DAWN.COM | Editorial | Resumption of talks
The two foreign secretaries, Salman Bashir from Pakistan and Nirupama Rao from India, finally met in New Delhi on Feb 25 and described their talks as useful. Rao said there had been good chemistry and transparency on both sides.
They agreed to remain in touch, and Bashir invited his Indian counterpart to visit Islamabad. The talks covered all the issues outstanding between the two countries.
What was striking, though, was the level of scepticism and pessimism expressed in Pakistan about the utility of holding talks with India at this time. There were those who were sure that India would not be willing to discuss anything other than terrorism — more precisely, its insistence for the past many months that those Pakistani nationals who were allegedly involved in planning and executing the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist incident must be punished and “the networks of terrorism in Pakistan be dismantled”.
India has been particularly angered that Hafiz Saeed, head of the banned Jamaatud Dawa considered a cover group for the Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT) that allegedly masterminded the Mumbai attack, remains a free man and recently made an incendiary statement against India. True enough, this was the main issue raised by Rao; but it was clear all along that once the talks took place, there was little that India could do to stop Pakistan from raising any other issue, including Kashmir.
Initially, the Pakistan Foreign Office did not help matters by insisting that India must agree to resume the ‘composite dialogue’ that was broken off after the Mumbai attack. Some officials also called for an ‘integrated’ dialogue. They missed the point: the resumption of talks was the real thing and all else was quibbling over words. The very fact that it was India that took the initiative for the resumption of talks signalled a rethink by New Delhi and a reversal of its own intransigent stance for more than a year.
There has, no doubt, been foreign pressure on India to resume dialogue with Pakistan; but it is more likely that the decision to hold talks was taken by New Delhi itself, on a re-evaluation of its interests.
The fact is that Islamist militant groups have become an even greater menace for Pakistan than for India; as Bashir said, Pakistan “has suffered many more Mumbais” than India. This realisation may well have influenced India to resume talks with Pakistan; India cannot go on looking at the issue of militancy through the prism of the past.
The ISI might have been supportive of the LeT and other jihadi groups in the past but today, religious extremists and terrorist outfits have become the main security threat to the Pakistani state, government and society. Since last year, Pakistan’s armed forces have been engaged in a war with militants in Swat, South Waziristan and elsewhere. It is clear, therefore, that Pakistan and India have a common enemy in these militants.
Of course, India is not alone in looking at issues through the prism of the past. Many in Pakistan harp on about the fact that the Afghan Mujahideen and Osama bin Laden were once fully supported by the US, during the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan. They ask why the US now regards them as enemies.
The answer, obviously, is that circumstances change. In the 1980s, the Mujahideen and the US drew close to each other because of their common opposition to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Once the Soviets left, the common cause was gone.
While one can understand the outrage in India over the Mumbai incident, New Delhi’s reaction has been disproportionate and even misplaced. India itself conceded that no official agency in Pakistan had been involved in the Mumbai incident. While one of the terrorists, who was captured alive, is a Pakistani national and has confirmed that the LeT organised the attack, it was always clear that there had to be some Indian involvement as well.
Putting all the blame on the Pakistani government was irrational, since it cannot be held accountable for all the wrongs done by its nationals. To use an analogy, most of those involved in 9/11 were Saudi nationals but the US has never made this an issue against the Saudi government. India has also been mistaken in allowing the terrorists to derail the Indo-Pakistan peace talks, in effect giving to the terrorists a veto over the destinies of millions.
At the same time, Pakistani authorities need to be much more active in punishing Pakistani accomplices of the Mumbai incident. In this context Interior Minister Rehman Malik has been guilty of too much talk and too little action. Some sections of our media have also done a disservice by putting the interests of a handful of militants over the interests of the country. These terrorists deserve no defence or sympathy for their unlawful activities.
It is unfortunate that both in India and Pakistan, there are hate lobbies that continue to oppose any forward movement in Indo-Pakistan relations. They build on fears and concocted evidence to build up an atmosphere of deep distrust; more than 60 years have already been lost in the process. There have, no doubt, been fundamental problems such as Kashmir that have defied a solution. But fears in Pakistan about India blocking the rivers, which might lead to war, also appear highly exaggerated.
Our Indus Waters commissioner, Jamaat Ali Shah, and an ex-finance minister, Dr Mubashar Hasan, have said only recently that the shortage of waters in our rivers is due to climatic conditions and not because of any theft by India.
Finally, this question has to be posed to the sceptics: how exactly are the differences between the two sides to be resolved? One option is confrontation, but this would lead to nuclear war and destruction. Since that does not make sense, there is no other option but holding talks. They may be long and frustrating but eventually, the advantages of peace and cooperation will compel the two countries to come to terms with each other.
