Letter from Islamabad

The problem is: How do we get there? My impression is that this has been as little thought through in Islamabad as in Delhi. Both governments are still searching for a compass to draw the roadmap. Which is just as well. For the one thing to avoid is the meretricious drama of yet another ill-prepared summit. The summit should come at the end of the road, however long and steep and slippery the climb. The leaders should be brought in only to cut the last 8216;8216;Hillary step8217;8217; to the top. Now is the time for the sherpas to start setting up Base Camp.

For this, we first need to get some cobwebs out of our minds. True, the Pakistan economy has been through a pretty rough patch but it is a dangerously misleading illusion to imagine that their proxy war has bled them white, which is why they are suing for peace. The finance minister, Shaukat Aziz, who inaugurated the conference I am here to attend, announces that the Pakistan economy in the current financial year, July 2002-June 2003, has recorded the fastest growth in South Asia. He does not say so but the sad fact is that they have overtaken India as we slide downwards and they slither up. Per capita income in the current fiscal year, he adds, has risen by a double-digit figure. Foreign exchange reserves, at 10 billion dollars, are nearly ten times what they were at the time of Pervez Musharraf8217;s coup in 1999. The blood transfusion comes from the resumption of foreign aid and a massive augmentation in remittances from the huge Pakistani diaspora. More significantly, foreign direct investment in the much smaller Pakistan economy is on par with what it is in our much larger economy. We are not dealing with a failed state. We are dealing with a nation and a people who have demonstrated, yet again, their resilience.

Pakistan is not, and never will be, a democracy but, as the most brilliant Pakistani participant in the meeting points out before pungently explaining why, for all its democracy deficit, Pakistan, of all the Muslim countries, is certainly the most democratic, with, moreover, a military leadership that is constantly running for constitutional cover. The utterly frank, fearless and often damning revelations of the state of their polity by the Pakistani participants demonstrates that freedom of expression is not one whit less in Pakistan than in India. For good or for ill, the Pakistani military-political establishment is sensitive to public opinion. That public opinion can be harnessed to a settlement provided two conditions are fulfilled. One, the dialogue needs to be transparent for the people to be cut into the loop. Second, no settlement which portrays itself as a defeat for Pakistan can be sustained. Equally, Pakistan recognises that, for the same reason, no solution which amounts to defeat for India is possible. This is the window of opportunity we should prise open: a win-win equilibrium, a Paretian optimum from which if either moves away both will be worse off.

No one 8212; least of all I 8212; know where that Paretian optimum lies. If I 8212; or anyone 8212; did, there would be no need of a dialogue; we could go straight there without further ado. No, the equilibrium is to be attained not through divine revelation but through sustained, meaningful, accommodative dialogue, through a joint search for the point where both India and Pakistan will win and neither will lose. At times, this will seem like hunting for a black cat in a darkened room. But that is when both would need to be assured that they are not hunting alone. Hence, the indispensability of so structuring the dialogue as to make it uninterrupted and uninterruptible. The fits and starts which have characterised all previous Indo-Pak engagements must be strictly eschewed. Talks about talks must focus on how to insulate the continuation of the dialogue from the inevitable ups and downs of the relationship. In the past, every time the going has been good, the dialogue has been sustained, but the moment it has been overshadowed by a passing cloud, that is, at the precise juncture that a dialogue is most needed, either side or both has seized the opportunity to disrupt the process. It generally takes years to get back on course.

This, of course, has been as true of our dialogue with our Kashmiri discontents as it has been of our dialogue with Pakistan. The two tracks8212; the internal and the external8212;must be kept strictly separate and must not proceed in tandem. For it is the speed with which we move on the inner track that will set the pace for the outer. Moreover, the faster the progress in restoring internal normalcy, the better the chances of softening the barriers between the Kashmiris themselves, caught as they have been for the last half century on either side of the impenetrable wall which separates PoK from our J038;K. There is, of course, no question of, indeed there must be zero tolerance for, any pretence at Kashmiri sovereignty, but on both the internal and external track we will have to remember always that the Question of Jammu and Kashmir ultimately boils down to the people of the state. It is not a property dispute. Hence, weaning the Kashmiri away from the causes of his discontent will decisively determine the course and content of the external dialogue.

And what of the Americans? Most Pakistanis feel comforted at the thought of an American presence as ballast for mounting a countervailing power to what they are deeply concerned is a stronger India. At the same time, the intrusive diplomacy and interventionist activism of the Bushmen has fuelled widespread apprehension in Pakistan, as in much of the Muslim world, of the baleful consequences of letting the camel into the tent. The present Pakistan government, in the present international context, is, therefore, ready, in concert with its people, to take the bilateral track signposted by the Simla Agreement. The facilitation effected by the recent Armitage initiative is readily acknowledged in Islamabad but there does not appear to be any particular insistence that the Americans must be at the table, or even waiting in the wings, for the dialogue to move forward. It is as vital to the success of the dialogue that the dialogue be insulated from the ups and downs of the India-Pakistan relationship as it needs be insulated from the waning and the waxing of America8217;s relentless pursuit of its own wildly fluctuating and whimsically passing interests in the region, with no more concern for the grass underfoot than a rogue elephant displays in the jungle. The Vajpayee government must, therefore, learn to tell the Americans, 8216;8216;Thank you8212;and goodbye8217;8217;.