Inside Pakistan

Sushant Sareen

Pakistan’s Strategic Dilemma Propels Peace Process

That there is massive change in the mindset of Pakistanis towards India is an impression that this writer got during a visit to Pakistan last August. This impression has got further strengthened during a recently concluded visit. The desire for peace with India is no longer limited to the usual suspects; rather it is to be found even in the quintessential establishment types who have traditionally thrived on India-baiting. But the desire for peace is also accompanied by great confusion about the direction that the Pakistan state is taking and the likely repercussions of the changing policy towards India. Of course, there are still the voices of the extreme right, symbolised by the Nazria-e-Pakistan mafia. But while earlier their voice was representative of the national mood, now they now appear to be on the margins of public debate.

The reason for the transformation inside Pakistan is to be found in a combination of diplomatic, strategic, economic, political and even cultural factors. To take the cultural factor first, we must remember that Pakistani establishment’s mindset is a predominantly Punjabi mindset. While a lot can be said about the Punjabi’s bull-headedness and cussedness, one should never underestimate the Punjabi’s pragmatism. This pragmatism is of course born in a vacuum but is the result of the situation in which Pakistan finds itself, a situation from which many in Pakistan believe that the country can extricate itself by settling affairs on its eastern front with India.

Pakistanis appear to have come to terms with the reality that after waging three and a half wars and mounting a jihadi campaign for 14 years, they are no closer to wresting control of Kashmir than they were 56 years ago. There is a sense of futility about the strategy being adopted. Moreover, the jihadi campaign, which many earlier believed was a low-cost-high-dividend campaign, is turning out to be quite the opposite. The jihadi factory has created a terrible image of Pakistan in the world, which in turn has not only deprived Pakistan of much needed foreign investment but also robbed it of business opportunities around the world. The jihad factory has also created a climate of uncertainty under which domestic investment too has all but dried up. Economic distress levels are very high and Pakistan is today one of the few countries where poverty levels are rising rather than falling.

In the given situation the Pakistani establishment, especially the army, has started understanding that its own corporate interests are being threatened. According to Dr. Akmal Hussein, a renowned Pakistani economist, the generals have understood that unless the economy can be put on a high growth path, they will simply not only not be able to find the resources to keep the military machine in fighting state, but might soon have no state left to protect or as some wags put it, conquer. Peace with India has therefore become necessary for economic revival. Politically too, the elite, which includes a large section of the military-bureaucratic establishment and the political, feudal and business elite, has started feeling threatened by the unbridled growth of the jihad industry. No less than a person than the former army chief, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg has now started hinting at the menace that the jihadis have become. It’s therefore not for nothing that Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been saying that the internal threats to Pakistan are far more serious than any external threat.

But the impact of the jihad factory on the economy and the polity is just one factor. An even more important factor, and one which the generals appreciate more than anyone else, is the strategic crisis that Pakistan finds itself in. The Pakistan army has always exercised a veto on the three major strategic issues confronting the country- Kashmir, nuclear program and Afghanistan. As long as America was either supporting or ignoring Pakistan on these issues, the Pakistani military establishment exercised a great deal of autonomy in policy formulation and implementation on these three issues of strategic importance. But with the Americans becoming an involved party and no longer ignoring or supporting Pakistan, in fact pressurizing Pakistan on all three, the strategic crisis has reached a critical point. Pakistan is now increasingly fearful of being caught in an Indo-American pincer and the only way out is by either settling with India on Kashmir or by giving up all interest in Afghanistan and letting the Americans create a new mess there and in addition compromising on its nuclear program to satisfy the Americans.

Out of the three, Kashmir is probably the least critical and easiest to settle. There are two reasons for this. One, apart from water flowing through Kashmir, Kashmir has little strategic value for Pakistan. Kashmir has more of a sentimental and emotional value and less of a strategic value for Pakistan. Two, settling Kashmir doesn’t mean Pakistan giving up its position on the issue and accepting the line of control as the international border. All it means is putting the issue on the back-burner (a much misunderstood and misused phrase), lowering tensions with India through beneficial cooperation and disengaging from the eastern front.

Afghanistan and the nuclear program however have a far more critical dimension than Kashmir. The nuclear program is seen as the ultimate guarantor of Pakistan's security and something that will prevent Pakistan from becoming another Iraq. But recently Pakistan has been coming under tremendous American pressure with questions being raised about the safety of Pakistan's command and control systems as well as revelations of Pakistani role in proliferating nuclear technology to countries like North Korea, Iran and Libya. Many Pakistanis believe that the Americans want to denuclearise Pakistan or at the very least start controlling Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Afghanistan too has grave implications for Pakistan's external security and internal stability. Pakistani intellectuals openly concede that Afghanistan is turning out to be a strategic nightmare for their country. But interestingly enough, it was when the former ISI chief Lt.Gen. Asad Durrani made light of the threat that Pakistan faces from a disturbed Afghanistan that one got convinced that Pakistan is in real trouble on its western front. Gen. Durrani is a brilliant mind who has perfected the art of deflecting people from the real issue. This is exactly what he did when this writer met him after the Lahore summit and asked him how the Pakistan army took the Lahore declaration. At that time he insisted that the army had absolutely no problem with Lahore declaration and the media was making too much of the absence of the service chiefs at Wagah. Of course, now we all know what Gen. Musharraf thought of the Lahore declaration and what he did to sabotage it.

The fact is that the last thing Pakistan can afford is to see Afghanistan descend into chaos or to have the Pashtuns, who straddle the Durand line, being marginalised inside Afghanistan. Even worse from Pakistan's point of view is the profile India is acquiring in that country. Pakistanis are very uneasy at the thought of India using Afghanistan to make trouble for them in the restive Pashtun belt of Pakistan. Adding to their disquiet is the American pressure on Pakistan to crack down hard on Pakistani Pashtun supporters of the taliban and other disaffected Pashtuns like Gulbadin Hekmatyar.

Many Pakistanis now realise that the only way to handle American pressure is by settling its affairs with India. The peace dividend that will result through trade, investment, travel, pipelines, opening of transit to Afghanistan and Central Asia, will help in reviving Pakistan's economy. Peace with Pakistan would leave India with little reason to try and create trouble for Pakistan through Afghanistan. With the eastern front settled, Pakistan will be able to concentrate is energies on settling the western front with Afghanistan. Moreover, once the threat from India recedes, Pakistan will be in a better position to withstand American pressure not only in Afghanistan but also on its nuclear program.

But at the same time there is a fear that the peace process with India could lead to a reaction from the jihad factory which will go out of business. The state seems to have lost control over many of the jihadis and is not going to find it easy to put the jihadi genie back in the bottle. Political observers in Pakistan are divided in their assessment of the threat posed by the jihadis. But they all agree that the state has not done the political and administrative ground work required to eliminate the jihadis. Not surprisingly then many Pakistanis are bracing themselves against the assault of the jihadis.

But there is also a realization that there are no easy options left for Pakistan. If the Pakistani state wishes to remain in tact then it must close down the jihad factory before the jihadis overwhelm the state. But closing down the factory will mean inviting a reaction from the jihadis. At the same time by closing down the jihad factory Pakistan will lose it’s only real leverage in Kashmir, which means that Pakistan must strike a deal with India that allows it to keep face. Perhaps this is what the Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri meant when he told a few Indian journalists on the sidelines of the SAFMA conference in Rawalpindi that neither side should think of humiliating the other.

A Jihadi Perspective in Indo-Pak Thaw

For an Indian journalist, meeting the jihadis in Pakistan always makes for a great story back home. But despite the omnipresence of the jihad factory in Pakistan, it has never been easy to get hold of important jihadi leaders. Post-9/11, and especially after the ban imposed on some jihadi organisations, setting up meetings with jihadis has become even more difficult. With Pakistan's famed ‘agencies’ quite chary of the jihadis talking to journalists, especially if they happen to be from India, access to jihadi leaders is tightly controlled. After the suicide attack Gen. Musharraf, many of the jihadi leaders (especially those belonging to Deobandi groups like Jaishe Mohammed, Harkatul Jihad Islami and Harkatul Mujahedin) had gone underground and the last thing they needed was to give an interview to an Indian journalist. Even the ones willing to meet were not willing to accept my condition that the meeting take place in a public place, preferably a popular hotel or restaurant. And yet, the temptation for that story remains.

I had all but given up on setting up a meeting with the jihadis, when I received a call from a Pakistani journalist friend. He informed me that he has set up a meeting for me and that he is sending a car to pick me up. That was the end of the conversation. I had no idea who I was meeting or where I was supposed to go. Knowing and trusting my friend I decided to sit in the car and go to the appointed place. The car drove me to a non-descript house. I went in and was ushered into a room where my friend was sitting with a senior leader of the Jamaatud Dawa (a reincarnation of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Taiba).

For the next two and half hours we had a long (and very civil) conversation in Punjabi, during the course of which we discussed and argued over the present state of jihad and its future, the JuD’s perspective on Indo-Pak relations, and about the organisation itself. The conversation started with the JuD leader saying that he believes that 9/11 was a disaster for the jihad. He was candid enough to say he will never admit this in public but his own feeling is that jihad suffered a great setback after 9/11. He said that there is great pressure on them from the regime to stop their jihadi operations and that a close watch is being kept on them.

When I asked why JuD had not been banned along with the reincarnated Jaishe Mohammed, Harkatul Mujahedin and other extremist organisations, he said that after the attack on the Indian parliament, the Lashkar leadership had decided to bifurcate their activities inside Pakistan from their jihadi activities inside Kashmir. He said that in December 2001, the Jamaatud Dawa had been formed and that the Lashkar-e-Taiba had nothing to do with the JuD anymore and that it was a completely separate organisation. He said the reason why JuD had been kept on the watch-list was because the regime found absolutely no evidence of its involvement in jihad in Kashmir. As to the provocative speeches being made by the JuD chief, Hafiz Saeed, I was told that all he is doing is making speeches and that’s not a crime (which it is if the Pakistan government was to apply the law). He said that after the formation of the JuD, the leadership had lost control over the operations of the LeT, and while they still had contacts with the organisation, they no longer exercised any control over its operations.

Pakistani journalists covering the jihad beat however debunk any distinction sought to be drawn between JuD and LeT. They said that they are still one and the same. They pointed out to the JuD annual congregation at Pattoki and said that the fiction of JuD and LeT being separate organisation became clear at this congregation where the entire security was provided by the LeT cadres. They said that the JuD is still collecting funds for the LeT and is also helping in procurement of arms and ammunition. JuD offices still double up as offices of the LeT inside Pakistan and recruits for the LeT are still being recruited by the JuD. In other words, the formation of JuD and separation of LeT is no more than an eye-wash.

When asked about the involvement of the LeT (or JuD) in acts of terrorism outside Kashmir, the JuD leader flatly denied any involvement. His take on incidents like the Gateway of India blasts and other such incidents was that these are acts done by Indian Muslims as retaliation for the massacres of Gujrat and other injustices heaped on the Muslims by Hindus in India.

The conversation then turned to how the JuD viewed the thaw in relations between India and Pakistan. The JuD leader was not very optimistic about the future of the peace process. He said that the Indians would take certain steps which would ensure that the peace process collapses. He said that his tanzeem is not unduly worried by the thaw because they don’t think this thaw will last long. Of course, if the peace process did succeed then the JuD would not stand in the way of its success. But he added that the solution to Kashmir that India sought would ensure that the stalemate continued because even if Pakistan accepted the Indian solution the Kashmiris would not, and they would continue their struggle against ‘Indian occupation’. He appeared to be on the defensive when confronted with the negligible Kashmiri presence in the violence in J&K. He first tried to put a Kashmiri face to the jihad but then admitted that most of the jihadis are Pakistani. But he said that in recent months a large number of Kashmiri youth are joining the jihadi ranks.

He repeated the rhetoric about Muslims coming to aid of ‘oppressed’ fellow Muslims. But when asked why people like him never thought of the 140 million Indian Muslims and only of the 4 million Kashmiri Muslims, he once again appeared to be caught in a dilemma. Perhaps he was wanted to say that his organisation is actually involved in arming and training the other Indian Muslims, but this then would have amounted to mea culpa that neither he nor his country could afford. He took great pains to convince me that his organisation isn’t against peace and the last thing they want is for the subcontinent to undergo yet another 1947 type holocaust. At this stage I asked him what their response would be to a call for ceasefire within Kashmir. He was candid enough to say that they would not accept a ceasefire because this would affect their ‘karobar’. I then asked him to list a few steps that he feels the Indian government needs to take to convince the Pakistanis about its seriousness in seeking a peaceful solution to Kashmir. For a few minutes he was caught speechless. He then kept fumbling for words and tried to sidestep the question. It was almost as if they had never even thought about searching for a non-jihadi solution to Kashmir. But when I wouldn’t give up and kept insisting that he come out with something positive and constructive, he very lamely said that maybe if the Indians released the political prisoners it would be a good step. At the same time he was realistic enough to understand that it was not possible for the Indian state to release prisoners who facing charges of committing heinous crimes.

The meeting with the JuD leader led me to four conclusions. First, I got a feeling that the meeting took place because the JuD wanted to convey a message of being an organisation of reasonable people and not the mindless fanatics they are often made out to be. There was a visible softening in the stand of the JuD, something which was simply not there when I met the Lashkar chief, Hafiz Saeed some three years back. Second, the meeting probably took place with the concurrence of the JuD’s handlers. But if this is the case then it probably means that the JuD has been kept in reserve to raise the jihadi temperature if the Pakistani establishment feels that the peace process with India is not going in the desired direction. The implication of this is that the Pakistani establishment is still playing a double game as far as jihad is concerned and hasn’t forsaken jihad as an instrument of state policy.

Third, the jihadis are unable and perhaps incapable of imagining a world without jihad. For them jihad is an article of faith without which they would lose their sole purpose of existence. And finally, the JuD (and its sister organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba) is the one jihadi organisation that for now at least remains under the complete control of the Pakistani establishment and either for reasons of short-term expediency or as part of a long-term strategy is not willing to confront the establishment just yet. And this, despite the fact that the JuD is deeply concerned and even angry not only about the pro-American and anti-jihad direction that Gen. Musharraf’s regime appears to be taking but also the pressure that is coming on the organisation to wind up their jihadi activities in Kashmir and other parts of the world.

The question is for how long the JuD will continue to take directions from the Pakistani establishment. Here one thing that the JuD leader said keeps ringing in my ears. Sounding an ominous warning for the Pakistani regime, he said that there is only so much humiliation and pressure that a man or a people can take. Once the pressure become unbearable and humiliation crosses the limit, there is bound to be retaliation.

The Kashmiri and Religious Politicians Perspective

Amanullah Khan, chairman of the JKLF, is most unhappy with the peace process between India and Pakistan. For a man who knows what it means to be first used by a state and then unceremoniously disposed off after the state has achieved its purpose, Khan realizes that the peace process, if successful, is probably the end of the road for people like him. There was a time in the late 1980’s and very early 1990’s when Amanullah Khan was a really happening man in Pakistan. His organisation, JKLF, was spearheading the ‘freedom struggle’ inside the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. But after the Pakistanis raised militias that were sworn to struggle for making Kashmir a part of Pakistan, the JKLF’s militant cadre was systematically wiped out. Today, what is left of the JKLF in Pakistan is Khan, who, in the fond hope of remaining relevant desperately seeks out journalists to have his two-bit say on Kashmir.

When I met Khan at an Islamabad hotel, he expressed his unhappiness over the peace process, which according to him had completely excluded the Kashmiris. When told that he of all the people should have realised that this is what was always going to happen and that the choice before the Kashmiris is simple: either they enter into a deal with India, or else India enters into a deal with Pakistan, Khan responded in anger and said that in that case the Kashmiris from both sides of the divide would get together and confront India and Pakistan. But he agreed that in case this happened India and Pakistan will get together against the Kashmiris and in this fight the Kashmiris would lose. Khan went on the defensive when asked why he won’t let the Kashmiris ever live in peace. By now Khan had got extremely agitated and started rambling about Kashmir eventually winning its independence and that people who have doubts should realise that there was time when even India's independence appeared impossible. He then flew off the handle and said that when Gandhi started his movement, he was derided by the British as a ‘naked fakir’ but later the same British had to negotiate with him.

I told him that the British left India because of the changed international situation and because they lost the stamina to hold on to India. The current situation in South Asia could hardly be compared to the post-World War II situation. Secondly, I said, Khan does great disservice to the memory of the Gandhi by comparing himself with the Mahatma. Khan responded by saying he had picked up the gun only as a means to draw attention to the Kashmir issue and once international attention got focussed on Kashmir he had decided to forsake the gun and pursue peaceful means for resolution of the issue. But this was as much nonsense as one could take from Khan.

I reminded Khan that the JKLF had given up the gun not for some higher ideal but because it had no guns left. The systematic campaign by Pakistan and India to wipe out the JKLF’s militant cadre had left Khan with no choice but to give up the gun. I also reminded him that the JKLF was the original terrorist organisation and all its actions were classical terrorist actions. All that the JKLF did was to kidnap and murder innocent civilians. When confronted with the murder of the Indian diplomat, Ravindra Mahtre in UK, the attack on the school bus carrying children of military officers, the killing of Air Force officers who were shot in their backs while waiting for their bus (a case in which Yasin Malik is an accused), the cold-blooded murder of the vice-chancellor of the Kashmir University and the General Manager of HMT, Khan, somewhat unconvincingly kept denying his involvement in all these incidents. But his discomfiture knew no bounds when asked how he could claim to speak on behalf of the Kashmiris since he is not a Kashmiri but belongs to the Northern Areas and cannot even talk in the Kashmiri language. Khan ended the meeting by expressing more disappointment in me than in the peace process.

While ‘Kashmiris’ like Khan are unhappy, other ‘Kashmiri’ leaders like Sardar Attique Ahmad Khan, son of the former prime minister of ‘Azad Kashmir’ Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan and president of All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference are somewhat confused. Talking to Sardar Attique, it became clear that his party is not averse to the peace process. This is so probably because the Azad Kashmir leadership has always faithfully followed the line given to it by the Pakistani establishment, especially the army. And if today the Army is searching for peace, then these leaders are not going to oppose the process. Sardar Attique insisted that his party has always stood for a peaceful resolution of Kashmir. He agreed that no quick fix solution to the issue was possible and that it would be a long drawn out process. However, he said, in the meantime alternative arrangements can be worked out to provide relief to the Kashmiris by allowing movement across the LoC, ending the violence in the state, engaging the leaderships of the two parts in a political dialogue, setting up political structures so that intra-Kashmiri dialogue is possible etc.

But while Sardar Attique was reasonableness personified, he and others like him have a problem. A senior Pakistani journalist sitting with us literally took Sardar Attique’s pants off and told him that if this is what had to be done then what was the reason for the fighting over Kashmir for 56 years. He warned Sardar Attique that people are going to ask very uncomfortable questions and are going to ask why they have been misled for so long. The diatribe of this journalist, who incidentally is not opposed to the peace process but is also not very optimistic about it, shook Sardar Attique to the core and he was left fumbling for words to explain his position. There was however a lot of merit in what this journalist was saying. The fact remains that the Pakistani leadership has not done the required groundwork to prepare public opinion for the peace process. As a result the peace process is being seen as a surrender or a sell-out and this is going to be a big problem for the military-bureaucratic establishment and the political establishment of Pakistan.

This was exactly what a politically well-connected jihadi leader indicated when he said that if the establishment thinks it can by simple administrative action bottle the jihadi genie then it is in store for a massive surprise. He said that the jihad network had gone far too deep into the body politic for it to be handled through administrative action alone. He said that unless the establishment exposes in public the corruption, shenanigans and depravity of the jihadi leaders, it will not be able to impress upon the public the need to dismantle the infrastructure of jihad. He said that anyone who thinks that jihad can be stopped by blocking the LoC or by seizing bank accounts and stopping fund-raising activity is only fooling himself. According to this man, there are probably more jihadis entering India through Bangladesh (which he called the most happening jihad country) and Nepal than through the LoC.

While the Kashmiris and the jihadis are going to be a problem, the one area from where the regime has least worry is surprisingly enough the religious parties, in particular the Jamaat Ulema Islam (JUI) and the Jamaat Islami. The JI has been traditionally most hawkish on Kashmir. But in the last few months, the Jamaat seems to have softened its position. It came as a big surprise when a young but important Jamaat leader told me that the best way out is for India to placate the Kashmiris on its side and that once the Kashmiris are re-integrated into the Indian mainstream then the Jamaat will be left with no choice but to accept the reality. He said the Jamaat will probably continue to make some noise but will slowly disengage itself from Kashmir. In a dig at his own leader he said ‘agar Kashmiri raazi to kya kare ga Qazi’ (Qazi Husain Ahmad, leader of Jamaat Islami Pakistan).

A very senior leader of the JUI agreed and he said that people must understand that the Jamaat is not like the military that can overnight affect a U-turn in its policy. He said, somewhat tongue in cheek, that maybe if the right message was given from the right quarters (the army and ISI) to the Jamaat it would go slow even on its rhetoric and eventually back off from its position on Kashmir. He said that the Jamaat leadership has started understanding that sticking to the UN resolutions on Kashmir is not in Pakistan's interest because implementing these resolutions would mean having to withdraw Pakistani troops from Kashmir and letting Indian troops move into the area vacated by Pakistani troops for maintaining law and order. But the Jamaat is finding it politically difficult to disengage from its long standing position. He said that while the JUI backs the peace process wholeheartedly, for reasons of political expediency, the MMA will continue to raise questions about Kashmir and will continue to observe anniversaries like the Kashmir day on February 5. He added that as long as the MMA alliance survived, the Jamaat would continue to be restrained by the JUI on the question of peace with India. But if the MMA split the Jamaat would revert to its old mindless hawkish position and would enter into alliances with people opposed to peace with India and become a complete nuisance.

After meeting a cross-section of Pakistani leaders, the impression one gets is that with the Pakistani state in the process of making a paradigm shift in its policy towards India, political players in the country are still struggling to redefine themselves to fit into the new scheme of things to come. The fact that the peace process is still in its infancy means that seasoned political players must play their cards carefully so that they are left with a fallback position in the event the peace process grinds to a halt. But just as the future of Pakistani politics will to a great extent be determined by the peace process, the future of the peace process too will depend on how the political players (including the army and the jihadis) redefine themselves.

The Contours of a Possible Deal

What deal or understanding was reached at Islamabad between Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, can at best only be speculated upon. But from the way the two sides have gone about doing business at Islamabad it appears as though the Indian and Pakistani establishments have given up the Punjabi way of dealing with the other side in favour of the Marwari way of doing business. For 56 years they followed the Punjabi way which is first strike a relationship and then do business. Now they seem to be following the Marwari practice of first doing business with each other, and once sufficient trust and faith develops, entering into a long-term relationship.

Another thing which happened this time was that both sides learnt the lessons of the failed Agra summit. As a result, both sides decided not to conduct diplomacy through the media. So far there has been no selective leak or background briefing to favourite journalists that gives any idea of the contours of the understanding arrived at in Islamabad. Probably the only hint we have of what transpired behind closed doors is the comment of the Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, who said that the meeting between Vajpayee and Musharraf was so tough, blunt and brutal that he feared that the talks between India and Pakistan would once again collapse. That the two sides finally agreed upon a joint statement is, perhaps, indicative of the desire on both sides to make a breakthrough and set in motion a process for reconciliation and resolution of disputes and issues. At least that is what appears to be the direction in which the two countries are moving. Of course, how successful this process is, and whether or not it does bring peace in the region, will depend crucially upon the seriousness as well as expectations that the two sides hold from this process.

Talking to Pakistani analysts, commentators and politicians, the feeling one gets is that they are confused. There is a degree of wishful thinking about the possible solution. At the same time, there is apprehension that the general might have once again succumbed to international pressure and entered into an understanding, if not a deal, that is not in Pakistan's interest. There is a sense of realism that Kashmir is not an issue that is amenable to a quick-fix solution and that the best case scenario is a step-by-step process leading to a solution some time in the future. But there is also the impatience with the process and a desire to find a quick and acceptable solution to the Kashmir issue. There is the unmistakable desire for reaping the benefits of peace and a sense of futility about continuing along the path of hostility. But there is at the same time the feeling among some sections of Pakistani opinion that the Indians are so keen to do business with Pakistan that in return they will be amenable to a settlement of Kashmir which is favourable to Pakistan or at the very least satisfies the Kashmiris. There is a sense of futility and even ennui on Kashmir and people want to get it over with. But there is also the baggage of decades of indoctrinated suspicion, hostility and hatred that they find it difficult to get over especially if there is a feeling that Pakistan has lost out to India.

It is against the backdrop of such conflicting emotions that people in Pakistan talk or speculate about the understanding or deal reached in Islamabad with the Indians. And because of the conflicting emotions some of the expectations that even some senior and responsible people hold from the peace process are completely unrealistic. The trouble is that often enough in the Indo-Pak context, a wishful solution is first bandied about as the likely solution and when that wish is dashed on the rock of reality the two sides go into a prolonged sulk and the peace process collapses.

One such solution that some people in Pakistan are talking about is the so-called ‘Chenab formula’, under which the river Chenab will become the international border. What this means is that the Kashmir valley and some Muslim majority districts of Jammu division will go to Pakistan while the rest of Jammu division and Ladhakh will become parts of India. This formula is so bizarre that one fails to understand how any government in India, which hasn’t lost a war to Pakistan, can ever accept it. What is equally surprising is how some Pakistanis can actually think of winning territory in negotiations which they haven’t been able to win in a war. In fact, this is what the Pakistani military ruler was alluding to when he said he was willing to give up insistence on the UN resolutions on Kashmir. The Pakistanis apparently are in the process of convincing themselves that the Indians will be amenable to this solution. Therefore the sooner the Indians disabuse the Pakistanis of such fanciful notions, the better it will be for the peace process.

Another solution that some Pakistani analysts are talking about is somewhat more realistic, but probably equally difficult to implement. This solution talks in terms of the international border being broadly around the current LoC but with major adjustments. This means that a few districts will change hands but without any dislocation of the people. The adjustments will be such that they will keep the security interests of the two sides in mind. But again, this is easier said than done because such a solution will be a political minefield that neither side will be able to walk. Then there is talk of a solution based on the proposals made by the Kashmir Study Group, which include among other things, shared sovereignty by India and Pakistan over the Kashmir Valley. But no government in India will ever be able to agree on these proposals.

There are however many Pakistanis who agree, albeit reluctantly, that at this point in time there is really no solution to the Kashmir issue. The analogy that fits Kashmir best is that it’s a problem like diabetes, which you can keep under control by taking shots of insulin but for which there is no permanent cure. The moral of the story is that both India and Pakistan must learn to live with the problem of Kashmir until such time that some cure is invented or discovered. This line of thinking is probably closest to what the Indians have in mind and the only way to make a paradigm shift in bilateral relations between the two countries. However there is a difference between the Indian and Pakistani outlook on learning to live with the Kashmir problem. While the Indians believe that the two countries can live in peace without necessarily having to solve Kashmir, the Pakistanis believe that perhaps peace may yield a solution to Kashmir.

For Pakistanis, learning to live with the Kashmir problem does not mean giving up the search for a solution to the problem. What it means is that ending the mindless hostility of the past 6 decades and entering into a more cooperative and beneficial relationship with India. This means that opening up to trade, travel, tourism, transit, investment, infrastructure development, energy cooperation with India both bilaterally and under the SAARC framework. As far as Kashmir is concerned, it means lowering the level of violence in the state and taking a series of reciprocal measures that gives relief to the Kashmiris caught in the crossfire between Indian security forces and the jihadis. The measures being envisaged are ending the infiltration from the Pakistani occupied portion of Kashmir, announcing an amnesty and providing safe passage to jihadis operating in Kashmir and exchanging intelligence to eliminate the hardcore jihadis. Once there is relative peace in Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian army could be withdrawn to the barracks and internal security duties could be handed over to the local police and paramilitary forces. Later some sections of the army could be withdrawn from the state. All these measures will also build confidence. Movement between the two portions of Kashmir could be opened up and even some sort of an over-arching political structure whereby the political leadership and governments of the two portions of Kashmir could meet and solve issues of common interest and concern without necessarily reverting to either New Delhi or Islamabad.

This really is the best case scenario for the peace process. Anything else (whether it is LoC as border, Chenab formula, Kashmir Study Group proposals or any other such solution) is either not going to be acceptable or deliverable. But for the Pakistani establishment delivering on this last scenario too will not be easy because the onus of taking the important first step of ending infiltration lies on the Pakistanis. Ending infiltration implies that the Pakistanis have either decided to dismantle the jihad factory or have asked the jihadis to lie low for sometime and give the establishment time to try and reach an acceptable solution within a specified time frame and that if this does not happen the jihad tap can be opened up once again. In either case Pakistan will be playing with fire: in the former case, the Pakistani state is likely to be embroiled in a long and destructive battle against the jihadis; in the latter case, Pakistan will be seen to be a rogue state and could possibly be ostracized from the international community.

This article first appeared on the website of the Observer Research Foundation, www.orfonline.org and has been reproduced here with their permission.