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A difficult dialogue

Imagine ballroom dancers who both think their partner is preparing to stick a dagger into their back, and you have a good idea of where India-Pakistan dialogue on terrorism stands. The October 22 meeting of the Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism (JATM) saw little other than mutual recrimination — recrimination, moreover, pulled verbatim from the last round of dialogue in March. While India called for action against Islamist terror groups operating out of Pakistan, Pakistan’s diplomats decried Indian involvement in financing Baloch nationalists. Islamabad’s envoys had nothing to offer on Pakistan-based suspects involved in the firebombing of the Samjhauta Express or the serial terror strikes in Hyderabad. Just how earnestly the two governments take the dialogue is evident from the fact that seven months have passed since the JATM convened, instead of the scheduled three. All of this has led critics to write off the exercise as a waste of time and taxpayers’ rupees.

Hard going the anti-terror dialogue might be but any such conclusion would be unwarranted. Part of the problem is that India and Pakistan have radically divergent expectations. New Delhi hoped that the JATM would lead to serious cooperation on countering the designs of Islamist and Khalistani terror groups operating from Pakistani soil. Islamabad wanted mainly to address international concern about the role of its armed forces and Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate in sponsoring terrorism. Some in India’s security establishment have called for coercive instruments to be used to change Pakistani behaviour, like cutting off the water it receives from India’s eastern river systems or using offensive covert operations to deepen that country’s ethnic fault lines. Aside from being ethically beyond the pale, such a course would be fraught with peril. What, then, can India do? Developments in Pakistan hold out reason for hope. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has promised to deliver terror lords like the 1993 Mumbai serial bombing architect Dawood Ibrahim Kaksar if she returns to power. President Pervez Musharraf has, for his part, scaled back direct ISI support to groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizb ul-Mujahideen. Neither has done so from any newfound love for India. Instead, they have come to see that the jihadi infrastructure built by the ISI to wage war against India provides a foundation for the Islamist assault on the Pakistani state. In an interview to The Hindu earlier this year, former ISI chief Asad Durrani predicted that the JATM would prove useful when both Pakistan and India had common enemies to work against. Improbably enough, such a day might not be all that far off.

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