the presence 
of these weapons destroys trust radically. A 
close neighbour, possessing the ability to 
suddenly incinerate any city, cannot be trusted 
on the hoary doctrine that it is the capability 
that counts; intention can always change.

That basic mistrust disallows close economic, 
trade and cultural cooperation. It is this that 
does not permit either side making significant 
concessions. Some trust is a precondition for a 
cooperative dispensation to being agreed upon. 
Even insipid normalisation eludes.

Reasons for quarrelling

Why have Pakistan and India been quarrelling all 
along? The reason has many constituents. Emphasis 
on religious communities was a colonial legacy. 
That resulted in communal rivalry that 
progressively got worse; communalism was the 
shortest route to political success if the other 
community was sufficiently demonised. Muslim 
communalism demanded being treated as equal to 
Hindus for having once been dominant. They tended 
to be toadies to a "central" power to save one's 
privileges, mainly lands. Muslim politics was a 
quest for saving privileges that evolved into 
Muslim separatism.

Pakistan inherited an assumption of equality with 
Hindus. Meantime Hindus evolved a nationalism 
with Hindu ethos and another based on 
Indo-Persian civilisation superimposed with 
secularism and democratic values. Thus in Indian 
and Pakistani states, the colonial period's 
communal rivalry survived as foreign policies. 
Indians think they are a great power. But 
Pakistan's UN representative has observed: "In 
the strategic and defence areas, Pakistan always 
demands and deserves parity with our neighbour". 
This is rivalry in the context of nukes. With 
such mindsets can they work out a friendly 
settlement?

Factually, not one out of eight disputes has come 
nearer a solution after two Rounds. Two have been 
dealt with, viz, Kashmir and atomic forces, and a 
brief mention made of the third: rival states are 
based originally on communal consciousnesses. 
Today the reality is rivalry between the two 
states that caused several wars and the cold war 
continues. Popular pressure to get out of this 
vicious cycle is there. Which is why the two 
governments do not let the dialogue die. American 
nudges and pushes are also responsible.

If anyone in Pakistan would listen there is a 
solution of Kashmir: let's stop seeking a Kashmir 
settlement, unless territorial aggrandisement is 
what motivates Islamabad. It is a matter of 
Kashmiris' aspirations vis-à-vis India and their 
rights. Well, let these two sort it out. Pakistan 
should loudly proclaim it has no locus standi. If 
Kashmiris want a different future, let them 
struggle and achieve it.

The second issue concerns atomic weapons. Well, 
there is no solution of this problem. The only 
solution is that both countries should 
simultaneously get rid of them. The bomb-loving 
lobbies on either side think it is not a 
practical proposition. Islamabad and New Delhi 
pretend that confidence building measures are 
adequate.They aren't. The CBMs look good in 
normal times; when tensions are high they are 
ignored.

Work of time

Time will reshape assumptions, attitudes and 
purpose of the two states. Their identities must 
rest on firm cultural and historical foundations. 
A people-to-people reconciliation and friendship 
between them, indeed among South Asians, will 
transform the prospect.

But a fourth issue is trying to climb up the 
list. It is river waters. The Baglihar Dam is 
already with the World Bank. Other water problems 
require a fair-mindedness. It is absent. Siachen 
and Sir Creek, half-solved issues, could not be 
clinched.

Agreement on trade, transit trade and economic 
cooperation, as also free travel and cultural 
cooperation depend on Islamabad realising that no 
contacts with Indians is no lever on India.

_____


[2]


The News International
October 08, 2005

One step forward, two steps back

Praful Bidwai

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a 
researcher and peace and human-rights activist 
based in Delhi

The most that can be said about Foreign Minister 
Natwar Singh's visit to Pakistan is that the two 
neighbours have barely managed to salvage their 
dialogue from a downturn. There was no 
breakthrough on any issue, including the 
relatively tractable Siachen and Sir Creek 
disputes. But India and Pakistan have 
successfully taken out the gravely, discordant, 
note out of their conversation, which became 
audible in New York last month in references to 
United Nations resolutions and cross-border 
terrorism. The return of a degree of cordiality 
and earnestness in India-Pakistan exchanges is 
more than a little welcome.

Yet, it's evident that both states are proceeding 
with the utmost caution. Take the language of 
their joint statement. Its boldest formulation 
says: "The two sides exchanged ideas on the 
Siachen issue and agreed to continue their 
discussions so as to arrive at a common 
understanding before commencement of the next 
round of the composite dialogue ..." On other 
issues, officials merely "welcomed the ongoing 
diplomatic discussions in a framework to promote 
a settlement... on a mutually acceptable basis".

Natwar Singh has since even played down the 
optimistic note on Siachen by declaring that 
"there is no deadline", but "we hope the talks 
will move forward". One can only hope he was 
being overcautious. The substantive agreement on 
Siachen is specifically focussed on six issues: 
identifying the positions currently held by the 
two armies, agreement on the positions to which 
their troops shall withdraw, defining the areas 
of disengagement, creation of arrangements to 
monitor the pullback, establishing a verification 
mechanism to rule out future violations; and 
settling the Line of Control beyond reference 
point NJ-9842.

This detailed formulation leads to the inference 
that India and Pakistan may be close to reaching 
an agreement, just as they were August last year, 
indeed, as far back as in 1989. Nevertheless, 
worries and reservations persist among their 
military leaders.

The Indian military is keen to demarcate its 
troops' precise existing positions -- something 
that Pakistan's brass believes will amount to 
endorsing India's "aggression". India reportedly 
holds two of the three crucial passes around the 
glacier. It does not want to surrender this 
"advantage" without its troops position being 
recorded. Pakistan is reluctant to identify the 
location of its troops.

The "advantages" are mostly illusory. The 
considerations at work are largely about false 
notions of "honour", "prestige", "humiliation" 
and "surrender". They must not be allowed to 
block agreement. Siachen, it bears repeating a 
hundred times, is the world's highest-altitude -- 
and also it's most pointless and strategically 
ludicrous -- war. It costs India Rs20-25 million 
a day, and Pakistan perhaps only slightly less. 
The two countries have lost thousands of soldiers 
on the glacier's icy slopes -- not so much to 
gunshots as to frostbite.

A much larger number of those who serve in these 
ultra-harsh conditions amidst total desolation 
have developed severe psychiatric problems, 
including extreme anxiety, stress disorders and 
chronic depression. These colossal human and 
material costs would be hard to justify even if 
Siachen had exceptional strategic importance. But 
it has no strategic significance whatever. The 
glacier leads nowhere. Control over it gives no 
privileged access to another strategic location 
either.

It's hard to understand how military leaders who 
even minimally respect the rights of soldiers 
("our boys") countenance such wanton destruction 
and gratuitous assaults on their bodies and 
minds. Such callousness beggars belief. It also 
calls for a political initiative to take matters 
out of the generals' hands. They often don't make 
wise, discriminating judgments about strategic 
issues, leave alone human rights.

That's exactly what India and Pakistan need to 
do. Leadership is all about that. If Manmohan 
Singh and Musharraf can't summon up the will to 
crack even the Siachen dispute, they will have 
proved that they don't lead from the front. They 
will also have proved the hollowness of the 
promise to make Siachen a "mountain of peace". 
Rather, Siachen's glacial speed will literally 
set the pace of the India-Pakistan dialogue.

The hard part of the India-Pakistan talks is yet 
to come -- Kashmir, nuclear weapons, 
demilitarisation, complete end to all support to 
hostile groups, water, trade, freer movement of 
people. So far, India and Pakistan have dragged 
their feet over implementing even what they 
agreed to -- for instance, reopening consulates 
in Karachi and Mumbai. Even on the Nankana Saheb 
and Poonch-Rawalakot bus services, they insist on 
holding "technical-level" talks, as if the 
schedule and capacity of the buses were a highly 
complex issues soluble only with uncommon 
expertise.

Such ultra-conservative, ossified mindsets must 
change if there's to be a breakthrough, indeed if 
the dialogue is to be sustained through the 
present stage. It's not easy to see how this can 
happen. As this Column has argued earlier, there 
is merit in non-reciprocal, unilateralist 
approaches -- whether on visas, trade and 
investment, or demilitarisation.

On Kashmir, there's some hope. There's a 
cross-LoC dialogue for the first time ever, and 
the Indian government and the majority faction of 
the Hurriyat Conference have met. The dialogue 
needs to be expanded and speeded up. But it's 
already clear that the Kashmiris have a mind of 
their own, and will follow an independent 
approach, given a chance. By all accounts, there 
has been a remarkable improvement in the 
situation in Indian Kashmir. This too should 
facilitate resolution of the dispute within the 
agreed parameters.

It's on the nuclear and missile issues that 
there's no cause for hope or optimism. Both India 
and Pakistan continue to pretend that their 
nuclear weapons are not destabilising -- when 
they manifestly are. This is an extension of the 
charade the two played out in the 1980s and most 
of the 1990s. Then, each tacitly accepted that 
the other was developing/had developed nuclear 
weapons; that was only "normal" and "natural". On 
missiles too, the two have shown deplorable 
complacency.

After their nuclear tests, they should have 
agreed to a missile tests-flight ban to delay the 
deployment of nuclear weapons on delivery 
vehicles with a far greater reach than warplanes. 
Instead, they have plunged headlong into a 
missile race, which has dangerously shifted 
beyond the ballistic level, to include cruise 
missiles.

The agreement signed last Monday permits both 
sides to test-fire ballistic missiles from as 
close as 40 km inside their border, with an 
impact-site (where the missile can land) limit of 
75 km. Apparently, India wanted the test-site at 
least 120 km inside the border. But Pakistan 
insisted on 40 km. This was an insane bargain, 
given that both have whole classes of missiles 
with a range several times greater than 120 km.

The deal's implications are clear. The two 
adversaries, with no strategic distance worth the 
name between them, have cynically chipped away at 
margins of safety and assurances regarding 
unusual occurrences. Now, missile tests 
perilously close to the border will be considered 
"normal" within the context of a 
half-century-long hot-cold war.

This is a retrograde step even in relation to the 
nuclear and missile confidence-building measures 
agreed in 1999, themselves inadequate. This is 
bad news for India-Pakistan relations in general. 
Unless the two stop regarding each other as 
strategic adversaries - what else are nuclear 
rivals? - they cannot talk peace in ways that are 
authentic or organic to their security interests.

_____


[3]

Indian Express
September 21, 2005


PART-I
Whither Peace Process?
The obviously bumpy meeting between Prime 
Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf 
in New York has many analysts worried
Radha Kumar

The obviously bumpy meeting between Prime 
Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf 
in New York has many analysts worried. Why did 
President Musharraf bring up Kashmir in the 
context of UN resolutions instead of discussing 
the peace process between India and Pakistan? 
More worryingly still, why did he push for 
troops' reduction in Baramulla and Kupwara, both 
areas of heavy militant presence, not to mention 
infiltration routes - is he continuing to support 
the militant groups on one hand, while talking 
peace with India on the other? Or is there a 
context to all this that we do not know?

An immediate explanation for President 
Musharraf's conduct could be Afghanistan. 
Pakistan is under pressure to prevent Taliban 
attacks from the NWFP during the Afghan 
elections, and a major concession by India would 
offset domestic anger. This also explains why US 
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asked our 
Prime Minister to agree to the President's demand 
for troops' reduction. (Presumably she did not 
realize the strategic significance of Baramulla 
and Kupwara for militancy, though she should have 
suspected something of the sort, having 
experienced similar tactics).

Yet if President Musharraf was quick to make 
counterproductive demands in New York, he dropped 
his demands equally quickly. The conciliatory 
statements of the Indian and Pakistani leaders 
following their disagreements suggest a wider 
context to the New York meeting, that the two 
countries have moved to the next stage of the 
peace process - how to fully and finally end the 
violence in Jammu and Kashmir - but are still in 
the preliminary stage of negotiating the steps 
that each will take, and their sequencing. If 
this is the context, it is a potentially positive 
one.

The issue of ending violence was always going to 
be a thorny one, almost as much so as the issue 
of a lasting settlement. From the first 
initiatives to get a peace process started in 
2000, Pakistan has been reluctant to give up what 
successive governments considered their only 
trump card, the militant groups fighting in 
Kashmir. In the past two years, however, Pakistan 
has inched towards reducing support for 
militants. First there was the cease-fire on the 
LOC in 2003, then acceptance of India's fencing 
in 2004-5, and most recently an active 
discouragement of cross-border infiltration.

India's initiatives to end violence have kept 
pace with these changes. It took some time for 
the security forces to accept the need for reform 
- indeed it is only this year that 
counterinsurgency operations have been downsized, 
partly due to better intelligence. But once 
reform started, it has been pursued. There is, 
finally, a sustained effort to stop human rights 
abuses by security forces. Earlier this year, the 
Indian government made a first reduction in 
troops, which was supposed to be followed by 
further reductions once a cease-fire with 
militant groups was agreed. That is yet to happen.

Why is it so difficult to get a cease-fire - at 
least with the Hizbul Mujahideen, who previously 
entered cease-fire talks, most memorably in 2000? 
A political strategy was carved out, that the 
Hurriyat would seek a cease-fire from the 
militant groups, in fact this was one of the 
purposes of the Hurriyat's visit to Azad Kashmir 
and Pakistan. But the Hizbul has proved difficult 
to win, perhaps because its leader, Syed 
Salahuddin, wishes a political role of his own, 
independent of the Hurriyat, or perhaps because 
Pakistan still fears to give up its "military 
option" entirely.

On the Indian side, too, we have heard little 
support for a cease-fire, which really is 
puzzling given that it is only after violence 
ends that hearts and minds can be won. What 
prevents the Indian government from saying that 
they are willing to offer the militant groups a 
cease-fire, via the Hurriyat, Pakistan or any 
interlocutor they choose? They could reassure the 
Hurriyat that the offer will not undermine them.

In the meantime, India could interpret President 
Musharraf's New York demands more liberally. The 
Indian government has already begun to redeploy 
the military out of highly populated areas, and 
security is now being handed over to the Kashmir 
police and Central Reserve Police Forces. These 
are key CBMs which could be made more of, for 
example by citing them as signs of India's 
sincerity in the peace process. To do so will 
give both the Hurriyat and Pakistan a boost - and 
it will begin to plug a worrying gap that is 
emerging. Political and humanitarian talks have 
finally gotten off the ground, but negotiations 
for an end to violence are less visible. For the 
peace process to be irreversible the two need to 
go in tandem.


The writer is a trustee of the Delhi Policy Group 
and Professor at Jamia Millia University.



Indian Express
September 22, 2005

PART-II
The View From Srinagar
Over the past six months Srinagar has begun to move into a post-conflict stage
Radha Kumar

It seems odd to talk about Srinagar when there is 
such an important meeting underway in Delhi, a 
''heart to heart'' between Kashmiri leaders from 
all regions of the former princely state. But 
this meeting's impact will be judged from 
Srinagar, and my own sense is that its potential 
to impact favourably is large.

Over the past six months Srinagar has begun to 
move into a post-conflict stage. The difference 
is palpable. There are far fewer checkpoints, and 
these are manned by local police and CRPF. The 
army is far less visible - except at night, when 
the hilltops ringing Srinagar glitter with the 
light from army barracks. Though the city still 
empties of its local residents at nightfall, it 
bustles until then. On a late July afternoon, the 
Mughal and Shalimar gardens were bursting with 
flowers and people to enjoy them, and Dalgate 
was, at 11 p.m., packed with tourists, the 
restaurants were lit, and I even heard music 
playing.

This is, however, only one side of the story. I 
was there a couple of weeks ago, when the Prime 
Minister's talks with the Hurriyat took place. 
The local press coverage was considerable, and 
optimistic, but the public reaction was more 
mixed. Most people still doubted the sincerity of 
the Indian and Pakistani leadership, as well as 
the unity of their own - and they have reason to 
do so.

At the same time that the Prime Minister held 
talks with the Hurriyat, the Jammu and Kashmir 
government charged Srinagar's fundamentalist 
firebrand, Asiya Andrabi, under the Public Safety 
Act. Andrabi had been earlier arrested, along 
with other women colleagues, for roughing up a 
woman dining with her husband, as part of her 
drive to rid the city of brothels. There were no 
protests at her arrest on common criminal charges 
- but when the government used the PSA against 
her, Srinagar went on strike. Most people 
concluded that this event revealed that the 
India-Hurriyat talks were only ''for show,'' 
though some accused unnamed spoilers of 
deliberately undermining the peace initiative by 
the Hurriyat.

It appears that the blunder was inadvertent - the 
recently appointed police chief acted in an 
excess of zeal, without considering whether the 
PSA was appropriate or assessing the potential 
public damage his charges might do to the nascent 
peace process with the Hurriyat. But the damage 
was done - the effect of the India-Hurriyat talks 
was severely reduced.

This is not the first time that the right hand 
has undermined the left in Kashmir. I was in 
Kashmir for an ''intra-Kashmiri dialogue'' in 
July, with participants from all the different 
regions of Jammu and Kashmir, including Azad 
Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. The day after our 
conference began, militants took over the central 
cable system, closed down all the entertainment 
channels and substituted a text that said ''we 
apologize to our subscribers for their loss of 
entertainment, but we had to do this in protest 
against the killing of three innocent boys in 
Kupwara by the security forces''. That afternoon 
two militants got into the Lal Chowk shopping 
complex, which was soon surrounded by security 
forces, in an encounter that only ended two days 
later (which was when cable TV was restored too).

''This militant attack is being done to discredit 
our meeting,'' one Azad Kashmir participant said 
to me. At the time I thought he was exaggerating 
- ours was a low profile civil society meeting 
but now I am not so sure. The battle for Kashmiri 
hearts and minds has entered a new phase in which 
the peacemakers are gaining ground over the 
naysayers. The question is, how do we help the 
peacemakers defend and expand their space, while 
preventing the naysayers from using violence to 
disrupt the peace process?

It is in this context that the present meeting in 
Delhi gains salience. First of all, it brings 
together diverse and, until now, warring leaders 
from the different parts of Jammu and Kashmir. To 
have Farooq Abdullah, Abdul Ghani Bhatt and Sajad 
Lone at the same table, discussing a peace 
process proactively instead of combatively is in 
itself a huge confidence booster that all shades 
and sections of Kashmiri opinion will be part of 
the consultations for a lasting settlement. It is 
also an enormous step for the Hurriyat to say, as 
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq did, that elected political 
leaders and civil society must be involved in 
talks as well.

The problem is that these meetings are all taking 
place this side of the LOC. When will there be an 
intra-Kashmiri - or an India-Pakistan-Kashmir - 
dialogue in Muzaffarabad, Lahore or Islamabad? Is 
it possible to tackle the issue of violence 
without having such meetings on the other side of 
the LOC? From Sardar Qayoom Khan's remarks it 
appears that Pakistan is beginning to recognize 
this need, but cautiously. Chief Minister Mufti 
Sayeed, Mehbooba Mufti, and Farooq and Omar 
Abdullah have all been invited to Pakistan. Not 
quite a conference, but it is another step on our 
slow road to peace...

The writer is a trustee of the Delhi Policy Group 
and Professor at Jamia Millia University.


Indian Express
September 23, 2005

PART-III

Settling the Kashmir Dispute
The next step is to make the talks more 
inclusive, by bringing in elected leaders and 
civil society
Radha Kumar		 		 

Yesterday I received an email response from an 
Indian Express reader in Pakistan, Shaukatullah 
Khan, to my piece of September 21, ''Whither the 
Peace Process?'' Shaukatullah accused me of 
''toeing the line'' of the Indian Government by 
talking about CBMs without discussing the 
settlement of the Kashmir dispute. ''People in 
Pakistan will not fall in the trap of pulling on 
the cord of peace process and endless 
negotiations lest our nukes be rusted,'' he 
concluded darkly.

The reason why I have not discussed possible 
settlements in these pages (though I have in 
various other fora, including a book) is, first 
of all, that Prime Minister Singh and President 
Musharraf have already indicated the broad 
contours of a settlement based on making the LOC 
''irrelevant.'' How this goal is to be achieved 
and what the details of a lasting settlement 
should be are matters that need to emerge out of 
wide-ranging consultations with, and between, 
India, Pakistan and the people of the former 
princely state of Kashmir. Attempts to preempt 
that process through the public space of OpEds 
could be counterproductive. As it is we South 
Asians are endemically suspicious. If the 
political actors in this peace process are 
considered to be following a prearranged plan 
they will fear loss of credibility, and their 
political will, which is never as strong as we in 
the public wish, is likely to weaken further.

This is not to say that there should be no 
discussion of a settlement. Without such a 
discussion many in Kashmir will doubt that India 
and Pakistan are serious in their pursuit of 
peace - and many in Pakistan will accuse General 
Musharraf of buckling under pressure.

But we need to distinguish between what should be 
discussed in private, between the leaders and 
their back channel envoys, and what should be 
debated in public. We are still in the stage of 
unfolding a peace process, when substantial 
discussion of a settlement has taken place 
between Prime Minister Singh and President 
Musharraf, and presumably between the Hurriyat 
and President Musharraf, but is yet to take place 
between the Hurriyat and Prime Minister Singh.

The peace processes that result in a lasting 
solution generally conform to a pattern. In stage 
one there are secret negotiations between the 
concerned governments, separatist leaders and 
armed groups, in which the key elements of a 
settlement are broadly agreed. These are followed 
by a comprehensive cease-fire and cessation of 
all hostilities, including hate speech.

In stage two the focus shifts to concrete 
confidence-building measures, such as reduction 
of troops, release of political prisoners and 
punishment of human rights violations, in tandem 
with more visible political negotiations for a 
settlement in which all the different parties are 
involved. Civil society support is critical at 
this point; it provides both a public 
constituency for reform and acts as a control on 
politicians seeking advantage.

Stage three is when the parties unveil a 
comprehensive and detailed settlement, including 
the disbanding and rehabilitation of militias, 
and begin to implement the peace agreement.

The Kashmir peace process has not followed this 
pattern. We have taken some elements from stages 
one and two, without completing either. There is 
no cease-fire, and whatever secret negotiations 
there are with armed groups have not yielded 
fruit. Without a full cessation of hostilities 
the measures we are taking from stage two, such 
as troops' reduction and prisoner releases, are 
bound to be partial and reversible.

To begin public discussion of a comprehensive 
settlement at this point will only compound the 
muddle. Worse, it might narrow the options for a 
settlement. At present, the armed groups have a 
veto over the peace process - they can always 
resort to violence to disrupt or end it. They 
will have the same kind of veto over a 
comprehensive settlement if negotiations towards 
one take place without a cease-fire.

Moreover, we have just begun to widen the talks' 
process so that the political elements amongst 
the separatists, such as the Hurriyat, gain over 
the military elements that continue to oppose 
peace. Here the next step is to make the talks 
more inclusive, by bringing in elected leaders 
and civil society, in order that discussions 
towards a settlement have wide public support.

India and Pakistan messed up the autonomy option 
by making it conditional, and negotiating it in 
the context of violence. Neither country can 
afford to repeat this mistake. If they muddy the 
options that are available today, Kashmir could 
go the route of Chechnya or Palestine, both 
eventualities to be devoutly shunned.

In this context, India has another quick decision 
to make. The deadline for a Congress takeover in 
Kashmir is fast approaching. I hold no brief for 
the Mufti government, but continuity can be 
important when there is a critical peace process 
underway. I do hope the pros and cons of a 
takeover are being carefully weighed by our Prime 
Minister.

(Concluded)


The writer is a trustee of the Delhi Policy Group 
and Professor at Jamia Millia University. Email: 
radhakumar1900 at yahoo.co.in





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