The Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia summit at Almaty in the first week of June provided the expected impetus to drive Pakistan and India away from a military confrontation.The summit has helped push the diplomatic process forward. Of the numerous bilateral meetings that took place, the most important were the ones President General Pervez Musharraf and Chinese President Jiang Zemin held with their Pakistani and Indian counterparts separately. Both urged restraint, and Russian Vlaidmir Putin also adopted a hands-on approach.However, just 24 hours after Musharraf made his statement on the need to have neutral observers along the LoC to check infiltration, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee responded with India’s old and non-workable proposal for joint patrolling of the LoC by Pakistani and Indian armies. Vajpayee made the informal proposal at his pre-departure press conference, which was held for only Indian journalists.Whatever the merits and demerits of this proposal, it is clear that India is finally feeling the heat of the international community’s displeasure over its tough talk.India’s gain comes at a price: With the international community now deep into the Pakistan-India diplomatic quagmire, it’s unlikely to exit without attempting a holistic engagement with the issue.Over the last three years, political, diplomatic and military developments on the Jammu and Kashmir issue have demonstrated the need to establish linkages of both cause and effect between four elements, which will have to be addressed for any genuine intervention:• There is a problem of cross-LoC infiltration.• The unresolved Jammu and Kashmir problem will continue to keep India and Pakistan to the brink of war• Many of the armed groups that emerged during the nineties to support the armed struggle in Kashmir are not under the control of the Musharraf government — just like Indira Gandhi was unable to control the activities of Khalistani leader Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale whom she created herself; just as the United States could not control the Contras after creating them in Nicaragua; just as Islamabad was unable to control the Muttahida Quami Movement after creating it.• Despite the very tough international response to Pakistan’s Kargil military activity and its subsequent withdrawal from Kargil, the issue of cross-LoC infiltration keeps re-emerging.Hence, as long as the unresolved Kashmir issue remains on the Pakistan-India horizon, in addition to the price paid in terms of human blood, war-like situations will continue to re-surface.Cross-LoC infiltration can never be resolved as an isolated phenomenon. Any effort, therefore, at working for durable peace requires addressing all the four actors simultaneously. No instant miracles, as opposed to a process or a comprehensive approach to the Jammu and Kashmir problem, will be viable.For Pakistan too, a comprehensive approach will work, one that is committed to a credible political process through which a just and durable settlement to the Kashmir problem, in accordance with the people of Jammu and Kashmir, can be arrived at.Pakistan is now repeatedly making this offer while claiming to also have controlled cross-LoC infiltration. In this round, Islamabad recognises that to a great extent, its words will be checked by ground facts. Equally Islamabad has, by claiming that it is controlling activity across the LoC, conceded that it can, to some degree, control the activity.While Pakistan, yet again, wants to check India’s intentions for a genuine dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir, it recognises that it has also set itself up for scrutiny by the international community on the issue of cross-border infiltration. Pakistan’s best option is to take the Kashmiris in confidence, keep its word on ground facts, keep diplomatic pressure on India and demand the international community’s intervention in keeping the pressure on India to address the Jammu and Kashmir problem comprehensively.The world knows, more than it did even during Kargil, that a Pakistan-India stand-off over an unresolved Jammu and Kashmir problem can catapult the otherwise indifferent global diplomacy into a crisis mode. As non-stop phone-calls and messenger diplomacy continues endlessly, trying to prevent an Indo-Pak war, the world recognises that Kashmir can no longer be ignored.Nasim Zehra is a leading Pakistani commentator on security issues and a member of Pakistan’s National Kashmir Committee
