Pakistan: Now or Never?

from India Insight:

Why is Kashmir upset over choice of new interlocutors?

Last week, New Delhi appointed three new mediators to find a solution to the decades-old dispute over Kashmir where popular protests against Indian rule have mounted in recent months.

The appointment of the three-member non-political team of interlocutors -- journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, academician Radha Kumar and government official M. M. Ansari -- is also aimed at defusing simmering anger in the disputed region.

More than 110 people were killed, most of them by police bullets, in months of deadly protests.

But New Delhi's most important initiative on Kashmir, which India and Pakistan claim in full but rule in parts, has provoked widespread disappointment and dismay.

"...the eight-point plan of action unveiled last month had generated tremendous hope and enthusiasm. And yet the actual announcement of a three-member non-political team has provoked widespread anger and hostility and even invited ridicule," says Amitabh Mattoo, Professor of International Studies at Delhi's  Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a senior separatist leader spearheading the ongoing protest strikes, has described the appointment of interlocutors as a "futile exercise."

from India Insight:

Is Kashmir’s protest leader gaining popularity?

Separatist militancy has waned over the years in Kashmir, but now a radicalised young generation which has grown up in over two decades of violence and strife is driving the massive anti-India demonstrations across the disputed region.

Who is leading months of freedom demonstrations in Kashmir, a fresh unarmed uprising that is proving a huge political challenge for the Indian government?

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the 80-year-old hardline Kashmiri politician who is hated by India and backed by Pakistan, has emerged as the leading face of the present separatist campaign in the region.

Since the crisis started on June 11 when a 17-year-old student died after being hit by a tear gas shell during a protest, Geelani weekly issues a protest calendar that calls for protest marches, strikes and sit-ins.

More than 100 people have now been killed in more than 100 days of protests, the biggest since an armed revolt against New Delhi’s rule broke out in 1989.

The death toll so far includes children, women and teenagers, nearly all killed by police bullets.

Many Kashmiris are not happy with Geelani's protest plans because the continuing cycle of strikes and government curfews has shut down schools, colleges and offices, made food and medicine scarce and has brought untold misery to the people.

from India Insight:

India offers fresh peace talks to Kashmir

New Delhi has expressed its willingness to hold talks with "any group" from Kashmir where protests against Indian rule have mounted in recent weeks and government forces have killed at least 65 people, mostly stone-throwing protesters.

The civilian deaths have fuelled anger in the disputed Himalayan region where anti-India sentiments run deep though militant violence has gone down.

"We hope to restart the dialogue process. We will talk to any group, any political party which is willing to talk to us," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

According to Hindustan Times, the government will soon come out with specific meaures to address some issues which may bring relief to the people of Kashmir.

A nearly three-month-long separatist strike, curfew and security lockdown has kept the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley on the boil, shutting down much of the scenic region.

"Few days means few days...government hopes that it will be able to re-start the process of dialogue in the near future," Chidambaram said.

After several failed rounds of peace talks between moderate separatists and New Delhi in the past decade, locals say India is only buying time and is not serious about resolution of the dispute.

from India Insight:

Of Kashmir’s “staged” killings and south Asian peace process

When the prime ministers of India and Pakistan held talks on April 29 and signalled an unexpected thaw in their frigid relations, troops in Indian Kashmir reportedly lured three civilians to work as porters.

The next day, security forces allegedly gunned down three on the Line of Control (LoC) and passed them off as infiltrating militants from the Pakistan side.

Last week, police exhumed the bodies after three families in north Kashmir's Baramulla area said the slain men were innocent relatives who had gone missing days before the "border clash".

After identification the three bodies were found to be those of the missing men, triggering massive anti-India demonstrations across the Valley.

Government forces in the disputed region have been accused in the past of murdering innocent civilians in staged gun battles and passing them off as separatist militants to earn rewards and promotions.

But the fresh "staged' killings have come at a sensitive time in  Kashmir where rebel violence is waning and the region was expecting a push to stalled peace talks between New Delhi and the region's separatists.

Though the Indian army and the state government have launched a probe into the 'fake gun battle" and Defence Minister A.K. Antony has assured there would be no cover-up to shield the guilty, the damage has been done.

India and Pakistan: finding the right forum for dialogue

“Peace,” said Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw ”is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.”  Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao begins that arduous process on Thursday when she meets her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir to try to break a diplomatic freeze that followed the November 2008 attack on Mumbai.

 Rao, speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said she hoped to “build, in a graduated manner, better communication and a serious and responsive dialogue to address issues of concern between our two countries”.

In her speech, she insisted Pakistan must act to dismantle Pakistani-based militant groups blamed for attacks in India and Indian Kashmir. “The greatest threat to peace and stability in our region emanates from the shelter terrorists find in the border of Afghanistan-Pakistan and in Pakistan itself,” she said. ”Terror groups … continue to recruit, train and plot attacks from safe havens across our borders.”

In answer to a question about whether Kashmir would figure in her discussions, as sought by Pakistan, she acknowledged this was a subject that must be discussed bilaterally. India’s concerns about terrorism would find “essential focus”, she said  — with emphasis on the word essential — but that “obviously we would like to keep the door to dialogue open”.

The problem, as discussed  in this story, is how to structure the dialogue.  With India’s Pakistan policy decided in the prime minister’s office, the foreign secretaries can do little more than provide a supporting role in preparing the groundwork for another meeting between the two countries’ leaders, possibly on the fringes of the SAARC summit due in Bhutan in April (see pdf of the invitation from Bhutan)

Like his predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants peace with Pakistan. He is likely to move cautiously after being criticised by his own party for giving too much ground in talks last July with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of a non-aligned summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

And while many people believe that real progress will require bold steps by the two countries’ political leadership, they are a long way from the kind of summit talks which might make a breakthrough possible. A summit between Musharraf and Vajpayee in Agra in 2001 ended in disaster after the Pakistani leader tried to strike a deal directly with the Indian prime minister in an attempt to leapfrog the time-consuming preparations of their bureaucracies.  Neither country is seen as being particularly keen to repeat the experience.

India and Pakistan: looking beyond the rhetoric

With so much noise around these days in the relationship between India and Pakistan it is hard to make out a clear trend.  Politicians and national media in both countries have reverted to trading accusations, whether it be about their nuclear arsenals, Pakistani action against Islamist militants blamed for last year’s Mumbai attacks or alleged violations of a ceasefire on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir. Scan the headlines on a Google news search on India and Pakistan and you get the impression of a relationship fraught beyond repair.

Does that mean that attempts to find a way back into peace talks broken off after the Mumbai attacks are going nowhere? Not necessarily. In the past the background noise of angry rhetoric has usually obscured real progress behind the scenes, and this time around may be no exception.

MORE TALKS

The Hindu newspaper reported on Sept 1 that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may meet either the president or prime minister of Pakistan on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad in November. It said the Indian government was already working out what strategy to adopt to make any meeting meaningful, while also pushing Pakistan to take more action against Pakistan-based militant groups in order to prevent another Mumbai-style attack.

There is no confirmation of that Trinidad meeting, and nor is there likely to be for some time, but The Hindu in recent months has proved to be well informed about the prime minister’s approach to Pakistan. Singh himself laid out his plans in a speech in parliament in July in which he promised a “step by step” approach to dialogue – effectively meaning that India would talk to Pakistan while refusing for now to reopen a formal peace process broken off after the Mumbai attacks.

The two countries’ foreign ministers are also expected to talk on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this month, although it is unclear whether this would be preceded by a meeting of foreign secretaries in line with an agreement reached in July that the top diplomats of India and Pakistan should meet ”as often as necessary”.  The Hindu said the foreign secretaries would meet in New York; more recent newspaper reports have called this into question.

DISMANTLING JAMMU AND KASHMIR?

When India and Pakistan shake hands

As encounters go between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the meeting in Russia between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari — their first since last November’s Mumbai attacks — was a somewhat stolid affair.

It had none of the unscripted drama of the handshake famously offered by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when they met at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002, while the two countries mobilised for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. Musharraf’s gesture made little difference in a military stand-off which continued for another six months.

Nor did it carry the warmth of a summit meeting between Vajpayee and then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore in 1999, which raised high hopes of a breakthrough peace deal between India and Pakistan. Those hopes were dashed months later when the two countries fought a bitter conflict in the mountains above Kargil, on the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir.

But for all its absence of drama, or more precisely because of this, did the meeting between Singh and Zardari lay a more solid foundation for what is likely to be a long and difficult process of repairing relations? 

The two leaders stopped well short of resuming a formal peace process broken off by India following the Mumbai attacks, and Singh delivered a stern warning to Zardari that Pakistan must not allow militants to operate from its territory. “I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism,” he told Zardari at a meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Yekaterinburg, in Russia.

But officials nonetheless held out the prospect of another meeting between Zardari and Singh at a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt in July and said that senior officials would hold further talks to exchange information on terrorism. Semantics aside, that means the two countries are talking again after a deep crisis in relations following the Mumbai attacks, although India has insisted it will not reopen the so-called composite dialogue peace process until Pakistan takes action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it blames for the assault.

So where do they go from here?  Analysts see little hope for now of the two countries being able to pick up where they left off in a peace process which some say had nearly led to a breakthrough on Kashmir.