Picking up the threads again in Kashmir

Columnist SULTAN AHMED proposes that attempts for peace must be re-started.

Moves are afoot to resume the suddenly suspended ceasefire talks in Kashmir. India wants the talks. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Home Minister A. K. Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandez have spoken of their readiness to talk to the Hizbul Mujahideen and other elements in Kashmir agreeable to the talks. Hizbul Mujahideen and the All Parties Hurriyet Conference with its 22 parties are interested in resuming the talks to explore a negotiated settlement of the 53-year old dispute that had led to three wars between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan too is interested in a negotiated settlement and has been urging the Western powers to intervene in the dispute, mediate if possible, or facilitate the talks. Gen Pervez Musharraf has offered to meet the Indian prime minister “anytime, anywhere” despite the negative response from India to such summitry.

The world as a whole, particularly the US and Japan, are interested in a negotiated settlement in Kashmir and peace in South Asia, imperille by the fact the two countries are now nuclear weapon states.

But India wants to avoid talking to Pakistan on Kashmir at the early stage and prefers to talk to the Mujahideen groups in Kashmir led by the Hizbul Mujahideen which is the largest and most powerful Mujahideen group in Kashmir.

India simultaneously argues it can be ready to talk to Pakistan if Islamabad gives of its “cross-border terrorism” by which it means sponsoring, supporting and arming Mujahideen groups in Kashmir and sending them across the Line of Control in Kashmir. Pakistan denies lending any such support and maintains its support to the freedom, fighters is only moral, diplomatic and political.

There is, however, a significant shift in the Indian stand. Earlier it used to insist all resistance in occupied Kashmir sprang from the elements orchestrated by Pakistan and sent across the border. But now they admit substantial number of Kashmiris are a part of the resistance forces there, and Hizbul Mujahideen, which is primarily Kashmiri, is the dominant element among them.

Earlier the All Parties Hurriyet Conference was out of the negotiations, though the Hizb as one of the parties is under it. But now it has offered to be a party to the negotiations on the basis of half its executive talking to India and the other half to Pakistan and eventually bringing the two sides together for final talks. What it proposes is more like the Palestine peace talks in which the US talked to Yasser Arafat and his assistants on one side and with Israeli leaders on the other side, and eventually brought them together at Camp David recently.

There are good reasons for all sides to want a negotiated settlement after the dispute, occasionally bursting into war has lasted to 53 years. And now that India and Pakistan are nuclear powers there is the fear the next war may eventually have a nuclear end. Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar keeps on reminding that next war between India and Pakistan may bring nuclear weapons into a totally destructive play.

On the Kashmiri side 60,000 to 70,000 people have lost their lives and many times more than have been injured. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed and large number of women raped or dishonoured in other ways. And millions of Kashmiris are without employment as the tourism industry has been largely shattered.

On the other side India is reported to have lost more than 10,000 of its soldiers, and it is losing on an average 10 soldiers everyday now, apart from its heavy losses in Kargil last year in men, material and money. And India finds the overall cost of the damage to its  global image due to the Kashmir conflict excessive. All that favours negotiations.

But while all the parties, minus some excessively militant elements, want negotiations and a ceasefire prior to that, they are able to agree on little else.

If the negotiations are to start they have to agree on three phases.

1. Who all should participate in the ceasefire talks. The largest number of parties participating in the ceasefire talks the better as a few militant parties can sabotage the ceasefire through excessive violence.

2. Sustaining the ceasefire through mutual cooperation and barring small parties outside the negotiations from sabotaging it.

3. Final settlement of the Kashmir dispute which may take time as all the aspects of the dispute are discussed and solutions found. Each stage of the discussion may confront new problems. Determined efforts have to be made to prevent them from sabotaging the talks and reaching solutions.

The ultimate rock on which such negotiations may founder is the Indian insistence that Kashmir is an inalienable part of India and cannot be parted with on any score. It is that historic insistence that bars India from entering into serious discussions on Kashmir with Pakistan, and if it does start talking, stalemating that as early as possible. Time, India thinks, is in its favour, and hence as long as the dispute is prolonged or frozen the better for India.

The Mujahideen on the other hand want to make India pay a heavy price for that occupation. If India has 500,000 to 600,000 troops there, it is also losing 10 to 12 soldiers everyday at the hands of the Mujahideen. The troops have to be very vigilant and equipment destroyed by the Mujahideen has to be replaced quick. And if after 52 years India is war-weary in Kashmir it is not surprising.

The world, beginning with the US agrees that no Kashmir settlement is possible without direct India-Pakistan talks. And India cannot go on avoiding such talks for ever.

A war between India and Pakistan will not be confined to South Asia because of the nuclear arms of the two countries. The Pakistan Foreign Minister has said a conflict between India and Pakistan can lead to full scale war in which nuclear weapons could be used. He has repeated this assertion several times.

The influential Washington Post also keeps on repeating that Kashmir is a nuclear flashpoint. It was “a window of opportunity that was slammed shut when the ceasefire talks were cancelled,” says the newspaper.

It says “in the short run the recent week’s drama has cast India in better light than Pakistan, as Vajpayee prepared for a high profile visit to Washington and New York next month.”

The fact is the unilateral ceasefire announced on July 24 came as a surprise and stunned many of the Mujahideen groups. Similarly cancellation of the ceasefire following abrupt end of the talks - or after only one meeting - came as a double surprise. The three month’s ceasefire was over in three weeks.

Mr. Fazal Haq Qureshi who negotiated with Indian commanders on behalf of the Hizb Mujahideen has criticised the Hizb for withdrawing its truce offer before the talks could resume after an initial first meeting, and said because of that a “great chance for resolution of the Kashmir issue and peace was wasted.”

The Hizb chief Syed Salahuddin has said the Hizb consulted foreign countries like the US and European states, before offering the unilateral ceasefire. If that be so it should have consulted those countries before calling off the ceasefire talks.

One of the reasons given by the Hizb for calling off the ceasefire talks is that India did not agree to make Pakistan a party to the talks. But now the new chairman of the Hurriyet Conference Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhatt has come forward with a formula for it and said it was not possible to associate Pakistan with the talks from day one, and suggested the seven-member executive of the alliance could be split into two and while one half of the executive talks to Pakistan, the other half will talk to India and eventually bring them together.

Farooq Abdullah, chief minister of Indian occupied Kashmir, says Vajpayee cannot risk talking to Pakistan. He says that as Vajpayee has been maintaining the Kashmir is part of India and Indian sovereignty would be compromised if Kashmir leaves India.

Because of that consistent stand of the BJP leader the two prime ministers will not able to meet together although both will be in New York for the millennium session of the UN General Assembly in September. President Clinton of the US would also be in New York at that time, and he is hosting a reception for the top leaders attending the US General Assembly session then. He would want them to meet each other, and would be ready to help them come together if they are willing.

The SAARC summit which used to provide an opportunity for South Asian leaders to meet together and discuss mutual issues outside the conference room has also been put off. It was scheduled to meet in November at Katmandu but was postponed at the Indian insistence following the military take-over in Pakistan on October 12.

But now Mr. Vajpayee says he can talk to Pakistan despite its military rule, but Pakistan should suspend its cross-border terrorism, which Pakistan denies sponsoring or assisting.

President Clinton’s ability to pressure India to come around to a meeting with Gen. Musharraf is limited as his term of office comes to an end by the end of the year. While Mr. Vajpayee refuses to meet Gen. Musharraf he also avoids meetings at other levels between India and Pakistan to discuss Kashmir. That in effect means India has slam shut the door for talks with Pakistan on Kashmir.

Now Hizbul Mujahideen insists that Pakistan should be a party to the talks, while the APHC argues that Pakistan could join the talks when the real issues are discussed and the final fate of Kashmir is settled. Pakistan may not lose much by agreeing to this proposal. But can India achieve much by preferring to talk to the Hizb leaders as well as those of the APHC with its 22 component parties? They too want the future of Kashmir to be decided by the Kashmiris, not by India, nor by its constitution that treats Kashmir as a part of India irrevocably.

India will not be the gainer for adopting such diversionary tactics and hoping to gain by talking to Kashmiri Mujahideen groups what it may lose by talking to Pakistan. India is deceiving itself by following this policy or simply trying to gain more time, believing time is in US favour.