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Journalism of Courage
While the government has wisely held back from blaming cross-border terrorism in the wake of the Delhi bombings, there can be no doubt that the central premises of the current peace process with Pakistan as well as India’s quake diplomacy will soon be put to scrutiny.
The scale and timing of the terror attacks in the capital will inevitably raise the familiar arguments on whether India can trust President Pervez Musharraf. There would also be questions on Musharraf’s ability, let alone will, to end cross-border terrorism.
Some will argue that cross-border terrorism is a structural element of Pakistan’s foreign policy towards India and no amount of goodwill from Delhi would bring it to an end. Taking this logic forward, the sceptics will insist the peace process and quake diplomacy are a fool’s errand. After the Delhi bombings, they will conclude, now is as good a time as any to pull back from the peace process and turn our back to Pakistan.
Critics of the peace process remind us of India’s central precondition when the latest round of the peace process was launched by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Musharraf in January 2004. It was built on Pakistan’s promise that the peace process will be conducted in a violence-free environment.
Despite this internally consistent criticism, the government has rightly chosen to press ahead with its quake diplomacy and concluded a major agreement with Pakistan on opening up the Line of Control in Kashmir for joint relief and reconstruction, barely hours after the Delhi bombings.
While India should not and cannot ease the pressure on Pakistan to stop cross-border terrorism, there are many good reasons for staying the course on quake diplomacy despite the Delhi bombings.
One is the relatively simple proposition which underlines that the terrorists have the most to lose from the Indo-Pak peace process and the Indo-Pak quake diplomacy might begin to isolate them in Jammu and Kashmir.
The link between progress in Indo-Pak engagement in Kashmir and terrorism is evident. The night before the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service was launched on April 7 this year, terrorists mounted one of their worst attacks, targeting passengers who were to make the historic crossing of the LoC. Meeting in Delhi less than two weeks after these attacks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Musharraf declared the peace process irreversible and insisted that they will not let terrorism derail it.
From a larger perspective, too, it should be clear that India cannot win the war on terror by refusing to engage Pakistan. Either anger or frustration cannot be a substitute for a long-term strategy.
Nor can the war on terror be won by military means alone. If it were possible, we should have done it by now. Politics and diplomacy have as much a role as military operations in winning this ugly war. In the last few years India has focused on three different dimensions of the war — international, bilateral and internal.
India’s global campaign against Pakistan’s support to cross-border terrorism began to pay dividends after September 11, 2001 and the December 13, 2001 attack on India’s Parliament. India’s threat to go to war against Pakistan in the summer of 2002 forced the international community to significantly ratchet up the pressure against Pakistan to stop cross-border terrorism.
The decision to engage Pakistan in a sustained peace process and initiate a purposeful dialogue on the disputed Kashmir was a long overdue attempt to address Pakistan’s genuine political concerns. While the results from this have not been entirely satisfactory, they have not been meagre either.
While cross-border infiltration has significantly eased, violence, however, has continued in Kashmir and beyond. The Delhi bombings are the worst instance of these attacks that included the killing of the education minister in the J&K government just days after the quake.
India has also engaged in a dialogue with the separatist groups within J&K and has promised to take a number of steps to boost the political trust and confidence necessary for a successful dialogue. India has recognised that without addressing the political grievances of the dissident groups the sources of support enjoyed by the terrorists could never be undermined.
Thanks to the three-fold approach, the international, bilateral and internal conditions of J&K have never been as favourable since the start of the insurgency in the state in 1989. The tragic earthquake that flattened the entire Pakistan Occupied Kashmir has dramatically expanded the political space for India to make a pro-active political intervention to transform Indo-Pak relations as well as the discourse on Kashmir.
Not to take advantage of this situation would have been a historic blunder for India. The terrorists would love to see India walking out of quake diplomacy at a time when the people of J&K across the dividing line are clamouring for Indo-Pak cooperation in relief and reconstruction.
Instead of obliging the terrorists after the Delhi bombings, India must relentlessly pursue the new strategic objective it has set for itself in Kashmir — change the ground realities in the state by unfreezing the LoC.
Both the Right, which argues nothing will ever change in the relations with Pakistan, and the Left, which is impatient that nothing has changed after the quake, have not understood the extraordinary significance of the LoC agreement signed in Islamabad on Saturday.
By providing a generic framework for long-term Indo-Pak political cooperation in J&K for relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction and making it easier for all Indians and not merely Kashmiris to participate in this effort, it has thrown open an unexplored terrain for New Delhi.
India’s bold and unconventional quake diplomacy is poised to generate aÿ whole range of new options in winning the war on terror. While there is no guarantee of success, generals and statesmen who are not willing to take calculated risks rarely win a war.
