Quake tragedy gives India, Pakistan chance to come closer

Quake tragedy gives India, Pakistan chance to come closer

Vijay Joshi, Associated Press/New Delhi

Tragedies have a way of bringing people together - even
adversaries.

Saturday's devastating earthquake in Kashmir joined rivals
Pakistan and India in a common grief and offered them a chance to
shed past hostilities and make peace. But that might be just
wishful thinking.

"The negotiating table decides the power equation. That
equation of power is not going to change by an earthquake.
Nothing is decided by goodwill," said Ajai Sahni, the head of the
Institute for Conflict Management think tank in New Delhi.

"Every major tragedy gives rise to a wave of sentimentalism
(but) these things are not decided by sentimentality," he told
The Associated Press.

Kashmir is simply too deep a wound in the political psyches of
both India and Pakistan to be healed quickly. Since Pakistan's
creation from British colonial India, the two nuclear rivals have
fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir that left the
Himalayan region divided between them by a cease-fire line, the
de facto border today.

On Saturday, deaths visited on both sides of that border, but
much more so in Pakistan - where the death toll is between 20,000
and 30,000. In the Indian Kashmir, the toll was 650.

Within hours of the quake, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke
with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf by telephone to offer
relief and rescue assistance to his country. The Indian foreign
minister also made a similar offer to his Pakistani counterpart.

Musharraf told CNN that he was considering Singh's offer and
would ask for "whatever we need," but cautioned that it may not
be easy. "You do understand there is a little bit of sensitivity
there," he said.

During their six-minute conversation, Singh and Musharraf
agreed that their envoys would coordinate disaster relief
operations, Indian officials said on Sunday, speaking on
customary condition of anonymity.

To N.M. Prusty, the head of emergency relief at the
international aid agency CARE's India office, this is a golden
opportunity.

"The mutual help in humanitarian crisis will be the most
powerful confidence building measure in the history of India-
Pakistan relationship," he told the AP.

"History shows that at the time of natural disasters we have
come together in this region. This is an opportunity when both
India and Pakistan can forget their differences," he said.

Prusty's optimism stems from the peace brought to the
Indonesian province of Aceh by another natural disaster -- the
Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami. Faced with unprecedented death and
destruction, separatist rebels in Aceh and the Indonesian
government agreed to stop fighting and forged a peace accord that
is still holding.

In Sri Lanka too, another country devastated by the tsunami,
Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sinhalese government also joined hands
to help shelter and feed survivors. But their peace was short-
lived: the country's foreign minister was assassinated in an
August attack widely thought to be the work of the Tamil Tigers
rebels, although they deny any role in the killing.

To Sahni, the conflict management expert, the gestures made by
the Indian and Pakistani leaders to express solidarity are just
that.

"I don't think there will be any kind of long-term impact.
There will be some symbolism. We will pretend to give some aid,
they will express their gratitude. That's about it."

Symbolism was also on display from Israel, which offered aid
to Muslim Pakistan, a reflection of Musharraf's recent overtures
to the Jewish state.

India accuses Pakistan of harboring Kashmiri militants
fighting for independence or merger with Pakistan. Militant
activity has come down in recent months in line with the peace
efforts.

Col. J.S. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman, said eight
suspected militants were shot to death on Sunday when they tried
to sneak into Indian Kashmir from Pakistani Kashmir.

"Unfortunately when the Indian army is trying to provide
earthquake relief, these attempts at infiltration are taking
place," said Juneja. "But our guard is not down."

Still, the earthquake gave the two countries the opportunity
to test some of the recent confidence building measures reached
during the numerous rounds of the peace talks.

On Saturday, India's Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran used for
the first time a newly installed telephone hot line -- the fruit
of months of painstaking negotiations -- to speak with his
Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Mohammed Khan, to convey sympathy and
offers of aid.

Top military commanders in Kashmir also used a telephone hot
line to offer sympathies for the soldiers killed in landslides.
At least 54 Indian soldiers were among the dead.