A case of flip-flop-flip

The chameleon changes colour on Pakistan

Mani Shankar Aiyar

If consistency is virtue only in an ass, then the NDA government is no donkey. Were the flip-flop-flip on Pakistan the consequence of a genuine change of heart, it would be welcome. It would even be welcome if it were a belated recognition of ground realities. But if, as seems, it is only yet another change of costume by the quick-change artiste we have for prime minister, then it is cause for concern. It is even more cause for concern if our government is braying because the Americans are twisting its tail.

The invitation to General Pervez Musharraf to visit the city of his birth as Pakistan’s chief executive is overdue. But it makes nonsense of the government’s refusal to deal with him since the coup of October 1999. As of the reasons advanced hitherto to not deal with him, let it be stated that he is still an unelected military dictator. He still remains the prime culprit for Kargil. He is as unrelenting as ever in promoting cross-border terrorism in Kashmir — and beyond. He is still patron-in-chief of the Taliban. He is the cause, not the obstruction, to hostile propaganda against our country. And he has not retracted his contempt for the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration.

None of this surprises me, for Musharraf is, after all, a Pakistani. But it was precisely these grounds on which the Vajpayee government has ostracised him all these months. It is legitimate, therefore, to ask oneself whether the country’s interests are best served by the self-serving publicity, poetic phrase-making and meretricious headline-hunting which constitute Vajpayee’s substitute for sound and sensible governance. Do sincerity of intent and clarity of purpose have nothing to do with foreign and national security policy?

On every issue of national security and foreign policy, it is momentary publicity which determines the throw of the NDA dice. Vajpayee has presided for three years over a ceasefire with the NSCN(I-M) in force since 1997, but while his emissaries rush to Bangkok to parley conditions for the extension of the ceasefire, not a single step has been taken towards a political settlement. Indeed, by entrusting the negotiations to a retired civil servant, the Vajpayee government have ensured that politics is put on hold. What then is the larger purpose of the ceasefire?

In precisely the same way, the Vajpayee government repeatedly prolonged its cessation of offensive military action in Jammu and Kashmir (aka, its ‘‘ceasefire’’), but so messed up the political initiative that we are back after nearly a year to exactly where we were. Meanwhile, the National Conference has been alienated because Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah was not taken into confidence over the opening to the Hurriyat; the Hurriyat have been alienated because they were dropped in favour of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen as the preferred interlocutor; the Hizb have been alienated because they were left bereft when someone got the bright idea that it would be best to send the Hurriyat to Pakistan for instructions; the Hurriyat then got once again alienated when the Vajpayee government decided to screen who could visit Pakistan and who not; then everyone else was upset when Shabir Shah emerged as the Government of India’s partner of preference; then Shabir was out on his ear because Vajpayee thought it best to first talk to Pakistan. Would not the steep escalation in military casualties and civil killings during the so-called ‘‘ceasefire’’ have been obviated if the wisdom so lately dawned had been that of the Vajpayee-Advani-Jaswant triumvirate 18 months ago?

Of course, we must talk to Pakistan. But not to earn brownie points from outsiders. We must talk to Pakistan to secure a South Asia at peace, to put behind us half a century of disruptive discord. That is not a ten-minute publicity stunt a la Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It calls for uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue, persisted in most when the adversarial relationship is at its worst. We have to learn from the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho who persisted with their dialogue from 1968 to 1973 through some of the worst military hostilities the world has ever seen. I do not exaggerate. The tonnage of bombs dropped over Vietnam exceeded the global tonnage through all of the Second World War. Dialogue for peace has to be between sworn enemies. It is that will to persist which has never been manifest between India and Pakistan.

To foster that will should be the objective of any India-Pakistan summit. Which is why talks about talks are more important even than the talks themselves. We have in the example of Panmunjom a mechanism to lay the ground for uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue. Even when they have nothing to slay, the disputants have a forum to meet. That forum is a table laid precisely across the ceasefire line, so that no South Korean has to leave his country to talk to his North Korean counterpart, even as no North Korean has to cross the border to meet his South Korean colleague. To disrupt dialogue, the oldest trick in the diplomatic trade is to declare it ‘‘inconvenient’’ to meet the other side. Therefore, for the India-Pakistan dialogue to succeed, the venue had best be the Wagah-Attari border with a solemn commitment in advance to the regularity and frequency of meetings. (On Vietnam, the venue was the Hotel Majestic in Paris and the meetings were held every Thursday, Agent Orange or no.)

The agenda must, of course, include Kashmir but not be limited by it. And it would be best to have a single interlocutor on both sides rather than fracture the dialogue, as we have been doing since the Gujral-brokered accord of 1997, into eight petrified Working Groups. Only with a single politically-empowered interlocutor can the integrity of the dialogue be maintained, opening the door to what is lost on the swings being made up on the roundabouts. And the South Asian parliamentary innovation of a Zero Hour should be introduced to facilitate the venting of topical grievances before getting down to the business on the order papers.

Such diplomatic nitty-gritty is not, alas, Vajpayee’s forte. Long on rhetoric and short on substance, he is befogged by detail. If, therefore, the Musharraf invitation is to lead anywhere, it would be best if the prime minister were to return to his poetry and the foreign minister to perfecting his accent, leaving it to the professionals to get on with the job.