IF Sartaz Aziz does travel to New Delhi later this month on the invitation of his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval, it would mark a few weeks of relatively well-managed tensions in the bilateral relationship.
After all, subsequent to the Gurdaspur attack, there was a sense that the Ufa joint statement may be jettisoned and India and Pakistan would resume their war of words.
Happily, better sense prevailed and both sides have avoided any serious verbal attacks at the highest political and security levels over Gurdaspur or the wider terrorism issue.
Also read: India proposes security advisers’ meeting
Yet, that is also a measure of how low the expectations have fallen: simply avoiding a war of words in the days after a terrorist incident is surely not a stable way of carrying forward the bilateral relationship.
More is needed and it could start with the National Security Advisers’ meeting.
Yet, with the NSA meeting too there multiple concerns. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, there have been rumblings within the Pakistani state that the Ufa format, wherein the NSAs are to discuss all issues connected to terrorism, has put Pakistan at some kind of disadvantage.
Presumably, that implies disagreements between the political government and the security establishment or the lack of proper groundwork done for Ufa in the absence of a full-time foreign minister.
It hardly bodes well for seeking a breakthrough with a hawkish Indian government if the Pakistani stance is not the product of a consensus to begin with. But that is only the first hurdle.
The two states have long perfected the art of allowing high-level meetings to occur but nothing of substance to be decided. Even where there is some kind of roadmap decided – as Ufa suggests with a series of specific meetings to be held – the specifics of what is to be discussed is left open or broad enough to dampen expectations.
Complicating that already knotty situation is that the Pakistani side has also talked of the resumption of back-channel talks, suggesting that substantive issues can be kicked off the immediate agenda. Surely, a talks process that publicly focuses on Indian allegations of Pakistan-originating terrorism, but shoves the Kashmir dispute into the background, is doomed to fail.
What the bilateral relationship also needs is sustained interest and input from the top political leadership. Ufa put security front and centre, with meetings scheduled between the NSAs, the DGs of the Pakistan Rangers and the Indian BSF and two countries’ DG Military Operations.
What, though, of the political component? Meetings between the two prime ministers in third countries on the sidelines of other summits are not enough.
The civilian component needs to be ramped up. Could part of the problem be the absence of a full-time foreign minister here?
If the Pak-India relationship is to move forward, perhaps Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif needs to re-think his foreign policy set-up first.
Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2015
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