A Prime Minister in Wonderland: The Peace Process and Its Perils
Praveen Swami
Special Correspondent, Frontline
Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee's peace initiative on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has
passed through the mirror between the real world and into that strange
place Lewis Carroll called Wonderland.
In Wonderland, as literary critics have taught us, all participants must
submit to a tyranny of meaninglessness. At once, they are overcome by a
compulsive urge to decode the babble that passes for dialogue, and to
search for sense in even the most trivial and insignificant text. Six
months ago Vajpayee announced in Srinagar that "spring will return to
the beautiful Valley soon, the flowers will bloom again and the
nightingales will return, chirping." So far, the only chirping to be
heard is that of the Kalashnikov - but heard from within Wonderland, it
would seem, the ugly staccato rattle of gunfire contains within it the
muted strains of birdsong.
Little is known about just what transpired in Wonderland - in this case,
the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) - on October 22, when the Union
Government announced Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani would negotiate
with the secessionist All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC).
The CCS, sources say, discussed the peace initiative for a little over
half an hour; no voices of dissent were raised. Union External Affairs
Minister Yashwant Sinha was charged with offering Pakistan the
now-famous twelve-step peace proposals.
Advani's appointment as negotiator with the APHC, a source present at
the meeting said, was presented as a fiat, and was not the
outcome of discussion. Again, however, consultations on negotiations
with the APHC began at least a fortnight before the CCS meeting. Former
J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, for one, was consulted on his
reactions to such a move shortly after his return from a vacation in
London in early October. Soon afterwards, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad
Sayeed went public with his belief that the Prime Minister ought to
negotiate directly with the APHC - an idea he had pressed home to
Vajpayee over the past several months.
No one has yet offered a wholly plausible explanation of the volte
face in Indian policy this unexpected revival of the peace process
represents. On September 25, speaking before the United Nations General
Assembly in New York, Vajpayee had made perhaps the most blunt official
assertion that no dialogue was possible unless Pakistan-backed terrorism
ended. "When cross-border terrorism stops", the Indian Prime Minister
had said, "or when we eradicate it, we can have a dialogue with Pakistan
on the other issues between us." He seemed equally pessimistic on the
prospects of a dialogue with the APHC, saying it wanted "a special
invitation, which I cannot understand." The Union Government had already
extended, he pointed out, "a general invitation to all."
Evidently, understanding dawned on the Prime Minister sometime in the
two weeks after his New York visit, and the time Farooq Abdullah was
consulted on possible dialogue with the APHC. Several explanations have
been offered for this sudden turn-around. Some observers believe there
was intense US pressure to give their Afghan war ally, General Pervez
Musharraf, some legitimacy-inducing concession on J&K. This school of
thought points to a dramatic reduction in fatalities in J&K in October,
which fell to a record low compared to the same month in 2001 and 2002 -
and, indeed, to a level not seen since March this year. This can be
interpreted to be a partial fulfilment by Musharraf of India's
'no-terrorism' precondition.
Advocates of the US-pressure thesis point to several other pieces of
evidence. On October 29, deposing before a House Sub-Committee on
International Relations, US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca
singled out Musharraf for effusive praise. "Despite sceptical public
opinion and bitter criticism from a coalition of opposition parties,"
she said, "President Musharraf has maintained Pakistan's policy of
supporting US operations, with practical results."
Pakistan, Rocca proceeded, was doing what it could on Jammu and Kashmir.
"We look to Pakistan to do everything in its power to prevent extremist
groups operating from its soil from crossing the Line of Control," she
said. She then broke with past US protestations, notably by Richard
Armitage just months ago, that Musharraf was not doing enough to end
cross-border terror "The Government of Pakistan has taken many steps
to curb infiltration [emphasis added], but we are asking it to
redouble its efforts." Rocca proceeded to call for "dialogue and
peaceful solutions to disagreements in the region," including with
"militants in Kashmir." Rocca's use of the terms "militants" and not
"terrorists" is instructive, particularly since several of these figure
on the US Government's own list of foreign terrorist organisations.
The US pressure thesis, however, has little hard evidence to support it.
Neither, sadly, does the other leading contender - Prime Minister
Vajpayee, this latter school of thought runs, is deeply concerned with
his place in history - or, cynics contend, a Nobel Peace Prize - and
genuinely wishes to push ahead with a negotiated settlement. His policy
thrust became evident in the winter of 2000, just a year after India's
military triumph in the Kargil war. Hoping to strengthen pro-dialogue
elements within the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin (HM)
led by dissident 'commander' Abdul Majid Dar, Vajpayee initiated the
five-month Ramzan Ceasefire. The ceasefire eventually collapsed, but
Planning Commission Chairman K.C. Pant was appointed as the Union
Government's first official interlocutor to continue the dialogue
process.
Pant formally invited the APHC to join the dialogue soon after his
appointment in April, 2001. It never responded to the letter. Syed Ali
Shah Geelani, then part of the APHC, demanded that it be allowed to
visit Pakistan as a precondition to dialogue. Others, like Abdul Gani
Lone, were more sympathetic to the Pant mission, but could not carry the
organisation with them. Shabbir Shah, a secessionist leader outside the
APHC umbrella, also received a letter, and responded by asking for
several clarifications.
A desultory dialogue followed. N.N. Vohra replaced Pant this year, and
issued a press release inviting all interested parties to dialogue.
Maulana Abbas Ansari, soon after his appointment as Chairman of the APHC,
dismissed the invitation out of hand, described Vohra as a "clerk" and
demanded direct dialogue with the Prime Minister. Vohra is known to have
met both Advani and Vajpayee in the days before the CCS meeting, at
which he was also present. Sources say the hard-nosed bureaucrat made it
clear that his mission had reached a dead-end, and that any further
progress would require the Government to make larger concessions to the
APHC centrists.
Despite Vohra's frustrations, however, the Government and APHC had in
fact remained in contact. Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister
Brajesh Mishra, and Officer on Special Duty A.S. Dulat, are believed to
have held a series of covert meetings with top APHC figures. Former
Union Minister Ram Jethmalani, in turn, conducted a parallel dialogue
process through his own Kashmir Committee, which functioned as a
sounding-board for new ideas. When Vajpayee visited Srinagar this April,
his renewed calls for dialogue added impetus to this quiet peace
process.
The next month, Ansari revived the idea of visiting Pakistan, much to
the ire of the Islamists around Geelani, who felt they would be kept out
of such an initiative. Meanwhile, the APHC itself split down the middle,
and the Prime Minister's Office came to believe it needed to make fresh
concessions in order to strengthen the centrists. During a meeting of
the Inter-States Council in August, Advani offered the APHC an "informal
dialogue" that bypassed Vohra. If the APHC "desired to come to Delhi",
Advani said, "the Centre would have no objection to keep the door open
for talks informally." From here to the CCS offer was just a small step.
Despite the magical illusion of a 'dramatic breakthrough', however,
there appears to be no clear plan for transforming dialogue with the
APHC into a material reality. There is still no agreement over the text
of a formal official invitation to the APHC, for one; the secessionists
want some formulation that acknowledges their demand for an independent
Kashmir, which New Delhi will be hard-pressed to provide. Neither is
there consensus within the Government, too, on the demands by the
mainstream APHC to visit Pakistan to hold a dialogue with secessionist
and terrorist groups based there.
Among the secessionist themselves, there is similar disarray. Yasin
Malik's faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)
opposed a two-way dialogue with India just this August, while the
breakaway parallel APHC formation, led by Islamist hardliner Geelani,
seems hostile to any repast commencing on a table to which it has not
been invited. Advani, for his part, seems keen to circumscribe the
limits of the dialogue agenda. On October 24, he insisted that "the
unity, integrity and sovereignty of the country cannot be compromised,"
an obvious reference to the APHC's demands that the secessionist agenda
be brought to the table. Instead, he suggested a federal
decentralisation of powers, as part of an all-India process. On May 8,
Vajpayee had suggested the prospect of an "alternate arrangement" on
Jammu and Kashmir, a term that some read to imply a measure of dilution
in India's current structure of sovereignty.
As New Delhi steps ahead, then, it would do well to search carefully for
hidden mines. First, it is not negotiating with the principals in the
conflict. The APHC centrists have little to give New Delhi in return for
a deal - the keepers of the jihad in J&K, after all, all reside
in Pakistan. The assassination of a senior APHC centrist; a major
terrorist attack; even an intemperate speech could well sweep aside any
gains of Delhi's recent initiatives. The collapse of the peace process,
with general elections on the horizon, will strengthen those arguing for
a limited military response to any major terrorist aggression. Each step
towards peace, then, could actually end up bringing India and Pakistan
closer to war: we are, after all, inhabitants of Wonderland.
Courtesy:
South Asia Terrorism Portal |
