Agra Summit, after all is said and done, did collapse. There is no tangible gain. The Indo-Pakistan deadlock is complete. Personal chemistries between Pakistan President and Indian PM are said to have ineffably harmonised there. That may provide a basis of some progress in future. May be. But there is no certainty. Hope however lingers.

But too much cannot be made of the ability of President Musharraf's media skills and his transparent sincerity. His appeals to the Indian people over the heads of India's ruling establishment are perhaps helpful. But how far do they take the train that has become tagged on to Gen. Pervez Musharraf's person, Kashmiris and all the 140 million Pakistanis. In actual international dealings these factors get discounted where realpolitik rules. Pakistan cannot talk to India from any position of strength.

That is basic. It failed to win all its four wars; the Kargil's spectacular beginning had had to end in an unceremonious evacuation and that too with American aid. President of Pakistan reiterated, correctly, that there is no military solution to the Kashmir imbroglio. What are the implications of Kashmir having no military solution?

The fact of the matter is that, apart from not having won a single war, possession of rival nuclear deterrent puts paid to any hope of military force being any use in any situation in solving the Kashmir problem insofar as Pakistan's determination to help liberate the people of Kashmir is concerned. If this objective is to be achieved, the means will have to be mainly political and diplomatic for achieving that end.

Nuclear bombs have frozen dead the Indo Pakistan dispute on Kashmir. Any real progress towards a Kashmir solution will have to be worked out with the willing cooperation of Indian government after the Indian public opinion enables it to do so. That will have to be a long and sustained effort. In the process of converting the Indian public opinion to the extent of accommodating Pakistanis and Kashmiris true wishes, Pakistan's rulers may have to do a lot of things that Indian people may want.

President Musharraf's unscripted initiatives at Agra and since need to be seen as an initial exercise in the effort to influencing the Indian public opinion with a view to creating a pro-Pakistan lobby in India --- a legitimate and necessary objective. Does Islamabad understand all its implications? One oblique word about the supposed guarantee of Pakistan's security, viz. the nuclear deterrent, in addition to its deadening impact on Kashmir dispute, needs to have its other aspects focused on: so long a single Pakistani bomb exists --- and there actually must be many --- Indians will always fear and mistrust Islamabad's rulers.

Similarly a single Indian bomb, so long as it is there, Pakistanis will have ample reason to mistrust and fear Indian security establishment. After all, these evil weapons have no defence whatsoever. These offensive weapons kill and burn all there exists in, on or at the target zone and far more areas around --- to wherever the radioactive fallout will be taken by winds and water. It will kill even the earth in the target zone and all the flora and fauna over a wider area. Even future generations will be attacked by their use. Who can trust an adversary government that possesses such weapons?

These are inherently mistrust creating and destabilising factors. We should take good care lest they become permanent. If that happens, there might then be no solution to any problem. Insofar as India's intransigence on Kashmir is concerned, who can forget that they are in possession of a large chunk of Kashmir. They mean to retain it. They have successfully defended it for over half a century.

Having fought many wars, mere words, uttered no matter with what sincerity and effectiveness, can scarcely induce the Indian security establishment to relinquish its stranglehold on Kashmir. It has to be compelled -- by the Indian people themselves. Until that happens, South Block will continue to stall and stymie, taking shelter behind India's constitution embodying Kashmir as a part of India.

It will simply not negotiate on Kashmir. Pakistanis should devise a suitable PR strategy and the policy to force South Block into democratic reasonableness. The present kind of Jehad in Kashmir is misconceived. It is playing on an adversary's pitch and according to his rules and assumptions. Whoever has more fire power and trained manpower will actually win. Who is actually suffering: ordinary Kashmiris. Who is mainly dying? Mostly young Kashmiri boys --- Muslim ones. India admits to 30, 000 deaths. Kashmiris outside India put the figure at 70,000 to 80,000.

As of now the struggle is utterly unequal --- largely because the gun has become the arbiter. In a certain sense, the Pakistanis and Indians mean to fight on to the last Kashmiri Muslim young man. This is unfair to the Kashmiris. Let us recognise that the Indian political class has one billion people to recruit from. It has more resources than Pakistan. It can buy or make whatever equipment may be required. It can go on indefinitely to suffer the kind of casualties Indian security forces are taking. But the supply of Muslim Kashmiri youth is more restricted; it can run out. Kashmiris, when they began in 1989 with a non-violent protest, it conferred on them on a high moral ground.

The guns in their and other hands have made them vulnerable to being dubbed as terrorists. They are losing world's sympathy. Look at the record. How many violent liberation movements have produced peaceful and progressive states in recent decades? Algeria, Vietnam, Palestine and many African states yield ambiguous answers. Vietnam's victory was more a definitive defeat of American wills to kill more --- not because of Vietnamese of undoubtedly heroic fight. American will to go on murdering was sapped by nonviolent protests in the US campuses and on Europe's roads.

Algerians made truly heroic sacrifices. But could anyone visualise. Algeria's independence without a de Gaulle? Palestinian PLO, so long as it pursued violent struggle, achieved nothing. Once it resorted to Intifada, it got at least pittance.

Violence has endangered that pittance today is a different case; Israel's true nature --- a fascist state with a racial philosophy quite akin to herrenfolk, its democracy (and earlier socialism) for Israelis notwithstanding --- will take some more time to be widely realised. Only Intifada will force the Israelis' hand into some concession-making while international opinion and pressure might make Israel a true democracy for all, with crucial Palestinian concerns being met in substantial measure. In most other areas of civil wars in Africa only anarchy has incrementally won.

All this has relevance for Kashmir. Taking up the gun in Kashmir --- under the euphoria created by nuclear capability --- was a mistake. Nonviolent protest is far more effective. Violent means are an invitation to a ruthless government to employ far greater violence and kill so many that the whole society is brutalised and chances of progress vanish.

Let the Kashmiris, the actual Kashmiris, revert to nonviolent protests and demand freedom --- from the Indians who are denying it in various forms. Pakistan has little role. It can only do what it claims: giving political, moral and diplomatic support and no gun running. In the end, the matter has to be resolved by the Kashmiris and Indians primarily between themselves.

There is no reason for Pakistan to remain fixed on 'Kashmir or nothing' while India goes on saying 'anything but Kashmir'. Let's get out of that sterility. Let's be truly flexible. Normalise ties fully with India. Be civilised neighbours, trading and cooperating, while differing on Kashmir NMD and possibly many other issues. Create a pro-Pakistan lobby in India openly.

Let India try to do the same here. Let us both be democracies and truly civilised by treating our own and India's citizens with courtesy and sympathy. Let us both progress economically, politically and socially through regional cooperation. Pakistan's unremitting efforts to recruit UN, American or any other mediation are misconceived too; the propaganda points thus gained do not amount to much in real life. Indians are unlikely to agree to any mediation. Nor western good offices will necessarily be to the advantage of Pakistan.

For, most of them will ultimately advise Islamabad to accept the LOC as the definitive border with India. If that is what might come of it, Pakistan might as well do it without the pother of international mediation. At any rate, the failure at Agra might have increased the American role in South Asia. Both India and Pakistan have to count the cost of developments that may ensue. Finally Pakistan economy's current state and its prospects demand a basic change in the national budgeting. This is definitive. It cannot go on bearing the burden of both the expected levels of debt servicing and security outlays in the coming years. Economic expertise of western bankers cannot make fewer resources much ampler by pursuing the policies they are being told to pursue. A basic change is overdue. That cannot come without a revolutionary change in Pakistan's India policy. Will there by any?