The Hindu : PEACE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

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Saturday, Nov 08, 2003

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PEACE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

"THE RULE IS," the Queen told Alice in Lewis Carroll's classic, Through the Looking Glass, "jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday — but never jam today." To anyone who has been following the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir since December 2000, Alice's frustration will be familiar. Peace could have been won yesterday, and it could be won tomorrow — but somehow never today. A little under three years ago, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee initiated the five-month Ramzan Ceasefire and ordered Indian troops not to initiate offensive combat operations. It looked for a while like pro-dialogue elements in the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin along with centrists in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference might engage in talks with the Indian state. The representatives of those forces, Abdul Majid Dar and Abdul Gani Lone, are both dead, victims of terrorist bullets. The ceasefire period actually saw escalated levels of terrorist violence, in terms of the killings of civilians. Then we had Operation Parakram, an effort to coerce Pakistan into ending its state-sponsored jihad. That enterprise too collapsed. Now we have Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's `Healing Touch', coupled with new Union Government offers of direct dialogue with the Hurriyat.

How close are we now to actually getting some jam? In April this year, Prime Minister Vajpayee promised the people in Jammu and Kashmir that soon "the nightingales will return, chirping." So far, the only song to be heard is the staccato rattle of the Kalashnikov, but the peace initiative has chugged on. In August, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani offered some kind of informal top-level dialogue with the APHC, the precursor of the current offer. Mr. Vajpayee has shown extraordinary resolve in pushing for peace with Pakistan and within Jammu and Kashmir, for his party faces State and general elections in the near future. What is less clear, however, is that this energy is underpinned by a coherent strategic vision. Just a month ago, the Prime Minister asserted in New York that dialogue could begin only "when cross-border terrorism stops or when we eradicate it." He seemed equally pessimistic over the prospects of a formal dialogue with the APHC. The organisation, the Prime Minister said, "wants a special invitation, which I cannot understand." Two weeks after he made this statement, some understanding seemed to have dawned on the Government, for reasons that are still far from clear.

What explains the turnaround? Possibly, only possibly, some quiet United States arm-twisting. This October has seen the lowest levels of fatalities for the month in years, a sign that Pakistan may have been pushed to meet in part India's `no-terrorism' precondition. It is, however, worth reflecting on the limitations of premising the peace process on such pressure. First, Pakistan will not sustain de-escalation unless it is provided concrete incentives to do so. As things stand, it has no incentives; no Indian Government can meet Pakistan's minimum demand on Jammu and Kashmir, which is the handover of a part of the State. Secondly, the APHC centrists with whom a dialogue is under way are not principals in the conflict. They cannot deliver a reduction of violence for the simple reason they have no leverage with the groups who carry it out. Thirdly, the existence of a public-domain peace process centring only on the APHC centrists will give jihadi groups and their Islamist political supporters good reason to try and overturn the dialogue table, and thus end a feast to which they have not been invited. The Prime Minister has already warned this is his last throw of the peace dice. With general elections around the corner, there will be great pressure on his party to compensate for a failed peace process with a display of military muscle. Policy-makers need to think through their responses to the emerging situation carefully, in the knowledge that each peace initiative that flops serves to heighten tension between India and Pakistan and within the troubled State.

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