DIPLOMATIC BUBBLE: Indo-Pak talks: what happened?

 DIPLOMATIC BUBBLE: Indo-Pak talks: what happened?

By Saeed Minhas

ISLAMABAD: Is it true that instead of showing any positives from the recently-held ministerial meetings between India and Pakistan, the foreign ministers from both the countries preferred to play to their respective hawkish galleries thus lessening if not completely nullifying the impact of the much-hyped talks? 

The diplomatic corps and intelligentsia in Islamabad were overtly expressing in advance that no major break-through should be expected from these talks between Shah Mehmood Qureshi and SM Krishna. But following the talks, now they are dismayed that both sides spoiled the opportunity crafted by their common friends like the UK, the US and even China. 

The diplomatic gaffe from Qureshi is certainly not in sync with these high-profile talks, which had three rounds (one scheduled and two unscheduled in the span of just 12 hours) throughout the day. If a statement on the eve of the talks from Indian Home Secretary GK Pillai accusing the ISI of the Mumbai attacks and reiterating the same old Jamaatud Dawa mantra was a non-starter, then the tantrum shown by the Pakistani foreign minister can best be dubbed as a diplomatic blunder and nothing else. 

To find some clues, meetings and interviews with some friends, known to represent the establishment mindset, revealed that it would be naïve to even think that agencies from both the sides were not playing their part in these talks. What might have brought a cool customer like Qureshi (many call him submissive) to set aside all basic norms, many diplomatic sources and establishment gurus believe, is the American double-talk with Pakistani Khakis over their proposed Afghan exit-strategy. 

Whether they will able to pull out of the troubled Afghan lands, or whether their allies in NATO would be able to sustain the increasing number of body-bags (378 during this year so far, with over 50 percent belonging to the US) and financial burden (running into trillions of dollars), is not what matters, to Pakistani policy makers but what hurts them is the pressure from the US to share the Afghan turf with the Indians. 

Many of them share the common perception that accusing Pakistan of being India-centric is as naïve as considering that Russians and Chinese have dumped their plans to have access to the warm waters or Americans are no more concerned about the Chinese or Iranian threat to their hegemony in the region. 

In the face of cold-start strategies (India’s Pak-specific war doctrine) and prick-and-bleed policies being practiced on Pakistan’s soft-bellies like Balochistan and the north-western region, the Pakistani establishment is not ready to close its eyes to both internal and external factors threatening its very existence or strategic edge, especially when multiple forces with multiple designs are competing/operating simultaneously in its vicinity. 

Strategic depth still remains the mainstay of the Pakistani establishment but due to a paradigm shift in the ground realities, bitter experience of dealing with the leftovers of the US-CIA-funded and ISI-run jihadi monster and changing scenarios of the region’s strategic importance in the coming days, this depth is no more dependent on sub-conventional actors, rather it is focused primarily on a visible deterrence and secondly, on a pro-active diplomacy. 

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, India’s shutter-down approach towards Pakistan is well documented. Whereas, riding on its specially-developed relationship with the Americans and being a victim-of-terrorism-state itself, Pakistan has been gaining diplomatic currency in the recent past by not only showing its willingness to open bilateral or even trilateral talks with India but also to earn respect from the world bodies for its cooperative gestures, military adventures and strategic plus intelligence sharing acts. In return, the establishment has been asking to protect its strategic interest, development as well as investment needs and instead of over-stretching the Pakistan Army from east to northwest, its primary concerns should be given due consideration. 

Ranging from decades-old disputes such as Kashmir, water, Sir Creek and Siachen to recently added ones like the controversial dams, terrorism, and financing the insurgencies in each others’ terrains, both countries have adopted various means of proxy wars, yet they have managed to accumulate more problems then resolving any single one from the existing list. 

Trust deficit, therefore, keeps surfacing whenever there are chances of heading towards conflict resolution. In this context many analysts believe that if the US plans to groom Afghanistan as another proxy war zone for not only India and Pakistan but to settle its scores with the other regional powers, then the mess is likely to multiply in magnitude and manifest. By constantly urging the Indians to play a crucial role in Afghanistan, they believe, the Americans are playing a game, which might backfire with severe consequences for all the stakeholders. 

A high-profile Afghanistan conference is about to take place on July 20 in Kabul where US President Barack Obama’s diplomatic queen Hillary Clinton along with his military and strategic bigwigs will appear in person to share (as many diplomats consider dictate) the views of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, foreign ministers from 40 nations and 30 other delegates from interested nations and organisations. 

According to a leaked agenda of the upcoming Kabul conference reported by a British newspaper, all the countries fighting in Afghanistan would announce to hand over the country’s security to the local Afghan Forces by 2014. If we give any credence to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had admitted recently in Brussels that the international community had “underestimated” the size of the challenge in Afghanistan, then we can only hope that hastening towards winding up this mission or concluding it without caring for the respective ‘national interests’ of all the stakeholders might not bode well for the region and the rest of the players involved. How the world leaders, led by the UN secretary general and aided by Secretary Clinton, will look at this is something which everyone will be interested to know, including both India and Pakistan. Therefore, analysts believe that any future developments between the nuclear-armed archrivals would be hinging partly on the outcome of this Kabul conference or largely on the broader American policy regarding Afghanistan and the region.