Monday, May 31, 2010

'NEW BEGINNING' TO AN OLD CYCLE OF DIPLOMACY

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India is making a new beginning for peace with Pakistan. Dr Singh was however not quite sure if his peace initiative would work. Going by past record, it is unlikely that the latest peace moves will succeed. The last few initiatives for a sustained and meaningful India-Pakistan political dialogues have tended to follow a boringly predictable trajectory: successive Indian Prime Ministers, with an eye on posterity but without any sense of timing or even appreciation of ground realities, reach out to Pakistan, which as it subsequently turns out, duplicitously grabs the 'hand of friendship'; the two sides start engaging each other but without either side having any new idea to break the logjam; soon the Pakistanis run out of patience and there is invariably a spectacular incident – Kargil after Lahore bus diplomacy, Parliament attack after Agra summit, 26/11 after the resumption of the Composite Dialogue process – that effectively kills the peace initiative, until next time, when the cycle repeats itself.

    This time around, the buzzword, or if you will 'core issue', is 'trust deficit', which according to the Indian PM is the biggest problem between the two countries. While the Indian side maintains that the foreign ministers' dialogue will focus primarily on bridging the trust deficit, the Pakistanis are crowing about how the Composite Dialogue is back on track, albeit under a different nomenclature and perhaps a different structure. To the extent that when two countries enter into a political dialogue, a host of issues of interest to either side – including terrorism for India and Kashmir, water and alleged Indian involvement in Balochistan for Pakistan – will be discussed between them, it might be termed as a return to the Composite Dialogue. But without a structured dialogue on the sectoral tracks that form part of the Composite Dialogue, India can always claim that it has continued to hold out on the Composite Dialogue process. Although chances of any breakthrough appear very dim, the two sides will probably agree on some sort of a road map for continuing the dialogue at the political and bureaucratic level. Without such an agreement, the initiative will be declared a failure, something that both sides would like to avoid.

There is a body of opinion which feels that with the US dragging the two countries by their noses to the dialogue table, there are good chances of a breakthrough. But there are limits to how much the even the US can push India and Pakistan. In any case, the US is mistaken if it thinks that improved atmospherics between India and Pakistan will allow Pakistan to shift its focus from the eastern to the western border. If this didn't happen during the 2004-2008 period when relations between India and Pakistan were the most relaxed in decades, it is unlikely to happen now when the two sides have barely started trying to put together another peace process.

In order to kick-start the dialogue, the Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna's has indicated his willingness to 'trust' Pakistan on the issue of terrorism. This 'trust' however flies in the face of a flood of reports about how the jihad factory in Pakistan against is once again back in business. There is also rock-solid intelligence about the involvement of Pakistani intelligence agencies in directing attacks against Indians in Afghanistan. Recent incidents of attacks on Indians in Afghanistan – the targeting of Indian consulate staff in Jalalabad being a case in point – are being kept under the wraps, lest the political environment gets sullied before the talks. But this pusillanimous attitude will become politically unsustainable as soon as terrorist strikes take place in India.

Worse, in keeping with the proclivity of Indian leaders to provide an alibi for their Pakistani counterparts, Mr Krishna has explained away Pakistan's failure to take credible action against terrorists operating against India by blaming it on Pakistan's 'fiercely independent' and 'assertive' judiciary. Needless to say, Mr Krishna seems to have turned a blind eye to the quality of evidence, or rather the lack of it, which the Pakistani authorities presented against the LeT chief, Hafiz Saeed. Small wonder then that Indian foreign office could do little except mumble a rather apologetic 'disappointment' on the release of Hafiz Saeed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Perhaps all this reflects the lack of trust that Dr Manmohan Singh has been talking about. But then the big question is how the two sides propose to bridge this trust gap and reach that level of confidence in each other which allows them to 'move to substantive negotiations'? Clearly, the sort of cosmetic Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) that have been undertaken so far are not going to help. If truth be told, the CBMs between India and Pakistan have done everything except build confidence between the two sides. The problem, however, is that neither side seems to have figured out what it thinks it must and can do to gain the trust of the other side. It is not even clear if, short of their maximalist positions, either side has worked out the building blocks that it thinks the other side must bring on the table to bridge the trust deficit. There is also a degree of befuddlement in official circles over the reasons for keenness being displayed by either side for resuming the dialogue, as also what the other side hopes to achieve from the dialogue.

As things stand, nothing short of India disbanding its army and handing over Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan is likely to end Pakistan's self-created and self-serving paranoia of India, much less satisfy the Islamists who dominate the Pakistan army and polity. On India's part, unless Pakistan dismantles the jihad factory operating against India, renounces its irredentist claims on Jammu and Kashmir, reforms its educational curriculum which indoctrinates children with the most obnoxious sort of stereotyping of Hindus in particular and non-Muslims in general, and most of all, ends the pernicious influence of the army and intelligence agencies on the affairs of state, it is unlikely that India will develop any trust in Pakistan. What are the chances of any of this happening?

Theoretically, the impasse can be broken by some bold, out of the box initiatives that lead to a paradigm change in their bilateral relationship. But this is a catch-22 situation: without trust, bold initiatives are not possible, but how do you build trust without bold initiatives. The lack of public and political support in India for re-engagement with Pakistan, and vice-versa, will inhibit the two governments from deviating too much from their stated national positions. There are also serious questions over whether the current Pakistani government is a credible interlocutor. Dr Singh seems to believe that Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's position has strengthened after the passage of the 18th Amendment in Pakistan. But the reality is completely different.

The civilian government is merely a show-boy when it comes to Pakistan's India policy. It dances to the tune played by the Pakistan army, which remains implacably and inveterately opposed to India. In other words, the civilians in Pakistan are in no position to deliver on any deal they strike with India, which in turn means that this initiative will ultimately end up like its predecessors – in the dustbin of history.

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    <1230 Words>                    31st May, 2010

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Thursday, May 06, 2010

DEATH DOESN'T MEAN CLOSURE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    Both the guilty verdict as well as the death sentence, that has been pronounced on the barbarian, who goes by the name of Ajmal Kasab were really no-brainers. In some ways, executing Kasab for the horrific savagery that he committed seems too small a sentence. Unfortunately, legally as well as physically, this is the maximum punishment that can be given to him. And, unless misplaced political or diplomatic considerations intervene, once the legal processes run their course, the civilised world will no longer have to bear the burden of this beast after a few months time.

    In a sense, the bated breath with which both the verdict and the sentencing has been received seems a little strange. Perhaps this was the result of a bit of grand-standing on the part of the prosecution which used what can only be called a legal version of sledgehammer to swat a fly. Unless there was some larger purpose being served by the thousands of pages of evidence that was presented and hundreds of witnesses that were produced before the court, the case against Kasab was pretty open-and-shut and ideally should have finished in a couple of months, instead of being dragged for over a year.

    Not only was the evidence against him overwhelming – CCTV footage and what have you – he was literally caught red-handed. That despite all this, it has taken so long to convict this terrorist in a special court doesn't really say much for the Indian criminal justice system. It was, in any case, quite pointless for the prosecution to try and prove the larger conspiracy and the involvement of Pakistan behind the savagery of 26/11. This was already a well established fact and merely the fact that an Indian court had convicted one of the terrorists on the basis of all the extra evidence was hardly going to make any difference, either in terms of shaming or exposing, much less deterring, the promoters, planners and perpetrators of this horrific crime, all of who are sitting in Pakistan.

    Quite aside the fact that the prolonged trial of such a high-profile case does nothing to strengthen our demand on Pakistan to speedily bring the masterminds of this dastardly crime to justice, statements by senior Indian officials and politicians that the trial proves the fairness and transparency of the Indian judicial system smacks of a sense of inferiority and lack of conviction on their part over the effectiveness of the judicial system to deliver justice. Why should India seek certificates or try to prove anything from rest of the world on the fairness of our judicial system? After all, we never hear the Americans or British or Chinese or even Middle-Eastern potentates seeking approval from any other country for the punishment they give to criminals and terrorists.

    This is not to say that the criminal justice system in India is in fine fettle. Far from it, the reality is that the criminal justice system is practically dysfunctional in cases which are not as 'celebrated'. There are innumerable terrorism cases that have been languishing in the courts for years. Part of the problem is the training, investigative skills, equipment and technology needed to solve the cases is sorely lacking. Add to this the fact that the police is understaffed and has terrible service conditions. Equally, if not more, serious is the bizarre situation in which India is using 19th Century law like the Indian Evidence Act to combat 21st Century crimes. No surprise then that in the 26/11 trials, while Kasab was convicted because his mug was on CCTV cameras and he was captured by an act of superhuman heroism by an intrepid Mumbai cop armed with nothing more than a lathi, the other two terrorists were able to secure acquittals. If this is not a failure of the legal systems, structures and processes, then what is?

    Clearly, instead of patting itself on the back and trying to win brownie points to cement its vote bank politics, the government needs to work overtime to make legal provisions that allow law enforcement agencies to collect technical evidence against terrorists and criminals. The amendments made in the law through the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act are woefully inadequate to successfully prosecute terrorists and their accomplices. Had such provisions been there in law, both Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin too would hang.

    Apart from the domestic dimension of the verdict in the 26/11 trials, there is also an external dimension which too is unlikely to change merely because a Kasab is going to hang. The simple reality is that regardless of the tomes of evidence presented in the 26/11 trial, it is not going to be enough to stop the operation of jihad factories operating in Pakistan. Quite to the contrary, these factories which had been in a go slow mode for some time now are once again going full steam in manufacturing murderers. On the very day Kasab was pronounced guilty, a Lashkar-e-Taiba cell was unearthed in Kashmir. There was also a terror alert in Delhi after the verdict.

Not only is Hafiz Saeed openly addressing rallies in Lahore and other parts of Pakistan, the LeT commander in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Abdul Wahid Kashmiri had been addressing rallies of jihadist groups in PoK threatening jihad against India and rest of the world. It of course, goes without saying that the US secretary of state who has to certify that Pakistan is taking credible action against LeT is going to turn a blind eye to these activities and give an all clear to their Pakistani allies and ply aid and arms to Pakistan.

    As far as the trial of the masterminds in Pakistan is concerned, chances are that India will be sorely disappointed. As of now, it is not entirely clear what are the charges that these terrorists are facing in the Pakistani courts, or what is the quality of evidence that has been presented against them. If the evidence is as flimsy as the one presented against Hafiz Saeed or if the quality of prosecution leaves much to be desired, then these guys could soon be back in business of exporting murder and mayhem into India. But even if by some quirk of fate these terrorists are found guilty and convicted, it remains to be seen as to what the sentences will be. If they are given light sentences ranging from 5-7 years then they could be out in a couple of years. Let us also not forget the influence that these auxiliaries of the Pakistani intelligence agencies wield in Pakistan, not only with the Pakistani military establishment but also with the superior judiciary of Pakistan which is packed with Islamist judges. A conviction by the trial court could easily be overturned by the Lahore High Court or the Supreme Court.

    The bottom line is that carrying out the death sentence on Kasab is not going to bring a closure to the 26/11 case. Nor for that matter will the conviction of the terrorists being tried in Pakistan will end the menace of terrorism in India. The real closure will come only with the closure of the jihad factory in Pakistan, which in turn will happen only if Pakistan takes concerted and sincere efforts to de-radicalise its society and its polity, neither of which are on the anvil for the foreseeable future, even less so in light of reports that the Pakistan army is wanting to use LeT cadres in Afghanistan.

A last word is in order on the reaction in Pakistan to the Kasab verdict. While sensitive and sensible people in that country are embarrassed and even contrite over what has happened in Mumbai, this element is really now a fringe minority. The majority opinion is that Kasab's conviction is a grave miscarriage of justice. Given this demonical mindset that denies, if not revels, in the massacre of innocent people, one cannot help but wonder what sort of a peace process the government is entering into with Pakistan. More importantly, unless Pakistan cleans up its act, the spectre of another 26/11 type attack is always going to hang over India's head.

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    <1360 Words>                    6th May, 2010

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Saturday, May 01, 2010

A SALAMI SLICING SOLUTION

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    The almost total silence in India, from the government, opposition and strategic community, over disclosures made by former Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, on the deal on Jammu and Kashmir that had been worked out in the back-channel between the two countries, is quite unsettling. The fact that neither a denial nor a clarification has been issued by the Indian side is tantamount to an acquiescence to everything that Mr Kasuri has been saying. Shockingly enough, nobody in the Indian establishment, except perhaps for a tiny clique, seems to have any real idea, much less details, of the purported deal on Kashmir worked out in the back-channel. Tragically, the otherwise hyper-active Indian media is more interested in the salacious and sordid details of the IPL scam rather than about what all India might have conceded in the quest for something as fragile, uncertain, and ephemeral as a peace deal with Pakistan, and that too on Kashmir.

The broad contours of the deal have been floating around for quite some time. These included, inter alia, demilitarisation of the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, a high level of autonomy, soft borders, no redrawing of borders and no dislocation of settled population, and some sort of joint mechanism for management of common resources like forests, water and other such issues. Kasuri not only confirmed a lot of what was being speculated, but also went a step further by revealing that the deal was almost done and was just a 'signature away'.

According to Kasuri, the two countries had reached what he calls "the only possible solution to the Kashmir issue". This involved full demilitarisation of both Indian Kashmir as well as 'Azad' Kashmir (a euphemism for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir). Both countries had "agreed on a point between complete independence and autonomy" and had worked out "a package of loose autonomy that stopped short of the azadi and self-governance aspirations." The Line of Control (LoC) would become 'irrelevant' and the people of the state could move free across the LoC using only their identity cards.

In an ideal situation, this would perhaps be an eminently workable, if not ideal, solution. But the simple fact of the matter is that given the state of relations between India and Pakistan – the trust deficit, the unremitting export of terrorism, the Pakistani animus towards India which has now acquired almost civilizational overtones – this solution doesn't have much chance of working, at least not until relations between the two countries and peoples normalise and a high degree of trust and confidence develops between them. In the current circumstances, however, the solution that appears to have been worked out is neither doable, nor deliverable and, most of all, not desirable.

Take for instance Mr Kasuri's admission that the agreement was "an interim one, and was subject to review after 15 years... during this period its implementation would be monitored by all parties concerned and, in the light of the experience, this arrangement could further be improved." The Kashmiri separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq endorsed the 'interim solution' line of Mr Kasuri. Indeed ever since the back channel diplomacy started, Kashmiri leaders like Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir have spoken about 'a series of interim solutions' leading to the final solution. This is nothing if not shorthand for Pakistan using a salami-slicing approach to extend its control bit by bit over the Indian state.

Although Mr Kasuri has not stated this explicitly, it is quite clear that the LoC would not have become the permanent border between India and Pakistan. Quite aside the fact that for India converting the LoC into an international border is huge concession, even if some government was to ever agree on it, it will find it immensely difficult to deliver on such a deal. For one, there is a unanimous resolution of parliament that emphatically states that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the only issue that needs to be decided is the modalities of Pakistan's vacation of its illegal occupation of a part of the Indian state. But assuming that the Parliamentary resolution can be side-stepped, the government will have to contend with a 'basic feature' of the Indian constitution which states that the territorial unity and integrity of the country cannot be altered. There is, however, a constitutional provision under which borders can be settled but even this involves an elaborate procedure – a two-thirds majority in Parliament followed by two-thirds of the Indian states endorsing such a move – which for the foreseeable future is both undoable and undeliverable.

In other words, the LoC would have remained a de facto and not a de jure border, something that would keep alive Pakistan's irredentist claims over the Indian state. This in turn means that as and when the Pakistanis felt that the situation was ripe, they could resurrect their revanchist claims. The soft LoC could easily be exploited to create conditions inside Jammu and Kashmir that could, in the future, be used to create enormous political and security problems for India and wrest control over a substantial, if not entire, part of the state.

As far as the deliverability of the deal is concerned, there is a big question mark as to whether the government in Pakistan can really pull the file off the rack and sign it. Let alone the current government, there are doubts on whether even Musharraf could have actually signed such a deal, and if he had indeed been so brave or stupid to do such a thing, how long such a deal would have lasted once he was no longer on the scene. Mr Kasuri claims that the current civilian government in Pakistan is fully aware of the deal and is in favour of pushing it through. According to him, all the stake-holders in Pakistan, including the Pakistan army, had endorsed the deal. Perhaps, the military brass had nodded their heads in agreement to the plan when Musharraf was both army chief and President of Pakistan. But no sooner had he doffed his uniform, the Pakistan army all but repudiated the deal.

Asif Zardari of course was keen on good relations with India. Shortly after his party emerged as the single largest party in the February 2008 general elections, Zardari gave an interview to an Indian channel in which he said that Kashmir must be pushed on to the back-burner and left for future generations to settle. In all likelihood, Zardari at that time was not aware of what had been worked out on the back channel on Kashmir. But the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who had been the ISI chief when the back channel was on, surely knew what had transpired. Within a few days of Zardari's interview, Kayani went to PoK and "reaffirmed the army's commitment to the Kashmir cause in line with the aspirations of the nation".

Zardari probably never took the hint and, after he became President, he announced that the nation "would soon hear good news on Kashmir". At this stage he was probably familiar with the understanding reached in the back-channel. A week later, Kayani went to Siachen and "highlighted the national consensus that exists on the Kashmir issue". The final straw came after Zardari told an Indian audience that Pakistan would never exercise the First-use option of its nuclear weapons. A week later the 26/11 attacks took place and the Indo-Pak peace process was blown to smithereens. Today, with the Pakistan army once again calling the shots on high policy and strategic issues and the civilian government reduced to handling municipal matters, the civilian government has been forced to distance itself from plugging for a deal on Kashmir.

    It is a little surprising that a seasoned politician like Mr Kasuri, who is one of the few people in Pakistan who has always been a votary of good relations with India, could have been so politically naive as to think that the solution that was being discussed on the back channel was doable, much less deliverable. Solutions arrived at on back channels are at worst nothing more than an academic exercise, and at best theoretical constructs of what could or might be. The utility of back channel is not so much in coming up with a big-bang solution but more in working out a step by step approach to create conducive conditions that over the years enable some sort of a deal that both states and their peoples can live with.

At the end of the day, deliverable deals are possible only through regular diplomatic and political channels, in full public view and with full public approval. By Mr Kasuri's own admission, the public opinion needed to be prepared to accept the deal because the solution would have only succeeded if there was public support behind it, which it clearly wasn't. Under the circumstances, it would have been quite a task to sell the deal on Kashmir to the people of both countries. Therefore, rather than 'pulling the files from the rack', these files should be allowed to remain where they are and pulled out only after trust and confidence is built between the two countries and their peoples. Otherwise, instead of settling issues, a deal such as the one being talked about could end up inflaming the public opinion to a point where not only will the deal become untenable and the political future of the dealmakers get jeopardised, but the peace process itself will suffer a terrible setback, one from which it might find it difficult to recover.

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    <1600 Words>                    1st May, 2010

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