India Pakistan relations in 2017 and beyond


India Pakistan relations in 2017 and beyond
India and Pakistan must move forward in peace. Will they rekindle the flame of peace?

As the year ends, an Indian and a Pakistani jointly look back at the gains and losses in terms of relations between their two countries and suggest a way forward

By Samir Gupta and Saeed Ahmed Rid

By Samir Gupta and Saeed Ahmed Rid

As we say good bye to 2016 and welcome 2017, it is easy to feel sad about the sorry state of relations between India and Pakistan. Another year has passed with the two countries stuck in a vicious geo-political conflict.

Another year of deaths due to terrorist attacks, cross-border firing and our refusal to let go of the burden of hate we have carried for a long time. Around 900 people in India and 1,800 in Pakistan died in terrorism-related incidents this year alone, as of 25 December, 2016.

Another year of precious resources being diverted to bombs, fighter planes, nuclear weapon programs and warships while the two countries remain near the bottom of the table in terms of human development.

India ranked 130 in the last published Human Development Index (HDI) rankings while Pakistan ranked 147 out of 187 countries. The reason for that is obvious. India ranked 134 and Pakistan ranked 164 out of 177 countries in their public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP in 2012. Pakistan was 23 and India was ranked 32 out of 141 countries in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP.

What is holding us back?

Over the years, dialogue between India and Pakistan has been held hostage to what we call the ‘first syndrome’. Before September 11, 2001 Pakistan would scuttle any bilateral dialogue, pursuing a policy of ‘Kashmir first’. After the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India has been invoking a ‘terrorism first’ policy that chokes any progress in dialogue. This approach has brought no gains to either the people or the states.

The year 2015 had ended on a high note for Indo-Pak relations with three major positive developments in the space of only twenty days in December 2015.

First, India and Pakistan’s National Security Advisers, Ajit Doval and Nasir Janjua, met secretly in Bangkok on December 6. On December 8, the Indian Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj landed in Islamabad to attend the Heart of Asia Conference and the two countries announced a schedule for Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. Then, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his famous stopover in Lahore on December 25.

It appeared as if India and Pakistan had finally found a way out and all the stake-holders were on board the peace process.

However, the optimism was short lived. Just as many region-watchers had predicted, these breakthroughs were followed by disaster. Within days of Modi’s visit to Pakistan, we saw the terror attacks in Pathankot, India, on January 2. The newly announced Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue process was scuttled before it could even begin as the severe public backlash catalysed by the media in India triggered the “terrorism first” policy.

The summer of conflict gave way to further brinkmanship by the two countries at the United Nations in September. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gave an uncharacteristically sharp speech at the UNGA on 21 September 2016. Eenam Gambhie, India’s first secretary at the U.N. responded in kind the next day.

The warmth and camaraderie of December 2015 were unfortunately a million miles away. All channels of bilateral talks and possible side-meetings at international events were cancelled.

Prime Minister Modi’s attendance at the upcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Islamabad, 15-16 November, was expected to improve the situation. However, the attacks in Uri on the Indian-administered side of Kashmir on 18 September 2016 killed any remaining hopes of an early revival of the peace process.

The SAARC summit became the first casualty as India refused to attend the summit in Pakistan. Both countries revived a war of words and hostile diplomacy unbecoming of the letter and the spirit of the SAARC charter.

Pakistani artists working in Bollywood became the second casualty as the media inflamed the public opinion against them. Many Pakistani artists working on creative projects in Mumbai were forced to leave. Pakistan responded by banning Indian movies. There was a prolonged spell of military conflict across the international border and Line of Control. India tried its best to isolate Pakistan diplomatically at all international forums. Pakistan responded by sending emissaries to global capitals with Kashmir dossiers.

The scorecard of 2016 may not appear to provide much hope for 2017, but we believe peace is still possible and that 2017 may yet usher in a new path of peace and understanding between India and Pakistan. But for this to happen, India and Pakistan must move beyond their refrains of “terrorism first” and “Kashmir first” respectively. No progress is possible with the ‘first syndrome’ because things cannot move ahead when preconditions are laid for talks.

Why first? Why not both together? This is exactly what both countries had already agreed in December 2015 while announcing the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue  (CBD) framework that both Kashmir and Terrorism would be discussed along with all other outstanding issues. We need to revive the CBD process from where it was broken off in January 2016 after Pathankot.

The CBD process needs to be used to devise a comprehensive mechanism and strategy to deal with future terrorist incidents and flare ups without jeopardizing the dialogue and the people-to-people contacts. It is imperative to delink bilateral talks, sports, art and people-to-people contacts from provocations, on either side, if the peace process is to have any chance of succeeding.

Neither country is doing the other a favour by coming to the dialogue table. Trying to use peace as a bargaining chip to get the desired outcome will not work. We have seen Pakistan offering peace talks as a reward to India for resolving Kashmir, and India offering peace talks as a reward to Pakistan for clamping down on terrorist groups. In fact, peace will be an outcome of their negotiations once they start talking. There is no reason why the mistrust and hatred cannot be dismantled. Scepticism must give way to committed action.

Samir Gupta is an IT professional and peace activist based in Ghaziabad, India. Dr. Saeed Ahmed Rid, a researcher and academician, teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan. Email them at [email protected] and [email protected]




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