IT’s a miracle of sorts by itself that the India-Pakistan peace process continues at all, cautiously skirting around the bumps and pitfalls on the way. Hardly before or since the high-powered Bhutto-Sawaran Singh talks (1963), the secretary-level post-nuclear detonations meeting in 1998, the Vajpayee-Nawaz Sharif Lahore summit in 1999 and the abortive Agra encounter of July 2001 had the peace process gone beyond the second or third round only to spawn new issues instead of resolving the old ones.

What is unique about the on-going process, besides its continuity, has been the simultaneity of multi-layered mutual exchanges and the friendly aura surrounding them. Hardly a week passes when one or the other delegation or group does not happen to be on one or the other side of the border. Officials at various levels, retired bureaucrats/soldiers, captains of trade and industry, singers, movie stars, students etc. have established a creative cross-border rapport unimaginable after the Agra disaster.

While the pernicious status-quo on ‘core’ issue bodes not too well, such CBMs as the resumption of the road link between the two halves of the Kashmir by itself is no mean achievement.

The road to the Kashmir Valley is open and the one between Rawalakot and Poonch should soon be open. Agreement has already been reached in principle to begin a bus service between Amritsar and Nankana Sahib. Yet another agreement on reopening Indian and Pakistani consulates-general in Mumbai and Karachi is nothing short of a break-through.

The initiation of a triangular dialogue process between Kashmiris and Pakistan, Kashmiris and India and amongst the Kashmiris themselves has also been significant. This should in due course create the right setting conducive to a tripartite round table conference (RTC) representing India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris.

The Kashmiris had been practically kept out of the process through peace and war. Even the UN, while forming UNCIP – the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan — would not so much as even formally include Kashmir in its designation. UNCIP and all UNSC resolutions do stay textually on the UN agenda.

However, they would mean little in practice without the active participation of the Kashmiris.

Now about India’s persistent refusal to allow any change or re-engineering of borders. It’s like having one’s omelette without breaking eggs. The final solution of the Kashmir imbroglio must involve a reconfiguration emanating from three wars.

Call it a ceasefire line or line of control (LoC), it remains the product of an armistice or a truce (essentially a ceasefire) and not a part of a peace agreement. As regards India’s own role and record in changing borders, it had been one of compromise as in the case of its acceptance of the partition plan against its much-trumpeted stand on Indian unity. After independence, the record has been one of bare-faced military invasions of Kashmir, Hyderabad (Deccan) and Goa and the creeping annexation of Sikkim.

Its invasion of the eastern half of Pakistan epitomizes the final act of military aggression by one neighbour against the other, leading to the break-up of Pakistan. India’s stand against the final resolution of the Kashmir dispute based on a reshuffling of borders is, therefore, historically untenable, politically questionable and morally insupportable.

Regardless of Pakistan’s own criminal acts and follies against its own people, India’s invasion of East Pakistan in November-December 1971 was a case of naked aggression against Pakistan. It was not a mere border change but the creation of a third country to change the entire political geography of the subcontinent.

India’s argument against yet another change of borders as a grave threat to its secular constitution and geographical homogeneity would, therefore, make little or no sense at all in the light of its past record as a country changing borders by force of arms.

Given the political will and resolve, India can bury the ghost of Kashmir once and for all. Pakistan is willing to go beyond the stated position as embodied in the various UN resolutions. Never before have the two countries come so close in their quest for abiding peace. After the latest round of talks on the whole range of issues within the framework of the composite dialogue process, the two foreign ministers expressed ‘satisfaction’ over the ‘progress’ achieved since their last review in September 2004.

The Kashmir dispute was discussed in a ‘purposeful and forward-looking manner’ and ideas exchanged for the ‘resolution’of the Siachen and Sir Creek issues, hopefully by the year’s end or January 2006.

Signing of two agreements on pre-notifying flight tests of ballistic missiles and establishment of a hot line between the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency and the Indian Coast Guards should also serve as a substantive input for the resolution of ‘core’ issues.

What is important is to let the process continue. The finished product can wait. The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.