More process than outcome

By Dr Maleeha Lodhi in the News, Sept 18

The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.

The joint statement issued after the recent meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India was long on words and short on substance. It expressed the two ministers’ “satisfaction on the holding of meetings” rather than report progress on the disputes that divide the two countries. This is because the mélange of bilateral interactions over the past year has not driven any outcomes on the contentious issues that comprise the eight-point agenda.

Notwithstanding SM Krishna’s terse and Hina Rabbani Khar’s rambling remarks, the bonhomie on display at the joint press conference reflected the improved atmosphere of bilateral relations since talks resumed two years ago. But it did not mask the reality that process still outpaces outcomes in the renewed dialogue. On core issues more discussions than decisions characterise the fragile peace process.

Disputes and irritants remain in a state of deadlock. Despite incremental movement in other areas of the dialogue, the unresolved sources of tensions pose an ever-present risk of reversal in normalisation, if the past is any guide.

The signing of an agreement to liberalise the visa regime is a step in the right direction. But it is a modest one, whose efficacy will be determined in its actual implementation. After all efforts to ease travel across the Line of Control ended up being bogged down in bureaucratic hurdles and were never satisfactorily operationalised. Moreover, despite a few categories, the new visa regime, replacing that in operation since 1974, remains as restrictive for the majority of applicants.

It is fair to argue that given the start-stumble-stop pattern of Pakistan-India diplomatic engagement, completion of two rounds of the post-Mumbai dialogue on the full range of an agreed agenda counts for headway in an accident-prone relationship. Trade liberalisation has so far been the centrepiece of the two-year effort, with Pakistan poised to grant most-favoured nation (MFN) status to India by the end of 2012.This is expected to happen once three MOUs signed earlier this year become agreements. These aim to address some of Islamabad’s concerns on India’s non-tariff barriers and other restrictive practices and are said to be a work in progress.

Trade’s contribution to improving relations is yet to be tested. But for trade liberalisation to build momentum, issues that are the source of enduring discord as well as recent irritants also have to be meaningfully addressed, because they can retard or undercut the evolution of economic ties due to their potential for instability and reinforcing mistrust. If the strategic environment between the two countries remains fraught it is hard to see how trade between them can achieve its full potential.

Caution is therefore warranted in assessing prospects for the normalisation process. This is because of a number of reasons. The most obvious, mentioned earlier, is lack of headway on resolving key disputes including critical water issues. The government’s expectation that moving first on issues that have long been India’s priorities – trade/economic and people-to-people contact – would elicit reciprocity and Indian willingness to tackle disputes has not materialised so far.

Pakistani officials said as much to their Indian counterparts during SM Krishna’s three-day trip. The Pakistani side is believed to have conveyed to the visiting delegation that while Islamabad had shown flexibility in its approach to normalisation it had not yet found a matching response from Delhi, whose ‘mindset’ does not seem to have changed on core issues.

It was also pointed out in the talks that other than Kashmir even on disputes where agreement in principle was reached in the past, like Siachen, they remain unimplemented and had given way to a hardening in Delhi’s position. Similarly on water issues information that India is obliged to provide under treaty commitments to the Indus Waters Commission had not been forthcoming. Delhi also continued to block financing for the Daimer Bhasha dam in key multilateral institutions.

The discussion on terrorism laid bare the differing priorities and unmet expectations of both sides. From briefings given by the visiting delegation to the Indian media, terrorism formed Delhi’s top priority in the talks. The Indian complaint was that Islamabad had not moved decisively against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack and needed to ‘do more’. Pakistan agreed that the issue of terrorism was important but it needed to be addressed in a cooperative and patient way. It was conveyed to Mr Krishna during the talks that India’s unremitting use of the issue as a stick to beat Pakistan and malign it in international forums undermined serious cooperation. This conduct suggested Delhi was more interested in the issue’s propaganda value than addressing it with Islamabad.

In this context it was also emphasised by the Pakistani side that while a virtual moratorium had been placed on its diplomats and spokesmen from making public statements critical of India in the interest of normalising ties, this had not been reciprocated by Delhi.

In the past year Islamabad’s overall public silence on Kashmir has not gone unnoticed in Indian-held Kashmir. Many Kashmiri leaders have privately conveyed disappointment over this. Syed Ali Shah Gilani, chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, gave public vent to these misgivings immediately after the Islamabad talks. Taking exception to comments by foreign minister Khar at the press conference and depicting the lack of focus on Kashmir during the talks as a change in Pakistan’s stance, he said this undermined Pakistan’s own interests. His strong statement prompted a ‘clarification’ by Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, which denied any policy change on Kashmir and iterated the “high esteem” in which Islamabad held Gilani.

In the Islamabad talks disagreements were not just limited to the usual issues. For the first time the Indian foreign minister formally raised the issue of Gilgit-Baltistan, claiming that Pakistan’s effort to convert the region into a de facto province was a matter of “serious concern” for his country. For their part, Pakistani officials reiterated their longstanding concerns about Indian activities directed from Afghanistan in Balochistan and Delhi’s continuing support for Baloch insurgents.

But the elephant in the room at the Islamabad talks was Afghanistan. With no formal discussion ever held on an issue that has poisoned relations in recent years and added another layer of mistrust, suspicions of each other’s strategic intentions are likely to intensify rather than ease in the months ahead. As the 2014 deadline for an end to the American combat mission approaches this could inject greater uncertainty in the Pakistan-India relationship.

In the likely complex posturing by regional powers for influence in post-Nato Afghanistan, Pakistan and India can again become locked in an action-reaction cycle. This could risk reversing the positive movement in their bilateral relations. Already the Indo-Afghan strategic partnership agreement signed last October has added a new factor to Pakistan’s strategic calculus.

What emerges from all this is that skirting around contentious issues far from strengthening prospects for normalisation can be counter functional to détente. Commercial ties will advance if they are accompanied by efforts to address the sources of instability in Pakistan-India relations. This is the lesson of history and dictum of common sense not an argument for imposing conditions on how the peace process should proceed. At present the two countries even lack a mechanism for de-escalation if there is a relapse into tensions especially as the sources of regional instability remain in place.

Ultimately forging ‘normal’ ties rests on a problem solving approach not one that avoids the problems at the root of the precarious Pakistan-India relationship. This means seeking outcomes that give permanence and stability to normalisation rather than leave it exposed to political and strategic risk. This should urge the two countries to make bold and determined efforts to resolve their differences rather than leave them in a gridlocked state in the vain hope that they will somehow fade away.www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-132550-More-process-than-outcome