From New York To Srinagar

Spin doctors who accompany Indian Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers on visits abroad routinely useterms like 'breakthrough' and 'historic' to describe meetings that their bosses hold. This is particularlytrue when summit meetings take place either in the White House, or with Pakistani leaders. 

When India's youngest Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met Pakistan's youngest Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto inIslamabad in 1989, there was no dearth of hangers-on in Rajiv Gandhi's entourage gushingly telling him howgood the two young Prime Ministers looked on television and how the new generation of leaders would set asidethe mindsets of the past and usher in a new era of eternal friendship. Barely a few months after this summit,Pakistan's leaders were fomenting insurrection in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) with shrill calls for "Azadi"(Freedom). 

A decade later, Prime Minister Vajpayee embarked on his now famous bus journey to Lahore, only to find hisdreams of a 'breakthrough' shattered on the high hill tops of Kargil. What India's Pakistan-obsessed media andbleeding-heart liberals failed to understand was that both in 1989 and in 1999, elected Indian Prime Ministerswere dealing with counterparts in Pakistan who had little say in influencing the policies that Army Chiefslike Generals Aslam Beg and Pervez Musharraf were controlling -- policies aiming to 'bleed India with athousand cuts'. 

Unlike sentimental Indians, the Pakistani military establishment conducts its policies towards India notout of any sentimentality, but on the basis of prevailing domestic and international power dynamics.

What were the prevailing domestic and international factors influencing Musharraf when he met Prime MinisterManmohan Singh on September 24? Domestically, he was finding a lack of adequate support for his plans tocontinue as Army Chief beyond December 31. While he could quite easily stage another bogus 'referendum' andannounce that he had secured public support for his plans, this route could further expose his lack ofdemocratic and constitutional legitimacy. 

Secondly, with two four star generals scheduled to retire on October 7, he could never be sure of theunquestioned loyalty of an officer at least seven years his junior, who would become Army chief, if he decidesto go the constitutional way, and relinquish his job as Pakistan's Army Chief. 

Musharraf knows better than anyone else, that political power in Pakistan grows out of the barrel of a gun.Things would become infinitely more complicated for him, if he became internationally isolated and lost thesupport of the Americans. The Americans, in turn, do not want him to get embroiled in tensions with India, butrather to focus his attention on stabilizing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where around 70,000 Pakistanitroops are now deployed, fighting remnants of the Al Qaeda and its supporters.

Adding to Musharraf's complications is the fact that his favourite jihadis from groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) are now targeting him personally. The other hot Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) favourite, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is now a house divided, with the leadership of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed being called into question and a senior leader, Maulana Ibrahim Salfi, assassinated in broad daylight. 

Within Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) remains another house divided, despite attempts by diplomats like Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokar to bring them together, under the tutelage of Syed Ali Shah Geelani. It is interesting that even as Musharraf was meeting Manmohan Singh in New York, the 'moderate' APHC leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was said to be busy meeting the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) leader Sardar Qayyum and ISI Chief General Ehsan-ul-Haq in Saudi Arabia. Failure to re-establish a united fifth column like the Hurriyat would be a setback for Pakistan's efforts to keep the pot boiling in the Kashmir Valley. 

Given these developments, it is only logical for Musharraf to buy time by continuing the dialogue process with India, while making it clear to his domestic audience that he still remains committed to the ISI's larger strategic objective of weakening India from within. Musharraf played his cards very well in New York, telling his domestic audience that he had not forsaken larger objectives, while persuading the international community that he was a changed man, fully opposed to terrorism.

Not surprisingly, the statement that Musharraf read out after his meeting with Manmohan Singh was worded tolend itself to different interpretations. This is going to be controversial, especially as Delhi's UnitedProgressive Alliance (UPA) government has been less than pro-active in focusing domestic and internationalpublic and media attention on the details and implications of Pakistan sponsored terrorism. The government hasalso not effectively rebutted Pakistan's charges of human rights violations, or exposed the gross violationsof human rights in PoK. 

Musharraf made it clear that there could be no improvement in economic relations till the Kashmir issue wasresolved to his satisfaction. He had earlier described Indian allegations of Pakistani support for terrorismas being 'hackneyed'. Dr. Manmohan Singh, however, subsequently asserted: "Terrorism did come up in ourdiscussions and I mentioned unambiguously to President Musharraf that the starting point of the whole dialogueprocess is the commitment given by Pakistan in the January 6 statement, that territory under Pakistan'scontrol will not be used for terrorist activities." 

For good measure Dr. Singh added: "We cannot discuss substantive issues and Confidence BuildingMeasures if terrorist activities are not controlled. Therefore, there is no doubt that this is thepre-condition to moving forward."

There have, however been two important, but unpublicized developments in recent talks with Pakistan. Duringdiscussions with Khurshid Kasuri, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh made it clear that India wasconcerned about the lack of representative institutions, democratic freedoms and meaningful autonomy in PoKand the Northern Areas in the PoK. It also seems that Dr. Manmohan Singh has thrown the ball back inMusharraf's court by asking him to spell out what he believes could be the basis of 'reasonable' and mutuallyacceptable solutions to the issue of J&K.

General Musharraf's game plan is now reasonably clear. He will not raise the level of terrorist violencebeyond India's threshold of tolerance. Given the dissensions within jihadi outfits supported by the ISI,General Ehsan ul Haq will be given time to prepare new strategies to keep the pot boiling with terroristviolence. At the same time, coercive pressure and threats to their lives will be used to get the Hurriyatleaders to fall in line. 

In negotiations with India, the effort will be to get India to accept the gas pipeline project and agree toa pullback of its forces from Siachen. There is no dearth of people in India, including some in ManmohanSingh's Cabinet, who would like us to accept these Pakistani wishes with no quid pro quo, either ondeveloping normal trade and economic relations, including transit rights to Afghanistan, or on endingcross-border terrorism. But it appears unlikely that Dr. Manmohan Singh will oblige them!

While it is in India's interests to press ahead with moves for demanding more democratic freedoms in PoK andsuggesting measures to open the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service, much is now going to depend on how the governmentmanages the situation within Kashmir, so that people there realize that increasing pressure has to be put onPakistani jihadis, by identifying their hideouts and eliminating them.

No effort can be spared to demonstrate to people in J&K that playing the Pakistani game, as elements inthe Hurriyat are now doing, has no future. The scope of Delhi's interlocutor in J&K, N.N. Vohra'spolitical dialogue needs to be expanded to take into account the views of all sections of the people in theState.

Given the way that developments in Kashmir and Manipur have been handled in recent months, there is littlereason to be optimistic that this task can be carried out imaginatively by the Home Ministry. Delhi will haveto formulate policies to respond appropriately and pro-actively to Pakistan's efforts to destabilize thesituation within India.

There is no place for sentimentality on this score.

G. Parthasarthy is former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan.  Courtesy, the South AsiaIntelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal