It is time to call the Pak Army’s bluff : The Tribune India

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It is time to call the Pak Army’s bluff

AFTER some rumination, the Pakistani General remarked: “India-Pakistan relations are going nowhere.” After some deliberation on the merit of that comment, an Indian General concurred with that tragic prognosis — agreement between two Generals is a rarity at India-Pakistan Track II meetings.

It is time to call the Pak Army’s bluff

NEEDED: Indo-Pak military-to-military engagement. AFP



Maj-Gen Ashok Mehta (retd)

AFTER some rumination, the Pakistani General remarked: “India-Pakistan relations are going nowhere.” After some deliberation on the merit of that comment, an Indian General concurred with that tragic prognosis — agreement between two Generals is a rarity at India-Pakistan Track II meetings. He said, after equal thought, that change in bilateral relations can only take place if the Establishment in Pakistan is made to alter its behaviour. There is very little profundity in this observation except that it raises the hackles of the Pakistani military participants in the seminar. 

Pakistani journalists and other civilians invariably make a distinction between the military establishment and the elected government. A former Indian politician chiseled the Indian General's prescription, saying that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif once told him: "Thanks to the foresight of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Army has remained under civilian control." This became the big takeaway last week at the three-day conference at Kathmandu - the regional Shangri La - on transforming India-Pakistan relations. This particular initiative has been at it since 2003, following the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001. Like the indefatigable Robert Bruce, this effort has proceeded uninterrupted, unlike the on-and-off official dialogue, in a never-say-die spirit and was held even two days after the Mumbai attack. While Track II cannot replace Track I, it is essential to keep the conversation going.

The official dialogue is stuck in the standard Indian groove: terror and talks cannot go together, though there has been no scaling down in diplomatic relations or any tinkering threatened by India with the Indus Water Treaty. Ever since the beheading of an Indian soldier on the LoC in January 2003, India and Pakistan have come pretty close to a dialogue, but last-minute glitches like the Pakistan Foreign Secretary meeting the Hurriyat or terrorist attack at Pathankot have allowed spoilers to disrupt the planned talks. It is quite possible that the Modi government might complete its term without holding even a single round of Track I dialogue. This will be a unique record. Even the low-hanging fruit like Sir Creek and Siachen on which agreements were reached more than once have eluded resolution as these have got packaged with the Kashmir dispute. There is now no incremental approach to conflict resolution, though the accent is to end violence to create an environment conducive to talks.  

The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung-sponsored dialogue, after internalising its lessons, has sought to change the narrative by keeping the hard security topics aside and shifting the imagination and expectations to mainly below-the-radar confidence building measures (CBMs) involving "peoples in both countries" as stakeholders. These catalytic CBM projects have the capacity to tell better stories and take baby steps in transforming the relationship. These projects have to be technically feasible, commercially viable and politically do-able, insulating them from spoilers/naysayers. A number of catalytic projects have been designed over the last three years and tested against the three imperatives to ensure they are ready to go once the political and security climate improves - thus, in other words, the window opens and both sides are ready to resume business. 

Against this background and parameters, the two sides examined the prevailing India-Pakistan scenario, identifying their positives and negatives. The revival of ceasefire, though briefly broken twice, is a big relief for civilians in reduction of violence. Added to this is the Indian Army's goodwill initiative on the suspension of military operations, also called 'Non-Initiatation of Combat Operations', in the hinterland but not astride the LoC where infiltration continues unabated and terrorists are killed in large numbers. Till the undocumented ceasefire is recognised and regularised, it will remain brittle. The elections under a caretaker regime on July 25 are a significant political event in Pakistan, signifying a third elected government completing its full term. After General Musharraf, civil-military relations have been so calibrated that the Pakistan Army does not require to intervene under the legal cover of the 'Doctrine of Necessity' but still call the shots without accountability or responsibility. The judiciary is now back in cahoots with the Army after opposition by the lawyers' agitation in the Musharraf era.

The Pakistan Army’s grand plan (revealed during Happy Hour) is to ensure the demise of Nawaz Sharif's PML(N); instead to install a weak coalition government from a hung house with its blue-eyed boy Imran Khan of the PTI as Prime Minister.  The ISI-Judiciary nexus is not alien to such covert strategic games of planting governments of the Army's choice. In the 1990s, ISI chief Asad Durrani admitted to preventing Benazir Bhutto from coming to power. Still, PML(N) will be no walkover as sympathy for the Sharifs in the pivotal Punjab is very high. Whoever becomes Prime Minister — Imran Khan, Nawaz's brother Shahbaz Sharif or even Fazlur Rehman - nothing is likely to change between India and Pakistan; or Pakistan and the US; and Pakistan and Afghanistan, unless there is a change of heart in the Army, which the Pakistani participants confirmed was very unlikely.

But there is a silver lining in the cloud. Pakistanis were lauding the Army Chief, Gen Qamar Bajwa, for his many India-friendly statements and the unprecedented step of inviting Indian journalists to 7 Division headquarters in Miranshah, North Waziristan, the erstwhile haven for Taliban and the Haqqanis. Treated as royalty, nothing was off-limits for them. Pakistan has not extended such a peek to anyone into their counter-terrorism citadel — not even to Pakistani journalists. The message is clear: Pakistan Army faces a present and real threat from terrorists hiding in Afghanistan. It was made clear that it is time the two armies engaged each other and for this a creative architecture has to be constructed. India has to address Pakistan's imaginary and illusory insecurities and its conventional military superiority. It is time to call the Pakistan Army's bluff. But someone has to bell the cat. Prime Minister Modi's ingenuity in finding an acronym for every conceivable problem must construct one for military-to-military engagement as  made-by-Track-II CBMs can only catalyse the dialogue process.

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