For defensible frontiers

INDIA’S war against terrorism has entered the second phase since December 13. Pakistan has committed itself to take action against terrorist organisations and General Musharraf has declared that terrorism which was taking its toll inside Pakistan due to internecine ethnic and sectarian violence for many years must be stopped. He has now announced that militant jehad and terrorism from Pakistan’s territory would not be permissible.

But there are signs that the locus of running the terror campaign against India would shift to Jammu and Kashmir including PoK. China, which has strong strategic relations with Pakistan has re-endorsed the importance of a peaceful solution negotiated bilaterally. Russia, the UK and other powers have asked Pakistan to eliminate terrorism.

The US has given strong support for eradicating terrorism and has practically given up its earlier desire to mediate. But it will continue to nudge India and Pakistan to reduce bilateral tensions and normalise Indo-Pakistan relations.

This would not be the first time that we would reach a definitive point in the search for a solution to the Kashmir problem. Kashmir was always an object of great powers’ strategic interest from the very beginning. The main arguments were not merely the Cold War politics, but Pakistan’s importance as the military-strategic outpost for the British Empire and the West.

Ambassador C. Dasgupta has rendered a great service by his painstaking research into hitherto unavailable British official documents to throw fresh light on the diplomatic-political pressure brought to bear on India to take the issue of Pakistani military aggression in 1947-48 to the UN, and the undermining of India’s military operations by the British Commanders-in-Chief who were apparently taking their orders more from the British High Commissioners rather than the political leadership of independent India.

Even the UN Resolution on plebiscite was apparently speeded up to ensure it goes through before General Bucher would hand over to General (later Field Marshal) Carriapa as the first Indian C-in-C of the Indian Army in January 1949. The rationalisation of Pakistan’s importance to the West has not really changed even after the Cold War was over more than a decade ago, and Afghanistan has once again made it a “front-line” state.

Surveying the past indicates that attempts had continued throughout to get a solution to the Kashmir issue which would be favourable to Pakistan and Western interests and India was expected to make all the concessions. The infamous Sandys-Harriman proposals for partition of the Kashmir Valley in an effort to placate Pakistan (a military ally) by exploiting India’s weakness soon after the Sino-Indian war in 1962 stand out as a grim reminder.

Nehru stood his ground and the result was denial of military weapon systems from the US beyond some small arms and winter clothing to defend India against communist China! Five years later the military leadership of the US refused to agree to any nuclear security guarantees to India because of the US-Pakistan military alliance.

According to top Pakistani leadership of the time, the US had agreed not to question Pakistan’s nuclear programme in return for Pakistan’s acceptance in becoming the “front-line state” against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan which inevitably led to the highly explosive combination of drugs-sophisticated weapons-religious extremism-terrorism which plagues the region and led to September 11, not to talk of the attacks on democracy on October 1 and December 13.

Trying to evolve a “solution” to the Kashmir issue, including “track 2” activities, had reached the levels of an industry during most of the 1990s in the US. This only reduced after nuclearisation of India in 1998.

But we should remind ourselves that every one of the approximately nine formula- tions by Western strategic-diplomatic experts required only India to make all concessions. The question therefore arises: how should we approach the future? First, the realities. Kashmir is described as the “core” issue for Pakistan; that it runs in their blood as per General Musharraf who conducted the war in Kargil. But so is it for India, though for different reasons but with far greater justification and legitimacy.

The conflict between Pakistan and India is fun- damentally an ideological one and Kashmir only represents the tragic consequence of that conflict between the idea that every human being is equal (and hence the democratic principle and practice) and the contrary idea that only one sect of religion defines the equation between human beings. This conflict may take a long time to get moderated and meanwhile what we need is peace and stability.

Unfortunately, both India and Pakistan are left with virtually no negotiating space for arriving at a solution peacefully. Space for give and take is necessary for any solution complicated over the decades as Kashmir is. And war could hardly be conceived an option in present times. Pakistan tried that in the summer of 1999 with disastrous results for itself.

Our own interests require durable peace un-disturbed by external interference especially with extremist violence and terror. We have agreements with Pakistan (including the Simla Agreement) which commit both sides not to use force against each other regardless of any interpretations. This rules out support to terrorism which Pakistani elites saw as the low-cost option to take Kashmir and inflict continuing pain on India through the proverbial “thousand cuts.”

There are signs that this has become counter-productive for Pakistan and it has committed to the UN Resolution 1373, the SAARC Convention on Suppressing Terrorism, and is under pressure to roll back its strategy of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

We may expect that as things move along the above lines, Pakistan would shift the locus of terrorism to J&K and increasingly press for meaningful talks on Kashmir. Without any negotiating space where either side has some leeway to give and take these talks would either remain talks for talks or might lead to pressures for concessions by India. The history of the Kashmir problem is a history of concessions by India and India alone.

Our first priority should, therefore, be to create the requisite negotiating space for give and take which does not cut into our interests and enlarges our options. This can only be done on the basis of two principles: that the whole state is part of India, and secondly, the need for defensible frontiers in J&K.

We have only occasionally sought to emphasise that J&K is integral to India. This must assume greater seriousness in the days ahead and should form the political framework under which we would address the Kashmir issue. At the same time, there will be need to negotiate what can only be termed as defensible frontiers so that sitting atop great heights during rain, snow or sunshine does not keep demanding human and material resources indefinitely.

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