The path is the destination

No plan, design or strategy, no matter how wisely and carefully crafted, would work unless the assumptions made for its success worked out. ...

No plan, design or strategy, no matter how wisely and carefully crafted, would work unless the assumptions made for its success worked out. Take, for example, the ongoing peace process between India and Pakistan. It took us fifty years to evolve a framework with which many of us can live. In August 1997, the foreign secretaries of the two countries, after some deep deliberations in Islamabad, made out a prescription. It was called 8220;the composite dialogue8221;. They did not elaborate its algorithm, its design logic, but it was a good one. If the belligerents, India and Pakistan, took up their main points of contention, more or less at the same time, some of them, the simpler ones, could be straightened out in quick time. That in turn would create the 8220;right environment8221; to resolve the more complex disputes. If the conception has survived nuclear explosions, Kargil and the post 9/11 turmoil, it must have been built upon sound footing. In due course, we refined it.

Just in case one had forgotten the small print! We were told in the earlier days that the dialogue would not only be 8220;composite8221;, it would also be 8220;integrated8221;. That meant: progress on all issues had to be in tandem. Sounded fine; but for a problem. If there was little or no movement on one track, we had to slow down on all the others. The favourable environment, needed to deal with the more complex issues, would now only obtain when these issues were resolved; exactly the Catch 22 situation we had set out to avoid. The 8220;integrated8221; part was quietly dropped. The process was now to move on multiple tracks with multiple speeds. No longer strictly 8220;composite8221;, the dialogue retained the politically correct adjective.

Evolution of this formula was purely a civilian sector enterprise. All the same, since it is the military that prides itself in the study and development of strategic concepts, it may be gratifying to note that a military strategist, too, would have sanctioned the plan. When operating along multiple axes, forces that meet less resistance continue their momentum. That helps movement on other fronts. When the situation is right, some fronts are reinforced to effect a breakthrough, facilitating early capture of the main objective.

Military strategy, on the other hand, even if called to service, could not have helped kick-starting the process. A political decision was needed to override the two 8220;pre-conditions8221;. Pakistan wanted Kashmir to be, visibly at least, the focus of talks. India, on the other hand, insisted that all what she regarded as terrorism had to cease before the talks began. Once they understood the algorithm, both found out that their needs could only be met once the process had started.

An important point had still to be taken care of. Resolution of Kashmir, we all well, almost all understand would take a little while. Nevertheless, since it is a 8220;core issue8221; for Pakistan and a multi-corps problem for India, some gesture, even a symbolic one, was needed to signal our earnest desire to solve it. Getting the leaders from the two sides of the Kashmiri divide together seemed one good option. If the idea inspired the two sets of Punjabi leadership to jump the gun, I do not know. In case of Kashmir, the fact that it did not violate either side8217;s declared policy was indeed important. The key consideration, however, was: how best to contain this sensitive front, while we got on with our more tractable issues. Now that we have agreed to run buses across the LoC, more than merely the leadership can come together. More reason for optimism, I suppose! The air in Islamabad on the evening of February 16 was bubbly. The two foreign ministers had thumbed the bus agreement. The mood was too blissful for my taste.

A bus did come to Lahore once. After our bombs came out of the basement, we needed one to ride together the highway to nuclear heaven. Never content with small mercies, we wished it could take us all the way to the seventh heaven. Burdened with our past baggage, it could not carry our elated future. The first blast, with epicentre far under the Kargil hills, and it crashed. What would happen, if there was another one, this time under the bus? Nothing too serious if we still remembered the most important assumption made when we designed the concept: sustenance of the process will be more important than its substance. Now that we have taken the plunge, the bus should run. The bus is being run, in the first place, to firm up the process. But it cannot run, unless the process is firm enough to sustain it. 8220;Path is the Target8221;; so goes a German saying. Once firmly on the path, we can reclaim the subcontinental elan: manzil ki taraf do gam chaloon, aur samne manzil aajai I only have to walk towards the destination, and there it will be.

The writer is former director general, ISI, and ambassador of Pakistan to Germany and Saudi Arabia