The Exclusion Zone

India has destroyed the possibility of a peace process and obviously they want to find a scapegoat. It is nothing new for the Indians to routinely blame Pakistan. It now has to be seen whether the freedom struggle of the Kashmiris will continue with greater or the same intensity... But surely it will continue." That was the response of Riaz Ahmed Khan, the spokesman at Pakistan’s foreign office, to the collapse of the peace initiative in Kashmir.

Indeed, India’s dismissal of the Hizbul Mujahideen’s demand of conducting tripartite negotiations on Kashmir has raised many an eyebrow in Islamabad. That’s because many officials here cannot understand how India could conceive of a peace process in Kashmir without engaging Pakistan. These officials feel that India should have seized the offer from the Hizbul Mujahideen and kept the option of engaging Islamabad for a later date, instead of resolutely slamming the door shut on the question of tripartite negotiations. There’s also much debate on the reasons underpinning India’s obstinacy on the issue of including a Pakistani angle to the Kashmir issue.

Says the director-general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Dr Shirin Mazari: "India miscalculated the ceasefire offer. It wrongly read the Hizbul’s offer as the outcome of ‘exhaustion’ of the jehadi outfits. I think New Delhi then tried to play around it, only proving that it has no intention to open a dialogue on Kashmir. The Hizbul Mujahideen’s decision to withdraw its offer is a correct one."

This perception of Mazari’s is surprisingly endorsed by most political parties in Pakistan, which seldom, if ever, can get to see eye-to-eye on important issues. For instance, the former interior minister of the Pakistan People’s Party (ppp), Aitizaz Ahsan, told Outlook: "We feel quite disappointed that India did not take advantage of the opportunity of the most important development since the Kashmiri intifada began in 1989. We feel that the only way out is a tripartite dialogue which could lead to a lasting, permanent and equitable solution, and not the continuation of jehad."

It might have been an attempt to score political points, but ppp chairperson Benazir Bhutto went further and also blamed the Pakistani establishment for the collapse of the peace process. She said: "The foreign office has failed to use its good offices with the Hizbul Mujahideen to keep the ceasefire going. It was a window of opportunity given that both India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed and have fought three wars." Progress on Kashmir, she thought, could have helped pave the way for a meeting between Pakistan’s ceo, Gen Pervez Musharraf, and Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during the UN summit in New York next month.

The English language daily, The Dawn, has chosen to term the end of the ceasefire as the death of an initiative. "The struggle in Kashmir since 1989 is not about preserving the sanctity of the Indian Constitution but of looking beyond it," it reported. "Vajpayee should not have put the Hizbul Mujahideen in a spot by foreclosing the ambit of the talks with it."

For the moment, however, the Pakistani government will try to milk the aborted peace process for all that it’s worth. For instance, as Musharraf pointed out, "India’s own admission that the freedom fighters are from occupied Kashmir has exposed the falsehood of its propaganda for projecting the liberation struggle as Pakistan-sponsored terrorism."

Some feel Pakistan has gained from the aborted peace process. Says former chief of staff Gen Mirza Aslam Beg: "The announcement of a ceasefire by the Hizbul was an invention of the Pakistan government. Today, Pakistan has an option to let the jehad continue, for how long can New Delhi bear the economic losses? Pakistan is now one up." The hardliners, obviously, support the culture of the gun. As Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed told Outlook: "(Syed) Salahuddin should not have backed out of the jehad. He should understand that jehad is the only answer." This week, Salahuddin met the Qazi in a bid to mollify him.

There have been suggestions that the Hizbul Mujahideen chief should shift from Islamabad to a neutral ground so that he gains greater credibility. As Benazir said: "Salahuddin should hold his press conferences outside Islamabad. This would prevent the perception that the Hizbul Mujahideen is Pakistan-based."

But perceptions of neutrality or bias apart, the general feeling in Islamabad is that all indications are that peace will elude Kashmir as long as New Delhi doesn’t rethink its policy on the tripartite negotiations.