Beating the Peace Drums

Beating the Peace Drums

April 16, 2012

Asif Ezdi

A little more than a week ago, a battalion headquarters of the Pakistani army in the Gayari sector of Siachen was suddenly buried under a nearly 20-metre-thick mass of snow, ice, slush and boulders after being hit by a massive avalanche. A search-and-rescue operation launched immediately after the disaster has so far failed to turn up any survivors among the 127 soldiers and 11 civilians stationed at the camp at the time.

While a nation unified in grief waits anxiously and prays for news of survivors, our political leadership has shown a remarkable degree of detachment from this monumental tragedy. They have offered few words of solace to the families of the missing persons and hardly any expression of appreciation for the incredible sacrifices being made by our soldiers who daily brave murderous conditions of weather and terrain to keep the country safe from further incursions by a not-too-friendly neighbour.

Zardari and Gilani have contented themselves with issuing routine statements through the press-of the kind that would be made if some natural calamity were to hit a remote Pacific island. Neither of them has appeared in person to offer comfort to the families of the victims, most of them from Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, or express our admiration for the fortitude of our soldiers in the highest battlefield of the world.

Some members of our “civil society” and the “liberal” sections of the media have also failed to acknowledge the debt we owe to the troops who guard national territory in Siachen. One of them, the head of the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), has called for a unilateral Pakistani withdrawal from the area. “Why should we be going for an agreement (with India)? We should just withdraw,” he is reported to have said. “If we do that, Indian domestic pressure will also result in a withdrawal there.” Can there be anything more naïve?

There is of course a host of reasons-human, financial and environmental-why both countries should withdraw from Siachen without waiting for a resolution of the bigger Kashmir question. About 8,000 soldiers from both sides are estimated to have died since 1984. Most of these deaths, about 70 percent, were from the near-Arctic weather conditions and a treacherous terrain beset by landslides and avalanches.

The financial burden of the deployment is also huge. India has stationed seven battalions and spends $800,000 daily, not counting the added wages and bonuses it pays to its personnel stationed there. Pakistan has deployed less than half the number of the Indian soldiers and spends one-fourth the amount.

The environmental damage caused by the troop movements, training exercises and building of infrastructure is not only local but affects also the entire population downstream which depends on drinking and irrigation water from the Indus River-and that means practically 80 percent of the population of Pakistan. This is not only because of the melting of the glaciers but also the permanent pollutants in the military waste-like cobalt, cadmium and chromium-which are leached into the river. India, on the other hand, is unaffected because it does not take water from the Indus.

Despite all these reasons, negotiations between the two sides on a mutual withdrawal from positions occupied since 1984 have been at an impasse because of Indian insistence that Pakistan should authenticate the Actual Ground Position Line, on the map as well as on the ground. Pakistan is not ready to do so as it would amount to recognising the Indian incursion. After Gayari, some Indian security analysts are hoping that Pakistan will now soften its position.

Only a day after the Gayari calamity, Zardari landed at New Delhi grinning from ear to ear-accompanied by young Bilawal flashing a V-for-victory sign-to visit Ajmer. He had a luncheon meeting with Manmohan Singh in order to pursue his very personal agenda of “normalisation” with India, so personal that even the foreign minister was not included in the delegation. That agenda, which is very much in accord with India’s – and Washington’s – priorities in relations with Pakistan, has two principal elements: (a) establishment of normal trade and economic relations and the promotion of enhanced people-to-people contacts between the two countries; and (b) a “settlement” of Kashmir on the lines of that which Musharraf was negotiating with Manmohan Singh through the backchannel.

Zardari has already delivered in a big way in the first of these two areas by opening up the Pakistani market to Indian exporters-without any quid pro quo from Delhi. This has surprised even the Indians who were expecting that any move by Pakistan towards trade liberalisation would be vetoed by the military establishment. Zardari pleased the Indians further by suggesting at his meeting with Manmohan Singh that Pakistan and India should emulate the India-China model, in which the two countries have been steadily expanding their trade and economic relations despite the unresolved boundary dispute.

To nudge Pakistan to take further steps to expand bilateral economic exchanges, Delhi has now announced a decision in principle to allow direct investment from Pakistan. India’s next target in the economic field is to get Pakistan to open the land route to Indian exports to Afghanistan and Central Asia. It would be safe to conjecture that this subject came up in the Zardari-Manmohan meeting and that Zardari was amenable.

As regards Kashmir, India’s keenness to resume the backchannel dialogue held from 2004 to 2007 during Musharraf’s rule is no secret. The “settlement” that the two sides were then negotiating would have set aside the UN Security Council resolutions and legitimised India’s occupation of two-thirds of the state in return for some concessions by India of very dubious value, which, besides, would also be easily reversible.

Those who argue in favour of a settlement on these lines, as Khursheed Kasuri does endlessly, contend that there is no alternative because there cannot be a military solution. They are only partly right. There cannot be a military solution. But there is another-better-choice open to Pakistan and the Kashmiris than legitimising India’s occupation. That option is to maintain the current international status of Kashmir as disputed territory till the exercise of the right of self-determination by the people of the state and to continue Pakistan’s moral, political and diplomatic support for the Kashmiris under UN Security Council resolutions. The time when Kashmiris will have azadi might seem distant but it will surely come because the age of colonialism is dead, much though India may want to keep it alive in Kashmir.

After the ouster of Musharraf in 2008, both Zardari and Manmohan Singh were interested in resuming the backchannel negotiations on Kashmir. But the suspension of bilateral dialogue by India after the Bombay terrorist attacks in November ruled that out. In an interview last week with The Wall Street Journal (12 April), the Indian foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai indicated unmistakably that India would now like to resume the backchannel dialogue. India, he said, would be happy to start talks towards a deal to keep Kashmir’s borders as they are but allow greater trade and movement of people across the Line of Control. The backchannel, Mathai said, “was a very useful channel of discussions. They made progress.”

This is a subject that is sure to have come up in talks during Zardari’s visit. It is significant that BJP leaders were present at Manmohan Singh’s luncheon meeting with Zardari. So was S K Lambah, the Indian envoy to the backchannel negotiations.

Both Pakistan and India need an atmosphere of tranquillity in the region in order to concentrate on their economic and social development, but peace will not break out by the two sides’ beating the peace drums. Peace will only come if there is the will to find equitable solutions to bilateral disputes.

Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com

-The News