Beyond confidence building in Kashmir, New Delhi and Islamabad are purposefully negotiating on the question of J&K for the first time since the Shimla Agreement of 1972. It is widely known that the back channel negotiations on J&K have made significant progress. While such sensitive negotiations must necessarily be ‘in camera’, there has been an extraordinary public debate in both countries on potential solutions to the Kashmir dispute. This could only be to the good of both the countries.

All these advances, however, are in danger of being lost after the gruesome terrorist attacks on suburban trains in Mumbai. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf addressed the new questions on the relationship between the peace process and cross-border terrorism in their meeting at Havana two months ago. The answer they came up with was a decision to establish a joint mechanism for cooperation on “counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations”.

The visceral reaction in New Delhi that greeted this mechanism tells us less about the credibility of Indian expectations on counter terror cooperation from Pakistan than the accumulated negativism in the Indian security and foreign policy establishments.

Nevertheless the breathless denunciation of the mechanism even before it was set up boils down to one question. Why would Pakistan want to embark on such cooperation with India? The professional nay-sayers in the establishment and outside merely affirm that cross-border terrorism is a conscious state policy of the Pakistani army, and that any hopes for its reversal are unrealistic.

The assessment that cross-border terrorism is Pakistan’s rational choice begs another question. Under what circumstances or conditions could this rationality change?

... contd.