M B Naqvi

The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist

mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

Much mischief has resulted from the presence of intrinsically destabilising presence of nuclear weapons during the current crisis on the borders. They do possess an inherent deterring quality. So the two adversaries dare not use them and have made their confrontation look foolish: unable to take it to its logical conclusion, they find it hard to stand down while it appeared all too easy to mass troops menacingly at the borders. There will be time enough to talk meaningfully about the atomic arsenals later. Right now it is necessary to arrange mutual withdrawal that the two cannot do alone; its pointlessness will be too obvious. They needed a third party.

As it happens, both sides have been competitively wooing the Americans and want them to help achieve their respective objectives. India's main wish is to see cross-border terrorism stopped in Kashmir with US help. Pakistan has sought American good offices to diffuse the border tensions and help preserve peace in the Subcontinent. At least Pakistanis have been asking the good offices of the US. The US was delighted in being tacitly accepted as the honest broker by both the embattled nuclear powers, enhancing its role in the region.

But in the US Secretary of State Colin Powell's strategy of keeping peace in South Asia, the ordering of immediate objectives is peculiar: he wants Pakistanis and Indians to begin talks on Kashmir and on 'all other matters' for building mutual trust - and only after that confidence building mutual withdrawal of troops is to take place. This is strange. Here are two countries that are not on speaking terms, ready to rush at each other's throat, and they are being asked to start elaborate negotiations first with a view to earning each other's confidence. After mutual trust has returned, they will start withdrawing their troops and equipment from forward attacking position. Lay people would ordinarily advise these more than mere semi-cold warriors to start pulling back from the borders first 'without prejudice to their political positions'. This withdrawal itself will be the primary confidence building block. Formal talks can only begin after each side is sure that the other side is unlikely to make a sudden mischievous move. Why Secretary Powell has chosen an order of business that flies in the face of commonsense needs to be inquired into. Anyway, the US can only bring the two sides together; every other agreement has to be arrived at by these two together.

At all events India and Pakistan have to live side by side in peace and they cannot ask the US diplomacy to be eternally there to persuade (force?) them not to go to war or threateningly massing their troops on the borders. They must have enough civilisation in themselves to coexist peacefully without external aid despite their differences. As a matter of fact, if the US good offices - the effectiveness of which is obvious - had not been available the two sides would still have to de-escalate tensions first by mutual withdrawals for the good and adequate reason that both are nuclear powers that simply cannot afford to use them. The experience since Dec 13 last should convince both New Delhi and Islamabad that old-style coercive diplomacy, or gunboat diplomacy, does not now work the way it used to. Similarly the way Pakistan was conducting its Kashmir policy has proved to be counterproductive though earlier suppositions indicated otherwise. Hopefully they can now draw up the rules of coexistence in the special conditions of South Asia, as shown by the recent experiences.

Doubtless, there is the frightfully difficult question of Kashmir with its telltale history. Experience has shown that a radically dissatisfied power, Pakistan, simply cannot use violent ways to agitate or take the Kashmir Valley militarily, the only area of Jammu and Kashmir state it wants. India would rather fight than allow any secession of Kashmir Valley. The BJP and Sangh Parivar in India might also unleash forces that would kill far too many Muslims in India, as Kuldip Nayar has shown, should anything like that look like becoming a probability. War is not an option now or later. But a recognition of this reality does not mean that Pakistan must necessarily accept the finality of the status quo. Only, it has to realise (a) that there is no quick solution to the Kashmir problem; and (b) that Pakistan has to have a new and more workable longer-term India policy that includes rational efforts to secure a democratic solution to the Kashmir issue through democratic means.

Pakistan policies will grow from the Jan 12 televised speech of Gen Pervez Musharraf, although this should have come earlier, soon after the U-turn in the Afghan policy. Its logic demands that all our stances, approaches and policies must be based on peaceful, in fact democratic, methodology. Pakistan itself has to democratise speedily in order the better to employ democratic methodology. That is how it can be more effective. The current military confrontation has shown that adequacy of military forces, nuclear and conventional, has no bearing on problems between India and Pakistan or for the solution of the Kashmir dispute, issue or problem. One it is admitted that there is no military solution of Kashmir issue, the whole military approach becomes inappropriate, including Jihad with the gun. Political approach is the right response to the Kashmiris aspirations.

Pakistan's substantial military build down, especially in the nuclear sphere, will boost its credentials to talk peace and to gain high moral ground. Whether or not India quickly responds, or is ready for early negotiations, our policies must be based on patient, peace-promoting ideas. We should now aim at exactly the opposite of what the Vajpayee government did in December last: work for restoration of maximum contacts between the Indians and Pakistanis, full normalisation of ties between the two countries to at least the level they were before 1965 - free mutual trade on the MFN basis, acceptance of SFTA and SAPTA bases for the SAARC, seeking investments from Indians and investing in India and of course maximum cultural exchanges. A people-to-people friendship with India should be worked for, as the policy of controlled hostility has resulted in the crisis that grew out of December 13 attack on Indian Parliament that left no way out for either side.

But what about Kashmir? It may be asked. Well, let us actually accept what we verbally say: there is no military solution to the problem. If so, all militaristic approaches or methods must be eschewed in favour of recognising the true particulars of Kashmir imbroglio. If Kashmir issue is to be peacefully and amicably solved, what it requires is that Pakistanis have to mount a giant operation to convince the Indians that India will actually benefit - economically and even politically - more by being flexible and forthcoming to the Kashmiris. Indeed we must ascertain and understand desires and psychology of Indians to determine our policies: what precise quid pro quo can we offer, if any, to make them accommodating on Kashmir and become cooperative friends with Pakistanis.

Pakistan actually needs a growing pro-Pakistan lobby in India and it should freely allow a pro-India lobby in this country. The basic orientation of both countries being what it is, each has a stake in the overall orientation of the other. A thoroughly democratic and secular Pakistan is in India's interests. Similarly, Pakistan has a vital stake in the Indian polity remaining secular, democratic and non-militaristic. Let each state pursue this aim. The two countries and their peoples have thousand and one commonalties of cultures, languages and literatures, races and of course common history. Their social conditions are broadly similar and both have to live and prosper in not only the Global Village the world has become but in the globalised economy. There are plenty of issues where they need to work together. Ecology of South Asia imposes common tasks and makes cooperation an imperative.

To revert to the Kashmir issue that has caused so much trouble already, it has to be seen that if it has to have an amicable solution, it will be a long haul. It requires a two-pronged approach. Let approaches to its proper democratic solution be sought by non-officials - eminent personalities of this big Village. It can be implemented in the fullness of time, say 30 to 35 years. Meantime, there can be an interim and neutral sort of arrangements for the Valley to be negotiated between New Delhi and Islamabad. The issue of sovereignty needs to be fudged or blurred, if it cannot be shared. Indeed, it need not affect sovereignties but should mean an effective demilitarisation of that part of Kashmir, full freedom to Kashmiris to travel to all parts of the old Jammu and Kashmir State, to manage their own affairs democratically and trade freely with both Pakistan and India, with the two countries jointly picking up the tab insofar as the Valley is concerned. Let Kashmiris progressively become a bridge between Pakistan and India - to pave the way of a rational and democratic solution of this problem.