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 India Insight:

India-Pakistan “secret pact” – was Kashmir accord just a signature away?

India and Pakistan held secret talks for more than three years, reached an accord on the thorny Kashmir issue and had almost unveiled it in 2007 before domestic turmoil in Pakistan derailed it, former Pakistani foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri has revealed.

Kasuri says the two nuclear-armed rivals, who rule the Himalayan region in parts, had agreed to full demilitarisation of both the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir with a package of loose autonomy on both sides of the Line of Control, a military control line that divides the region between two nations.

"We agreed on a point between complete independence and autonomy," Kasuri told Times of India.

Almost all Kashmir leaders except hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani came on board and agreed on the accord that was to be signed during a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Islamabad scheduled for February-March 2007.

It never happened. The then Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, lost power and the country plunged into turmoil.

The "secret deal" had come despite six decades of distrust and other festering disputes between the two countries who have fought wars over Kashmir.

Has Kashmir, the region that has bled for twenty years, lost an opportunity for peace and permanent settlement?

Pakistan and India: After Yekaterinburg and Sharm-el-Sheikh; now we have Thimphu

Another international summit. Another chance for the leaders of India and Pakistan to find a way of getting their countries to talk to each other.

After last year’s aborted attempt at peace-making, first in Yekaterinburg and then in Sharm-el-Sheikh, expectations are running low that the prime ministers of India and Pakistan will make much headway when they meet at a SAARC summit in Thimphu, Bhutan this week.

But given that cynicism is the preserve of the intellectually lazy, I’m going to resist the temptation to jump into that safe and comfortable foxhole and instead see where these talks might lead us.

India broke off the formal peace process with Pakistan after the 2008 attack on Mumbai blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and both countries have yet to find a forum in which the two neighbours might — if not resolve their differences — at least find a way to talk to each other.

I was wrong, by the way – last year I thought the issues that divided India and Pakistan were not so much about form but about substance.  It turns out that it is a lot about form – at least for now in finding the right form for dialogue. The problems of substance – and they are legion – will come only later.

The main issue is that Pakistan is insisting on a resumption of the formal peace process, the so-called Composite Dialogue. India wants a more cautious return to talks which would stop short of the Composite Dialogue until Pakistan takes more action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

“Forget Kashmir and terrorism or even Afghanistan and water, the current stalemate between India and Pakistan is all down to one word,” writes Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu. “Both countries publicly say that Dialogue is the only way forward. Yet each is paralysed by the name ‘Composite’. New Delhi is so allergic to it that it will not accept its use, while Islamabad has become so attached to the C word that it insists there can be nothing else.”

On tipping points and Taliban talks

One of the issues that seems to arouse the strongest emotions in the Afghan debate is the question of when the United States and its allies should engage in talks with the Taliban.  Some argued that the moment was ripe a few months ago, when both sides were finely balanced against each other and therefore both more likely to make the kind of concessions that would make negotiations possible.  It was an argument that surfaced forcefully at the London conference on Afghanistan in January. Others insisted that U.S.-led forces had to secure more gains on the battlefield first.

If you go by this survey carried out in December by Human Terrain Systems (pdf) (published this month by Danger Room) the people of Kandahar province were convinced at the end of last year of the need for negotiations: (as usual health warnings apply to any survey conducted in a conflict zone):

“Reconciliation is a popular concept in Kandahar province. There is almost universal agreement that negotiation with the Taliban is preferable to continued fighting. Specific approaches such as calling a Loya Jirga and a jobs training program for former fighters are both widely supported. The desire for reconciliation is likely driven by the perception that the Taliban are part of Afghan society; a significant majority of respondents view the Taliban as ‘our Afghan brothers’. This opinion is unsurprising considering the ethnic makeup of the Taliban - highly Pashtun – and the movement’s history in Kandahar Province,” it says.

Since December/January both sides have faced setbacks.  The arrest in Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, for whatever reason, has at the very least sent a message to the Afghan Taliban in the so-called Quetta Shura that they can no longer count on Pakistan as a safe haven.  At the same time, the U.S.-led military campaign seems to be running into problems, if the latest spate of negative press reporting about the forthcoming offensive in Kandahar is to be believed (see Martine van Bijlert at the Afghan Analysts Network on her recent visit to Kandahar; The Guardian for a useful round-up of links; or follow these blogs by Kandahar residents Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn)

Does that mean we have now reached a new point of balance where both sides stand to gain more from talking than fighting?  Not necessarily. Wars have a way of gaining a momentum of their own in which some developments – for example the planned offensive in Kandahar – become unstoppable.

But perhaps equally importantly, how are we to recognise when this point has been reached? Where is the tipping point?

A report just published by the RAND Corporation,  “How Insurgencies End” (pdf), based on a survey of 89 different insurgencies, has some worrying pointers for anyone who thinks they will know for sure when is the right time to open talks:

Pakistan unlikely to act soon on Lashkar-e-Taiba

Despite initial military successes against the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan is unlikely to move any time soon to dismantle the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. As I wrote in this analysis,  Pakistani security officials say the country has enough on its plate fighting militants on its Afghan border without opening a new front in Punjab province, where the LeT is based. They argue this could drive the LeT – which has been careful not to launch attacks within Pakistan itself – into a dangerous alliance with the Pakistani Taliban and other al Qaeda-linked militant groups.

That’s likely to aggravate friction with India, which not only blames the group for the 2008 attack on Mumbai but also sees an LeT hand in supporting and training the Indian Mujahideen to launch smaller-scale urban bombings in India, in what some are now labelling “the Karachi project”. (For a report on the Karachi project, see this month’s edition (pdf) of the CTC Sentinel.)  India broke off talks with Pakistan after the Mumbai attack and despite several bilateral meetings on the sidelines of international conferences last year, the two countries have been unable to find a way back into dialogue. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will likely meet his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani at a SAARC summit in Bhutan next week, but prospects for any real progress are relatively slim.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba may also ultimately prove a threat to the west, given the wide network of support in the Pakistani diaspora for its charitable wing, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The LeT has been associated with a number of plots in the west over the years, although opinion is divided on how far it represents an actual rather than potential risk.  Evidence from investigations into David Headley, the Chicago man who has pleaded guilty to working with the Lashkar-e-Taiba to plot attacks in India, suggest the group is still very much focused on India and Kashmir.

The group is also believed by some to be operating in alliance with other militant groups in Afghanistan, particularly in Kunar and Nuristan, where U.S. forces have taken a heavy beating. The LeT has a history of involvement in eastern Afghanistan, dating back to the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s and it once ran training camps there for fighters going to Kashmir. Pakistani officials dismiss as Indian propaganda suggestions the Lashkar-e-Taiba is operating in Afghanistan, although they acknowledge some splinter groups may have broken away from the main organisation to fight there.

If there are indeed former LeT fighters in eastern Afghanistan, it is something of an irony that across the border in neighbouring Bajaur the Pakistan Army is complaining that it has cleared militants out of their strongholds there, only to see them escape to Kunar, where the U.S. military presence has been scaled back.

(Photo: caves formerly used by Taliban militants in Bajaur, now cleared by Pakistan Army/Adris Latif)

Wagah – The tragicomedy of India-Pakistan

Most people who follow South Asia have either watched the Beating the Retreat ceremony at Wagah on the India-Pakistan border on video or been there in person. The farcical and choreographed display by goose-stepping soldiers from India and Pakistan as they slam shut the gates on the border crossing is such a  staple for Western journalists that it has almost become too cliched to write about.

But having been there myself for the first time last week, after 10 years of following India and Pakistan, I can’t resist throwing in my own two cents’ worth.

The mood is already riotously cheerful as we arrive from Lahore, “Jai Ho” blasting out from loudspeakers on the Indian side, soon to be drowned out by loud music on the Pakistani side, accompanied by much banging of drums, clapping, flag-waving and dancing. The goose-stepping soldiers with their turbans appear and dance out their quadrilles to cries of ”Pakistan Zindabad” on our side of the gate, “Bharat Mata ki” on the other. The white gates with the Pakistani flag and the name of the country in both English and Urdu are still shut, so that my first impression of a country that I once lived in for four years is that I can hear India rather than see it.

Then the gates open and for the briefest of moments you imagine what it would be like if the crowds on either side could simply walk up to each other, hug and talk; perhaps even pass each other on their way along the Grand Trunk Road as it once was before partition in 1947. The day that happens, if and when it does, you would have to be a very hard person not to shed a tear.  For me, at that moment, the fun of the ceremony was lost.

A spectacle that had initially seemed colourful and amusing became farce. Gone was the suspension of disbelief that allowed you to watch soldiers from two very professional armies perform in a way which would make even talent judge Simon Cowell blanche.

I’m not sure the mood in the crowd really changed. The women opposite us in the back row of the women-only benches continued to dance. The men kept yelling for Pakistan while the crowd on the other side chanted for India. It was impossible to tell whether they too had felt the same hollowness when the gates opened and were simply hiding it better.  Or maybe they were just enjoying a fun day out.  Tragicomedy is not unusual in South Asia, although the word is rather too decorous for the many thousands of deaths it has witnessed over the years.

The overly costumed soldiers in the ceremony faced off against each other while buglers sounded the retreat – traditionally played to signal the end of battle at sunset.  Slowly, with much reeling and flicking of ropes, the Indian and Pakistani flags were lowered. The gates were slammed shut.

from Afghan Journal:

Challenging the myths of Pakistan’s turbulent northwest

Reuters' journalist Myra Macdonald travelled to Pakistan's northwest on the border with Afghanistan  to find that some of the Kiplingesque images of  xenophobic Pasthuns and ungovernable lands may be a bit off the mark especially now when the Pakistani army has taken the battle to the Islamist militants.  Here's her account :

                               By Myra MacDonald

KHAR, Pakistan - I had not expected Pakistan's tribal areas to be so neat and so prosperous.

These are meant to be the badlands, mythologised as no-go areas by Kiplingesque images of xenophobic Pashtuns, jezail musket in hand, defying British troops from rugged clifftops.

They are the "ungovernable" lands where al Qaeda took sanctuary after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan; the bastion of Islamist militants said to threaten the entire world.

Yet to fly by helicopter for the first time into Bajaur tribal agency is to challenge the more wildly imagined cliches about this little-visited region on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Pakistan’s ethnic jigsaw shaken by NWFP name change

Changing the name of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to “Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa” has triggered a new debate over whether other ethnic communities have the right to claim and win separate regions.

Parliament last week approved the new name, reflecting the Pashtuns’ demographic dominance of the province.

Pashtun nationalists, represented by the Awami National Party (ANP), who lead the coalition government in the province, argue the old NWFP name indicates only a geographical location rather than the ethnicity of its inhabitants, unlike the other three Pakistan provinces — Punjab for Punjabis, Sindh for Sindhis and Baluchistan for Baluchis.

But before its passage in the Senate, angry protesters in the Hindko-speaking dominated region of Hazara in NWFP took to the streets. They burned tyres, blocked roads, damaged buildings and vehicles and observed a strike. Seven people died in clashes with police.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, whose Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) is the third largest group in parliament, justified the violence, saying “if their rights (Hazaras’) will be denied then they have no option but to take to the streets.”

His party’s senator, Mohammad Ali Durrani Hussain, said he would soon introduce a bill in parliament seeking provinces for Hazaras, who speak Hindko, and Seraiki speakers, another large ethnic group in the northwest.

Writing in his column for the Daily Times, senior journalist Syed Talat Hussain said Hazara erupted because its inhabitants were assumed to be politically irrelevant and the ANP “drank too deep at the well of political chauvinism.”

from Afghan Journal:

Bombing your own people: the use of air power in South Asia

(U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt jets, also known as the Warthog. File photo)

Pakistani army chief of staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani offered a rare apology at the weekend for a deadly air strike in the Khyber region in the northwest  in which residents and local officials say at least 63 civilians were killed.

Tragically for the Pakistani military, most of the victims were members of a tribe that had stood up against the Taliban. Some of them were members of the army. Indeed as Dawn reported the first bomb was dropped on the house of a serving army officer, followed by another more devastating strike just when people rushed to the scene. Such actions defy description and an explanation is in order from those who ordered the assault, the newspaper said in an angry editorial.

But the question really is wasn't it coming? The counter-insurgency strategy that Pakistan has pursued to wrest control of its turbulent northwest along the border with Afghanistan has consisted of heavy use of air strikes and long range artillery barrages in the initial stages before putting boots on the ground.

It's the steam-roller approach that Lord Curzon, the turn-of-the century British Viceroy of India, spoke about when confronted with a similar challenge in Waziristan - except that it relies on stand-off weapons like releasing bombs from the safety of a jet aircraft to keep military casualties down, taking a leaf from the U.S. playbook in Afghanistan.

Indeed it would appear that while the U.S. is trying to change tack after years of  deadly strikes in Afghanistan, and focus on avoiding casualties at all costs, the Pakistanis are relying on the classic counter-insurgency strategy of overwhelming force as Tim Foxley writes on the Afghanistan blog or the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Guest contribution-Pakistani democracy may be noisy but it delivers

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is the High Commissioner of Pakistan to Britain.

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

Why Pakistan needs strong institutions is amply demonstrated in recent events of monumental importance. These have not got the attention they deserved. It is a tribute to democracy that the government of Pakistan has succeeded in meeting major challenges, and in doing so, it enjoyed the support of the masses and major political forces in the country. Let us talk about those monumental events at the international and national level that have taken place since the democratic government took over in March 2008.

First, the government succeeded in its campaign in the war on terrorism. Just imagine, a war called America’s war or Musharraf’s war became the whole Pakistani nation’s war with the brave Pakistani armed forces putting their heart and soul into eliminating the scourge of terrorism. The international community no longer questions Pakistan’s sincerity in this war. The whole nation has turned the tables against the Taliban while a year ago even some of our friends described the Taliban onslaught as a mortal threat to Islamabad. The Taliban are not only on the run but they are considered to be an anathema to a common Pakistani’s way of life.

Second, there is a marked improvement in relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unlike the Musharraf-Karzai relationship, there is a positive chemistry between President Zardari and President Karzai. President Karzai appreciates that the current leadership in Pakistan means business and is sincere about the stability of Afghanistan.

Third, the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue, although in its fourth session of the past five years, entered into forward gear for the first time with structured discussion on 10 substantive issues encompassing security, economic, defence and cultural cooperation as well as cooperation in the energy sector. Clear benchmarks have been decided by the two sides in order to achieve tangible results. In the war on terror, we no longer hear a “do more” demand from the U.S. but a real appreciation of Pakistan’s role in tackling extremism. Not only that, Pakistan’s participation in the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington has re-asserted the confidence of the international community in the safety of Pakistani custodial controls over its strategic assets.

Fourth, the Balochistan Package (Aghaz-e Huqooq-e Balochistan- Initiation of Balochistan’s Rights) is a historical initiative by the government which enjoys the support of all the political forces in the country. For the first time in the history of Pakistan a government has taken extraordinary measures to address the deprivation of the people of Balochistan. The government has also succeeded in sensitizing the international community towards external machination in the province.