Pakistan’s new President Pervez Musharraf and India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee are scheduled to hold a long-awaited summit in New Delhi tomorrow in the hope of defusing a tense situation that has built up in the past two years.
The two-day summit has no precise agenda but both leaders have already spelled out the issues that they wish to raise. Vajpayee has put the emphasis on confidence-building measures followed by plans to increase trade and cultural exchanges between the two neighbors. Musharraf, however, has stated that the key purpose of his visit is to engage India in a dialogue about the future of Kashmir.
Before going to New Delhi, Musharraf made a number of moves to strengthen his position at home. Having come to power in a coup d’etat two years ago, he had to legitimize his power before meeting the Indian leader. It was thus that Musharraf was named president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan last month, sending the incumbent, Muhammad Rafiq Tarar into oblivion.
Under the Pakistani Constitution, however, the presidency is largely ceremonial. This is why Musharraf had to make a supplementary move. He created a National Security Council with virtually unlimited extraconstitutional powers. Musharraf himself will be chairman of the new council that will act as a combination of the legislative and executive branches at the same time.
The Pakistani National Security Council is modeled after the Turkish one that has been the center of power in Ankara since 1960. The difference is that the Pakistani council has even greater powers and, unlike its Turkish counterpart, is not bound by any constitutional constraints. Also, the Turkish council includes the prime minister and several other Cabinet ministers who are elected politicians and accountable to the Parliament. The Pakistani one, however, consists only of the army, navy and air force chiefs plus the governors of the country’s four provinces. Because all these people are appointed by Musharraf and can be dismissed by him, the entire council could be regarded as a power tool for the general.
Will the New Delhi summit get anywhere? The short answer is: no.
Musharraf may have already shot himself in the foot, not once but twice. By focusing almost exclusively on Kashmir, he has made it difficult for the Indian side to be forthcoming about broader plans to ease the tension. Vajpayee’s government is sustained by a Hindu nationalist coalition that regards the preservation of Indian rule in Kashmir as sacred.
But even if Vajpayee were prepared to make meaningful concessions over Kashmir, he might wonder why he should present these to a Pakistani transition leader. Musharraf has weakened his own position by announcing that he will hold elections in Pakistan in October 2002 and that he himself will not be a candidate. Thus Vajpayee might well prefer to wait until Pakistan has an elected government, and presumably a new constitution, before engaging it in a long-term dialogue about Kashmir and other sensitive issues.
Kashmir has already caused two wars between India and Pakistan. Fighting in Kashmir itself, between pro-independence groups and Indian security forces, has claimed almost 60,000 lives in the past decade or so. The dispute also forced the two neighbors into one of the costliest, and potentially deadliest, instances of arms race seen anywhere in Asia. The two sides have developed and stockpiled nuclear weapons while building up an impressive arsenal of medium- and long-range missiles.
The long-term political cost of the Kashmir dispute for both India and Pakistan may well be higher. In India, obsession with hanging on to Kashmir against the wishes of its inhabitants has led to a freeze on all political discussions and debates regarding the reform of state structures.
India was initially conceived as a federation. In practice, however, the central government has steadily expanded its powers at the expense of local, provincial and regional democracy. Whenever the issue is raised, the central government imposes a clampdown with reference to the dangers that supposedly threaten Kashmir. The standard argument is that if Kashmir is allowed to hold a referendum and become independent, the whole Indian federation may fall apart. The current crisis in Indonesia, including the secession of East Timor, is cited as a warning to Indians who seek a redefinition of relations between the central government and the democratically elected regional authorities.
What is forgotten is that Kashmir is a particular case. That particular status was recognized by Britain, then the colonial power in the subcontinent, and by the United Nations that, in 1947, granted the people of Kashmir the right to decide their future in a plebiscite. New Delhi’s refusal to organize that plebiscite is the principal cause of the conflict in Kashmir. All other Indian states, however, joined the federation voluntarily. And, with the exception of small secessionist movements in two tiny Himalayan states, there is no significant constituency for a disintegration of the Indian federation.
India is a mature democracy and must have enough self-confidence to tackle the Kashmir problem through something other than the use of force. There is no evidence that in a properly organized plebiscite, a majority of Kashmiris would vote for a clean and immediate break with India. And even if they did and Kashmir became independent, there is no evidence that this will in any way undermine India’s essential national interests or regional position. On the contrary, a solution of the Kashmiri problem will enable India not only to expand its economic role in the state but also to establish privileged relations with Pakistan.
For its part, Pakistan has no interest in being fixated by the problem of Kashmir. To be sure, Pakistan can continue to support a low-intensity war in Kashmir forever. But it will never have the military and economic wherewithal needed to win a conclusive victory against India in a straight war.
The Kashmir conflict has also perverted Pakistan’s political development. It has given the military the level of power and prestige, plus a good chunk of the national budget, that they would otherwise not have secured. The army has emerged as a supranational institution, almost obeying no laws but its own and routinely dismissive of constitutional constraints. The history of Pakistan has been marked by five military coups in just 50 years. For half of its life as an independent state, Pakistan has been ruled by the military.
Hooking the entire politics of a large and complex nation to a single issue, no matter how important, is always counterproductive. In trying to liberate Kashmir, Pakistan has imprisoned itself. In trying to perpetuate its illegal occupation of Kashmir, India has turned itself into a political hostage.
What is the way out? For 54 years, both sides have sought a military solution and failed. Pakistan cannot “ liberate” Kashmir by force and India cannot crush the wishes of the Kashmiri people for self-determination. Thus both Pakistan and India have a national interest in getting unhooked from this costly and ultimately destructive single issue. The people of Kashmir also have an interest in detaching their problem from the more complex issue of relations between two rival neighbors.
But how can all that be translated into concrete political moves?
The first step would be for India to open talks with the Kashmiri leaders who have always agreed to operate within a legal and largely non-violent framework. The armed groups must also be associated with the talks, albeit after a cease-fire has been agreed upon. Pakistan, for its part, must endorse any such talks and take measures to prevent the part of Kashmiri territory that it controls from being used as a base for armed action in Kashmir itself.
At the same time, Pakistan and India ought to open a series of new fields for cooperation. One of these could be the proposed oil and gas line between Iran and India via Pakistan. The other could be a forum to discuss the freezing of the nuclear arms race.
The more India and Pakistan are interlocked by tangible economic, political and military interests the more likely they would be to cooperate in solving the Kashmiri problem. Thus good relations between Islamabad and New Delhi are in the interest of the people of Kashmir as well. This is why we must all hope that the Musharraf-Vajpayee summit will succeed.
