India and Pakistan still see Kashmir in different ways

Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri, Emeritus Professor, India's University Grants Commission, Project Syndicate

After two years of off-and-on nuclear brinkmanship, India and Pakistan are once again talking about how to settle their differences rather than issuing threats and rattling nuclear sabers. But do the talks now underway have any better chance of success than the countless failed negotiations that have marked the past fifty years?

On Nov. 25, 2003, India and Pakistan agreed to a cease-fire along the Line of Control (LoC), the international border that divides Indian Kashmir from Pakistani Kashmir, as well as the actual ground control (AGPL) in strategic Siachen region. The cease-fire thus covers a huge area: The 778-kilometer LoC, the 150-kilometer AGPL and the 198-kilometer international border. This should pave the way for a meaningful dialogue at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting to be held in Islamabad between Jan. 4-5.

Moreover, Pakistan has partly conceded its demand -- which dates to the creation of India and Pakistan a little more than half a century ago -- for an internationally supervised referendum in Kashmir to determine the province's sovereignty. A brave concession, no doubt, but India has a more rigorous criterion for believing that Pakistan is truly serious about reaching a peaceful agreement: It wants Pakistan to dismantle the infrastructure of cross-border terrorism -- in particular, the training camps for Kashmiri separatists and their international jihadi brethren.

Reining in the violent militants who keep the Kashmiri pot boiling, however, is difficult on both sides. In India and Pakistan, Kashmir is the national question. Every Indian and Pakistani government embraces the Kashmiri cause, both as a useful device to divert attention from their failures and because they fear what their publics might do if they were seen as surrendering to the traditional enemy on so vital an issue.

With Pakistan's economy in a tailspin, and with the jihad culture of so many young Pakistanis undermining the country's international credibility, moderate voices are at long last breaking through. The eminent columnist Amin M. Lakhani recently argued in the Dawn, Pakistan's largest-circulation newspaper, that "Pakistan's singular preoccupation with Kashmir...has been self-defeating.

Domestically, it has thwarted the country's economic, social and political development. Internationally, (it) has diminished the country's stature and left its reputation smeared. Even its spiritual development has been warped by the proliferation, popularization, and increase in relative power...of religious groups that represent an intolerant, militant, and gender-based interpretation of Islam."

Lakhani points to the bitter irony that Pakistan's 143 million people have sacrificed much in demanding democratic rights and self-determination for Kashmir's 13 million people, while enjoying precious few of those same rights at home for the past 55 years. Can Pakistan demand, with a straight face, rights for another people that it constantly denies to its own?

That is the sad and awful question Lakhani asks, but alas he offers no answer. Undoubtedly, at the forthcoming summit between the leaders of the two countries, India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will not miss any opportunity to ask the same question of his Pakistani counterpart. Obviously, Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarulla Khan Jamali will be able to offer no satisfactory answer to this question -- not when he has to go home and report to his boss, the General-turned-President Pervez Musharraf.

But Vajpayee should try to do more than score points off Musharraf. That Pakistan may be willing to put aside its demand for an international referendum in Kashmir is the first real sign of compromise to be seen over the issue in decades. Vajpayee should test Pakistan's seriousness on this point.

There is clearly room for doubt: On Dec. 18, President Musharraf declared that, at the Islamabad SAARC summit, he would demand a UN-sponsored plebiscite in Kashmir. The very next day, however, Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan, claimed that President Musharraf was prepared to drop this demand.

India needs to know if Musharraf is sincere. If so, the foundation for a real dialogue to defuse the struggle over Kashmir may be possible.

But Musharraf has good reasons to talk out of both sides of his mouth at this stage. He recently survived two assassination attempts, and Islamists accuse him of entering into a "bargain" with the infidel enemy, India.

Such rhetoric makes it hard to be optimistic about the outcome of the summit. Musharraf's vulnerable domestic position makes him probably the last man who can resolve with India the core issue of Kashmir. Seen as too pro-American because of his support of the recent war in Afghanistan, Musharraf needs to burnish his nationalist credentials. Posturing over Kashmir remains the best way of doing that.

Vajpayee, for his part, has hinted that if Pakistan wants a decent deal, it ought to make one with him, as he might be the last Indian leader for a long time who is willing to compromise even a little on the issue. The hard men of his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) look likely to do as they are told.

But the BJP has never shown any sign of solicitude towards Pakistan's interests. So the window of opportunity to talk and compromise may be open only briefly, and, unfortunately, we have probably not seen the end of nuclear brinkmanship.

The writer is a former Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and Research Coordinator at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.