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Hope for peace between
India and Pakistan

By Ramesh Thakur

Some years ago, I was visiting Samarkand in Uzbekistan, from where the Mughal Dynasty came down to the subcontinent. The only other person from South Asia in the group was a senior Pakistani military officer. We soon realized we had more in common with each other than any other members of the group because of our shared political and cultural ancestry of the Mughal empire. We agreed that the Khyber Pass was as much a part of my cultural heritage as the Taj Mahal was his, and we looked forward to the distant day when we might be able to visit both sites without restrictions.

With a bit of luck, that day may be nigh. Relations between India and Pakistan are poised to be the most hopeful in decades. A series of unilateral steps by each side has been matched by reciprocal concessions from the other, and led to restoration of diplomatic and transport links, overflights through national airspace, and some humanitarian goodwill gestures. The climax was the meeting between the two countries' leaders around the margins of the South Asian regional summit in Islamabad this month and a joint declaration on a fresh dialogue to be launched next month.

What has brought things to this happy pass, and how might the conflict be resolved?

Their nuclear status has finally injected a dose of grim realism in both capitals. There was a five-year window of heightened risk of nuclear conflict due to miscalculation, misperception or accident. Two years ago they came within hours of war. India held off in the end because of the fear of accidental entanglement with U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan from Pakistani territory. India discounted the risk of nuclear escalation by Pakistan, but was prepared for it if necessary. The close call was a sobering experience for both.

A high tolerance of terrorists operating from its territory has begun to destroy Pakistan from within. In any case, since 9/11 the international margins of tolerance, especially America's, have dramatically narrowed for regimes that will not crack down hard on terrorist cells in their midst. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has slowly but steadily tightened the screws on extremists at home in order to reclaim Pakistan from them and appease external pressure.

Outside pressure has intensified with growing revelations about a Pakistan connection with nuclear-arms development in three countries: North Korea, Iran and Libya. Indians will be forgiven for feeling bemused, when for years their allegations were dismissed as self-serving propaganda. But they too are now more honest about the many rigged elections in Kashmir in the past. And the record of brutality by security forces is another dark stain on Indian democracy.

These developments come in the context of 56 years of stalemate on Kashmir. Were it chiefly a territorial dispute, it could have been solved by now -- if not around the negotiating table then on the battlefield. But Kashmir is critical for its symbolic integrity to the national identity of both countries. Pakistan was created in the core belief that Muslims of the subcontinent could not live in a Hindu-majority country and must have their own nation. Kashmir as a state of India is a standing negation of this.

India was founded as a secular democracy. Kashmir is its only Muslim-majority state. Take that away, and India's basic identity collapses. This is why the vast majority of Indian Muslims are opposed to Kashmir going to Pakistan.

The stalemate contains the clue to the least unsatisfactory solution. India cannot convert military superiority into legitimate rule; Pakistan cannot wrest Kashmir by force of arms. The conflict has kept their progress and prosperity in check while alienating the world from the perennially squabbling siblings of the subcontinent. Kashmiris are devastated after 13 years of warfare that has cost around 40,000 lives. Most South Asians are waking up to the realization that the rest of the world has moved on, often through regional zones of trade and cooperation.

The world is neither convinced of the moral rectitude nor impressed by the self-righteous posturing of either country. Most ordinary Pakistanis and Indians, too, are weary of the interminable conflict. Both sides must cut a deal on Kashmir followed by more attention to economic and social development -- to human, not national, security.

The obvious solution is to legalize the territorial status quo along the Line of Control. Neither side would gain or lose. The de facto border is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. If it continues to symbolize conflict, South Asia will stay on the losing side of history as others make rapid progress. If it is converted into an international and open border, it could be the prelude to peace and prosperity as it becomes increasingly irrelevant for the flow of goods, people and ideas.

Other concerns in which a new relationship between India and Pakistan could be the pivot for improvement in the region as a whole are terrorism and regionalism.

South Asia has suffered from several instances of the blow-back phenomenon of terrorism. In 1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi paid with her life, killed by her own Sikh bodyguards, for having tried to harness Sikh religious nationalism to her politics of divide-and-rule in the province of Punjab. In 1991 her son Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Tamil suicide terrorist; outposts of Tamil terrorism at the very least had been tolerated on Indian territory by his government. And in December, Musharraf was the target of the very monsters of terrorism that in the past his military intelligence may have created or tolerated. Rather than feeding the fires of group grievance across one another's borders, South Asian nations would be better advised to cooperate in dousing the flames and containing the common threat.

The Islamabad summit also saw the signing of the South Asian Free Trade Area Agreement, which is bold and creative in moving away from commodity-by-commodity tinkering with tariffs to the vision of a genuinely integrated single market for the whole region in 12 years (including a three-year grace period for the least developed countries of the region such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal). However, it will enter into force only on Jan. 1, 2006, after all member countries have ratified it. Trade in services is not included in the agreement, and the vision is still well short of a customs or economic union. Even so, it should attract more foreign investment to South Asia and spur faster growth.

Other confidence-building measures could include easier cross-border access for travel, tourism, pilgrimage and commerce, reduction of troops in Kashmir, early talks by Indian authorities with militant groups in Kashmir, further clamping down by Pakistani authorities of extremist activities, improved market access to each other's products, and so on.

The approach adopted at Islamabad seems to have been to identify the ties that bind (culture, travel, trade), build on these, and embed the discussion of contentious issues like Kashmir and terrorism within their protective cocoon. If Vajpayee's ruling party fights the forthcoming general elections on the basis of peace overtures to Pakistan, that will truly be a revolution in political affairs in the history of the subcontinent since independence from Britain.

South Asia's 1.5 billion people have been given a great New Year's gift. Let us hope they make the most of it.

Ramesh Thakur is Senior Vice-Rector of UN University and Assistant Secretary-General of the UN. This commentary first appeared in the January 17 edition of The Japan Times. These are his personal views. 

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