Some Indian critics are less than enthused. New Delhi had justifiably suspended talks with Islamabad after the horrific Mumbai attacks of 26/11. By talking again at such a high level, even though there has been no significant progress in Pakistan bringing the perpetrators to book, India, they feel, has in effect surrendered to Pakistani intransigence. The new wide-ranging and comprehensive talks agreed to by the two sides, the critics point out, are the old ‘composite dialogue’ under another label, the very dialogue New Delhi had righteously called off since there was no point talking to people whose territory and institutions were being used to attack and kill Indians.
The fear in India remains that the government has run out of ideas in dealing with Pakistan — or at least that New Delhi has no good options, between a counterproductive military attack on the sources of terrorism and a stagnant silence. Our position, first articulated by our prime minister in Parliament in 2009, is that we can have a meaningful dialogue with Pakistan only if they fulfil their commitment, in letter and spirit, not to allow their territory to be used in any manner for terrorist activities against India. And yet it is also clear that ‘not talking’ is not much of a policy. Pakistan can deny our shared history but India cannot change its geography. Pakistan is next door and can no more be ignored than a thorn pierced into India’s side.
India’s refusal to talk worked for a while as a source of pressure on Pakistan. It contributed, together with Western (especially American) diplomatic efforts, to some of Islamabad’s initial cooperation, including the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and six of his co-conspirators. But it has long passed its use-by date. The refusal to resume dialogue has stopped producing any fresh results; the only argument that justifies it — that it is a source of leverage — gives some in India the illusion of influence over events that New Delhi does not in fact possess.
Instead, it was ironically India — the victims of 26/11—who had come to seem intransigent and unaccommodative, rather than Pakistan, from whose soil the terrorist attacks were dispatched, financed and directed. The transcendent reality of life on the subcontinent is that it has always been India that wishes to live in peace. India is, at bottom, a status quo power that would like to be left alone to concentrate on its economic development; Indians see Pakistan as the troublesome rebel, needling and bleeding its neighbour in an effort to change the power balance and wrest control of a part of Indian territory (Kashmir). Refusing to talk doesn’t change any of that, but it brought India no rewards and in fact imposed a cost. When Pakistan was allowed to sound reasonable and conciliatory while India seemed truculent and unreasonable, New Delhi’s international image as a constructive force for peace took a beating.
The thaw engendered by the two prime ministers at the cricket World Cup in March 2011—meeting at a major sporting event, devoid of rancour, which Pakistan lost fair and square to the eventual world champions — recognized that talking can achieve constructive results. It can identify and narrow the differences between the two countries on those issues between them that can be addressed. As Prime Minister Singh has realized, just talking about them can make clear what India’s bottom lines are and the minimal standards of civilized conduct India expects from its neighbour. And should it prove necessary, dialogue can also be used to send a few tough signals.
‘Cricket diplomacy’ is not new on the subcontinent. It was tried twice before, each time with Pakistani military rulers travelling to watch cricket in India. General Zia-ul-Haq’s visit to a match in Jaipur in 1986 was an exercise in cynicism, since it was aimed at defusing tensions stoked by his own policy of fomenting and aiding Sikh militant secessionism in India. General Pervez Musharraf’s visit to a cricket stadium in Delhi in 2005 came at a better time in the two countries’ relations, but foreshadowed a decline in the progress the two nations were making up to that point. Watching cricket does not necessarily lead to improved dialogue (especially when the other side’s wickets are falling). But when two countries are genuinely prepared to engage, a grand sporting occasion can be a useful instrument to signal the change. That is what the ‘spirit of Mohali’ has brought about. Talks have since resumed; but a year later, it is still too early to pronounce oneself definitively on whether and how that spirit is translating into genuine progress on the ground.
The argument against dialogue with Pakistan is strongly held and passionately argued by many I respect. And yet I believe these critics are wrong. Not just because, as I have explained above, it is clear that we are doing the right thing, but also because it is time the critics too understood that we do have other options.
We are doing the right thing, because to say that we will not talk as long as there is terror is essentially to give the terrorists a veto over our own diplomatic choices. For talking can achieve constructive results. It can identify and narrow the differences between our two countries on those issues that can be dealt with, while keeping the spirit of dialogue (and implicitly of compromise) alive. At the same time, what is needed is sustained pressure — especially through US military and intelligence sources upon their Pakistani counterparts — to rein in the merchants of terror.
And yet, the extent of possible US pressure remains constrained by Afghanistan. For a while after 26/11 I had hoped that this time the terrorists had gone too far. The murderers of Mumbai had, after all, made powerful enemies by killing American, French and Israeli citizens as well as Indian ones. While previous bomb blasts took only Indian lives, it was easier for the rest of the world to regard terrorism in India as an Indian problem. Mumbai, I reasoned, had internationalized the issue. As they dominated the world’s media for three gruesome days, the killers achieved a startling success for their cause, one that must have shaken anti-terrorist experts around the world, who now realize how easy it would be for ten men unafraid of death to hold any city in the world hostage. After all, how many hotels, schools, airports, markets or cinema theatres can you turn into fortifications everywhere in the world? But they also ensured that India will no longer be alone in its efforts to stamp out this scourge.
Or so I thought. But it became clear soon enough that as long as the war in Afghanistan continued, the world needed Pakistan more than Pakistan needed the world — and Pakistan knew it.
Afghanistan is where the tyranny of geography gives Pakistan an indispensable role in fulfilling the logistics needs for tens of thousands of US soldiers, who must be supplied, rationed and redeployed through Pak territory. (In my UN peacekeeping days I was told, by a grizzled American officer, the adage that amateurs discuss strategy, rank amateurs focus on tactics and true professionals concentrate on logistics.) It is no accident that at one point in 2009 reports began to surface that the United States was developing an alternative route through Central Asia to supply its forces in Afghanistan; but the mere fact that we were reading about it in the newspapers suggested that it was still more an idea than a reality, and the news was meant to serve as an unsubtle warning to the Pakistani military that if they thought that logistics had given them a stranglehold on the United States’ options, other options could still be developed. Bluntly, they haven’t been; the Central Asian route is much more expensive and, though the overwhelming dependence on Pakistan has been reduced with a smaller percentage of NATO supplies coming through that country than before, Islamabad remains logistically indispensable.