The Indo-Pakistan dialogue-I in New Delhi from October 31 to November 3 is a notable event if only because this is perhaps the first time in the history of the two countries that so many prominent Indians and Pakistanis – 10 Pakistanis and many more Indians – have engaged in such prolonged, intense and frank discussions at a non-official level on a whole gamut of issues which determine government-to-government relations.
As it happens, the dialogue has coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the growth of pressure on the two governments by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to reduce military expenditure and divert resources to economic development, and the rise of awareness in both New Delhi and Islamabad that the time is past when they could depend on Moscow and Washington respectively to bail them out. All in all, its timing promises to give the dialogue an importance it could not have possessed even six months earlier.
Surprising though it may appear on a surface view, Indians appear to have adjusted better and quicker to the changed world than Pakistanis, though it has involved the disintegration of the Soviet Union which has been India’s principal source of military supplies and political support for a quarter of a century. Both directly and indirectly, Pakistani participants showed far greater anxiety regarding the ‘new world order’ the United States is working for with the cooperation of its European and Japanese allies and the Soviet Union.
This divergence between the Indian and the Pakistani response to the post-cold-war world is notable because it underlines the possibility that in the coming months, Islamabad might feel obliged to adopt a less intransigent attitude than it has so far, provided, of course, New Delhi remains at once firm and conciliatory. If that indeed proves to be the case, the dialogue could qualify as some sort of a turning point in Indo-Pakistan relations.
This is not to suggest that the dialogue would have contributed to such a development. A non-official discussion can play such a role only if the governments concerned do not have normal diplomatic relations and need non-official channels to communicate with each other. India and Pakistan have not allowed their diplomatic ties to be disrupted even during the wars they have fought with each other.
Indeed, the non-official dialogue more or less coincided with the fifth round of the ongoing talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in Islamabad. The suggestion is that, wittingly or unwittingly, the organisers of this dialogue may have seized on a propitious time.
India, as is well known, is a status quo power, whatever view one may take of its role in the establishment of Bangladesh as a sovereign state in 1971. All Indian participants in the dialogue accepted this status quoist approach. So it was natural that they should have been keen that the dialogue in New Delhi be followed by one in Islamabad. But what about the Pakistanis?
It is somewhat surprising that they too should have been so pleased with the discussions as to have been equally keen on a second round in Islamabad – it has been scheduled for February 1992 – and that one of the ‘hardliners’ among them, Asif Vardak, vice-president of the Muslim League and a member of the Senate, should have gone so far as to say at the final session open to the public that he was returning to Pakistan as a peace missionary.
The former vice-chief of army staff under President Zia-ul-Haq, General K.M. Arif, a sceptic to begin with on his own statement, gave expression to a similar sentiment, though not in similarly enthusiastic terms. He said his expectations had been surpassed.
There is no adequate explanation of the cause of such satisfaction among the Pakistanis. After all, no attempt was made to discover a possible meeting ground on the Kashmir issue, which exercised them the most.
There was doubtless agreement on the need to contain and reduce military expenditure. On the face of it, however, this conforms better to the general sentiment in India than in Pakistan. New Delhi is also better placed to engage in this exercise than Islamabad for the simple reason that the military top brass in India does not exercise the kind of leverage its counterpart does in Pakistan. But, believe it or not, the proposal for a reduction in defence expenditure came from the Pakistani side. Why?
To an extent, the reason is obvious. Proponents of democracy and of continued friendship with the United States regard it necessary to curtail the power of the army and to avoid too tight an embrace by the Chinese. But when men such as General Asif, now a leading member of the non-government organisation Friends, headed by General Aslam Beg, till recently army chief of staff and known for his hostile attitude towards both India and United States, and hardliners such as the former foreign minister, Agha Shahi, and the former foreign secretary, Niaz Naik, favour, or willingly acquiesce in such a proposal, one is left wondering.
It is a commonplace that no small group can ever claim to speak for a people. In this specific case, the Pakistani guests were keen to put it on record that they were here in their individual capacity and not as representatives of the organisations to which they belonged. But no group consisting of as many as ten persons of such different backgrounds as General Asif at one end of the spectrum and Khaled Ahmed, resident editor of the Lahore edition of the Frontier Post, at the other, can be regarded as unrepresentative either.
The rise of a broad consensus is a mysterious and often a prolonged and confusing affair in societies. So is it in national delegations. It, however, appears that one emerged among the Pakistanis during the discussions. They had come armed with one and were playing with divided cards. But it did seem that they all agreed that tension with New Delhi should be reduced to exclude the possibility of armed conflict with India and undue dependence on China.
Pakistan has not switched alliances ever since it concluded the national security pact with the United States in 1954. The policy of friendship with China was initiated at the Bandung Conference in 1955 as a supplement to the alliance with America, though it caused misgivings in Washington in the early sixties. President Yahya Khan played a key role in arranging Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in 1971. Islamabad has not regarded China as a substitute for America and cannot do so at all in the present situation in view not only of its own but also Beijing’s dependence on the West in the economic field.
Thus, while Pakistani opinion-makers such as Agha Shahi may be unhappy with the emergence of a supposedly unipolar world and furious with what they regard as America’s arrogance of power, they have no feasible solution to suggest. Willy-nilly, they are also obliged to think in terms of reducing tension with India and thereby persuading India not to seek, or accept, cooperation with the United States in the military field.
It would be ridiculous to suggest that Islamabad is about to move towards a decision to reduce and gradually end its aid to terrorists in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. No such hopeful prospect is yet in sight. But the reason may not be so much the earlier calculation that India could be balkanised as the absence in Islamabad of a single centre of Authority capable of making a deal with India,
There are four visible power centres in Islamabad – President Ishaq Khan, army chief Asif Nawaz Janjua, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the chief of the Inter-Services-Intelligence. The ISI is virtually a state within a state and is in control of terrorist operations in India.
Since it is in a position to blackmail both the President and the Prime Minister – recent disclosures regarding Nawaz Sharif’s shady financial deals are believed to have emanated from it – and enjoys access to enormous funds generated by the booming drug traffic, it is not going to be easy to control it even if the other three agree to cooperate, which is not on the cards.
This critical issue did not figure in the formal discussions partly because the agenda had been framed, understandably, in terms of ‘irritants’ in the bilateral relations with the result that domestic factors obstructing a rapprochement had been excluded. I raised the issue in private off-the-record talks with my Pakistani interlocutors. They did not have an answer to the problem. It must be hoped that it will be faced squarely at the next round in Islamabad.
The dialogue apart, a multifaceted power struggle has been going on in Pakistan since President Zia’s death and it is likely to continue. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have further complicated the picture in that they have deprived Islamabad of the niche it had occupied since the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 and created considerable confusion regarding their future among the Pakistani people.
On top of it all comes the intensification of the contest for Pakistan’s loyalty on the part of Saudi Arabia, central to US plans for the Gulf, and Iran, potentially, if not already, the principal opponent of those plans. As it happens, sectarian conflicts (between Shias and Sunnis and Brelvis and Deobandis) and ethnic (between Sindhis and Mohajirs, Mohajirs and Pathans) show no sign of abating.
India, too, is not a society at peace with itself. But apart from Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab, where Pakistan’s intervention is patent, it has demonstrated again and again its capacity to contain conflicts through the democratic process. Unlike Pakistan, it has not been thrown off balance by the end of the Cold War. As an established democracy, it does not need to discover new friends and forge new alignments. On the contrary, the collapse of the Soviet Union has removed an element of confusion. India is part of the democratic world whatever its differences with the West, especially the United States, on specific issues such as the NPT.
Unlike Pakistan, which has had to define itself in anti-Indian terms not only in the political-strategic but also in the cultural realm, India has never felt obliged to return the compliment. Though most of us did not recognise this reality, the fact remains that Pakistan could do so only in the context of the Cold War. Obviously that option is not going to be as attractive as it has been.
Only the naive can believe that India can promote the democratic process in Pakistan through some gesture. All that India can do is to avoid ‘provocation’ even in retaliation and to agree to measures which eliminate the possibility of war.
On a surface view, this negates the possibility of improved Indo-Pakistan ties. A closer scrutiny will show that this is not the case. In any event, while Pakistan faces new compulsions to review its approach towards this country, it is not yet ready for a variety of reasons, mostly domestic, to respond positively to them.
Sunday Mail, 10 November 1991