Analysis: Difficulties of self-correction —Khaled Ahmed

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\06\30\story_30-6-2009_pg3_4

Self-correction looks like defeat, especially in small and weak states prizing honour and self-respect above other fundamental interests of the state such as the national economy

On June 19, 2009, a Dunya TV discussion had ex-foreign secretary Mr Riaz Khokhar protesting that President Asif Ali Zardari had not conformed to norms of ‘protocol behaviour’ while talking to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. The newspapers had earlier moaned about Mr Singh having insulted Pakistan by telling Mr Zardari to mend his ways before asking for a dialogue. Mr Singh had insulted Pakistan and Mr Zardari had simply cowered instead of insulting him back.

Anchor Dr Moeed Pirzada rang up the Indian Express’ editor Shekhar Gupta to find out if the Indians thought their PM had given them the satisfaction of insulting Pakistan. Mr Gupta thought that Mr Singh was normal instead of insulting while accepting a foreign secretaries’ meeting. As for the reference to terrorism, he thought Mr Singh was simply repeating what he had been saying to Pakistan earlier without apparently offending its media.

The ‘comfort’ groove of dialogue: Reading the drift of opinion in the media, Pakistan wants to get back into the groove of the composite dialogue that dragged on from crisis to crisis, surviving to finally deliver a deadlock on practically everything while giving the impression to insiders that they were getting somewhere. The ‘getting somewhere’ feeling is always there as a part of the professional ‘dialoguery’ to keep the international community allayed. And there is always a bilateral crisis to overcome in the midst of it all. India as the status quo power has adjusted to the groove of ‘atelic’ dialoguing with Pakistan.

Dialogue as charade as non-core issues proliferate: This is a charade where even the resolved issues are kept pending. Discussing Sir Creek threadbare over many sessions, the two sides begin to bicker over the thickness of the nib with which the line was drawn on the old maps of the dry estuary, haggling over the acres thus lost. Meanwhile, more issues are being created by India to push the ‘core issue’ to the ever-enlarging back burner. Coming under the Indus Waters Treaty, any number of Baglihar-type non-core issues can be added with dull regularity. India adds on non-core issues to delay getting to the ‘core issue’ of Kashmir.

Indira Gandhi thought Pakistan would be weaned from its Kashmir obsession after the 1971 defeat. Following the Simla Agreement Pakistan lay low for a long time, until the 1990s. The Kargil spasm was a repeat of what had been done in the past. Nawaz Sharif fell from power, but the Kargil villain Musharraf pleaded for dialogue and wrote up a joint declaration with Vajpayee undertaking not to let non-state actors go into Kashmir from Pakistan.

Politics of undermining dialogues: Each time our non-state actors attacked inside India the dialogue was disrupted, but always to be resumed under the international pressure coming from leaders cringing with the fear of an Indo-Pak nuclear holocaust. This time too, Pakistan wants the comfort of a dialogue with India whom it says it is fighting in the tribal areas. India wants it linked to ‘results’ in Pakistan’s pledge to punish the non-state actors who attacked Mumbai in 2008. Meanwhile it acquits the leader of the militia that had carried out the attack. Add to it the leader of the Lal Masjid let off by the Supreme Court and you have India and the world community faint with shock.

Myth of reciprocity and shame of unilateral self-correction: Once engaged in dialogue, the Pakistani diplomat insists on reciprocity. One has to ask: what is the purpose of the dialogue? Pakistan must sit down and think what it requires to do after so many failures of old policy of covert war against India. The dialogue with India should serve as a process that helps Pakistan self-correct. That is what the world wants from Pakistan and Pakistan can reject this in righteous dudgeon at the cost of losing all the dollars coming to it from an economically depressed West for its economic survival. Our diplomats want Pakistan to self-correct while dancing together with India in a dialogue. The question is: why should India self-correct?

A case for ‘disguised’ self-correction: Pakistan’s self-correction has nothing to do with India. Pakistan has to do it to survive as a normal state. This has become obvious after all its non-state actors have gone and joined Al Qaeda and the Taliban and are busy beheading people till they join them out of sheer intimidation or under the Stockholm Effect. But this process will have a salutary effect on the fashioning of a new dialogue with India. Self-correction can be a dignified process if the world supports it and India cooperates. Hence, the ‘new’ dialogue with India will have more to do with Pakistan than with India, whose lineaments will be decided by Pakistan.

Self-correction looks like defeat, especially in small and weak states prizing honour and self-respect above other fundamental interests of the state such as the national economy. The US has done many self-corrections. It did one massive one after Vietnam; it is in the process of accomplishing another after the Bush era. But Pakistan will have to disguise self-correction in the garb of a new dialogue that will aim at agreeing to create events of mutual reconciliation without disturbing the ‘grand narrative’ of its India-centric nationalism.

Begin by back-channel diplomacy: The new dialogue will have to be preceded by back-channel diplomacy. It is useful because it is deniable under opposition pressure while affording a glimpse into the real thinking of the other side. The jurisprudence of past back-channel attempts remains positive but the intervention of ‘business as usual’ state actions have pushed them into the background. That they were repudiated is in fact their merit. The leaders can wriggle out if they find the roadblocks beyond their capacity to overcome or if they are overthrown.

AG Noorani writes (Dawn June 20, 2009: Indo-Pak dialogue after Mumbai): “Considerable progress has been made in the back channel. On May 2, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed the former President Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf’s version, saying, ‘In fact Gen Musharraf and I had nearly reached an agreement (on Kashmir), a non-territorial solution to all problems but then Gen Musharraf got into many difficulties with the chief justice and on other fronts and therefore the whole process came to a half’.”

Lean on pledges made at SAARC: As for creating events, Pakistan will have to reach out for the papers it has signed at SAARC and the promises it has made in past declarations signed together with India. For instance, the 1999 Nawaz-Vajpayee declaration reaffirming ‘their commitment to the goals and objectives of SAARC and to concert their efforts towards the realisation of the SAARC vision for the year 2000 and beyond with a view to promoting the welfare of the peoples of South Asia and to improve their quality of life through accelerated economic growth, social progress and cultural development’.

Another example, that made many bristle in Pakistan, is Mr Zardari’s expression of intent in May in Washington to sign a transit trade agreement with his Afghan counterpart that would give India a trade corridor to Afghanistan and Central Asia. This has to be done because the composite dialogue of the 1990s has become compost after what the two states have done to each other.