The key lesson worth learning from New Delhi’s announcement that Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will soon fly to Islamabad to revive the stalled India-Pakistan dialogue is that India shouldn’t have in the first place aborted Jaishankar’s predecessor, Sujatha Singh’s visit to Pakistan in August on flimsy grounds which now stand thoroughly exposed.
Evidently, it wasn’t India’s Foreign Office but Prime Minister Narendra Modi who single-handedly cancelled foreign secretary-level talks last year accusing Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit of holding talks with Kashmiri separatists in New Delhi ahead of Singh’s visit. Now, six months later, Modi is sending Jaishankar to Islamabad without extracting even an iota of assurance from Pakistan that it won’t engage with Kashmiri separatists.
As India has not set any conditions for Jaishankar’s visit — certainly not the one which it trumpeted to call off the last scheduled meeting of the two countries’ top diplomats — who can rule out the possibility of Basit again having Kashmiri separatists over for chai pe charcha, or chat over tea, even as Jaishankar is packing for the trip?
“There is a red line we have drawn,” Syed Akbaruddin, India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman, had asserted last year echoing Modi’s new confrontational doctrine. “We have told Pakistan — you either talk to us or to them (Kashmiri separatists). Although there is no official Indian explanation for the sudden blurring of the much-touted “red line,” the reasons for Modi’s sheepish climb-down are pretty obvious.
He had no options but to give in to superpowers like the US, China and Russia who were pressuring New Delhi to make the first move to restart negotiations with Pakistan. Clearly, Modi can’t afford to defy three UN Security Council members particularly when they speak in one voice. There are domestic compulsions too. The People’s Democratic Party, with whom Bharatiya Janata Party is desperate to share power with in Jammu & Kashmir, has made restarting talks with Pakistan and normalization of relations between the two countries a precondition for a coalition government. Moreover, reaching out to Pakistan diverts public attention from Modi’s humiliating defeat in Delhi assembly elections and placates those who disapprove of Modi’s anti-Pakistan jingoism.
US intervention is evident from a White House statement on a long conversation between Barack Obama and Nawaz Sharif on Feb. 12 issued just before the India’s Feb. 13 announcement of Jaishankar’s forthcoming visit to Pakistan. The statement disclosed “the President discussed his recent visit to India, and noted that the US supports all efforts by both nations to improve ties.”
Modi also needs to placate Pakistan, which has leveled serious charges of aiding and abetting terrorism and insurgency against its giant neighbor. Such allegations can play havoc with India’s attempts to become a member of the Security Council. As Islamabad has already shared with the international community evidence of alleged Indian involvement in fanning violence, Jaishankar must brace for uncomfortable and embarrassing questions Pakistan is bound to ask.
There are credible reports of Pakistan itching to confront Jaishankar with “‘evidence’ of Indian links to terror acts, including the horrific massacre of over 130 children at a Peshawar army school in December.” This is in addition to the old Pakistani charge of Indian meddling in Balochistan, which was officially recorded in the 2009 Sharm El-Sheikh agreement between Manmohan Singh and Yousaf Raza Gilani. Islamabad has for long maintained that India’s consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad are espionage-cum-subversion centers abetting Baloch insurgency.
Besides the Peshawar carnage, Pakistan also sees India’s hand in its troubled Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). On Feb. 12 — just a day before Jaishankar’s visit was announced — Asim Bajwa, Pakistani military spokesman, proclaimed: “India is supporting terrorism in Balochistan and FATA. We have warned them at every level.” Prior to Bajwa’s accusation, National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz accused India of “launching attacks on Pakistan from Afghanistan.”
India too has its very serious concerns like crossborder firings by Pakistani military, Islamabad’s failure to act whole-heartedly against terror groups targeting India and the excruciatingly slow progress in bringing to justice masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attacks moving around freely in Pakistan.
India announced Jaishankar’s forthcoming visit to Pakistan soon after Modi’s telephone call to Sharif to convey his best wishes to Sharif’s boys in the World Cup. Even as expectations soar, Jaishankar must realize that Modi’s telephone call isn’t enough to mollify Pakistan’s security establishment convinced of India’s role in the Peshawar attacks, FATA and Balochistan. Similarly, Islamabad must understand that being in America’s good books is not enough — it must also salvage its sullied reputation in the neighborhood.
