One year of the world’s ‘war on terrorism’ leaves the prime source of Talibanisation, Pakistan, better placed to pursue its campaign against one of the world’s longest-suffering victim of terrorism; while the victim, India, is harder put to counter it. This bizarre byproduct of Washington’s strategies is the cost India is expected to bear as the lesser evil without which the world would find it harder to fight the greater evil of global terrorism. Our first response was urging Washington to press Pakistan to stop terrorism; instead, Pakistan contrived to persist in its mischief. When outrages became intolerable, we threatened war. This probably shook Washington into putting greater pressure on Pakistan than it might have otherwise; it almost certainly kept Pakistan from attempting greater damage to J&K’s elections. Both effects have worn off, leaving two stark realities: Washington feels it cannot do more to press Pakistan; and Pakistan thinks India cannot do more militarily. Both developments encourage Islamabad to continue the present level of proxy war, with the inevitable risk of major incidents, deliberate or accidental. Currently, we seem condemned to live with terror while working on internal settlements in J&K. This continuation of what we have been doing will only earn us more of the same—continuing unrest in J&K, distraction of policy-making from other major needs and, above all, the appalling damage to our society and values resulting from our feelings against Pakistan spilling over into communal animosities. We can neither yield to Pakistan nor let its mischief continue, so a new strategy is necessary. India has never obtained a proper understanding of Pakistan’s challenge. Most people incline to the Pakistani thesis that Kashmir is the ‘root cause’ of tensions even though General Musharraf himself has declared that those tensions, being inherent in Pakistan’s resentment against our power, will persist even if Kashmir is resolved. Before 9-11, when Pakistan was seen as a ‘‘failing’’ state, India’s position that it could concede nothing regarding J&K gained some support, but the manifest unhappiness of Kashmiris with Delhi still made us appear basically in the wrong. The realisation that not only was Pakistan even more in the wrong but that, right or wrong, any attempt to change J&K’s fundamental status as part of India would make the horrors that accompanied Partition look tame, has not taken hold. Even those who have some sense of that urge us to allow for the difficulty of any Pakistani regime appearing weak on the issue. With the need for Pakistani cooperation seen as requiring support for the present regime, focus has shifted from pressing it to stop terrorism to urging India to ‘do something’ conciliatory. Islamabad has even contrived to make its greatest handicap—domestic instability—into the asset of appearing as the ‘‘best bet’’ against worse regimes. Washington assures us Pakistan is a temporary necessity, India is a long term partner, we are not expected to yield on vital interests, we need not even resume talks but we need to find some way out with Pakistan, meanwhile let’s go ahead and deepen Indo-American relations. We do not lack sceptics who question whether these are genuine American commitments or mere blandishments to prevent our spoiling the game. Though it offends our long held preference, America is a key player in Indo-Pak relations; it is also the main opponent of the whole range of terrorism that feeds the branch we face. Our task is to turn Washington’s anti-terrorism against the terrorism we are suffering. It will be hard, but Washington can be made to see that even our capacity to develop long-term cooperation with it is being limited by Pakistani distractions. If America cannot do more to reduce Pakistani terrorism, it can do a great deal more to get Pakistan to move away from its other forms of hostility against us. Nobody can change Pakistan’s power structure except the Pakistanis themselves, of which there is currently little chance; but Americans can help turn this regime’s policies towards real detente. Kashmir cannot be ‘settled’ in isolation; it can only be dealt with as part of a broader peace process. Indeed, if Pakistan had not deliberately rejected cooperative interaction all these decades, the circumstances within which the two countries dealt with their differences could have become far more positive, enabling us even to look at settlements unthinkable in the relationship to which Pakistan has confined us. If Pakistan wants to find a way out short of dictating terms only a victor could impose, it must be persuaded to seek the normalisation route and only America can help in that. Instead of urging us to be more positive towards the Pakistani regime, it can help make talks meaningful. For instance, the economic possibilities Pakistan rejects offer a clear means of developing a vested interest in keeping the peace, such as is now wholly absent. The quid pro quo from us would be an agreement to resume talks, not on the basis of Pakistan’s isolation of Kashmir to the exclusion of anything else, but on our condition that normalisation be set in motion as the concomitant of talks—a much wider, and more specific, approach than Lahore or Agra. Our most effective answer to Pakistan’s animosity is to make ourselves so strong economically and militarily that its tactics are stultified by our sheer strength. The irony is that those shouting loudest against Pakistan—and Muslims—are the biggest obstacle to this kind of growth. Short of that ideal solution, we have two choices: make our present readiness to take serious military action so convincing that Pakistan realises, as it does not today, that we are not bluffing; or attempt to get a more helpful American involvement by coming out with a more constructive approach than simply demanding they end terrorism for us. Neither alternative excludes the other, so we should start on the diplomatic route, strengthening ourselves for the other. (The writer has been India’s ambassador to Pakistan, China and the United States of America and secretary, External Affairs Ministry)
