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NEW DELHI: A peace process between India and Pakistan is stumbling badly, but analysts say it is too early to declare it dead despite fresh violence in disputed Kashmir.
They say a South Asian regional summit due in Islamabad in January — coinciding with a traditional winter lull in fighting in Kashmir — still offers an opportunity to the nuclear-armed rivals to revive the process.
“The peace process has definitely faltered but I would not conclude that it is over,” said Sundeep Waslekar from the International Centre for Peace Initiatives in Mumbai.
He said he believed Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was committed to moving ahead with the peace process and thereby winning a place in history.
Vajpayee, 78, said in May he would make one last bid for peace in his lifetime — understood to mean before national elections due in India next year.
India and Pakistan, which came close to war last year, then exchanged ambassadors in what was supposed to be the beginning of a step-by-step peace process leading ultimately to summit talks.
But they have gone back to hurling insults at each other over a new surge in violence in Kashmir. New Delhi blames Islamabad for stoking a 14-year-old separatist revolt there, an accusation denied by Islamabad.
In a sign of how bad things have become, India said last week Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri was not welcome, days after he announced plans to visit India.
“The peace process is not dead, but it is limping along and nobody seems to be helping it at all,” said South Asian defence specialist Brian Cloughley.
RISING INFILTRATION: Bred on more than half a century of mistrust, both countries are predictably blaming the other for the stalled peace process.
Pakistani officials say India moved too slowly at the start, losing crucial momentum needed to clear away the bitter aftertaste of last year’s near-war.
India blames Pakistan for allowing Pakistan-based militants to cross into Indian-held Kashmir, stoking violence there.
It refuses to talk to a country it says sponsors “terrorism”, while Pakistan says India’s refusal to give any ground makes it all the harder for it to curb the militant, or jihadi, groups.
“The logic was that there has to be a chance given to diplomacy. The fact is that diplomacy has not worked, so obviously it is natural that the jihadis would start acting on their own,” said Pakistan’s former intelligence chief Hamid Gul.
At the heart of the dispute is the inability of either side to find common ground on the extent to which Pakistan can or does control the militant groups.
“Do they need support from the Pakistani government for rifles and hand grenades? They can be acquired cheaply on the open market,” said Gul.
India in turn is convinced any significant shift in militant groups’ behaviour would have to be sanctioned by the Pakistani army, headed by President Pervez Musharraf.
Many analysts agree.
“I believe that Musharraf is in favour of using terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” said Waslekar. “The fact that he is turning the tap on and off shows that he is controlling the tap. This is not to say that he is responsible for every single act.”
Whoever is in control, both sides are reporting an increase in infiltration into Indian-held Kashmir.
According to a senior Indian army official, about 260 people snuck across the border in August, compared with 110 last August.
And in Pakistan, the leader of one major militant group, who declined to be named, said more fighters were being sent into Indian-held Kashmir than at any time in the last two years.
After a summer lull, Indian Kashmir has gone back to a daily diet of shootouts, grenade and bomb attacks. About 200 people, most of them rebels, have been killed in Indian-held Kashmir this month.
Some of the violence is attributed to revenge killings after Indian forces shot dead Gazi Baba, the operational commander in Indian Kashmir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group, in August.
Other deaths are attributed to a traditional increase in infiltration as militants make their way into Indian-held Kashmir before the winter snows block Himalayan mountain passes.
From around mid-November, winter is expected to bring a slowdown in violence, offering a small window for India and Pakistan to lower tension ahead of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in January.
Pakistan has formally invited Vajpayee to the summit, which also includes the leaders of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives and Bangladesh.—Reuters
