'Doable' Siachen

Taking dialogue forward

A disengagement and demilitarisation process in Indo-Pak relations is quite viable and it has been so for the past two decades.

Pakistan’s decision to grant ‘Most-Favoured nation’ status to India has been the only real game changer so far in the dialogue between the two countries.

Little baby steps helped create a better climate within which Pakistan found it possible to take the big ‘MFN decision’.

Nonetheless, it was a bold decision to set aside atavistic fears that Pakistan’s economy would be overwhelmed by India’s industry, and instead to develop synergy out of the fast-growing Indian economy.

The decision also testifies to the broad political consensus within Pakistan about developing relations with India. Of course, we are witnessing a remarkable turnaround in Pakistan’s adversarial approach.

Conceivably, a major policy decision holding the potential to transform the relationship with India could only have been taken by the civilian government in consultation and with the approval of military establishment in Rawalpindi.

Therefore, the MFN decision also confirms the new thinking in Pakistan’s foreign policy orientations – articulated most recently by prime minister Yousuf Gilani at the Boao Forum in China – seeking integration with the neighbouring countries.

All this needs to be recounted faithfully to make three salients. First, India-Pakistan dialogue has not only gained traction but is beginning to yield long-term results.

Admittedly, prime minister Manmohan Singh’s persistence to pursue the path of dialogue with Pakistan has been vindicated. Second, Pakistan is signalling its readiness to become a stakeholder in good-neighbourly relations with India. Economic partnership is the key to forging a relationship of mutual dependency.

Third, looking ahead, India should do all that is possible in the new climate to sustain and strengthen the present momentum of the dialogue process. The fact is also that there is a ceasefire holding along the Line of Control; there is calm in the Kashmir valley; and, cross-border militant activities have come down. While moves to liberalise tariff regime or the investment regulations for Pakistani business are good, India needs to reciprocate at the same political level as Pakistan’s MFN decision.

This brings us to the ‘doable’ issues. The principal issue is Siachen. The recent statement by the Pakistani army chief Ashfaq Kayani reminds us once again the highest importance attached by Rawalpindi to solving the Siachen dispute.

The dispute arose out of India’s unilateral military action to occupy the Saltoro Ridge in 1984, which was a major violation of the Simla Agreement. In the ‘race’ for Saltoro, Indian army beat its Pakistani counterpart, which scrambled to counter the Indian operation, and a fait accompli was thus created.

Frozen conflict

Over time, it became a ‘frozen conflict’ and today India is in no particular hurry to vacate its occupation. The cost of maintaining troops on Saltoro is exceedingly high – Rs 3-3.5 crore per day – but India is probably become a rich country today with a massive defence budget. Again, the deployment may take a heavy toll in human casualties (which is almost obscene), but then, soldiers are paid to sacrifice for national security, aren’t they?

The point is, the challenge facing India is of ‘masterly inactivity’ over the Siachen dispute. How does ‘national security’ come into this paradigm? If the notion is that in case India vacates its occupation, Pakistan might foolishly rush in to grab Saltoro Ridge, it can be rubbished for what it is – baloney.

Those who harbour the notion shouldhave their heads examined. A disengagement and demilitarisation process is quite viable and it has been so for the past two decades. The hindering factors were: a) the insurgency in J&K and Pakistan’s support for cross-border militancy through the 1990s; b) political instability in India through the 1990s; c) and the Kargil War in 1999.

In the most recent years, a new geopolitical reality has also begun surging in the Indian foreign and security policy calculus – China’s rise. Arguably, control of Saltoro gives the Indian Army access to its western slopes leading to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas and to the Karakorum in the north. The control of Saltoro, theoretically, gives India a handle to insert itself into the Sino-Pak concord over Kashmir and to peer into China’s communication system connecting western Xinjiang with Tibet.

But in practical terms as well as in terms of the geopolitics of it, the hypothesis is extravagantly fanciful. The geopolitics, in particular, must weigh in. Clearly, China’s position on Kashmir has shifted to a neutral stance and, arguably, its ‘all-weather friendship’ with Pakistan has become dynamic – and, more important, Beijing attaches growing importance to a cooperative relationship with India.

Indian diplomacy has struck a good equilibrium between competition and cooperation with China, and Beijing seems to broadly appreciate it – no matter what noisy pundits may say. In other words, India can today well afford to develop a strategic vision about the kind of long-term relationship it wants to have with Pakistan.

Put differently, it is hard to imagine that anything more than confidence-building measures over Kashmir will be possible to work out so long as Siachen dispute sticks out like a sore thumb.

We never tire of agonising whether Pakistan’s military leadership would back the dialogue process or is willing to pick up the threads of the understanding reached with regard to Kashmir as of 2008. Whereas, the answer is there in front of us:  India needs to make its intentions towards Pakistan clear. The ‘doable’ Siachen dispute can be the next big game changer after Pakistan’s ‘MFN’ decision.

(The writer is a former diplomat)