The Great Debate UK
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."
Bhopal and Lockerbie on the agenda for Cameron and Singh
With his admission last week that Britain plays second fiddle to America, David Cameron has an opportunity to get one over Barack Obama during his much trumpeted first Prime Ministerial visit to India.
That Britain is keen to forge a more strategic relationship with India is not in question. Who wouldn’t? The India of even ten years ago is a much different place to one that I see every time I visit. Whether we’re talking of the new Delhi airport, the Worli flyover in Mumbai, or the ever increasing number of middle class consumers armed with cash, there’s no doubt that India’s on the rise.
Facts and statistics aside, India’s influence needn’t be solely defined by economics. In real, I believe the biggest influence she can have rests in the realm of global politics.
Under Tony Blair, the British Government lead the charge to bring India to the top table. As cheerleader, Blair did the unthinkable; he changed the way India was talked about by stating his support for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council for India. Immediately, you saw India being invited to G8 meetings, where the world’s richest nations got together to decide the future course of global events. Like a new student in an old school, India observed attentively and said little.
However, as time has progressed; and as events have benefited India, Manmohan Singh is no longer the new student. He has an edge over Obama and Cameron. His experience in dealing with global finance and economics is proving to be a major strength for India. Not only is India at the top table, but it’s bringing its experience to bear by offering solutions to global problems, like it has with the debate around the imposition of a global bank levy.
But, what I believe is that Manmohan Singh has a lot to gain from this visit. Whilst it cannot openly speak of American double standards, it can certainly use this visit to flesh out some arguments that Cameron may wish to take the lead on.
from The Great Debate (India):
India, Pakistan reach cautious win-win perch
By C. Uday Bhaskar
(C. Uday Bhaskar is a New Delhi-based strategic analyst. The views expressed in the column are his own)
The joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on the sidelines of the NAM Summit has generated considerable comment in both countries and is being interpreted across a wide bandwidth that ranges from outright condemnation to cautious cheer.
India and Pakistan are now back to formal engagement -- albeit in a brittle manner with many caveats after the composite dialogue, that goes back to January 2004, had been put on freeze by India after the Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008.
It is instructive that this modest breakthrough came on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit, which marks the first high-level political contact between the Obama administration and the UPA government after it was voted back to power.
The operative part of the statement is contained in a mere 18 words that read as: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed.”
Critics in India have flayed Singh for his seeming ‘capitulation’ and invoked the criticism that he is ‘weak’ -- a charge leveled against him during the early 2009 campaign phase.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Assessing U.S. intervention in India-Pakistan: enough for now?
In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India's response has been to look to the United States to lean on Pakistan, which it blames for spawning Islamist militancy across the region, rather than launching any military retaliation of its own. So after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's trip to India and Pakistan last week, have the Americans done enough for now?
According to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Rice told Pakistan there was "irrefutable evidence" that elements within the country were involved in the Mumbai attacks. And it quotes unnamed sources as saying that behind-the-scenes she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of the perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act”.
India's Business Standard said the Indian government was pleased with the U.S. warning. "This is exactly what India wanted," the newspaper said.
The Times of India, however, fretted the U.S. action against Pakistan appeared to be "turning tepid", in public at least. It attributed the U.S. approach to the perceived need to avoid backing the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari into a corner. (India has specifically not accused the Pakistan government of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, pointing instead to militant groups supported by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.) It also said the United States was wary of destabilising a partner on which it depends crucially as a transit route for supplies to Afghanistan, while also being hobbled by the change of administration in Washington.
So which way is the pendulum swinging -- towards firm U.S. action that will allow Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say he was right to put his faith in American diplomacy, or a lukewarm response that will either force India to act alone or leave its Congress-led government looking on in helpless frustration as it heads into a general election due by next May?
U.S. pressure has succeeded in pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink in the past. When fighting erupted between the two newly declared nuclear-armed powers in the Kargil war in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton persuaded then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pull Pakistani troops back. (Sharif paid a high price. Later in the year he was overthrown by then General Pervez Musharraf, a lesson unlikely to be lost on the current civilian government which is seen as wary of making too many concessions to India for fear of alienating the powerful Pakistan Army.)
Then after an attack on India's parliament in December 2001 triggered the mobilisation of close to a million men along the two countries' borders, the United States dived into another round of frantic diplomacy to persuade Pakistan to crack down on Kashmiri militant groups and the Indians to stand down. Much of that diplomacy went on behind-the-scenes, though for an interesting Pakistani view of how close the two countries came to war in 2002, here is a link to an article written in January that year by the current Pakistan High Commissioner to Britain.
TO MS. MYRA MCDONALD:
Well, there you go again maam. Do you know HOW VERY difficult it is for our 2 nations to establish any credible milestone towards peace, and how LONG it takes for us to get there and then a few choice words from your varied and illustrious columns and in an instant we forget about ALL that protracted effort and pull out our swords! Only YOU would know if you’re contributing to peace in the Subcontinent. I would suggest – NOT.
HOW ABOUT you get to the ROOT of our mutual dissent? Confused aye?
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, and please pardon my borrowing a line from the 1st Clinton run, allow me to remind you – that it is INDEED:
THE KASHMIR PROBLEM STUPID!
Instead of posting your wonderful spark ready catalysts all over the web, do you suppose you could come to the root of our mutual anguish? (thanks a LOT Lord Montbatten, how can we ever forget you!)
In fact the sooner India, the world’s biggest democracy, shakes off it’s positive allergy to SERIOUSLY discussing this important issue fully and finally (remember reading about the Kashmiri PLEBISCITE Ms. Mcdonald?) the sooner that WHOLE region and by extension, the West can feel safer. Our courageous Musharraf and his multi one-way unanswered gestures (how unfortunate) may have left the scene, but our Indian friends PLEASE understand this:
Cosmetic and mere lip service CBM’s, stubbornly refusing to include a chorus of near impatient 3rd party mediators (US PRES. OBAMA being the latest) with the real hope that the issue will somehow be swept under the rug by the passage of time are a waste of both time and money. Ain’t going to happen, and neither is Pakistan going anyplace.
HEEEELLLLLOOOOO???? Is the Indian government listening?
There Ms. Mcdonald, let’s see if you can rattle your ever ready pen on that one. Or should we continue to put the cart before the horse?
Unfortunately for Common people like Matrix who are fed hatred of India by their establishmet in pakistan, the Idea that India may perhaps be breaking with the past and moving away (I would rather say entire south Asia) is an anathema to their mind.
I always believed people who are exposed to liberal media will not be as bigoted as people who are fed only narrow and twisted propoganda of civilizational greatness.
But I am very surprised with these bigots because even with the English media and other liberal sources that are at their disposal. I am still unable to understand how people can be confined to their narrow narratives of pakistan.
Although it is possible to expect a chinese (or a mullah), though highly educated he might be, to have constricted ideas of his country bcoz of the media clampdown, one cannot belive that even in pakistan where free media reigns and a decent liberal news papers with diehard secularists exist, people like Zaid Hamid still roam around without being questioned in their News channels.
It is this popularity that even praveen Togadia (RSS,VHP) should have been jealous about. He must be longing to meet Zaid hamid to know how he twisted even the English speaking-western branding tugging educated Pakistanis into bending and twisting his ideas to match his dogmatism .
I am not here to pass judgements but I can only hope people like matrix keep reading economic (or better UNDP) indicators across south Asia while not being selective and he will find that,not only Srilanka,Bangladesh (of course India too) but also Nepal has overtaken pakistan in GDP Growth Rate.
It is now ascertained that Bangladesh will reach UNDP goals faster and accoring to Dawn author’s own admission Pakistan is at the cross roads of Education emergency.
Indian Strategists are hoping that bilateral trade with china and close American partership will allow India to close the clout that the chinese right now enjoy. When the trade between china and india crosses the threshold value when chinese belligerence against India looks more and more irrelevant, then Chinese wouldn’t lift a finger before they dump pakistan. As the Chinese and Indians wait for the slow and long decline of the American influence, they will simply build up ties with Iran and Chinese in particular may not have to depend on the land link that they are right now guarding zealously.
When others are playing the Great game cautiously and diligently experts are bedevilled as to why Pakistan is playing the adverserial role against India without first building itself. But few know that it is this machismo by the Army which is needed to usurp people’s aspirations and cling on to power.