... The predicament in which (Pakistan) establishment finds itself is unenviable. Even more than President Clinton's blunt words, the circumstances surrounding his visit to Pakistan - the elaborate security arrangements ... the difference between it and his visit to India, and his uncharacteristically sombre "body language" in Pakistan - have forced Pakistan's rulers to come to terms with their country's isolation in the world today ... For Pakistan isolation is psychologically devastating, for it has relied on outside support to bolster its self-confidence and political viability from its birth.
... For almost a decade after the Cold War ended, it got the US to turn a blind eye to its instigation of insurgency in Kashmir, by dangling the carrot of access to Central Asia before the State Department's eyes. This tacit support began to be withdrawn in 1997 but Pakistan continued to deceive itself till the Kargil war ... Isolation is thus an entirely new and terrifying experience for most Pakistanis.
The vulnerability that Pakistanis feel is compounded many-fold by its economic fragility ... Its military establishment therefore knows that it can neither sustain a war against India, nor seriously contemplate the risk of using nuclear weapons to offset India's conventional advantage But its options which were already narrow enough before the Kargil war, have been narrowed further by the ISI's partial loss of control over the jehadis.
Pakistan is therefore witnessing a competition between Islamic factions to outdo each other in Kashmir that the ISI is barely able to control. And this is dragging both countries towards a war that neither wants.
New Delhi is therefore right to insist that Musharraf should bring these factions to heel. Its assessment that Musharraf can stop them in their tracks is also undoubtedly correct ... But to stop the jehadis from coming into Kashmir he will have to crush their organisations in a military crackdown. But a military crackdown ... would make the jehadis turn against the Pakistan Government (and) deprive Pakistan of the only leverage that it still has for bringing India to the negotiating table. Musharraf would therefore be most reluctant to take such a drastic step against the jehadis until after he has arrived at an acceptable settlement with India.
. To break this impasse, the two countries need to define for themselves, in broad terms, the kind of agreement they can live with, and explore through diplomatic back channels whether there is sufficient common ground to make a dialogue fruitful. Only then can they map out a course for the future. At present, a dialogue is completely ruled out by the fact that there is not only no common ground, but Pakistan's rulers have not even the haziest idea of the kind of agreement with India that they could live with ...
Pakistan has no "bottom line" position on Kashmir because it is trapped between what it wants but cannot have and what it can have but does not want. What it can readily have is negotiations that make the Line of Control the starting point of the search for an- acceptable solution ... What it wants, plainly and simply, is to annex the Valley of Kashmir with a few parts of Jammu and Poonch throwr in for good measure.
Only in recent months has ... Pakistani establishment begun to come to terms with the fact that neither military force nor a spontaneous insurgency will deliver the Valley to them and begun to explore alternatives like independence, or an international trusteeship for Kashmir valley. But these alternatives are too woolly and one-sider at present to become a basis for serious discussion ...
... Against this background New Delhi needs to reevaluate Musharraf's offer of talks ... Pakistan's rock-hard position on Kashmir has begun to thaw. This process needs to be aided. A peremptory refusal by India to talk till Pakistan verifiably ends all cross-border infiltration i likely to slow down the thaw, if not reverse it. On the other hand, an agreement to talk, and the talks themselves can speed it up as Pakistan comes to understand the limit within which Indian governments have to function ...
India should lay down pre-conditions for the resumption of a dialogue ... that Musharraf can meet without compromising his own capacity to promote the thaw and explore new avenues to a solution of the dispute One move that India could reasonably ask for and which Musharraf has already indicated (in an interview to the Financial Times) that he could meet, is to rein in the jehadis ...
Musharraf and other Pakistani spokesmen have indicated that this can be done provided India simultaneously reduces the intensity of security operations in the Valley ... The government should explore ways to reduce the pressure on ordinary Kashmiris that arises from their living in what has become a battle zone, and to restore political normalcy.
... India (cannot) thin down the presence of the army because that will disrupt established intelligence networks and make the jehadis harder to control in the future. But it can rein in the Special Operations Group of the Kashmir Police ... The chief cause of the people's alienation and fear is the penchant of the SOG for descending upon the homes of identified but dormant former militants (of whom there are 31,000 in the valley and parts of Jammu) and extorting money from them. Custodial deaths regularly occur when the SOG gets too greedy or shows an excess of zeal. An amnesty for all militants against whom there are no specific charges of having committed serious crimes is therefore long overdue. So is the removal of the bạn on the JKLF, a ban that serves no purpose ...
... Every step towards political normality in the valley will not only strengthen India's position in relation to Pakistan, but also increase General Musharraf's room for manoeuvre within the Pakistani establishment, by allowing him to claim credit for improving the lot of the Kashmiris in India. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 6 & 7 April, 2000)
