As the country marked the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor, India’s strategic and foreign policy circles turned their attention to Pakistan, and New Delhi’s evolving approach towards its western neighbour. Here is my perspective.
After the success of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union, Pakistan thought that it could wrest Jammu & Kashmir from India, inter alia, through the ISI-mentored jihadi tanzeems. Successive Indian governments shored up Indian defences, and all prime ministers after Narasimha
Rao wanted to normalise ties through engagement.
In March 1997, the foreign secretaries met in Delhi after a hiatus of four years. Pakistan asked for the establishment of a “structured and integrated” dialogue mechanism. Its object was to control the scope and pace of bilateral ties. The process began in June 1997, and the India-Pakistan Composite Dialogue (CD) was announced in September 1998. Following the nuclear tests, Atal Bihari Vajpayee wanted engagement all the more. He instructed his negotiators, on the margins of the Durban Non-aligned summit in September 1998, to complete the process. This writer and the late Tariq Altaf, additional secretary in Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, finalised the nitty-gritty of the dialogue process during a one-on-one marathon session in the latter’s hotel. The CD was formally announced after Vajpayee’s meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in New York, some three weeks later.
The CD consisted of eight subjects, which could be put in three categories: Humanitarian matters, cooperation, and the resolution of issues, including J&K, and terrorism. Pakistan’s primary concern was J&K, and India’s was terrorism and cooperation. Pakistan considered any progress on bilateral cooperative mechanisms as a trap.
The CD’s first round was held in 1998. To cement the engagement, Vajpayee visited Lahore in February 1999. There was hope that relations would improve. However, Pakistan’s army chief Pervez Musharraf did not want the two countries to pursue peace. He continued with his Kargil plan. India’s decisive military action foiled the general’s intention. Bilateral relations nosedived and the CD was put in cold storage.
This remained so during Vajpayee’s term because of the IC 814 hijack in December 1999, the failed Agra summit of July 2001 and the Parliament attack in December 2001, which brought the two countries to the verge of war. In January 2004, Musharraf committed that territories under Pakistan’s control would not be used against India. That opened the doors to renewed India-Pakistan engagement, but Vajpayee lost the election. Manmohan Singh picked up the baton.
The India-Pakistan engagement proceeded through three vehicles – a back channel on J&K, led by former diplomat late Satinder Lambah on the Indian side, the CD and a Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism (JATM). The most significant was the back channel, which continued till 2014 but lost steam with Musharraf giving up office in 2008. While Singh and Lambah held that the two countries came close to finding a modus vivendi, but not a permanent solution, on J&K, a Pakistani counterpart of Lambah told me that big differences remained.
Four rounds of the CD were held between 2004-08, and another two through 2011-2012. The Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008 led to the CD being called off. However, it was resumed after Singh met his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani, in April 2010 on the margins of the SAARC summit in Thimpu, though nothing substantial was achieved.
The JATM held four futile rounds. The last was around a month before the Mumbai terrorist attack. It did not survive the attack. I led the Indian side in the last two rounds of the JATM; that is the basis for this assessment.
Singh’s dream of having breakfast in Kabul, lunch in Islamabad and dinner in Delhi remained just that. He did not once visit Pakistan during his tenure. But Narendra Modi did in December 2015 to indicate his commitment to normalising ties. He had earlier invited Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his oath-taking ceremony in May 2014 and showed enormous flexibility in accepting the demands of Pakistani generals who were unwilling to go along with the Ufa Joint Statement of July 2015. India and Pakistan agreed to resume the CD, only now it was renamed the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD). It did not occur because the Pakistani generals undertook the Pathankot terrorist attack within 10 days of Modi’s visit. A senior retired Pakistani general told me that the visit “had nothing to do with the Pakistani state”. Modi was embarrassed but still sought to keep hopes alive. They were snuffed out by the Uri terrorist attack in September 2016.
Modi decided to undertake kinetic action. Surgical strikes followed. A new paradigm had been set. It was followed by the Pulwama and Pahalgam terrorist attacks. India asserted that for a return to bilateral comprehensive engagement, Pakistan would have to abandon the use of terror. As it is now a part of Pakistan’s security doctrine, Pakistan cannot fold up the tanzeems.
India had signalled that talks and terror cannot go together before the pre-Uri terrorist attacks too. But it had, for 18 years, restarted the engagement process after terrorist attacks or Pakistani military action, as in Kargil. But Modi has now adhered to this position since 2016. He has also held the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. Going further, he has said that India would not distinguish between terrorists and the Pakistani state in future conflicts.
Many analysts wish Modi to go back to comprehensively engaging Pakistan, if for nothing else, but to manage a recalcitrant neighbour which has nuclear weapons.
Neither comprehensive engagement nor kinetic force has deterred Pakistan from using terror. That is indicative of its desire to keep India on the defensive. This stance is rooted in its foundational principle of the two-nation theory and its irredentism. It has been willing to sacrifice economic stability but is unwilling to give up confrontation. This pessimistic assessment is backed by India’s experience of eight decades, including the last 28 years, after both countries became nuclear.
India’s current approaches towards Pakistan have to be pursued with two caveats. Should Pakistan be willing, a robust mechanism to handle humanitarian matters should be evolved. India has to emphatically and continuously assert to the international community that the first step on the escalatory ladder between nuclear states is an act of terror or military action on its territory; hence, Pakistan must dismantle its terrorist infrastructure.
The writer is a former diplomat
