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How to Make Peace With a Fractured Polity?
The Subcontinent got a nice Christmas present on 25 December 2015:
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Pakistan on Friday — a significant sign the icy relationship between the two neighbors is thawing.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif greeted him at an airport in Lahore during his short layover in the city while en route to New Delhi from Afghanistan. Sharif was accompanied by his brother Shahbaz, Punjab province’s chief minister…
The visit occurred after Modi called Sharif to express his desire to make a stop in Pakistan, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry told reporters in Lahore. Sharif happened to be in Lahore at the time.
Chaudhry described the “goodwill visit” as pleasant and said the two leaders needed “to understand each other to open the doors of peace and stability in South Asia.”
Modi and Sharif talked about restarting a dialogue and increasing people-to-people contacts between their nations, he said.
The foreign secretaries of both counties are to meet in Islamabad at the end of the month, Chaudhry said.
It was the first time an Indian prime minister has visited Pakistan in almost 12 years.
Exactly one week later, however:
Heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists today carried out a pre-dawn strike at the Air Force base [in Indian Punjab], triggering a fierce gunbattle in which three securitymen and all five infiltrators were killed, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover in Lahore.
With the obvious intention of destroying fighter jets and attack helicopters housed there, up to six terrorists in army fatigues attempted to storm the base which is barely 35 kms from the international border with Pakistan but failed to go beyond the outer periphery.
In heavy exchange of fire, a commando and two other personnel of the IAF were killed along with five of the attackers. Blasts and intermittent exchange of fire was continuing this evening.
There was no clarity as to the number of attackers who are believed to have infiltrated from Pakistan and there was speculation that they may belong to Jaish-e-Mohammad headed Maulana Masood Azhar of the Kandahar hijack episode.
The impact this will have on the planned end of month meetings between the Indian and Pakistani Governments in Islamabad is likely to be bad. Domestic politics will require India to take a harder line. Domestic politics will require Pakistan to respond similarly.
It’s possible the meetings won’t even take place. Cui bono?
The thing is, the bones of it look familiar.
Sharif…noted that he was involved in a major peace initiative with India in 1999 when his then counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee [the Prime Minister of India] visited Pakistan.
The effort collapsed within months as Pakistan-backed forces infiltrated the Indian zone of Kashmir, which has been the source of two full-fledged wars between the nuclear powers.
Sharif blamed the 1999 Kargil conflict on army chief Pervez Musharraf, who later ousted him from power [in a coup], and repeated his past criticism of the focus on military spending.
“Had our countries not wasted their precious resources in a never-ending arms race, we would not only have avoided the futile conflicts, but also emerged as stable and prosperous nations,” he said.
So how it looks to me:
Pakistan’s civilian government wants to make peace with India.
Pakistan’s Army does not — and undercuts any peace initiatives by the civilian Government — either by acting directly, or by using proxies like the Jaish-e-Mohammad.
It is without a doubt in the interests of the people of the subcontinent for these two countries to make peace. But is it possible for India to make peace with Pakistan if an unaccountable, unelected power centre in Pakistan sees peace as a threat to its financial and political interests and is able to act in ways that make that peace hard to achieve?
If India doesn’t make peace, it’s rewarding and empowering exactly those parts of the Pakistani State (the Armed Forces) that are most opposed to it.
It occurs to me that this is an issue that comes up when dealing with any polity with competing centres of power — the most obvious being Iran — with a Reformist (it’s relative) elected Government headed by Rouhani trying to make peace, and the Revolutionary Guard seeing its interests better supported by ongoing conflict.
The civilian governments of these countries (Pakistan, Iran) are not capable of taming their unelected power centres. So how should countries which negotiate with fractured polities like that proceed? (Threats don’t seem to work. Is there anything else?)
Published in Foreign Policy, General
You’re discussing this as if it’s entirely for India and Pakistan to sort out. There are Kashmiris involved here, too.
The results of the 2014 J&K legislative assembly were really interesting. Hard to say how they’d have turned out without the call to boycott the polls, but turnout was more than 65 percent and pretty evenly split between BJP and PDP. I
t’s in New Delhi’s interest to commit sincerely to improving Kashmiri lives — and not to be regarded by Kashmiris as an occupying force. The Sadhbhavana operation was, overall, as these things go, fairly successful. The BJP and PDP may be able to work together in some strange and constructive ways. It makes more sense to focus on that than on trying to influence internal Pakistani dynamics.
It is indeed India’s duty, its Raj Dharma if you will, to work for the welfare of all Kashmiris (in and out of the valley, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, whatever). It is also in India’s enlightened self interest to do that. So I don’t disagree with you about that. But:
Zafar,
I like Claire’s desire to keep on the positive but your analysis seems much more accurate in the specific situation. Jihadism is transnational and intensely ideological. A rise in living standards and participation in government bodies mean nothing to them.
Coordination between the two governments would be in order to keep order. I hope they keep the interests of the vast majority of Indian and Pakistani citizens highest in their minds and act accordingly. I suspect from what you say the vast majority of the people of Kashmir would also be served very well by this kind of coordinated effort.
Regards,
Jim
Comment 32 is genuinely great. It’s an honor to share a site with you, Zafar.
Thanks, James! Same to you. Now I must go tend my inflated ego…
Zafar, just read this and thought of this post. Alyssa Ayres asks what Washington should do; these are her conclusions:
To which I’d reply that we have the standard dilemma, as with the Saudis. We’re not the only manufacturers of “defense equipment.” If they’re buying them from us, it at least keeps Pakistan nominally oriented toward us, gives us more knowledge about what equipment they have, more military-to-military contact and thus more intelligence, and in extremis, an ability to hinder their ability to make war by refusing to resupply parts. I’m very willing — eager, even — to talk about “support for counterterrorism training, democracy, governance, economic growth, and the crucial human development needs for Pakistan’s citizens,” but I want a lot more detail: Where have we done this successfully? Where have we done this only to realize we’ve been pointlessly pouring money into the coffers of a corrupt elite? What’s the detailed plan?
Thoughts?