Colin Powell tries his hand again

Columnist SULTAN AHMED discusses the latest attempt by the US Secretary of State to broker peace.

The patient and persevering Colin Powell, US Secretary of State has been back to the region in yet another quest for peace. It must be pretty frustrating for the man of war turned peacemaker to re-plow almost the same diplomatic sand again and again in the region or from Washington. But many of his predecessors who tried the same had not been more successful.

But as the parties involved in the deadly confrontation in the region are nuclear-armed powers and a clash between them is ruinous not only for them and the region but eventually for the world at large, he cannot afford to give it up.

So he has been to the region several times after September eleventh in an effort to sustain and strengthen Pakistan’s support for the anti-terrorist campaign led by President Bush and persuade India to make a working settlement between India and Pakistan possible.

While he has not been able to achieve that, he and his US associates have been able to reduce the chances of a war between the two countries whose million-strong Armed Forces are facing each other significantly less lightly. He will be back later he says possibly after the October elections in Pakistan and the state elections in Indian Occupied Kashmir which may be different from what he has been doing during his latest visit. Powell says that Kashmir is an international issue and not a simple domestic issue of India as New Delhi would have it. India argues the only issue in Kashmir is Pakistan, not stopping altogether infiltration across the Line of Control.

India wants the world to believe that the Kashmir issue is a Pakistan created issue and after the end of the major fighting in Afghanistan, some of the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda elements have gone over to Kashmir crossing the Line of Control.

India does want a dialogue with Pakistan because it does not want to discuss the divisive issues with Pakistan, certainly not Kashmir to which Pakistan gives primacy over other disputes. The fact is that the discussion of the Kashmir issue between them off and on for the last fifty years at all levels including a summit level have led to nothing. It has been perennially deadlocked regardless of the changing players at the top beginning with Jawahar Lal Nehru followed by his daughter Indira Gandhi who signed the Simla pact providing for bilateral negotiations on Kashmir. In fact India is determined to perpetuate its control on Kashmir and treat it more like its internal issue which neither the Kashmiris nor Pakistan can accept. And now following the global campaign against terrorism, India wants a freedom movement in Kashmir to be treated as a terrorist activity assisted and promoted by Pakistan which should be firmly stopped. President Musharraf has agreed to stop permanently infiltration across the LoC and take firm steps in that direction. India argues that Pakistan has taken such steps but not in their totality. It wants all violence in Kashmir to end. But the fact is that after fifty thousand to seventy thousand people have died in Kashmir, Pakistan is not in a position to stop all internal uprising or its violent manifestations. And that gives India the pretext not to resume the dialogue between the two countries disrupted at Agra last year.

And now the October state elections in Kashmir has become an immediate issue for India. It wants to go ahead with the elections without interruption or any violent happening. But the Kashmiris regard the election in the light of the past massive rigging of such electoral exercises by the Farooq Abdullah government as a farce. So the All Parties Hurriyat Conference have rejected the elections fearing it will be not better than past electoral exercises and argues that the state elections are no substitute for a plebiscite and their doubts have been confirmed by the refusal of India to allow international observers during the elections and no NGO’s either. The Indian foreign office spokesman has said that only resident diplomats in India and individual journalists will be allowed to observe the elections. In all probability their number will also be few, as their movement in the state may be restricted.

Powell came out openly in New Delhi suggesting international observers to make the elections more credible but that was promptly rejected by India. Powell now says the state elections can be the first step to end the dispute. But he did not make it clear how that can be. If the Kashmiris hold the elections unfair and the results as rigged as in the past the elections cannot become the first step to end the dispute and if the elections are boycotted by major political parties besides Farooq Abdullah’s Kashmir National Conference the elections can achieve nothing tangible. And if violence mars the election, their ability to pave the way for a political settlement in Kashmir is also severely limited. But India says the state elections are a litmus test of the sincerity of Pakistan not to escalate the violence there.

While Colin Powell and India hold that Pakistan can do more to check all infiltration across the LoC, President Musharraf says Pakistan has done all it could and cannot make more concessions in Kashmir. Colin Powell also wanted the release of the arrested Kashmiri leaders.

India has not committed itself to do that. How it can make the state elections free, fair and beyond dispute in such a contest is not obvious. Despite the setback in India, a series of US officials are to visit the region followed by Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of state before Colin Powell makes his next visit to the region.

Meanwhile, Christina Rocca, US Assistant Secretary of state for South Asia, has met President Musharraf and said the October general elections should be free, fair and non-partisan. It is now necessary for Pakistan to make its elections utterly non-controversial. President Musharraf has to weed out the unpopular constitutional amendments and political changes he has proposed and seek the support of political parties in an evenhanded manner.

Meanwhile, President Musharraf is to visit the US in September and the US pressure on him will increase to make the October elections truly fair and absolutely democratic. Two influential congressmen Benjam in Gilman and Gary. C Ackerman have written to President Bush asking him to insist to President Musharraf to restore full democracy in Pakistan. Other US leaders are also bound to exert some pressure on him and he has to respond to them positively and not give India a handle to exploit the situation against Pakistan.