Viewed from a political perspective, Musharraf had enough reason to be pleased with his gains on Kashmir from India. For one, he got India to negotiate on Kashmir, without reference to the 1972 Shimla Agreement, under the January 6, 2004 statement.

For the first time since 1972, India had agreed to take a fresh look at the Kashmir question and give up its insistence that the Shimla Agreement had reflected all that needed to be said on the dispute. Even more important, despite the many tantrums from the Hurriyat, India — while holding its nose — began to engage, if only to please Pakistan.

In his speech at Amritsar in March, Manmohan Singh for the first time offered to set up a “joint mechanism”, that some in Pakistan surely saw as a first step towards “joint management”, to promote institutionalised cooperation between the two parts of Kashmir.

It is also known that India and Pakistan have exchanged substantive proposals on J&K through the back channel. To call these extraordinary developments on Kashmir, in just two years, as “lack of progress” does not stand scrutiny for even a moment.

Musharraf has been accused of many things. But no one has been called him unintelligent. Musharraf knows he has got more out of India on Kashmir than any other Pakistani leader ever did. The practical person that he is, Musharraf also knows that the tranquility on his eastern borders with India since the end of 2003 has given him much needed space to cope with the immense challenges on western borders with Afghanistan.

... contd.