People's Conference leader Sajjad Lone's proposal
for division of J&K state is neither the first
nor the only proposal on the subject. However,
his latest exposition of it, while addressing a
rally on the martyrdom day of his father, Abdul
Ghani Lone, on May 22, specially described the
resultant state, after its division, as a Muslim
state. It would include the Kashmir valley and
Muslim majority parts of Jammu and Ladakh regions.
Sajjad Lone also complained, in a press
conference later, that though the Muslims were
the worst sufferers, development work was
concentrated in Jammu. The majority population
was denied its share in recruitment to government
jobs, he said.
Still, he may not have been entirely motivated by
sentiments of Muslim communalism. For, in the
same press conference, he declared Kashmir
Pandits to be an integral part of Kashmiri
identity. Like other Kashmiri nationalists, he is
seeking some sort of azadi for Kashmir. Being
convinced that Hindus and Buddhists of Jammu and
Ladakh respectively would not reconcile to any
arrangement which keeps them outside India and
within Azad Kashmir, he gives them an option to
opt out of the state.
As far as non-Kashmiri speaking Muslims are
concerned, they have hardly any option and
therefore do not matter, he must have thought. In
a newspaper article, he maintains, "assume for a
moment, that the 'opt-out' option is actually
communal. Who cares as long as it benefits the
Kashmiri nation?"
But will it really benefit Kashmiri nation? Can
the resultant state be called a Kashmiri Nation?
When ethnically non-Kashmiri people of Doda,
Bhaderwah, Bani, Gool, Arnas, Poonch, Rajouri and
Kargil are merged with the Kashmir valley, it
will crush them and threaten their unique 5000
years old civilisational heritage.
Some lessons from pre-and post 1947 politics of
the state will bring out the complications that
were added to it by exclusive concern of Kashmiri
leaders with the demands and urges of the
Kashmiris of the valley. Sheikh Abdullah, the
tallest leader of Kashmir, hardly had any
following among either the Muslims or Hindus of
Jammu.
The same is the case with the separatist outfits
today who do not have any Muslim representation
in them from Jammu. The limitations of
exclusively religion-based identities have become
evident not only in the state but also in
Pakistan. The way Gujjar and Pahari identities
are, for instance, asserting themselves in the
state underlines the point. It would not be
proper for any Kashmiri speaking leader to take
them for granted in the name of Muslim unity.
As far as Kargil - the Muslim majority district
of Ladakh which Sajad Lone wants to include in
the divided state - is concerned, a strong
reaction against division was expressed by youth
of the district who in a joint statement
expressed their fears about the threat to their
identity and inter alia asked "what will be the
fate of Buddhisst in Kargil, Muslims in Leh and
Pandits in Kashmir?"
The larger question of the impact of division of
the state on religious lines on the secular
fabric of India and communal relations within the
state, too, cannot be lost sight of. There are no
exclusive Hindu and Muslim parts of Jammu. The
sense of insecurity that the proposed division of
the region would cause to minorities in its two
parts can easily be visualised.
Moreover it would split ethnic and cultural
identities which to many are more important than
religions identities. During the last assembly
election, for instance, 95 per cent of the Muslim
population of Darhal constituency voted for a
Hindu candidate as he championed the cause of the
Pahari community living there.
The demand of for division of the state into five
regions, including that of Jammu and Ladakh, is
particularly ominous after General Pervez
Musharraf has, in his latest four-point formula,
recognised only three regions on the Indian side
- Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh. It would amount to
fighting against India as well as Pakistan.
The alternative is not status quo. For regional
tensions are growing rather fast. Earlier, Jammu
and Ladakh had a perennial grievance against what
they called Kashmiri domination. For the last two
years, since a Jammu leader became the Chief
Minister for the first time in sixty years,
similar grievances are being raised by Kashmiri
leaders.
The PDP president Mehbooba Mufti publicly
demanded that the chief minister should
invariably belong to the Kashmir valley. If
Kashmiri Muslims cannot tolerate a Jammu Muslim
as chief minister, how does Sajad expect that the
Muslims of Jammu will feel at home in a Muslim
state dominated by Kashmiris?
He, however got an ally in his game plan in the
BJP which has revived the demand of a separate
Jammu state. As BJP's support is confined to
Hindus of the region, its demand exactly
supplements Sajad's proposal.
It has by now been widely recognised that any
attempt to homogenise a nation and make it
uniform stifles its growth and invariably leads
to authoritarianism, as Hitler had demonstrated.
Diversity is therefore becoming the most
celebrated value inmodern times to ensure freedom
and democracy. It is the greatest asset with
which J&K state is bestowed with, provided the
urges of its diverse communities are reconciled.
It is the centralised and unitary set up of a
state which is the root cause of most of its
troubles. In fact, federal and decentralised
systems became the universal trend after the
second world war in all democracies. It may be
worth while to recall such proposals mooted in
J&K state from the early fifties which were
killed by ignorant and narrow minded religious or
regional bigots.
When the Delhi Agreement on autonomy was being
discussed, I, for instance, pleaded for extension
of the idea to state-region relations. Nehru and
Abdullah both agreed with my demand, and
announced at a joint press conference on 24 July
1952 that the constitution of the state would
provide for regional autonomies. The Praja
Parishad, an affiliate of the Bhartiya Jana
Sangh, agreed to withdrawn its agitation for what
it called full accession of the state on this
assurance, which it directly got from Nehru,
almost a year later. But meanwhile much damage to
the cause of Jammu and India had been done. Many
factors local and international intervened to
sabotage this agreement.
In 1968, Sheikh Abdullah convened the J&K State
People's Conference to discuss the future of the
state, which was attended by the entire spectrum
of the valley's political leadership including
Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, G M Karra's pro-Pak
Political Conference, Jamat-e-Islami and National
Conference. But I was the lone representative
from Jammu and had agreed to attend it provided
the future of the region was also discussed.
The Sheikh agreed with the suggestion and I was
asked to draft an internal constitution of the
state. The draft provided for a five tier set up
with political, legislative and administrative
powers to the elected regional councils on the
subjects delegated to the regions and further
devolution of powers to the districts, blocks and
panchayats. It was unanimously accepted by all
the 300 participants of the Convention.
Sheikh Abdullah reiterated his commitment for
regional autonomy at a conference of
representatives of Jammu and Ladakh that he
convened in 1974 before returning to power. The
idea was also included in the National Conference
manifesto 'Naya Kashmir' when it was raised in
1975, of which I was the author.
The idea was further refined in the report that I
submitted to the state government as working
chairman of the Regional Autonomy Committee in
1999. It provided a framework for political,
cultural and financial safeguards at every level
of the elected administration.
In sum, the importance of regional identities and
recognition of all ethnic entities needs to be
realised for maintaining the secular and
harmonious character of the state. Let thinking
people of all the three regions and all ethnic
identities give a serious thought to a parallel
attempt at building a powerful, democratic and
secular state.
NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan have agreed to be tough with terrorists and criminals on both sides by taking stringent measures. A joint statement issued on Wednesday at the end of the two-day Home Secretary-level talks on terrorism and drug trafficking said both sides strongly condemned terrorism and underlined the need for effective and sustained measures against terror activities. While Pakistan Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah cut short his visit and returned home on Wednesday morning owing to developments in Islamabad, both sides wrapped up the schedule on Tuesday itself, Home Ministry officials said. However, Pakistan officials stayed back to fine-tune issues such as consular access and visa agreement. In another significant development, both sides agreed to release by August 14-15 the prisoners who had been given consular access, whose national status had been verified and those who had completed their term. Immediate steps would be taken to reconcile the prisoners’ numbers to facilitate their early release after formalities. The two sides agreed to release by the same time fishermen held for minor offences and in each other’s custody on completion of formalities. Terming positive the cooperation between the Narcotics Control Bureau of India and the Anti-Narcotics Force of Pakistan, both sides agreed to enhance cooperation and sign a MoU at the earliest.
The port call of a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Chennai in southern India has provoked strong protests from a spectrum of political parties, trade unions, peace groups and environmentalists, writes Praful Bidwai.
The port call of a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Chennai in southern India has provoked strong protests from a spectrum of political parties, trade unions, peace groups and environmentalists.
It has also exposed a yawning gap between India's stance of non-alignment and foreign-policy independence and its practice of cultivating a close military and political relationship with the US.
The carrier USS Nimitz arrived on Monday for a five-day "friendly" call to Chennai at the invitation of the Indian government.
Indian leftist and centrist parties such as the All India Anna Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam, the main opposition in Tamil Nadu, held demonstrations in the state capital Chennai on Monday. So did transport and port workers' unions and civil-society organizations, including the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), a broad-based umbrella organization of more than 250 groups.
The carrier arrived in India's territorial waters from the Persian Gulf region, where it had been dispatched two months ago as part of a 50-ship armada.
"It is entirely possible that the aircraft carrier carries nuclear weapons on board," said Deepak Nayyar, a distinguished economist and, until recently, vice chancellor of Delhi University. "In that case, it would flagrantly violate India's well-established, often-reiterated policy of disallowing foreign nuclear weapons into its territorial waters."
Nayyar is one of 11 public intellectuals who last week signed a statement protesting the ship's visit, including celebrated writers Arundhati Roy and Mahashweta Devi, former civil servants S P Shukla and Sudeep Banerjee, and social scientists Romila Thapar, Prabhat Patnaik and Amit Bhaduri.
The statement points to the contradiction between the Indian government's claim that the Nimitz is "not known to be carrying nuclear weapons" and the United States' well-reiterated policy neither to deny nor confirm the presence of nuclear weapons on its warships under any circumstances. The statement expresses dismay at the fact that New Delhi "gratuitously granted this certificate to the US, when Washington itself does not do so", and said this speaks poorly of India's foreign and security policies.
If it indeed carries nuclear weapons, the Nimitz' port call marks a reversal of India's past policy opposing the transit of nuclear weapons in its neighborhood. In the 1970s and 1980s, India campaigned against the United States' naval base at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago and wanted the entire Indian Ocean to be declared a "zone of peace".
New Delhi has rationalized the carrier's visit by saying that at least 10 other nuclear-powered foreign warships have called at Indian ports in recent years. These include five other US naval vessels, four French ships and one British ship.
"These precedents cannot justify the present visit," argued Anuradha Chenoy, a professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University. "It is deplorable that India allowed these port calls in the first place without sharing the reasons for the underlying policy shift with Parliament or the public. Besides, the Nimitz is visiting India just when public opinion in West Asia is highly polarized because of the occupation of Iraq and the US's threatening gestures towards Iran."
The carrier's visit has special symbolic significance because of its role in the Iran crisis. The US has been mounting pressure on India to drop a proposed natural-gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan.
There is a good deal of lobbying on Capitol Hill in Washington to get the US administration to drop the nuclear-cooperation deal with India, which was initiated two years ago and is under negotiation. Last week, The Hill newsletter reported that several senators and congress members want the nuclear deal, which would make a special one-time exception for India in the global non-proliferation regime, to be made conditional on a cancellation of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project.
"The visit of the Nimitz is clearly no routine or innocent affair," said Chenoy. "India is aware of and has always been sensitive to the importance of symbolic gestures, including subtle and not-so-subtle forms of US gunboat diplomacy."
During the Pakistani civil war in 1971, the US dispatched another aircraft carrier, the Enterprise, to the Bay of Bengal. This was widely seen as signaling Washington's opposition to the continuation of the war after the Pakistan Army surrendered to Indian troops in Dhaka and East Pakistan became independent as Bangladesh.
"The political message of the current visit of the Nimitz is unmistakable. It is to tighten the India-US strategic embrace at a time when the US is engaged in its disastrous occupation of Iraq, which has destabilized West Asia," said N D Jayaprakash, a CNDP activist.
"India-US relations have turned a full circle," said Jayaprakash. "Now India is willing to indicate its uncritical support for the US military and to enter into an unequal strategic relationship with Washington. This is a shameful departure from India's independent strategic and foreign-policy orientation. It also means that the India-US strategic partnership is being strengthened at the expense of third countries."
Jayaprakash is appalled that some of the Nimitz' 5,000-plus personnel will engage in a public relations exercise by doing community service in Chennai, including visits to people affected by the tsunami of December 2004.
"This is sanctimonious posturing," he said. "After committing horrendous crimes in Iraq, US military personnel are trying to pretend that they have a humanitarian mission as well." (In fact, such community-service work has long been a routine part of every US naval port call to virtually any foreign country and predates the Iraq war.)
Trade unionists and environmentalists have also objected to the carrier's visit on the ground that it is liable to present another hazard, in the form of radiation from its two nuclear reactors. The Indian government said it will periodically monitor radiation levels; in any case, the Nimitz is anchored 2 nautical miles outside Chennai port proper.
However, the protesters are not satisfied given that India's own nuclear program has a poor safety record and its navy's ability to monitor radiation hazards is not independently established.
"What is galling is that Indian officials are bending over backwards to speak on behalf of the US and allay the public's apprehensions," said Jayaprakash. "That is completely out of order."
In recent years, the US and India have held high-level military exercises, including some that involved US nuclear submarines. But the Nimitz visit even lacks such a strategic rationale.
"The docking of USS Nimitz is not a neutral or normal affair, but a strong political-strategic statement," said Chenoy.
The statement runs counter to the promise of the ruling United Progressive Alliance to correct the strongly pro-US bias in India's policy under the previous government led by the right-wing pro-West Bharatiya Janata Party, and to fight for a balanced, multipolar world free of nuclear weapons.
IPS correspondent Praful Bidwai is a committed anti-nuclear activist and the author of several books on peace and disarmament.
Last Tuesday was a tumultuous day in Bandipore,
a little valley on the banks of Wular lake in
north Kashmir. Two incidents took place here in a
matter of a few hours which together may
symbolise the beginning of a new paradigm shift
in J&K. They signal a renewed phase of violence
with the sluggish peace process.
Two men from a local Rashtriya Rifles unit barged
into a house in a small neighbourhood of Gurjjars
in Kunan village. They were in plainclothes and
carried a grenade. The family alleged that the
two had asked the male members to leave and then
attempted to rape their daughter. The family
raised an alarm and, within minutes, the entire
village encircled the house. The angry villagers
overpowered the two armymen and started thrashing
them. Their faces were then blackened and they
were taken in a procession to Bandipore market.
This is one of the first incidents since
militancy began in Kashmir in 1990 of common
people taking the law into their own hands.
Interestingly, the villagers didn't even mask
their faces.
A few miles away, an interesting incident was
taking place around the same time in another
village. The villagers were returning to their
homes after burying a local boy who had joined
the militants recently and was killed in an
encounter with the army. A group of separatist
leaders from the moderate Hurriyat faction had
come to join the funeral ceremony. But as soon as
they started addressing the villagers, there were
angry shouts from the crowd. The Hurriyat leaders
were told to stop "doing business on dead
bodies". The incident indicated that this
village, known for its separatist leanings, had
transcended another fear.
The two incidents have no apparent connection but
they clearly suggest that the silent majority,
driven by desperation, is beginning to assert
itself. This may well signify a shift in the
Valley, where the situation is once again getting
fraught. The UPA government at the Centre has not
done anything tangible to sustain the tempo of
the few confidence-building measures on the
ground, like the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus or
direct talks with Kashmiri separatist groups. As
for Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, he is clearly feeling
the pressure of losing out to the hawks and has
started drifting towards hardline posturing as
well. Meanwhile, the Peoples Conference leader,
Sajjad Lone, has exploded something of a
political bombshell by talking about the "opt out
option" - making the district a unit for the
internal reorganisation of the state. This new
formula has come as a direct response to the
demand for a separate state of Jammu, raised by
the Jammu Mukti Morcha, a group which has the
overt and covert support of the BJP and Congress.
Lone's salvo is popular in the Valley and other
Muslim-dominated regions of the state where
people constantly complain of discrimination in
development projects and in getting
administrative jobs.
In fact, the Centre's dialogue process with
Srinagar does not include a single separatist
leader. The only direct measure the Centre has
taken to push its peace process forward was to
hold a few working group meetings. Not only was
the political representation in these meetings
inadequate, the government is being extremely
tardy in implementing its recommendations.
The Centre's manner of handling this process has
added to this new disenchantment. A few months
ago, when the PDP had threatened to walk out of
the ruling J&K coalition, demanding troop
withdrawal from the state, the Centre intervened
and framed a high-level committee led by Defence
Minister A.K. Antony to investigate the
feasibility of a troop cut on the ground. But
before the committee started its work and arrived
at a conclusion, the defence minister publicly
ruled out even a modest cut in troops. The
unexpected intervention of J&K Governor, Lt Gen
(retd) S.K. Sinha in the debate, did not help. He
termed the PDP's demand as "obnoxious".
From all indications it does seem that the period
of relative tranquillity that saw Kashmir move
towards peace may well be coming to an end. It is
a fact that the infiltration levels have come
down to an all-time low - seen as a fall-out of
the Indo-Pak peace process. However, the sudden
increase in activity across the LoC and a spurt
of violence in the frontier district of Kupwara
suggests the Pakistan establishment seems to have
turned on the tap again. The security agencies
say that more than 200 militants have already
entered Kupwara district alone, even as a dozen
infiltration bids were foiled along the LoC in
the districts of Kupwara and Baramulla recently.
Kashmir has entered a critical phase and if
immediate measures are not taken to push the
Indo-Pak peace process forward, with visible
outcomes on the ground, there is every likelihood
that the earlier atmosphere of hope will be soon
be overtaken by renewed bloodshed.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is widely
viewed as a military strongman who should be
pressed to hold free and fair elections this
year. Both the characterization of Musharraf and
the policy recommendation are misguided.
Musharraf's problem is that he has failed to act
swiftly and ruthlessly to set Pakistan's politics
on a proper course, and he knows -- better than
his critics -- that given the complexity of
Pakistan's internal problems, the holding of free
and fair elections might not check Pakistan's
drift toward extremism.
Musharraf does deserve criticism for the
deterioration of Pakistani civil society. About
his only defense is that things were worse under
his predecessor, the insecure Nawaz Sharif.
Musharraf had a golden opportunity to set things
right and develop a strategy that would build up
civilian competence and allow for the army's
retreat from governance. He missed it. After his
coup he rejected advice that he impose emergency
rule for a few months, meanwhile ordering the
intelligence services to round up the extremists
they had nurtured for years. But as a strongman
Musharraf had a fatal flaw: He wanted to be liked.
Since then his actions as a politician and leader
have been consistently flawed. He implemented a
crazy scheme of local government that further
destroyed Pakistan's civilian bureaucracy. He
refused to allow former prime ministers Benazir
Bhutto and Sharif to return to Pakistan and meet
a real electoral test. And he fabricated a phony
political party to provide the illusion of
popular support. He also entered into alliances
with the Islamists (only to betray them) and with
a party responsible for rule by terror in certain
areas of the country.
As a general, Musharraf got mixed reviews from
his peers. As a politician, he has shown little
talent. His one strength, until Chief Justice
Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry defied him, was that
his opponents were even less inspiring.
Musharraf's rule has not been without merit.
Going against the views of army hard-liners, he
lobbed one Kashmir proposal after another at the
Indian government, putting it on the defensive.
Under Musharraf, Pakistan's position has changed
from insistence upon a plebiscite (something
India will never allow) to one of several
alternative arrangements, all designed to save
face for Islamabad.
Musharraf did preside over economic reform, but
the World Bank has pointed out that income
disparities and rural poverty have both grown
while the urban elite make money hand over fist.
His treatment of the press has been retrograde.
It is Orwellian for American officials to claim
that Pakistan is on the road to democracy.
Musharraf receives unstinting American support
because of his turnabout after Sept. 11, 2001,
regarding support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
No one doubts his sincerity regarding al-Qaeda;
as he writes in his fanciful autobiography, these
were the people who several times tried to kill
him.
But there is room for skepticism about Pakistan's
role with regard to the Taliban. Pakistani
officials freely admit that their main concerns
in Afghanistan are Indian penetration (which
would mean encirclement for Islamabad) and Afghan
President Hamid Karzai's dependence on New Delhi.
Given this strategic compulsion, it is not
surprising that Pakistan tolerates, if it does
not directly support, the Taliban; it has no
other instrument available to it than this
Pashtun tribal hammer.
Whatever happens in coming days, we are not
approaching the end of the "Musharraf system" in
Pakistan. Even if he were forced out of the
presidency and ceased to be army chief, his
military colleagues would continue to rule from
behind the scenes, finding a pliable politician
or two to serve as their public face. Abroad,
they might get tougher with India (what better
way to unite Pakistanis than a crisis with New
Delhi?), and they would try to fake it with the
Americans regarding Afghanistan: They will not
willingly give up their Taliban assets.
Perhaps such a second coming of the Musharraf
system would work better with a military leader
more perceptive than the ebullient but shallow
Musharraf. But in the end, the army cannot rule
the state of Pakistan by itself. Perhaps it will
come to the realization that what it needs is a
strategy for a systematic withdrawal from
politics. This would involve heavy investment in
the quality and competence of the civilian elite,
a rebuilding of liberal Pakistan, and tough
measures against defiant, radical Islamists.
The United States is paying lip service to a
regime that is collapsing before its eyes and
that may yet turn truly nasty. Washington treats
Pakistan as if it were a Cold War ally, dealing
only with its top leadership. The great danger is
that this time around, Pakistan may not have the
internal resources to manage its own rescue. If
that is the case, then in years to come, a
nuclear-armed and terrorism-capable Pakistan will
become everyone's biggest foreign policy problem.
The writer is senior fellow in the Foreign Policy
Studies Program of the Brookings Institution and
author of "The Idea of Pakistan."
Barbara Crossette of The New York Times met
Rajiv Gandhi hours before his tragic
assassination on May 21, 1991. She misunderstood
his remarks in her report: "We were close to
finalising an agreement on Kashmir. We had the
maps and everything ready to sign. And then he
(Zia-ul-Haq) was killed in 1988." To the Foreign
Correspondents Association, however, he revealed
on April 27, 1991, that he had "almost signed a
treaty on Siachen with Zia. The only reason it
was not signed was that he died". What has since
emerged on impeccable authority is that in 1989,
he had come close to a deal on Siachen with
Benazir Bhutto. It was not clinched, but the
formula he offered then can serve as a basis for
an accord now.
Rajiv Gandhi and Zia-ul-Haq agreed in Delhi on
December 17, 1985, to begin talks on Siachen at
the level of defence secretaries. At the fifth
round of these talks, in Islamabad on June 17,
1989, a joint statement was issued, which stated:
"There was agreement by both sides to work
towards a comprehensive settlement, based on
redeployment of forces to reduce the chances of
conflict, avoidance of use of force and
determination of future positions on the ground
so as to conform with the Simla agreement and to
ensure durable peace in the Siachen area. The
army authorities of both sides will determine
these positions."
The fact of an 'agreement' was explicitly
mentioned. It was on "determination of future
positions", not existing positions. The army
authorities were to "determine" these positions,
i.e. future positions to which they would
withdraw ("redeploy"). The Indian army chief,
General B.C. Joshi, insisted in the talks held a
month later in New Delhi, on July 9 and 10, 1989,
on identifying existing positions. This still
remains our position. An agreement was, however,
reached in the sixth round, in New Delhi on
November 2 to November 4, 1992, on where the two
armies would redeploy. But Prime Minister
Narasimha Rao refused to clinch the deal.
However, India gave a Non-Paper to Pakistan on
January 24, 1994, which asserted that in the 1992
talks, "a broad understanding had been reached on
disengagement and redeployment, monitoring,
maintenance of peace and implementation
schedule". There was agreement on a "zone of
complete disengagement", resulting from the
withdrawals, as also the points to which both
sides would withdraw - India to Dzingrulma and
Pakistan to Goma. But a snag remained in this
formulation: "The two sides shall disengage from
the authenticated position they are presently
occupying."
Para 4 of this Non-Paper is still relevant now in
2007. It bound both sides in three respects: (a)
not to "reoccupy the positions vacated by them or
to occupy the positions vacated by either side";
(b) not to undertake any activity in the zone of
disengagement; and, what is most relevant now,
(c) "that if either side violates the commitment
in (a) and (b) above, the other side shall be
free to respond through any means, including
military".
This takes care of the question, how do we trust
Pakistan not to reoccupy the areas it vacated?
Worst case scenarios always prevent accord on any
dispute. How, then, do we settle Kashmir, let
alone Sir Creek and Siachen? In these days of
satellite surveillance, the distrust is
groundless. Siachen is not flat land that anyone
can cross by stealth. There was accord on joint
surveillance by helicopters in the November 1992
talks. Pakistan would invite reprisal from a
militarily superior India and incur odium
internationally, as it did on Kargil in 1999. A
good model is the Indo-Pak accord on February 4,
1987, on "the pullout of troops deployed on the
border by both sides", sectorwise, after Exercise
Brasstacks. "Both sides agreed not to attack each
other." It was based on trust and realism.
On Siachen, both sides agreed also that "the
delineation of the LoC beyond NJ 9842 (its
present terminus) shall be examined by a Joint
Commission letter", a task doomed to failure.
Pakistan wants the LoC to stretch eastwards to
the Karakoram Pass; India, to extend it to Indira
Col in the west of its existing position. Neither
side can possibly accept the other's stand.
The talks have thus been bogged down on the twin
issues of authentication of existing positions
and definition of the LoC to be drawn thereafter.
"Redeployment of forces" was to be but a first
step in a "comprehensive settlement" whose end
result would be "determination of future
positions on the ground". This would fill the gap
left by the Karachi agreement on July 27, 1949,
defining the cease-fire line, as well as the
Suchetgarh Agreement of December 11, 1972, which
defined the present LoC in J&K.
But there is a difference between the two
agreements on the terminus of the line. The 1972
agreement says simply "thence along the boundary
to NJ 980420" and ends there. However, the 1949
agreement had gone further. It mentioned the last
two points ("Chalunke, Khor") and ended thus:
"thence north to the glaciers. This portion of
the CFL shall be demarcated in detail on the
basis of the factual position as on July 27,
1949, by the local commanders, assisted by UN
military observers".
The next para provided that the CFL shall be
drawn on a map and verified on the ground by the
local commanders "so as to eliminate any no-man's
land". But no line was drawn from Chalunke, Khor
"north to the glaciers". The gap can now be
filled by drawing a line north to the glaciers.
A high Indian source told this writer in the
early 1990s that in 1989, the PM's able envoy,
Ronen Sen, offered Pakistan precisely such a
line. His counterpart, Iqbal Akhund, confirmed
this in 2000 in his memoirs Trial and Error. "It
should run due north, that is, up to the Chinese
border in a ruler-straight line". Ronen Sen said
at Belgrade during the NAM Summit inter alia that
"some principles must be established for
extending the line of control beyond No. 9842".
It is unlikely that the parties would agree on
anything but "a ruler-straight line" to the north
as the 1949 agreement envisaged.
India's vital interest is to ensure Pakistan's
disavowal of a claim to the Karakoram Pass. The
up-turned Triangle Indira Col in the West, the
Karakoram Pass in the East and NJ 9842 below both
is almost evenly split. The entire area can be
demilitarised.
The issues of authentication of existing and
future positions are bypassed. A clear line will
be laid down, called the Actual Ground Position
Line to allay fears of a complete partition of
J&K. It would not shorten the Sino-Pak boundary
as some in Pakistan fear. On the contrary,
Pakistan regains much of it, but we keep it well
away from the Karakoram Pass.
NEW DELHI, JULY 2: Security concerns are set to dominate proceedings during the two-day Indo-Pak Home Secretary level talks, which are part of the ongoing composite dialogue process between the two countries which began in 2004, beginning here tomorrow. But the real progress is expected in the sphere of streamlining the process of releasing “civilian” prisoners who have completed their sentences in either countries. Pakistan, whose Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah arrived here today, said the people of both the countries were interested in the issue of “civilian” prisoners. These are the people who had either overstayed or had committed a crime during their stay. But the issue of prisoners who were being held on charges related to national security is unlikely to be taken up officially, sources said. The Union Home Ministry expressed optimism and hoped that the meeting would contribute to confidence building and increasing people-to-people contact. The Indian side, led by Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, will also request Pakistan to increase the level of cooperation in tackling terrorism. The presence of training camps across the border and the increase in infiltration levels in Jammu and Kashmir over the past few months are also likely to figure during the meeting, which comes days after Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil reviewed the security situation at a high-level meeting in Srinagar. India is also expected to hand over a list of about 55 fugitives to Pakistan. However, keeping in mind their past experiences, officials said they did not expect anything concrete to come out of this. Strengthening of cooperation between the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency will also be discussed. The talks will focus on steps taken on drug control. “An understanding is expected to be reached on early finalisation and signing of a memorandum of understanding between the drug control agencies of the two countries to set up a regular institutional mechanism for co-operation on drug-related matters,” a Home Ministry spokesperson said.
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