Natwar Singh’s announcement that talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries will take place on June 27 and 28, that India was committed to the Simla, Lahore and Islamabad declarations, and that there was no policy declaration to the effect that the LoC should become the international border, has cleared the misunderstanding that had developed between India and Pakistan over the parameters of the peace process begun by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
But the mere fact that a single reference by Singh to the Simla agreement (and to the existence of other issues besides Kashmir) should have caused such a flutter in the dovecotes of Islamabad shows how much the interruption of the peace process has told on the nerves of Pakistan’s decision-makers.
There is, however, a deeper reason for the sensitivity that both countries are displaying towards each other. The people of both countries have shown in a hundred ways over the past 14 months that they want to put the past behind them and live as friends. Neither government, therefore, wants the peace process to fail. Yet their known positions on Kashmir are so far apart that if they follow to the letter Pervez Musharraf’s suggestion to exclude all solutions that either side finds unacceptable, it is perfectly possible there will be nothing left on the table. To avoid this debacle, both sides have agreed to eschew any premature discussion of a final solution in Kashmir, and to concentrate on the peace process. They hope the dialogue itself will narrow down differences over Kashmir. Progress on other issues will, in the meantime, increase the willingness to make compromises on Kashmir, till a solution finally emerges.
At first sight this seems the only way to go. That is why both the US and the EU have endorsed it wholeheartedly. But a closer look shows that a peace initiative that relies upon the process alone is also fraught with danger. The longer such a process lasts, and the deeper the two countries go into it, the more difficult it becomes to pull out if common ground continues to elude them. This is because there is a steady build-up of expectations that inevitably occurs as negotiations continue. A point eventually arrives when the negotiators fear the consequences of failure as much as those of success. For by then, the domestic and international backlash from disappointed expectations begins to look as threatening as those that could follow a less than optimal settlement of the dispute.
{{/usCountry}}At first sight this seems the only way to go. That is why both the US and the EU have endorsed it wholeheartedly. But a closer look shows that a peace initiative that relies upon the process alone is also fraught with danger. The longer such a process lasts, and the deeper the two countries go into it, the more difficult it becomes to pull out if common ground continues to elude them. This is because there is a steady build-up of expectations that inevitably occurs as negotiations continue. A point eventually arrives when the negotiators fear the consequences of failure as much as those of success. For by then, the domestic and international backlash from disappointed expectations begins to look as threatening as those that could follow a less than optimal settlement of the dispute.
{{/usCountry}}Each seemingly inept, inadvertent, or ill-timed statement out of either capital has served to jolt the other into thinking afresh about what is and is not possible, and to fill out the parameters within which the other is looking for a settlement. By an iterative process, therefore, these exchanges are helping both countries to give direction to and gain a measure of control over the direction of the peace process.
Where will the process end? Are there any parameters to the search for a solution that the two countries can agree upon? Yes. But to find it, both countries need to bring Kashmiri aspirations squarely into their calculations. Unfortunately, there is, at present, no consensus on what Kashmiris want. Most people in Pakistan take it for granted that being Muslims, Kashmiris want to be part of Pakistan. They prefer not to think of the MORI opinion poll, commissioned by the pro-Pakistan UK-based ‘Friends of Kashmir’ in April 2002, which showed that only 6 per cent of the respondents opted for Pakistan while 61 per cent opted for India. If all the 6 per cent were concentrated in the Valley, it would still translate into no more than a 13 per cent vote for Pakistan.
If one asks Kashmiris what they want, most declare without hesitation ‘Azadi’. But when you ask them to explain what ‘Azadi’ means to them, a systemic imprecision comes to the surface. For instance, as the J&K Permanent Resident (Disqualification) Bill, which was introduced in the state legislature in March, showed, Kashmiris want all the law-making and implementing powers that they need to safeguard their distinctness. But they also want to continue enjoying unfettered economic access to Indian markets and universities, to own property in India, and to travel without restrictions to and from India. The more thoughtful are also reluctant to give up the right of appeal to the Indian Supreme Court or the Election Commission against local judgments and decisions.
However, most Kashmiris also want the same freedoms in Pakistan. They want the Muzaffarabad-to-Srinagar road reopened, and resent the interdiction imposed by Delhi on travel to Pakistan. They would like to receive Pakistani tourists as they receive Indians, and unfettered access to Pakistani markets. Above all, they bitterly resent the fact that the two countries have made them a pawn in their power games, and turned their peaceful paradise into a violent hell without their having had a modicum of say in it.
Innumerable conversations over 14 years have convinced me that for Kashmiris ‘Azadi’ means, above all, the end of powerlessness. In effect, what they want is to return to the status they enjoyed before 1947, when they enjoyed free and unselfconscious access to the whole of the Indian subcontinent and to everything it could offer them. Although few would express it in this way, what they really want is to undo Partition itself, for that was the source of powerlessness on both sides of the LoC.
The road ahead for Delhi and Islamabad could lie in fulfilling this aspiration. It would require Pakistan to rein in the so-called Kashmiri militants severely and India to stop using its armed forces for counter-insurgency operations. It would require reopening the road to Muzaffarabad and the opening up of all of the old princely state of Kashmir — in stages — to trade and transit from both countries. It would require full participation in democratic processes in both parts of Kashmir, and the freedom of the two governments to discuss common concerns. It would allow each elected government to determine, and modify where deemed necessary, its relationship with India and Pakistan (a freedom that exists in theory in the constitution of J&K but has never been exercised).
However, it would not require either country to give up overall responsibility for the defence and foreign policy of its part of Kashmir. This is something that no Kashmiri to whom I have talked has demanded. What would emerge at the end of the negotiation process would be a variant on the condominium principle, in which India and Pakistan would jointly guarantee the security of Kashmir but take physical responsibility for the part they already control. The LoC would remain an international boundary, but would then become symbolic. All this could — and should — go hand in hand with the opening of trade, travel and cultural and sporting relations between the two countries, that is already underway.