THE recently-concluded Asian-African summit 2005 may go down as a turning point in Indo-Pakistan relations. Not only did the two estranged neighbours not cross swords over the Kashmir dispute at the summit, but went as far as to appreciate each other’s positive stand and reaffirmed their joint commitment to finding a peaceful solution to the festering dispute.

President General Pervez Musharraf, speaking at the summit, said: “Today Pakistan and India can be justly proud of showing sincerity, flexibility and courage that could lead to bilateral achievement of peace and harmony.”

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reaffirming his country’s commitment to finding a peaceful solution to the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, said: “In this spirit, in cooperation with Pakistan, we have embarked on a journey towards peace and good-neighbourly ties.” He went on to emphasize that both countries would continue trying to foster closer ties and could overlook past problems and push for “new cooperative mechanisms and regional partnerships.”

These are brave and inspiring words. They point to the statesmanship of the two leaders as statesmanship implies courage and vision. But they also sound a little hollow as nothing worthwhile has been achieved on any of the issues discussed for more than a year under the composite dialogue between the two neighbours.

As a matter of fact, lack of any progress on even comparatively less contentious issues has raised a question mark over the bilateral talks. Observers within the region and outside wonder for how long the peace process can sustain itself without any forward movement on the issues being discussed by Islamabad and New Delhi.

The most important achievement of the bilateral talks is the resumption of the bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad. This highly visible CBM opens the door for Kashmiris from both sides of the LoC to meet each other and discuss their common concerns. They may discuss their future relationship with each other and with Pakistan and India.

The resumption of the bus service may enable the Kashmiris to contribute to finding the final solution, keeping in view their own interests and aspirations. The involvement of the Kashmiris in the dialogue will make it easier for Pakistan and India to find common ground.

As there has been no forward movement on any of the issues discussed under the composite dialogue, the momentum of the peace process has been maintained by confidence-building measures (CBMs) — the Khokrapar-Munnabao railway service, additional meeting points for divided families, the establishment of consulates in Karachi and Mumbai, enhanced cooperation in trade, oil and gas pipelines.

These CBMs have been helpful in building up the confidence of the people as well as of the politicians and bureaucrats. They also have huge symbolic and practical importance.

But the most important contribution of the CBMs is that they have kept the peace process moving at the official level in the absence of any forward movement on the issues discussed under the composite dialogue.

Though the joint communique, recently issued in New Delhi, said that the process of normalization was “irreversible”, the question remains as to how long the CBMs alone can keep the peace process going in the absence of any progress on the issues being discussed under the composite dialogue. The CBMs cannot be a substitute for addressing substantial issues.

The outcome of top level meetings between Pakistani and Indian officials in May to find an early solution to the issues of Siachen, Sir Creek and the Iran gas pipeline will be eagerly awaited. These meetings are expected to prepare the ground for a review of these and other issues by the leaders of the two countries when they meet on the sidelines of the Saarc summit expected by the end of May. The defence secretaries of the two countries are expected to meet before the end of May to discuss the 1989 “agreement” on troop withdrawal from Siachen.

If real progress on any of the substantial issues continues to elude, then the policymakers in both the capitals should take a hard and critical look at the structure of the composite dialogue. As some astute and perceptive observers have pointed out, the way the composite dialogue is structured, renders an inherent rigidity to the bilateral talks which makes any significant progress or forward movement on any substantial issue extremely difficult.

If the two sides reach the conclusion that the structure of the composite dialogue is creating problems, then steps should be taken to make the talks process more flexible. Also, policymakers should seriously consider whether the interests of the two countries would not be served better if they got out of the strait-jacket of the composite dialogue and expanded the scope of their talks to the level of strategic dialogue.

They may discuss the basis on which a long-term relationship between them is sought to be placed. What sort of bilateral relationship do Pakistan and India envisage in the next 10, 20 or 50 years? How does Pakistan figure in India’s future plans ? And how does India fit into Pakistan’s future plans ? Once the answers to these questions are unambiguous and clear, the issues being currently discussed under the composite dialogue will become far more amenable to resolution.

The time has come when India has to change its policy towards Pakistan after nearly six decades of hostility and antagonism. New Delhi has to understand the reasons which impelled Islamabad to first turn to the Americans and then to the Chinese — the real danger of being attacked and overwhelmed by a much larger and unfriendly neighbour.

Now when Islamabad seems to have changed its policy towards New Delhi, the policymakers in India have to act consistently in ways which create a sense of genuine security and confidence in the smaller neighbour. They should heed the advice given by their own coalition partner, the CPI (ML): “Genuine peace and friendship between India and Pakistan can only be based on a conscious rejection and reversal of the jingoistic foreign policy pursued for most of the post-partition years.”

There can be no greater or more substantial CBM than a bilateral agreement on the controversial Baglihar dam. It is equally true that if the controversy over the Baglihar dam continues, it will undo all the good work that has so far been done in the sphere of the CBMs. It appears that the Manmohan Singh government has not yet realized that India’s non-accommodative stand on the Baglihar dam has sent a profoundly negative signal across the border — the ultimate Indian aim seems to be to deprive Pakistan of its legitimate share of river water under the Indus Water Treaty.

The Baglihar dam project, on the river Chenab, will have an installed capacity of 450 MW during the first phase to be doubled to 900 MW in the next phase. Begun in 2000, the project is to be completed by 2007. The expected height of the Baglihar dam will be 470 feet. The extent of water storage has not yet been made public and this forms the cause of dispute between Pakistan and India.

Under the Indus Water Treaty, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir only “run-of-the river” projects are to be built to tap the hydel power potential of the three western rivers flowing through the state.

This means that the storage created can only be meagre or not greater than 10,000 feet. Pakistan’s contention is that with gated spillways being built at Baglihar and a large capacity reservoir being created, there could be floods as well as a drought situation in Pakistan.

After the breakdown of the Pakistan-India talks on Baglihar, Pakistan requested the World Bank to appoint a neutral expert to resolve the dispute and the Bank has started the process for the appointment of a neutral expert. A trust fund will have to be created by Pakistan and India to meet the expenditure relating to the expert’s working.

The decision given by the expert will be binding on both the parties. Any point which cannot be sorted out by the neutral expert becomes a “dispute” which will have to be handed over to an arbitrator appointed by the Bank. The Bank is empowered to establish an arbitration court but cannot specify the time frame for dispute resolution and such a case as Baglihar may drag on for years.

Unless Pakistan and India resolve the Baglihar dispute bilaterally, the dam row is bound to cast its long , dark shadow on the ongoing peace process. As the case is likely to drag on for some years, the danger is that whatever Pakistan and India have achieved through CBMs will be irretrievably lost.

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has offered to discuss the structure and design of the Baglihar dam, New Delhi and Islamabad should make an earnest effort to settle the dispute bilaterally. As a matter of fact, all bilateral issues, big or small, need to be resolved for durable peace and genuine friendship between the two neighbours.

The writer is a former ambassador

I HAVE tried my best to find a plausible reason for New Delhi’s resumption of military aid to Nepal. Some in the government argue that China would have rescued the king, as it did in the case of Myanmar forcing India to make peace with Yangon, if we had not acted. King Gyanendra’s visit to China is also cited as proof of the feared Sino-Nepal nexus.

Firstly, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision was not taken on the spur of the moment. Both Kathmandu and New Delhi must have come to some understanding before the king met the prime minister at Jakarta.

Secondly, the fear of China aligning itself with the king does not make sense. With improving relations between New Delhi and Beijing, China’s doing anything behind India’s back can be ruled out. In fact, Beijing has become more aware of New Delhi’s sensitivity than ever before.

This is evident from the way in which the Chinese prime minister gave Manmohan Singh a preeminent position at the Afro-Asian conference in Bandung. So much so, that Manmohan Singh was chosen unanimously to speak for the whole of Asia at the signing ceremony of the New Asia-Africa Strategic Partnership (NAASP) agreement.

Even the prevailing situation in Nepal would have deterred China from giving weapons to the king since he is directly engaged in crushing the Maoists who control the rural areas of Nepal. They have often avowed sympathy to Chinese ideology and run down the bourgeois political parties. The communists cannot be seen as a party fighting against the left of some sorts. Since its attack on socialist India in 1962, China has come a long way and has changed its strategy that was partly visible when the Chinese premier visited New Delhi.

Pakistan cannot be the reason for India’s resumption of arms, although Islamabad sent a team to Kathmandu to assess Nepal’s requirements. Islamabad’s move was merely to go on record. It does not have enough resources to get embroiled in Nepal. Nor are its hands free from domestic insurgencies. Islamabad revels in fishing in troubled waters around New Delhi.

Kathmandu has never cracked its whip against the ISI operating from its soil, although the agency has not reached the proportions it has in Bangladesh. I am told that New Delhi has been constantly in touch with Washington because the two want to save democracy in Nepal. If Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made common cause with India on any issue while in Delhi recently it was on Nepal. New Delhi may have consulted Washington before giving military aid to Kathmandu. It appears that Washington’s aid will also follow.

My worry is the kind of message we have sent to the people in Nepal. They have been banking on India. For the first time, after many years, they have seen India standing by them and jettisoning the king for taking over the administration. A four-member team, including India’s former chief justice, J.S. Verma, and Sri Lanka’s supreme court judge, Ranjith Dheeraratne, has returned “profoundly impressed by the steadfastness with which the lawyers and journalists were trying to protect civil rights when they faced an extraordinary situation.” Look at what juncture we let them down.

The Nepalese may be right if they come to infer that India has stabbed them in the back. On the one hand, we even sent back the king’s emissary without letting him enter our foreign office and, on the other, we allowed the king to announce the resumption of military aid to Nepal.

In a way, we have always been riding two boats, one of the king and the other of political parties. We have played one against the other for our own interest and seen to it that neither of the two emerges so strong that it does not need us. They are like Tammany Hall tactics employed in American politics. We rescued the king because we want to deal with one man, as America does where democracy is weak. (See Washington’s cuddling of President General Pervez Musharraf).

India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, laid down the policy when he preferred king Tribhuvan to the Ranas. Nehru’s view was: “The history of the autocratic rule of the Ranas in Nepal is full of intrigue, rivalry, murder and assassination. The Ranas have gone so far as political power is concerned, but out of this background it has not been easy to build up a democratic set-up. Rivalries and intrigue continue and small groups fight for power. India occupies a very special position in regard to Nepal. But we have made it perfectly clear to all concerned that we have this special position and we do not approve of other foreign powers interfering in Nepal.”

India has enjoyed the special position since. But Nepal has matured in the meanwhile. Not long ago, the people there could have eliminated the king but they did not do so because he agreed to become a constitutional monarch. Yet the monarchy has not played fair and has continued to dabble in politics, playing one political party against another, knowing well that the army is behind it. New Delhi liked the arrangement because it gave it the vicarious satisfaction of ruling Kathmandu.

An Indian envoy to Nepal was the viceroy and he enjoyed himself basking in that glory. The people of Nepal were happy when New Delhi finally chose them instead of the king. Never had India been so popular as before. But, to their dismay, New Delhi has again failed them. The moment they came to know of its switching over to the king, the entire goodwill came tumbling down like a pack of cards. In fact, New Delhi is being hated more than the king. Friends forgive the opponents, but not renegades.

In reality, India, a soft state as it is, was nervous about the dangers of isolating the king. Granted, it could not leave the king alone. It could have at least considered a better way of retreat. The king does not make even a categorical statement about the restoration of democracy. “In due course” are his condescending words. What do political parties and civil society in Nepal do when they had come together, forgetting their differences, to restore democracy?

They cannot look to Delhi which is now dependent on the king. He will play politics — and use force — with a vengeance. The helpless Nepalese will feel more distanced from India. Democratic values lose their sheen when they are stretched to cover up the dark deeds of dictatorship. New Delhi did it in Myanmar some years ago. It has done the same in Nepal now.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

SRINAGAR was a city under siege. There were two soldiers in battle readiness every hundred yards or so on either side of the main artery — Maulana Azad Road — on all the major roads within the city, and an armoured vehicle (an ugly Indian-designed juggernaut on wheels) at each road crossing.

The Indian prime minister was in town to inaugurate the bus service to Muzaffarabad. Someone remarked that there was one soldier to every five to six residents of Srinagar. Notwithstanding this siege of the city, the so-called “terrorists” set ablaze on the previous night the central tourist office situated in the heavily secured area, where the bus travellers were lodged.

I asked a taxi driver what he thought of the situation. Replied he, “It is no longer Kashmir, but “cash more”. Asked to explain, he said, “The Indians wink at mega corruption around here, thinking it will buy them Kashmir.”

Srinagar is a dusty, traffic-polluted, ramshackle town of broken roads — and broken people — nestling in a fabulous countryside. No picture postcard does justice to this land. Grassy meadows of wild flowers lie at the feet of verdant mountains; the two main lakes — Dal and Nagin — offer a laidback serenity; forests of willows and flowering trees in semi-flooded lowlands appear to be the very picture of primeval peace. The metalled road ugliness stares you in the face.

Utter the word “Pakistan” and there are broad smiles, hugs, greetings and the sullen faces suddenly light up. Pakistan was like “open Sesame”. The bonding is stronger than I had imagined. I was told that when the Pakistan cricket team faced defeat in the two earlier ODIs, much of the population switched off their TV sets before the debacle culminated.

Likewise, a few years ago when the West Indies cricket team played against India in Srinagar, it was the West Indies that was cheered throughout the match. In conversation with a high-ranking minister, it was never “we”, that is, Delhi and themselves, but “India this” or “Indian that” or “Indian goods”.

Whereas in most parts of the world the appearance of the green Pakistan passport is a matter of some concern at any checkpoint, I had simply to wave my green passport to get past roadblocks. The road leading to the famous Nishat Gardens was blocked as it passed by the Grand Hotel where we were staying with the Indian leadership.

My driver simply said, “Guest from Pakistan” and at the wave of my passport, hands stretched out with Assalam-o-Alaikum. At one roadblock a policeman said, “My uncle Mohammad Yousuf has a shop in Sabzi Mandi, Rawalpindi, give him my regards.”

Even Indian soldiers succumbed to the pressure of the Kashmiri policemen in letting me pass the roadblocks to Nishat Gardens without a permit.

I met several political leaders in and out of government, including the APHC; two of them — both young — were outstanding for their candour and directness, free of verbosity and ideological luggage.

Mehbooba Mufti, daughter of the chief minister and president of the People’s Democratic Party, has her office in the chief minister’s house. I asked her about “disappearances”, in reference to young men being taken into custody by the security agencies and who disappear thereafter. Very often, those taken in have nothing to do with politics; a blood linkage to a known dissident (in Indian officialese any weapon-holding dissident is a “terrorist”) is sufficient to be incarcerated in communicado under the TADA laws.

In such cases the only person who can be reached for some sympathy and help is Mehbooba. She admitted to about 20 proven disappearances last year, which, she said, is a fraction of the number in previous years.

Mehbooba would welcome the participation of the APHC members in the political process. She agreed that a Gandhian-style non-violent protest would have been more effective than a resort to arms, but too much water had passed under the bridge since 1989.

Mir Waiz Umar Farooq, the hereditary custodian of the Hazrat Bal mosque, is a highly respected figure. Were he to enter the political mainstream, Srinagar would be his for the asking in any fair election. This young lean man is blessed with a maturity far beyond his years. He has the parlance of an academic.

In addition to his duties as a religious and political leader, he is working on his PhD, his subject being the cultural, literary and linguistic linkages between Iran and Kashmir in history.

Mir Waiz Umar Farooq admitted that the APHC parties were being marginalized by opting out of the political process. He was in favour of joining the process, provided the election was free, fair and transparent. The APHC is a divided house. I asked Mir Waiz as to how he would overcome the problem of taking an oath under the Indian constitution, an election requirement if one decided to take part in the process.

He replied that if there was an APHC agreement to participate, a way out would have to be found. Both he and Mehbooba Mufti were critical of not being allowed to travel to Pakistan to meet Kashmiris on our side.

Both, in their different ways, were of the opinion that a process of peace would lead to a solution of the Kashmir problem and that the solution was embedded in the process. However, being a moderate in this volatile situation draws flak from the extremists. Mir Waiz lost his father and more recently his uncle to assassins’ bullets. The madressah attached to the Hazrat Bal founded by his forbear in 1899, which has schooled generations of Kashmiri leaders, was burnt to ashes.

Omar Abdullah, a dapper young man, well heeled in the corridors of power, is the grandson of Sheikh Abdullah. He is more strident in his views on Pakistan and terrorism. I asked him if the fences being built by India along the LoC were as impenetrable as the Berlin wall and would the so-called terrorism come to an end? His answer echoed the Indian line. All terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir has its origin in Pakistan.

This standard Indian answer needs a little scrutiny. The concentration of troops in the disaffected parts of Kashmir as a ratio to the population is probably one of the highest in any conflict situation, anywhere. In addition, the potential points of infiltration are heavily mined and wired.

An individual wanting to move across such a line of divide, presumably fully equipped, would have to be an athlete of Olympian standards with the mental grit of an Everest climber. Would it not be easier for disaffected groups to buy or steal weapons in the arsenal-rich valley?

Prima facie the Indians have been their own worst enemies in Kashmir. Neither brute force, torture nor corruption can win the hearts of a people. Each occupation army creates its own Al-Ghraib. The Pakistan army was no exception during the Bangladesh war. Without doubt the Indian occupation army has alienated the common people in the valley of Kashmir.

A senior Kashmiri minister conceded in a private conversation that Pakistan should come to the rescue of India in its Kashmir predicament. But how? The answer hung in the air.

The Indian predicament is real enough. The geography of the Indian Union has been frozen by its constitution which includes Kashmir. To overcome the constitutional bar may sound easy to Pakistanis but not so to Indians.

To retain Kashmir at all costs is the sine qua non of all political parties. A point seldom appreciated in Pakistan is that any sudden change in Kashmir’s status is likely to hit Muslims in India, besides toppling any government in New Delhi which is a party to this. Hindu-Muslim relations continue to be prickly in many parts of India. Any major concession to Pakistan or the Kashmiris without a process is likely to trigger an emotional and political reaction.

Oddly enough, none of the politicians that I met in Kashmir were aware of the Tyrol settlement, which resolved a similar problem between Austria and Italy in Tyrol south of the Brenner Pass.

The bottom line of the settlement was that Italy would grant full autonomy to south Tyrol (similar to autonomy granted to Kashmir by Article 370 of the Indian constitution way back in the 1950s) but it was subject to the binding jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, if a difference of opinion arose on the interpretation of the agreement.

In the case of Kashmir, autonomy must include the right to raise para-military forces, free trade and movement across the LoC and to open trade and tourism offices anywhere in the world, including Pakistan.

This is the sort of autonomy that Quebec enjoys in Canada or the Wallon regions in Belgium. In other words, the autonomy must be non-retractable and justifiable internationally. My interlocutors in Kashmir showed much interest in the Tyrol settlement. They inquired if Pakistan would be prepared to grant a similar autonomy to Azad Kashmir and the Northern regions. Well, what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.

The writer is a member of the National Assembly.
Email: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk