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.