Having been outpaced by Gen Musharraf, the Track-II is under obligation to make India come to the negotiation table
FOR the past several years the term, Track-II, has come to be a euphemism for unofficial efforts to push both Islamabad and New Delhi towards the dialogue table. With the latest step taken by President General Pervez Musharraf, it will take some doing on the part of those involved in such parallel tracks to assess their role in the light of things as they stand today.
There are indications that while all previous plans had proved to be non-starters, the latest initiative by General Musharraf has the potential to lead to some kind of solution of the complex problem. The food for thought given by the general needs serious consideration by those pursuing Track-II diplomacy.
To be frank, President Musharraf took a brave step by spelling out a set of possible options which can provide a basis to resolve the lingering dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. He and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri clarified subsequently that the options had been articulated only for discussion by people and should not be regarded as a shift in Pakistan’s consistent stand.
Some political leaders have held the president responsible for making a departure from Pakistan’s stand. A realistic approach, however, leads one to believe that the president has made a good effort at starting a debate on an issue which has taken the two countries hostage since their independence in 1947. Because of this dispute, relations between the two neighbours could not normalize and potential of mutual trade could not be exploited.
Instead, during all these years the two countries have fought some wars and spent the rest of the time in making preparations for the next skirmish. Billions and billions of dollars were spent on defence preparations, each side wanting to leave the other behind in military might. The threat perception made it imperative for Pakistan to go nuclear only weeks after India showed its capability in May 1998.
For the two countries the period between 1947 and now has been of tension. The fact that the mere absence of war has generally defined peace between them says much about the kind of relations the two have had.
Having calculated the losses suffered by Pakistan — and India — in the past, and seeing no chance for good neighbourly relations in the times to come if the Kashmir dispute remains unresolved, President Musharraf came up with some ideas to cut the Gordian knot. Despite criticism at home, the general’s views have not been rejected by the remaining two parties to the dispute — India and the Kashmiri leadership.
Spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs Navtej Sarna said Pakistan should come up with any ideas in official talks between the two sides. The reaction is much different and milder than India’s earlier rhetoric about Kashmir being its integral part.
Almost all APHC leaders have come up with a positive reaction to President Musharraf’s views. A former AJK president and prime minister, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, has also supported the president’s thoughts.
In view of the emerging scenario, Track-II diplomats will have to re-think their strategy. They certainly do not have to push Islamabad anymore, for the president himself has taken the lead. The Track-II practitioners are now under a greater obligation to play a more active role. While President Musharraf has gone more than the half way to find a solution to the dispute, the Track-II now needs to mount pressure on India to come up with a matching response. They will be doing a great service to the cause of peace by persuading New Delhi to be as flexible in its approach as Islamabad has shown.
If the opportunity is not seized now, it will not perhaps be possible for anyone in Pakistan to come up with a better idea. Thus, the ball is now in India’s court and back-channel diplomacy should summon all its energy to make the plan acceptable to India and other stakeholders.
Critics of Gen Musharraf at home should also bear in mind that the UN resolutions could not be implemented in the past and they stand no chance of being given effect in the future. The world body itself has expressed its inability to implement them. Most of the permanent members of the UN Security Council have said it over and over again that Islamabad and New Delhi should resolve the Kashmir dispute through bilateral talks. A number of them also called the UN resolutions outdated and obsolete.
No country, because of its own interests, wants to mount pressure on India to hold the plebiscite it had promised it would. And because of the change at the international level, Pakistan is not in a position to have a new binding resolution passed from the United Nations. It will not be supported by the permanent UNSC members and there is no sense in moving a resolution calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir only to get it defeated. Such a course will be fatal both for Pakistan and the Kashmir cause.
Interestingly, while Islamabad’s consistent demand is for a plebiscite in Kashmir so that the people get an opportunity to decide whether they want to accede to Pakistan or India, New Delhi is not willing to accept Kashmir as a ‘dispute’. A former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, G. Parthasarthy, had told this scribe in an interview that for India “it is an issue, not a dispute”. He had pointed out that in all official talks or communications his country had used the same word for the Kashmir problem and had never recognized it as a dispute.
In the prevailing situation, Pakistan cannot expect any help from the Islamic countries, no matter how strong and principled its case on Kashmir. On a number of occasions it was proposed that Islamic countries should go for economic boycott of India as a means to pressure it to give the Kashmiris their due rights. Not a single country cut off its trade ties with India. Then it was proposed that the Arab countries should expel Indian workers from their lands to deprive New Delhi of billions of dollars it gets in remittances. No ‘brotherly’ Islamic country did so.
The countries which could do nothing for Iraq, one of the strongest OIC countries, when invaded illegally by the United States — as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan put it recently — could be of little assistance to Pakistan. Iraq has already been destroyed and the self-proclaimed liberator is determined to reduce it to ruins. Still the Ummah remains unmoved.
All Islamic countries together could not do anything for Afghanistan where war has been going on for more than two decades. They could not prepare a plan to liberate Al-Quds from Israeli occupation. They also could not extend any help to the people of Palestine who are being relentlessly killed by Israel.
Such an indifferent and slumbering bloc of Islamic states will certainly not be able to do anything for the Kashmiri people. Kashmiris and Pakistan will have to rely on their own muscle. They will have to prepare a strategy for the rights of the Kashmiri people keeping in sight the ground realities. And the ground reality is that UN resolutions no longer offer a solution to the dispute. Reference to the UN resolutions again and again is nothing more than waste of time.
Gen Musharraf, who has to lead the army in case of a war against India, has said it repeatedly that the Kashmir dispute can’t be resolved through military means. He has a better idea about the military potential on both sides. And when the army chief says that the matter can be resolved only through peaceful means, he must be right in his assessment. And the options he has talked about must be taken seriously.
Having been outpaced by Gen Musharraf, the Track-II is under obligation to make India come to the negotiation table 
