Global News Journal

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India and Pakistan: practising peace

Given the history of India and Pakistan, it is easy to be sceptical about the chances of their latest peace initiative. So let's start with the positives.

Unlike past peace efforts which have veered between ill-prepared personal initiatives by political leaders and technical talks between bureaucrats which foundered for lack of direction from the top, the current phase combines the two.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's impromptu  invitation to his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani to watch last week's India-Pakistan cricket semi-final coincided with the resumption of the first structured dialogue between the two countries since the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.  The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats, of India and Pakistan met in Thimphu, Bhutan in February.  In talks last week, the home secretaries of the two countries made progress in coordinating their investigations into the Mumbai attacks; the trade secretaries are expected to meet soon, as are the defence secretaries.

Moreover, the Indian prime minister is personally committed to pursuing peace in the time he has left before a national election due by 2014.  And while last year he was isolated even within his own party in his enthusiasm for peace - an idea that still lingers in some quarters - his  initiative  appears to enjoy the support of powerful Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. Outlook magazine, writing about his cricket diplomacy, noted that Singh was flanked by Gandhi and her son and prime-minister- in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, when he welcomed Gilani on his first official visit to India.

The Pakistan Army, which dominates foreign and security policy in Pakistan, has also been slowly reassessing its approach to Islamist militants it once nurtured for use against India as they slip increasingly out of its control. How far that reassessment goes is open to debate;  but few doubt that Gilani would have accepted Singh's invitation to India to explore peace talks had this not been endorsed by the army.

All that said, sceptics have history on their side when they argue that the latest attempt at peace-making will fail.  Militants, including those allied with al Qaeda, have an interest in disrupting peace talks, using an attack on India to stir up fears of war on Pakistan's eastern border and take pressure off them on its western border with Afghanistan.  If talks are not to be sabotaged -- particularly at a time when militant groups in Pakistan are fragmenting and some of their cadres  sucked into the orbit of al Qaeda -- both countries would need to overcome distrust enough to share intelligence to prevent another big attack.

Singh's peace initiative also has powerful opponents within the Indian establishment, who are well placed to whip up an already jingoistic media if they think he is going too far.  Bharat Karnad, from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, wrote that the Pakistan Army appeared to have decided to favour talks with India for now. "The question is can India capitalise on what seems to be rethinking underway in the Pakistan Army?  Alas, there is surprisingly less give here than is generally assumed," he wrote. "This is because India’s Pakistan policy is hostage to the petty calculations of the political class in the country and powerful ministries within the Indian government with vested interest in portraying Pakistan as menace."

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Keeping Raymond Davis and Lashkar-e-Taiba in perspective

According to the New York Times, Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor arrested in Pakistan for shooting dead two Pakistanis in what he says was an act of self-defence, was working with a CIA team monitoring the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

The article, by Washington-based Mark Mazzetti, was not the first to make this assertion. The NYT itself had already raised it, while Christine Fair made a similar point in her piece for The AfPak Channel last week (with the intriguing detail that "though the ISI knew of the operation, the agency certainly would not have approved of it.")

But it was the first article I've seen which focused almost exclusively on U.S. anxieties about the Lashkar-e-Taiba -- blamed for the 2008 attack on Mumbai -- while also linking these explicitly to the furore over the Raymond Davis case:

"The CIA team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant 'Army of the Pure'. Pakistan’s security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. These and other American officials, all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, are now convinced that Lashkar is no longer satisfied being the shadowy foot soldiers in Pakistan’s simmering border conflict with India. It goals have broadened, these officials say, and Lashkar is committed to a campaign of jihad against the United States and Europe, and against American troops in Afghanistan."

My first reaction to this was that it was not particularly new - we already knew the Americans were worried about the Lashkar-e-Taiba. My follow-up comment is that there is a danger of conflating the very specific row over Raymond Davis with longer-term arguments over the militant group. The two are not one and the same, even though they may overlap. And while rationally everyone knows this, politically such conflation is important, since it feeds all too often into a "pundit consensus" made up of emotion and impression.

 So here is a summary of my understanding of the history of the U.S. view of the Lashkar-e-Taiba based on conversations with officials and analysts (and on which, for fear of falling into pundit consensus traps myself, I am happy to be challenged.)

The United States, much to India's annoyance, was initially reluctant to take on all militant groups in Pakistan, focusing primarily on seeking Islamabad/Rawalpindi's help on tackling al Qaeda following the Sept. 11 attacks.  Yet, according to counter-terrorism experts, in adopting this stance Washington had failed to understand the way in which militant groups had changed in the 1990s from those with vertical hierarchies and clear agendas into a much more polymorphous, overlapping and horizontal movement. Among those who stressed this new development was former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who complained that even after 9/11.  the Pakistan Army was still running training camps for the Lashkar-e-Taiba with the full knowledge of the CIA.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Musharraf’s Kashmir deal, mirage or oasis?

The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats,  of India and Pakistan are expected to meet on the sidelines of a South Asian summit in Thimpu, Bhutan on Feb 6/7 to try to find a way back into talks which have been stalled since the attack on Mumbai in November 2008. Progress is expected to be limited, perhaps paving the way to a meeting of the foreign ministers, or to deciding how future talks should be structured.

Expectations are running low, all the more so after a meeting between the foreign ministers descended into acrimony last July. And leaders in neither country have the political space to take the kind of risks needed for real peace talks right now. Pakistan is struggling with the fall-out of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer  among many other things, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been weakened by a corruption scandal at home.

However, in the interests of establishing a baseline, I asked former president Pervez Musharraf in an interview earlier this week about a roadmap for peace he had agreed with Prime Minister Singh in 2007 before political turmoil forced him out of office. The roadmap brought the two countries to their nearest in years to a peace deal, and during Barack Obama's presidential election campaign, there was a great deal of hope it  could be revived in order to ease tensions between India and Pakistan  in turn helping to stabilise Afghanistan. Even after the Mumbai attacks ended chances of an early "Kashmir to Kabul" peace settlement, the idea has lingered on as one of the more promising models. Yet since the agreement was reached in secret, its details have never been officially released.

Diplomats say the agreement hinged on an acceptance by India and Pakistan that there would be no exchange of territory in disputed Kashmir but they would work to make irrelevant the Line of Control which divides the region. There was also supposed to be a "joint mechanism" under which Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris would oversee areas of common interest.  No one can agree, however, on far advanced the talks were. Some say the deal was ready for signing; others that there was still a long way to go.  In particular, the two countries had yet to agree the nature of the "joint mechanism", and bring on board their own people and domestic constituencies in accepting the agreement. Here is what Musharraf had to say when I asked him about the sceptics' view of the draft agreement:

"You are probably concentrating only on Kashmir. But there were two other issues, Sir Creek and Siachen. On Sir Creek and Siachen we reached a stage that they can be signed yesterday. There is no doubt in my mind."  The disputed territory in Sir Creek had been surveyed and was just awaiting a leadership decision, he said. "Then Siachen, we had decided on the relocation of troops beyond certain lines, so everything is done."

"Yes, Kashmir is not that easy. We had found basic parameters; it was my idea actually ... the parameters were first of all demilitarising, which meant really demilitarising on the Line of Control; graduated demilitarisation from the Line of Control and also from the cities in the Indian part of Kashmir; that is what is bothering and troubling the civilians there; so therefore in first case leave the cities and go into the outskirts and then further getting to garrisons. The second element was maximum self-governance, and the third was an overwatch of those areas not given for self-governance, and also (to) see how the self-governance is functioning. This body we had proposed, I had proposed, (was to) be of Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians.

 "So these were the parameters and then the issue was of the Line of Control, making the Line of Control irrelevant ... The Indians thought we should make this as a permanent border. My view was that this has been the cause of wars. How can we have the cause of conflict as the permanent solution? So my idea was that we could look into making the Line of Control irrelevant.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Will Obama refer to Kashmir in public in India?

Will President Barack Obama make some public remarks on Kashmir during his trip to India next month?

At a White House press briefing, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes refused to be pinned down on specifics,  beyond saying that the United States would continue to express support for India and Pakistan to pursue talks.

"I wouldn’t -- I don't want to get into prefacing with precision what his comments are, in part because he’ll be answering a lot of questions there in the town hall and press conference and we haven’t -- we’re still working through his remarks on certain things," he said.

Yet it is a question that cannot -- and will not -- be left to chance.

Indian is deeply sensitive about foreign visitors talking about Kashmir -- as British foreign ministers have learned to their cost on earlier trips. It regards Kashmir as an integral part of India and refuses even to recognise the territory at the heart of more than 60 years of enmity with Pakistan as disputed. Moreover, it has consistently rejected outside interference, saying that its disputes with Pakistan must be settled bilaterally.

Obama, who raised hackles in India during his presidential election campaign by suggesting the Washington should try to help resolve the Kashmir dispute, is hoping to use the trip to help U.S. business tap into India's growing economy. With a flagging economy at home, he cannot afford to offend his hosts.

But at the same time, the biggest foreign policy challenge of his administration is over how to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The war in Afghanistan cannot be ended without Pakistan's help. And Pakistan itself faces serious instability -- potentially a much bigger worry than Afghanistan with its 180 million people and nuclear bombs. Pakistan's identity in turn is intimately bound up with India - its past support for Islamist militants was driven by its belief that this was the only way to neutralise the influence of its much bigger neighbour both in Kashmir and in Afghanistan.  Depending on who you listen to, it either will not, or can not, tackle Islamist militants based in Pakistan without a peace settlement with India, including on Kashmir.

from Afghan Journal:

Obama in India next month; ripples in the region

U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to India is still a couple of weeks away and there is the huge U.S. election before then, but it has already set off ripples in the region. The Chinese have especially cottoned onto Obama's Indian journey, fretting over what they see as a U.S. attempt to ring fence China by deepening ties with countries around it. And continent-size India with a population of over a billion and an economy growing at a clip just behind China's is seen as a key element of that strategy of containment.

Qui Hao of the National Defense University, writes in the Global Times that while U.S. military alliances with Japan and South Korea form the backbone of the "strategic fence" around China, the "shell" is the partnership that Washington is building with India, Vietnam and other nations that have territorial disputes with China.

India, Qui cautions, would do well not to blindly follow America's policies in the region, especially if it really wanted to be a global player. India, China and the United States were bound up in a triangular relationship, and as the two weaker parts of that relationship, it was important that they maintained stable ties so that Washington didn't exploit their differences, Qui wrote.

Quite remarkable, since for decades and especially so in recent years, the Chinese have hardly seen India as little more than a regional player locked in disputes with its neighbours, much less an equal in a three-way relationship involving the United States.

Qui is not alone. Du Youkang who heads the center for South Asian studies at Fudan University said the rise of India and China was the 21st century's biggest development, and both countries must work to deepen ties. Some Western countries and the media were trying to drive a wedge between the two neighbours , Du said in the China Daily, urging both to be vigilant against elements inside their countries and outside trying to stir trouble and derail a growing relationship. There was much that was common between the two countries, not least their desire to meet the challenges  globalisation in  a Western-dominated international  economic  system.

China and India share a lot of common views on many major international issues such as a multi-polar world, reform of the international economic and financial system, South-North relations, democratization of international relations, climate change and World Trade Organization talks. In recent years, the two sides have enhanced coordination and cooperation over these issues to protect their as well as the entire developing world's interests.

China is not the only one watching Obama's passage to India. Arch rival Pakistan will be closely following the trip, beginning from Mumbai and indeed the very hotel which was one of the centres targeted by Pakistan-based militants in deadly attacks in 2008.  Pakistan, and by extension Afghanistan, will by themselves be the elephants in the room when Obama sits down for talks with his Indian hosts. Any tilt, or a perceived slight or remarks such as the one made by British Prime Minister David Cameron when he was visiting India, saying Pakistan couldn't look both ways in the fight against terrorism, run the risk of further souring U.S.-Pakistan ties.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan-India; a $5 million downpayment on a peace initiative

Historical parallels can be misleading, so I am a little bit wary of reading too much into a comparison between the devastating cyclone which hit then East Pakistan in 1970 and the current floods in Pakistan. But on the surface the similarities are there.

In 1970, the Pakistani government was criticised for not doing enough to help the victims of the Bhola cyclone, exacerbating tensions between the western and eastern wings of the country ahead of a civil war in which East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh. In 2010, the Pakistani government has been criticised for not doing enough to help the victims of the floods; potentially exacerbating tensions between the ruling elite and the poor -- usually the first to suffer in a natural disaster. At the same time the country is fighting what is effectively a civil war against Islamist militants, for whom poverty and alienation provide a fertile breeding ground.

At the very least, you can say that big natural disasters have unpredictable consequences. For that reason I'm reluctant to start speculating about the long term consequences of the floods, although the Indian blog, The Acorn, has made a pretty good stab at it here. And you can also say that the response of India will be crucial.

 In 1971, India backed the Bengali separatists, inflicting a humiliating military defeat on Pakistan, forcing its army to surrender at Dhaka and taking 90,000 Pakistani prisoners-of-war. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that war - and there are many - Pakistan's narrative memory of India exploiting its weakness in a civil war to split the country in two continues to inform its thinking about its much bigger neighbour to this day. So what happens in 2010?

The question -- at least as posed to me from a Pakistani perspective - is this. Will India show its sincerity towards peace by helping Pakistan recover from the biggest natural disaster in its history? Or will India take advantage of Pakistan's current vulnerability to impose its will on Kashmir? It is a question which is at once haunted by the ghosts of 1971, and infused with an optimism that history does not have to repeat itself.

So far the signs are reasonably promising. Pakistan has accepted an offer of $5 million flood aid from India (think America taking aid from Iran or vice versa to understand the significance of this).  India is also pledging to do more to help rebuild Pakistan. India and Pakistan, said Indian ambassador to the United Nations  Hardeep Singh Puri, shared the same history, topography, land mass and river systems.  The South Asian region was prone to natural disasters and, throughout it, the vagaries of nature continued to take a heavy tool of human lives and material losses. “We share the pain and agony and fully understand the trauma and suffering that our Pakistani brethren are living through,” he said.

At the same time, two of the big issues (Kashmir and water) which India and Pakistan traditionally blame on each other have been shown to be caused - at least partially - by problems within.  In Kashmir, a fresh wave of protests led by Kashmiri youths throwing stones has displaced the standard Indian view of the Kashmir revolt as one fuelled almost entirely by Pakistan-backed gunmen and bombers.  For the first time in years, the talk is of a need for a settlement on Kashmir which acknowledges that Kashmiri separatism has indigenous roots. In Pakistan, its problems with water management have been shown to go far beyond the much talked about threat of India manipulating the rivers which flow from its side of the border.  Both countries have had their assumptions challenged; both therefore have the potential for a change in mindset which might make talks easier.

U.N. plays down “guidance” on Kashmir

(Updated August 6, 2010 at 5:05 p.m. EDT with new remarks from U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.)

The United Nations is playing down a statement on Kashmir a U.N. spokesman sent to a small group of reporters last week. After India made clear that it was very unhappy with the language on Kashmir issued by the U.N. press office, the world body explained that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had  never uttered the offending words — at least not in an official statement.

This is the full text of what U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky has described as “media guidance” on Kashmir, as provided to Reuters by one of the reporters who received it by email on July 28:

“In relation to recent developments in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Secretary-General is concerned over the prevailing security situation there over the past month. He calls on all concerned to exercise utmost restraint and address problems peacefully.

“The Secretary-General welcomes the recent resumption of Foreign Minister-level talks between India and Pakistan. He encourages both sides to rekindle the spirit of the composite dialogue, which was initiated in 2004 and had made encouraging progress on some important confidence building measures, and to make renewed efforts to address outstanding issues, including on Jammu and Kashmir. He underlines the need for patience, perseverance and compromise on all sides.”

On Aug. 3 Nesirky played down that email during the daily U.N. briefing:  “The Spokesperson’s Office released to the media guidance which was prepared by the U.N. Secretariat, and that seems to have been taken out of context. This was not a statement of the Secretary-General.”

Nesirky was asked a number of other questions about the “guidance” — was it genuine; what was taken out of context; was it authorized by Ban’s office; what is Ban’s view now; etc. His response was: “I don’t have anything to add.”

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India and Pakistan agree to hold more talks: now comes the hard part

As predicted, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan agreed during a meeting in Bhutan that their countries should hold further talks to try to repair relations strained since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.  Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao told reporters at a regional summit in Thimphu that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani had decided their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries (the top diplomats) should meet as soon as possible.

In agreeing to hold more talks, India and Pakistan have overcome the first major obstacle in the way of better ties - the question of what form their dialogue should take. Pakistan had been insisting on a resumption of the formal peace process, or Composite Dialogue, broken off by India after the attack on Mumbai which it blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. India had been seeking a way back into talks which stopped short of a full resumption of the Composite Dialogue.

The prime ministers, who last met in Egypt last July, appear to have sidestepped that problem by agreeing to hold dialogue on all issues, without specifically labelling this as the Composite Dialogue (which incidentally is meant to cover all issues.)

Having dealt with the form of their talks, the hard part - issues of substance - now lie ahead.

Any easing of tension between the two countries is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan have been rivals for influence for decades.  Pakistan had already moved significant numbers of troops last year from its Indian border in the east to fight Pakistani Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan during a brief thaw between the two nuclear-armed countries last summer. According to a Pentagon report released this week, it may have redeployed as many as 100,000 troops from east to west. But that means it is unlikely to redeploy any more right now, particularly given its concerns at what it sees as an Indian military build-up on its eastern border.

But the talks between India and Pakistan could ultimately pave the way for a scaling down of the proxy war which the two countries' intelligence services have been accused of waging in Afghanistan. Over time, that will have a major impact on Pakistan's willingness to tackle the Afghan Taliban and force them to the negotiating table. (Pakistan's fight against militants so far has been concentrated on tackling the Pakistani Taliban on its border with Afghanistan rather than those fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.) 

Pakistani officials complain that India is using its presence in Afghanistan - which grew substantially after the fall of the Pakistan-backed Taliban government in 2001 - to destabilise Pakistan.  They say India's Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) is giving money and weapons to Baluch separatists in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. They also argue that R&AW agents are indirectly destabilising Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border by providing funding to militants via Afghan's NDS intelligence service. India denies the accusations and has so far refused Pakistani demands that it close down its consulates in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad near the Pakistan border.

from Afghan Journal:

When India-Pakistan wargames become real

(Pakistani army tanks in exercises in Bhawalpur sector. Pic by Christopher Allbritton)

Pakistan is conducting its biggest military exercises in 21 years and at the weekend thousands of troops backed by fighter jets took part in a mock battle to repel a simulated Indian military advance and inflict heavy casualties. The manoeuvres were designed to test a riposte to India's Cold Start doctrine of a rapid and deep thrust into Pakistan in a simulated environment, but you are never far from real action on the heavily militarised border between the two countries.

On Sunday, as the mock battle unfolded in the deserts of eastern Pakistan, the two armies were engaged in a real exchange of fire a few hundred miles away, along the border in Punjab. Both sides reported the firing in the Shakargarh sector and as is the norm blamed the other for starting it. It didn't last long and by the standards of Indo-Pak artillery duels it was a blip. But what is interesting is it took place along a settled section of the border as distinct from cross-border firing along the Line of Control separating the two armies in disputed Kashmir.  Shooting across the international border has been rare, although there have been incidents in January this year and in July and September in 2009.

NightWatch intelligence, which closely tracks developments across South Asia, says the Shakargarh sector carries  the weight of history and perhaps there is  a message behind the shooting. This is the site of a decisive battle during the 1971 India-Pakistan War in which Indian rocket launcher units destroyed Pakistani army armoured brigades ending hostilities in that sector. Firing in the location is always a reminder of December 1971. So the question is were the Indians trying to remind the Pakistanis about that battle nearly four decades ago even as Pakistan carried out the wargames named Azm-e-Nau 3 or New Resolve 3?

India, Pakistan wargames have in the past caused jitters especially when thousands of troops are massed near the border along with heavy armour and you are not sure whether they are only meant for exercises or is it a preparation for a real war. Back in 1987, India conducted Brass Tacks, the largest military exercise of its kind across South Asia in the deserts of Rajasthan a few hundred miles from the Pakistan border.

The exercises included the bulk of Indian Army and its mechanised and armoured formations; in short all the paraphernalia for a real war, concentrated on Pakistan's sensitive border areas. For a Pakistani, it would seem the ideal location from which to launch a cross-border operation into the Pakistani state of Sindh that could cut Pakistan in half.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India and Pakistan: a personal view of the water wars

 It was so long in the making,  so utterly predictable, that the news that Pakistan and India are now arguing over water carries with it the dull ache of inevitability.

When I was living in Delhi, which I left in 2004, a few analysts were already warning that the next war between Pakistan and India would be over water, rather than over Kashmir.  The mountain glaciers which fed the rivers which are the lifeline of both countries were melting, they said, and sooner or later India and Pakistan would blame each other for climate change. I did not take it that seriously at the time. Not even after seeing first hand how far the Siachen glacier - the world's longest glacier - had receded.  

Nor indeed did it properly register after talking to an Indian sherpa who had led the first Indian military expedition to Siachen in 1978 in what India considers part of its own Ladakh region  At the time, Ladakh was much colder, he said, and the snow on the glacier came right down into the valley. It had receded in recent years because of global warming, exposing the black tracts of scree I had scrambled up during my trip there. “It was like a beautiful road coming right down from K2,”he said, , “black moraine on either side.” There was nothing, and nobody there.

From the records of the India Office of the British Library, I unearthed an account written by the American explorer Fanny Bullock-Workman of her own travels in Siachen in 1911-12 -- so little consulted nowadays that the pages of her book began to come away in my hands.  She suggested that Siachen had been receding back in her days too,  so I was able to put the ebb and flow of the glacier down to natural changes in the climate.

Then a few years ago,  I made the drive from Srinagar in Kashmir to Leh in Ladakh and -- dangerous as it is to extrapolate from one's own experiences - saw the impact of global warming first hand.

It is a two-day drive from Srinagar to Leh, with a stopover in Kargil where India and Pakistan fought an intense border war in 1999. It is a spectacular drive, but also one of the most precipitous and most terrifying. By the time you are nearing Leh, you are looking forward to a comfortable hotel bed and a bowl of thick Tibetan soup.

Not long before we reached Leh, we discovered that the road bridge had been swept away by heavy floods rushing down from the mountain glaciers. I met a local Ladakhi journalist I knew who was, like me, stranded on the wrong side of the broken bridge. He took one look at me, and though I had not seen him for three years or so, he shook my hand and said two words: "global warming".  Then, like all the other Ladakhis there, he disappeared over a precarious crossing which the locals had fashioned across the river -- which involved walking across the upturned root of  a tree and then somehow making it from branch to branch across a raging glacial torrent to the other side.