prejudiced and panic-stricken reactions call for a considered response
STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB
The ISI connection
Critics have argued that the Indian participants did not care to check the antecedents of the organizer, Ghulam Nabi Fai in this case, and thereby worked against India’s national interest by going to an ISI-sponsored seminar. What they seem to ignore is that if it was after all a covert operation by the ISI and took the FBI, one of the world’s best investigative agencies, to finally unearth the link between Mr. Fai and the ISI, how can one expect the Indian academics, activists and intellectuals to have uncovered this link before they decided to air their views in seminars organized by Mr. Fai? While the criticism against respected Indian intellectuals and activists for participating in allegedly ISI-sponsored conferences on Kashmir in Washington can be dismissed by the simple argument that almost all of them were unaware of the source of Fai’s funding, the larger issue that needs to be addressed is about the importance of Indo-Pak track-two dialogues which many rightwing anchors have termed as a ‘cottage industry of wining and dining’ in the name of Kashmir.
Who funds these dialogues?
One major criticism against many of the ongoing track-two dialogues is regarding their source of funding. Critics say that these dialogues are funded by people with vested interests and because the participants are ‘well-taken care of’ they would happily endorse the hidden agenda of the organizers and will not keep the national interest of the country in mind. Such ‘unintellectual’ criticism needs to be seriously contested before being wholly dismissed. Let us come to the issue of funding first. There are at least four track-two dialogues going on at the moment between India and Pakistan and they had gathered momentum during the period when there was no dialogue between India and Pakistan after the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Almost all of them are funded by well-known and transparent funding agencies based abroad or neutral foreign governments. One of the major reasons why indigenous funding is discouraged for India-Pakistan track-two dialogues is that if it is funded by Indian funders, Pakistani participants would find it difficult to attend the conference and may have to answer uncomfortable questions at home and vice versa. Secondly, the Indian government has always adopted a hands-off policy when it comes to track-two dialogues and has in the past denied visas to Pakistani participants which is why most of these dialogues are held outside India and Pakistan. Holding these conferences outside India and Pakistan also helps participants to share their ideas freely and frankly without being under the constant glare and pressure of various actors back home. Moreover, it is hardly possible to verify the sources of a seminar organizer’s funding before one accepts the invitation to participate in it.
On the question of participants endorsing the hidden agenda of seminar organisors, it may be pointed out that most of the track-two dialogues are locally owned and locally organized even if foreign-funded. In other words, the agenda formation and consensus building are carried out by the Indians and Pakistanis themselves and most track-two meetings have roughly equal number of Indian and Pakistani participants. More significantly, most participants in these meetings are retired high-ranking officers from the bureaucracies and armed forces of India and Pakistan as well as well-known academics and experts from various think tanks and Universities. To claim that they are out there to be purchased by foreign intelligence agencies is making an unreasonably presumptuous argument, to say the least. The narrow minded nationalists and prime-time ‘televangelists’ are indeed indulging in self-flattery when they claim that they understand Indian national interests better than these individuals.
Why track-two engagements?
Since the ongoing campaign seems to be denigrating the very idea behind track-two engagements, it is necessary to put the philosophy behind these dialogues in proper perspective. Track-two dialogues are primarily meant to give an opportunity to senior and informed members of a country’s strategic community to interact with those of the rival state. There are multiple objectives behind such interactions: one, to appreciate the fears, concerns and demands of the other side; two, to understand the redlines and tipping points of the rival state; three, to engage in an unencumbered exchange of perceptions and ideas, and; four, convey the various suggestions and proposals from the other side to the decision-makers in one’s home country. One of the major advantages of track-two settings is that since most of these dialogues are held under Chatham House rules wherein nothing would be attributed to anyone after the meeting, participants are more likely to be frank and candid in their opinions leading to a better discussion of major issues and their potential solutions.
Kashmir and track-two dialogues
Track-two dialogues on Kashmir have in the past proved to be useful in a number of ways. They have helped the track-two interlocutors from the Indian side to clearly understand the positive transformation of the Pakistani approach to the conflict in Kashmir even as there has not been an official admission of it. Indeed, there have been occasions when the Pakistani decision makers made use of the venue provided by these forums to test waters on some of their out-of-the-box ideas on Kashmir. The meeting of an Indian track-two group with the then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraff in 2005 is a good example in this regard. In that meeting Musharraff outlined the various aspects of the so-called ‘Musharraff formula’ for the resolution of the Kashmir conflict and asked the interlocutors from both sides to discuss it further.
(Source: Greater Kashmir, 31 July, 2011. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2011/Jul/31/in-defense-of-track-two-dialogues-33.asp )
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