It is premature and wholly illogical to term the decisions announced after the Narendra Modi-Nawaz Sharif meeting in Ufa, Russia, as either a “breakthrough” or even the breaking of a “deadlock”. The announcements, at best, reflect a recalibration of New Delhi’s stop-go policy on talks with Pakistan, and that is what needs welcoming.
Let’s be clear. There is going to be no breakthrough, no breaking of a “deadlock†on any core issue. India is not going to ease up on Kashmir or Siachen, and Pakistan is not going to play ball on any issue of vital interest to India – especially jihadi terror fostered by the Pakistani Deep State (army, ISI), or even the trial of 26/11 mastermind Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi.
References to terrorism and the trial are just there for the optics – which may be worth having, but it won’t mean anything on the ground. Modi’s proposed visit to Pakistan next year may be great for photo-ops, but that’s about it.
We have to adopt Chanakya’s tactics with Pakistan, and this means focusing on peripheral issues, not the core. The core issues should be left for later generations. This is exactly what the Ufa announcements have done. There is no reference to Kashmir or India-focused terrorism.
Terrorism means different things to India and Pakistan. For Pakistan, terrorism sometimes means tackling Sunni fundamentalist forces like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is often seen to be attacking the army and the Deep State, whenever they are seen as a threat to the TTP’s Islamisation project.
Pakistan’s reason for even talking about terrorism is Chanakya neeti of its own; it is a kind of double-talk intended to confuse us. It is intended to bring India down to its level, where R&AW and Indian intelligence can be accused of fomenting terror in Balochistan or Afghanistan or elsewhere. Pakistan wants equivalence with India on terrorism since currently it seen as the fountainhead of jihadism. It wants India to share this ignominy.
For Pakistan, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, of which Lakhvi is commander, is specifically excluded from the terror definition since it is targeted against India. Tackling terror, in Pakistan’s lexicon, involves separating “good terrorists” like LeT (who only create mayhem in India) from the bad ones which target the Pakistani establishment. So, one should forget about any movement on Lakhvi, unless, by a strange quirk of fate, the Pakistani army has itself decided to replace him in LeT with someone less well known and who is less of a global PR liability. The chances are Sharif’s promise of a faster trial for Lakhvi is meaningless unless the Pakistani army has also endorsed the idea. One cannot entirely rule this out, for, after all, Pakistan agreed to sacrifice Osama bin Laden after sheltering him for years. It will sacrifice Lakhvi or Dawood Ibrahim only if it has got a deal that will benefit it.
This is not to suggest that the five areas on which movement has been announced at Ufa is not worthwhile. Apart from the Lakhvi half-promise, the two sides agreed to a meeting between the Pakistani and Indian National Security Advisors, Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz, meetings between the directors-general of the BSF and the Pakistan Rangers, the release of fishermen caught in each others’ waters, and a mechanism for facilitating religious tourism.
These measures are peripheral and do not signal any fundamental change in intent on the part of Pakistan. They actually signal a change in the Modi government’s attitude about re-engaging diplomatically with Pakistan. I have always argued that we should never suspend talks, even if they yield nothing. Talking can never do harm; at best they may provide forward movement on peripheral issues; at worst they may provide opportunities to vent anger and read the body language of the other side. A bonus is that the world feels happier if India and Pakistan are talking rather than just growling at each other and sabre-rattling on the border.
Our failing has been that we have become manic-depressive over Pakistan. We jump over the moon over any summit-level talks and big political gestures that ultimately mean nothing. Then we get angry when Pakistan shows us the finger and acts in bad faith. From Tashkent (1965) to Shimla to Lahore to Delhi (when Narendra Modi invited Sharif to attend his swearing-in ceremony last May), dramatic gestures and summits have never led to changes in Pakistan’s behaviour towards us. Pakistan signals a change of heart (which only means a small period of non-belligerence on its part, nothing substantial) when it is weak, and reverts to its violent engagements when it feels cockier.
The only relevant summit to remember when it comes to Pakistan is Agra in 2001, when Pervez Musharraf and Atal Behari Vajpayee almost came to an agreement, but LK Advani is said to have spiked it. Advani was right, and Vajpayee wrong in trying to move towards a solution on India-Pakistan issues without real basis for trust.
The reality is the Deep State in Pakistan, and even large segments of civil society, will not allow peace because of Pakistan’s foundational belief that it was created to oppose “Hindu Indiaâ€. Till this foundational belief is challenged and reversed by future generations of Pakistanis – resulting, among other things, in the formal bringing of the army and ISI under real civilian control – nothing will change. Pakistan will continue to view India as an enemy state even though it is the only one fostering this enmity.
A story is told about how Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya’s NSA and chief strategist, was initially failing in his efforts to overthrow the Nandas who ruled Magadha. His direct attacks led only to reverses, but he learnt a lesson when he overheard a mother scolding her child for burning his fingers by trying to take food from the middle of a hot bowl instead of its cooler fringes. This prompted Chanakya to realise his mistake: you don’t take on an enemy at his strongest points. He changed strategy and targeted the periphery of the Nanda empire before attacking the core.
The story may be apocryphal, but Chanakya’s lesson is relevant to us today when dealing with Pakistan. We should deal with the peripheral issues first, and not the core: Kashmir, terrorism, Siachen, Sir Creek, etc. The strategy must be to continuously engage with Pakistan on peripherals, and get forward movement on them – talks on trade, visas, etc. Pakistan will not play fair or even keep its word on even these issues, but breaches of trust will be less costly for us. Pakistan will regularly provoke us with terrorism, shootings on the border, and blocking India in Saarc. We should be eternally alert.
Another key element to Chanakya neeti is to keep the enemy guessing. This means not disclosing your plans – and keeping the enemy off guard or confused by hypocritical talk that is different from the actual intended action. The simple fact is that the Pakistanis have learnt Chanakya neeti better than us, and have never allowed peace talks to interfere with more aggressive intentions.
This is what Chanakya would have done. We should be ready to strike back whenever Pakistan breaches our trust. This means despite talks we have to be on our guard militarily. We should never agree to any deal on core issues till we are much stronger, both economically and militarily. If this means waiting 25 years for a deal, so be it. No deal with Pakistan will stick till they realise the futility of their strategy. It will take them decades to get there, and we have to wait patiently for that to happen.
Source from India Defence News.
