THE Pakistan-India dialogue will reportedly resume in the near future following a hiatus imposed by India.

Pakistan’s prime minister has expressed keenness to improve relations with India. His special envoy, who will conduct the ‘back channel’ diplomacy, dashed to New Delhi the day after his appointment to urge resumption of the dialogue.

Pakistan’s reasons for seeking normalisation with India make strategic sense. It is fully occupied with fighting off an internal insurgency and managing the Afghan conflict and the American exit from Afghanistan. It needs tranquillity on its eastern border.

As usual, India has played the reluctant bride, delaying the dialogue to signal its anger at the January Line of Control incident, and agreeing to the resumption on condition that there is no “violence and terrorism”, as the new Indian foreign secretary put it.

But process can rarely drive substance. The results of the dialogue process over two decades have been minimal. Kashmir remains unresolved. India’s positions have hardened, even on issues where agreement had been virtually reached, such as the Siachen glacier. The dialogue’s main achievements have been some ‘confidence-building measures’ and a paper agreement on trade.

Progressively, Pakistan’s positions, especially on Kashmir, have eroded due to its anxiety to find solutions. The reciprocal autonomy in India-held Kashmir and Azad Kashmir, elaborated during President Musharraf’s tenure, would have virtually formalised Kashmir’s division and compromised the UN sanctioned demand for Kashmiri self-determination. Fortunately, this plan was not accepted by India.

Is there any reason to believe that this time the dialogue will lead to a different result?

In the current ‘co-relation of forces’, as the Soviets used to say, India is under no compulsion to concede anything to a Pakistan beset by internal challenges — a multiple insurgency and terrorist attacks, a stalled if not failing economy, divided governance and US pressure to ease its exit from Afghanistan. Attempts are underfoot to sow further division within Pakistan, such as the Wall Street Journal’s article of July 31 on India-Pakistan which asserts that the Pakistani prime minister’s desire for better ties with India is “intended to weaken the military establishment that ousted him in a coup in 1999”.

Indian analysts have already declared that progress in the dialogue is unlikely because the Indian government cannot afford to appear ‘soft’ on Pakistan (or China) before its May 2014 elections. India’s sole focus seems to be on expansion of trade and economic relations. Pakistan should agree to pursue this on the basis of identified mutual benefit.

But trade and economic relations can be quickly disrupted if underlying political problems remain unresolved. Pakistan should enter this round of the dialogue with the determination to secure New Delhi’s recognition

that there are certain critical issues which, unless seriously addressed, can lead to confrontation, conflict and even catastrophe. These are: arms control, Kashmir, terrorism and water distribution.

Propelled by its great power ambitions, and encouraged by the US, India is today the largest arms importer in the world of both conventional and strategic weapons. These are being deployed mostly against Pakistan. India’s generals speak loosely of punitive strikes and ‘limited war’ against Pakistan. Islamabad is being obliged to maintain conventional and nuclear deterrence through an asymmetric response.

The central reality which both Islamabad and New Delhi need to recognise is that as nuclear-weapon states they cannot go to war. A conflict is highly likely to escalate, eventually and perhaps rapidly to the nuclear level. Schemes to disarm or neutralise Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities are unrealistic and dangerous.

It is vital for the two sides to reach mutual understanding of their conventional and nuclear doctrines and develop a ‘restraint regime’ to limit arms acquisitions and prevent a conflict by miscalculation or mistake.

Kashmir remains a flashpoint, not because of Pakistan-based insurgent groups, as India asserts, but because the Kashmiris abhor Indian rule. Unless India responds to their aspirations, they will continue to rise up repeatedly against India’s heavy-handed presence, as they have done since 1947. Each time this happens, there will be an inherent danger of an Indo-Pakistan conflict.

Continuing suppression will also fuel further radicalisation of the Kashmiris. The example of Palestine is instructive. Fatah’s failure to gain Israeli concessions transferred popular support to the more radical Hamas. In turn, due to the continued stalemate, Hamas has been losing ground to even more extremist groups: Islamic Jihad, the Salafists and some linked to Al Qaeda. In Kashmir, the secular Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front has lost popular support to the Jamaat-i-Islami. If oppression persists, the Jamaat may lose support to more violent groups.

It is no accident that within Pakistan, radicalisation and terrorist attacks have grown in direct proportion to Islamabad’s support for the US military intervention in Afghanistan and its interdiction of Kashmiri groups who were operating against India. Today, it is Pakistan, not India, which is the principal victim of terrorism, having suffered 50,000 civilian and military casualties over the last decade. Several pro-Kashmiri groups have joined the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) coalition.

The TTP, which includes Uzbek, Chechen and Arab fighters, and is linked to Al Qaeda, now enjoys ‘safe havens’ in Afghanistan from where many of its operations are launched against Pakistani outposts. There is evidence that some Afghan and Indian agencies support these TTP elements as well as the Balochistan Liberation Army whose operations are directed from Afghanistan. India’s purpose presumably is to weaken Pakistan and deflect its attention and resources away from its eastern borders. Pakistan must ask New Delhi to halt this dangerous game.

Last, with global warming rapidly melting the Himalayan glaciers, water security will emerge as a major challenge for both countries. India’s plans to construct numerous dams upstream on the Indus tributaries are likely to starve Pakistan of even the depleted future water supplies. This is an existential issue which, unless resolved, is certain to generate conflict. A fair agreement, based on the principles of the Indus Waters Treaty, is urgent.

Unless Pakistan is prepared to raise these critical issues and have them addressed frankly and fully, it will end up repeating the rituals and results of past dialogues with India. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is one definition of madness.

The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.