Musharraf's Visit & Aftermath - Escalation In Kashmir

J.E.Menon

The summit between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf on July 14-16 raised a lot of expectations, both in the region and beyond. The media hype preceding the event had created an atmosphere wherein positive results of some sort were considered a foregone conclusion. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of disappointment expressed in the media when the entire exercise collapsed quite unceremoniously and abruptly, and General Musharraf slipped out of India quietly after dark. Were the expectations warranted, was the hype justified, and is the disappointment relevant? The answer is no to all three. The exaggerated expectations reflected the triumph of hope over experience. The assumption that a “nationalist” BJP leader at the helm in India and a military ruler controlling all the levers of power in Pakistan would find it easier to make the necessary compromises was shown to be flawed; in India the elected leader is subject to public opinion, in Pakistan the self-appointed dictator is vulnerable to militant action.

 The hype was unprecedented as far as subcontinental summitry goes. But it is part of a trend that has been observed in recent years, at least partly because of the proliferation of private audio-visual media in India. Every little titbit about the summit was reported and analysed in advance by the print media and 24-hour television, right down to the menu at the various hotels the Pakistani leader was to visit. Not surprisingly, as observed by one seasoned commentator on the Indian side, when the summit ended on a discordant note, there was a “general feeling of regret and disappointment” which had been “accentuated by the utterly unjustifiable hype before the summit”[1] .

In fact, if one had cared to read between the lines, the signals of "failure" were quite in evidence before the summit began. The rhetoric indulged in by Musharraf and his foreign minister in the weeks leading up to the Agra meet indicated that, for them, the summit was going to be about Kashmir and little else. In India, the prevalent theme was that the summit would be about all bilateral issues including Kashmir. There was no meeting ground between the two sides on this basic issue, and that continues to be the case. As such, the Agra summit must be seen for what it was, or at least what it turned out to be – i.e. essentially little more than an opportunity for Musharraf to reinforce his image at home and abroad, a fig leaf under which to grab the presidency, and to pander to the jihadi movements in Pakistan. For Musharraf, sincere elocution notwithstanding, the summit was about legitimacy for himself. The Pakistani public has internalised the idea that India has never reconciled itself to the 1947 partition and that it is permanently seeking to destroy their country; yet, ironically, nothing lends a Pakistani leader greater credibility than to be invited to India, given a state welcome where all the stops are pulled out and treated on par at the level of head of state.

In this endeavour, Musharraf was indeed successful. Upon his return home, the Pakistani media were singing hosannas to the “victory” of the general in India, especially the way he had commandeered the airwaves through the adroit leak of near-live recordings of his infamous breakfast press conference on July 16. The jihadi movements were all praise for the leader who did not succumb to Indian pressure. The question, however, is whether Musharraf's visit to India resulted in any gain for Pakistan.

Musharraf Gains, Pakistan Looses
Gen. Musharraf came to India prepared to say "veni, vidi, vici". The press in Pakistan had begun laying the groundwork weeks in advance. The basic theme running through the various opinion columns and editorials, with a few notable exceptions, could be summarised as follows: India was intellectually fatigued from dealing with the Kashmir issue, the army was tiring and demoralised as a result of incessant mujahedin actions in the restive state, and public opinion was shifting in favour of a settlement suitable to Pakistan - which essentially means handing over Jammu & Kashmir on a platter to Islamabad. The general himself played a vital role in creating the pre-summit atmosphere of expectation. He catered to all his audiences, Pakistani, Indian and Western, i.e. mainly American. Comments made to the Pakistani media suggested that he was prepared to go where no Pakistani leader had gone before in negotiations with India, to change history as it were. The objective was to boost his "peace" credentials, enhance his international acceptability and reinforce his image of sincerity.  

Simultaneously Musharraf also talked tough, asserting that negotiations would be about Kashmir because all other issues were secondary. This was clearly for domestic consumption. An effort was made to project a popular mandate behind his decision to visit India. A series of meetings were held with political figures and the Pakistani intelligentsia in the days leading up to the visit, to create the impression of consultation and consensus on the Pakistani side. One Pakistani writer rather breathlessly put it thus: “As a public relations exercise, the consultations series was outstanding, the resultant welding of the mandate behind the President nothing short of brilliant”[2]. The fact remains, though, that it was no more a public relations exercise. Musharraf was and is, no doubt, well aware that the general public in Pakistan is highly indoctrinated on the Kashmir question, and that no real flexibility on the matter would be tolerated - especially if one of his military colleagues saw it fit to make an issue of it. Yet he certainly returned from Agra smelling of roses as far as his personal credibility and image at home were concerned. If he had any goals to achieve for Pakistan, however, the general did not have much to show for it.

Let us consider a couple of possible objectives, based on what the general himself has stated on various occasions. One objective almost certainly was to raise the profile of Kashmir and place it formally as a central (or “core”) issue in India-Pakistan relations, a notion which India has firmly rejected. During his visit, Musharraf did articulate on the Kashmir problem with “brutal candour”[3], and went expressly against his host’s wishes to hold a meeting at tea with leaders of the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) in New Delhi on July 14. While, this got Kashmir a tad more media play than may have otherwise been expected, it soured the atmosphere between the two delegations ahead of the dialogue sessions. As the talks between Foreign Secretaries Inam ul Haq of Pakistan and Chokila Iyer of India in Colombo in early August showed, India was not about to concede that Kashmir was a “central” issue. On the contrary, a tough statement from the Indian side rejected the notion that Kashmir was a “core” issue and rather linked normalisation of relations to the ending of cross-border terrorism[4].

A second possible objective was to raise the profile of Kashmir’s status as an international dispute. There is no evidence that the general succeeded in this endeavour. No country of any signficance has openly come out and taken a position that may be considered to be antithetical to that of India. No country has suggested since July 16 that third party intervention is necessary in the dispute. By contrast, several countries have openly declared that tensions over Kashmir must be resolved bilaterally between India and Pakistan. Indeed, Kashmir takes up no more of the time of the international community than it did in the past. The only tangible gain that Musharraf could be said to have achieved for Pakistan via the summit is the easing of the flow of desperately needed funds from the IMF, money needed to keep the Pakistani economy afloat. And, with hindsight, it is conceivable that the general did not, in fact, want more than that – i.e. to enhance his personal credibility on the one hand, and to get some money from the international donor community on the other, money needed to prevent an economic collapse over the short-term – hardly a victory for Pakistan.

Jammu & Kashmir - Escalation & Confusion
The violence in Kashmir never really stopped, not during the period of “non-initiation of combat operations” (NICO) - Nov. 19, 2000 to May 23, 2001 – and not during the summit. Between January and Aug. 15, 2001, police and security forces eliminated 1059 militants, most of them foreign mercenaries. In the same period, 359 police and security forces personnel lost their lives[5]. It is important to note that the end of NICO was announced together with the invitation to Musharraf. After the summit collapsed in disarray, there was a marked turn for the worse in the ground situation. On the one hand, the terrorists expanded their attacks. They resumed “fidayeen” strikes – i.e. operations in which the aim was to kill as many people as possible with the attackers prepared to die to achieve their objective, although these were not suicide operations per se.

For their part, the Indian military, paramilitary and police units in the valley upped the tempo of operations after May 23 and the death toll on the side of the terrorists went up sharply; several key leaders of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahedin, the two key terror groups operating in Jammu & Kashmir, were killed. In a statement issued on Aug. 2, the Ministry of Defence said that the Indian Army had eliminated 449 terrorists during June-July 2001 (219 in June and 230 in July), the highest toll inflicted by the Army alone in a two-month period since 1989, when Pakistan initiated the covert war in J&K[6]. In August, there was an almost daily stream of reports announcing the deaths of militants in encounters with the security forces.

The APHC Blunders & “Azad Kashmiris” Are Shown Their Place
The political process in J&K, i.e. the government’s initiative launched in early April through its chief negotiator K.C. Pant, had come to a standstill even before the summit. The Pakistani-backed APHC had refused to meet with Pant, who insisted on talking to all political leaders in the valley – i.e. even those who were outside the APHC’s fold of 23 parties. The APHC’s point of view was that it should be allowed to visit Pakistan before commencing talks with Pant. The government of India was not prepared to issue passports to certain members of the APHC. However, well before the passport issue came to the forefront, APHC chairman Professor Abdul Ghani Bhat had indicated the APHC would not talk to Pant. He pointed out in an April 4 interview that the government nominated negotiator “chooses to talk to all the parties in Jammu & Kashmir, which is he chooses to talk to a crowd”[7]. This was unacceptable to the APHC, which claims to be the sole representative of the Kashmiris – a position not bolstered by any electoral showing.

Once the summit was announced in mid-June, the government ignored the APHC, which began floundering around for a meaningful posture. Initial attempts to inject themselves as a third party into the summit diplomacy failed miserably as both Pakistan and India pointed out that the APHC had no role in a bilateral summit between India and Pakistan. Subsequently, Musharraf ignored Indian demands and held a meeting over tea at the Pakistani embassy in New Delhi with APHC leaders. The move gained nothing for the APHC apart from added animosity from the Indian side, reconfirming the view of a former US ambassador to New Delhi that the Hurriyat “seemed to have no peace strategy, only a protest strategy”[8]. The unwieldy coalition has been studiously ignored in the weeks following the summit. An attempt by the Hurriyat to reach out to the Indian public by visiting Chennai and other cities appears not to have worked out as per their expectations; they were not welcomed in the state of Kerala.

The experience appears to have chastened them. J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah said on Sept. 8 that APHC leaders would be ready to take part in forthcoming elections – identifying APHC senior executive member Abdul Ghani Lone, Democratic Freedom Party leader Shabir Shah and JKLF representative Yasin Malik among potential candidates[9]. If true, this may cause a deep split within the APHC. There was a report in the Hindustan Times on Aug. 21 that APHC Chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat was under strong pressure to expel Lone from the Hurriyat over this very issue[10]. Meanwhile, as the APHC was caught between a variety of internal pulls and external pushes, Musharraf was busy demonstrating the limits of “Azadi” (freedom) to the residents of “Azad Kashmir” (which is Islamabad’s name for Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir - POK). The assembly elections in POK were conducted on July 5, 2001. The nomination papers of 40 candidates of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) were rejected on the grounds that they had refused to sign an affidavit that they stood for J&K’s accession to Pakistan.

The Muslim Conference won the elections, gaining 30 seats, fuelling expectations that Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan or his son Sardar Atique Khan would be elected to the post of “Azad Kashmir Prime Minister”. This was not to be. On July 20, the generals engineered the election of Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan as prime minister. Sikandar Hayat Khan promptly announced that he would nominate Abdul Qayyum as president. That, too, was not to be. Musharraf had decided that Maj. Gen. Mohammed Anwar Khan would prematurely retire from the Pakistan Army and would take over the post of president. According to B. Raman, Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India: “Maj. Gen. Mohammad Anwar Khan had earlier served in the ISI (Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence)… in the division responsible for training, arming and guiding the Army of Islam consisting of the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Al Badr”[11].

In other words, the situation in Kashmir rapidly turned from one of euphoria in the period between May 23 and July 14 to one of gloom and confusion in the subsequent weeks. The planned September 25^th meeting between Vajpayee and Musharraf in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting did not materialise because of the horror perpetrated on the landmark twin towers of New York by the very same evil brood that have been "bleeding India" - a favourite term among Pakistani strategists for close to two decades. The bloodshed in Kashmir is likely to continue. Musharraf had come to India saying he wanted to change history, a notion which India welcomed. It soon became clear, however, that his intent was to change geography. New Delhi was not willing to oblige.

Concluding Observations
It is this writer’s view that Musharraf's visit to India and its aftermath goes to show that the underlying causes of the tension between the two countries are not of the type that can be smoothed over by sophisticated summitry. The ideological gulf between the two countries is vast and the divide in public perceptions too great, for any general, no matter how firmly in control of his country he may be, or for any politician, no matter how generous his intention, to bridge in a matter of two or three days – or indeed years. In that sense, the continuation of dialogue between the leaders of the two countries, and perhaps its institutionalisation, would be beneficial as it might open a window of opportunity at some point in the future. However, even so, such a window of opportunity will be of limited long-term benefit unless both countries have durable political systems that can develop a memory of sustained interaction based on existing accords and joint declarations.