Ripples in a teacup

Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, seems to have quite unnecessarily created ripples in a teacup by deviating from the Islamabad summit and briefly reverting to the perennial Pakistani buzzwords of Kashmir being a “core issue” in the Indo-Pak dialogue. It is fortunate that in spite of an election process going on in India, the issue has not started to snowball into rhetoric that could vitiate the atmosphere. New Delhi’s measured and sober response to this statement has helped do this and, therefore, needs to be welcomed.

What makes Musharraf’s remarks inexplicable is that there seems to have been nothing that could have provoked such a response. Almost everything he said indicated that building normalcy, peace and cooperative relations with India were the “centre stage” issues. The only explanation for that gratuitous harking back to the Kashmir-as-core-issue rhetoric — all the bluster and training of the commando in the general notwithstanding — is that there is an underlying lack of confidence in his and his country’s position on Kashmir, which they seem to be unable to come to terms with. The Pakistani elite has always displayed a deep sense of inability to deal with the growing gap between the two countries. Since we have heard the “core issue” formulation so frequently, it would be reasonable to assume that it comes with some idea, some plan, of how this crucial issue is to be resolved. While there have been some “solutions” emanating from western capitals, we have not really come across any, even at the non-governmental levels during innumerable Track-II discussions, from the Pakistanis themselves. The conclusion then is inescapable: Pakistan’s elites, especially their military leaders, have not been willing to understand what the problem is, leave alone make a serious attempt at seeking a solution.

That Kashmir is an outstanding issue has been accepted long ago — from the time when the UN required Pakistan to vacate the territories of the state of J&K to enable further action to be taken, to the bilateral Simla and Lahore agreements. Since 1988, the issue has got deeply enmeshed in cross-border terrorism. The problem is that Musharraf draws artificial lines by saying that confidence-building measures cannot proceed without progress on the “core issue”. The truth is that both must go together if the two countries are sincere about ushering in an era of peace and prosperity which — as Musharraf himself observed — has wide popular support: “The people of our countries want it, the business community is eagerly looking forward to it, and the media favours it.”