Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Editorial: Interpreting the Sharm al-Sheikh meeting
The Gilani-Manmohan meeting at Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt on July 16 has produced two versions of what really happened. The joint statement says that “dialogue is the only way forward”, adding that “action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed”. This gives rise to more ambiguity, which is of the essence when managing intractable crises. From Pakistan’s point of view, the sentence can be taken to mean two things at the same time. It can mean that Pakistan will not act against terrorists unless and until there is a resumption of Indo-Pak talks; it can also mean that India will not make talks conditional to Pakistan’s action against the terrorists.
Within the same text, however, from India’s point of view, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quoted as insisting on punishing the Mumbai attack culprits before talks could be held; Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s response to this is that Pakistan would do its best “but what about the dossier of questions Pakistan sent to India?” This was thrust and parry par excellence, indicating how the bureaucrats jousted over the text. Pakistan next got in a mention of “some information” it had “on threats in Balochistan and other areas” (an oblique reference to FATA). The Indian side must have fought over this. India is not mentioned but back home in Pakistan everyone knows it means Indian mischief inside Pakistan.
Talking to the press the two prime ministers added, in their own way, to the body of the text. Mr Singh said he would not get into a composite dialogue without Pakistan first showing progress on the anti-terrorist front. He also denied that India was involved in the trouble in Balochistan and other areas in Pakistan. Mr Gilani was more conciliatory but he did get in a reference to Kashmir as “an outstanding issue whose resolution will help in establishing peace”.
The joint statement doesn’t have the word Kashmir in its text. That must have been managed by the Indian diplomats in exchange for allowing Pakistan’s reference to Balochistan, but it was welcomed in certain quarters in India, while rejectionists there latched on to the ambiguity of the “linking” of terrorism to the composite dialogue. There is a history of how Pakistan has gradually made Kashmir remote as the central target of its campaign to talk to India under the Simla Agreement. In the past, it was “separated” from the rest of the agenda of composite talks and consigned to a special basket.
The Balochistan reference is important for Pakistan because Baloch insurgents themselves have talked about getting help from India. The fact that the world has ignored it is less about the lack of evidence and more about the pragmatism of geopolitics. As for India’s involvement in fomenting trouble in FATA, the issue has been handled in Pakistan irresponsibly. The trouble in FATA is home-grown but India has been taking advantage of it indirectly. That is smart from the Indian perspective because it is extremely difficult to find “direct” evidence of its involvement.
Even so government functionaries have been feeding the media this line and most TV channels have come to accept Indian interference as a given without any tangible proof.
One TV anchor talking to veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar on Thursday stated that militants killed in Swat were gurkhas of the Indian army because they were found to be uncircumcised (by the way, the Mehsuds are traditionally uncircumcised). This information still has to be tangibly proved inside Pakistan. If however Pakistan is being cautious by not revealing proof and is waiting for an appropriate moment for disclosure, then it may be hurting itself in the interim.
On Friday, the Bangladesh Prime Minister Ms Hasina Wajed went on record as saying that she would not allow the soil of her country to be used for terrorism inside India. This statement followed a complaint from the Indian side that Pakistan was interfering in Assam and the north-eastern states of India while using Bangladesh as a corridor. A lot of literature about this “covert” war indicates that Pakistan is keeping the pot of insurgency boiling in India only through injection of money. If this is true then India could be doing a similar tit-for-tat kind of operation in FATA, deniably and without non-state actors. It is to remove this kind of bilateral mischief too that Indo-Pak talks are needed.
