THE Foreign Office may be technically correct — dialogue with India is not officially suspended — but it is certainly in limbo. In trying to quell the controversy created by the high commissioner to India Abdul Basit’s remarks last week that in his opinion dialogue with New Delhi stood suspended, the Foreign Office has perhaps unwittingly confirmed that the government is itself unsure about how to proceed with dialogue. In the Pakistan-India dialogue equation, there are three power centres that always need to be considered. One of those power centres, the political government in Pakistan, is caught in the maelstrom of the Panama Papers and had already struggled to convert Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s boldness on India into policy actions.The other of those power centres inside Pakistan, the army leadership, is busy raking up allegations of Indian interference inside this country — suggesting it is in no mood to countenance wide-ranging dialogue envisaged under the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.
The third of those power centres, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, appears unable to make up its mind whether it wants to engage or ignore Pakistan.
The specifics may be new, but the historical pattern fits well. An India-centric Pakistani state dominated by the army and a Pakistan-obsessed Indian security establishment do not make for willing or effective dialogue partners.And when political visionaries have appeared on either side, they have been unable to build peace constituencies strong enough to resist the hawks. Yet, the logic of peace is irresistible.A secure and stable Pakistan and an India that wants to join the league of world powers cannot be realised without a long-term peace settlement between the two countries.
Simply, Pakistan is too big for India to ignore and India is too big for Pakistan to fight.Across mainstream political parties in Pakistan, there is a consensus that peace with India is necessary to unlock the socio-economic potential of this country.Unhappily, the civilian consensus in Pakistan also has the fewest tools available to it to press its policy case. In part, that is the fault of the civilians: rather than build institutions, they have relied on individuals trying to use the force of their personality or political capital to force change.
Inevitably, they have been rebuffed by the institutional strength of the hawks.There has also been a lack of planning. When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif negotiated the terms of resuming dialogue with India, perhaps there should have been greater emphasis on the need to ensure that dialogue would be uninterrupted and uninterruptible.If a cross-border attack were to happen, as it did in Pathankot, what would be the process to ensure that the post-Mumbai attacks fiasco would not be repeated and what guarantees would India give Pakistan that it would not effectively pull the plug on wider dialogue? Civilians in Pakistan need to learn that good intentions can pave a road to nowhere. http://www.dawn.com/news/1252333/dialogue-with-india
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