Saturday, April 21, 2012

Respond to Pakistan’s peace overtures


Pakistan is most likely looking for genuine strategic accommodation with India

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB


In response to Pakistan’s repeated calls and signals for peace-making, foreign policy mandarins in New Delhi seem to be behaving like a bunch of peace conservatives. This peace conservatism could be a result of a number of factors: lack of trust, dialogue-fatigue with Islamabad, domestic political preoccupations, or hard-nosed strategic considerations. At worst, New Delhi is ignoring Islamabad’s calls for peace; at best it is giving Pakistani peace initiatives a selective treatment wherein it wants to talk about one item and not another. 

Pakistani peace initiatives 
Recent meetings between Indian and Pakistani Commerce ministers Anand Sharma and Makhdoom Amin, respectively, have resulted in a number of trade-related agreements between the two sides. While India has decided, in principle, to allow foreign direct investment from Pakistan, Pakistan is taking steps to finalise a system of “negative list” for trade with India.  Both the sides have agreed to open branches of banks in each other’s countries, set up the India-Pakistan Business Council with co-chairs from both sides, and to ease visa rules for business travel. 

Rawalpindi’s signaling 
Increasing trade ties may be seen by ‘security-traditionalists’ as secondary issues between the two sides. Lets therefore look at some recent security-related developments.  Consider the recent statement of Pakistan’s Army Chief immediately after the Siachen avalanche that killed over 135 Pakistani soldiers. He is reported to have said: “All issues should be resolved and peaceful co-existence is very necessary for both countries. There is no doubt about that," he also hoped that the Siachen issue is "resolved so that both the countries don't have to pay the cost". Kayani’s statement assumes significance for two reasons: he is not known to be a very India-friendly Pak General, and, more importantly, his words count in Pakistan. Hence the statement on the need to have “peaceful coexistence” with India coming from Kayaniis of great significance.  After all, Rawalpindi is not known for pitching for Indo-Pak peace. 

Sharif, Khar and Zardari…and Agni 
Indeed, even before Kayani made the above statement, Pakistan’s former Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition, Nawaz Sharif, had gone even further in his recommendation. He had said that Pakistan should lead the withdrawal from Siachen Glacier, and that India would then automatically follow suit. Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar also reportedly said that Pakistan should review troop deployments in Siachen.  Indeed, she also went on to argue, to quote The Nation newspaper of Pakistan, “Islamabad now trusts New Delhi more than ever before and believes the Kashmir dispute cannot be a roadblock”. 

Pakistan president Zardari’s day-long visit to Indian on April 8 should also be seen as part of this growing chorus in Pakistan to better relations with India. While nothing greatly substantial may have been achieved during his brief visit, it was symbolic of Islamabad’s intentions vis-à-vis India. I was also surprised to note that there weren’t any aggressive reaction from Pakistan when India recently test-fired its nuclear-capable ICBM, Agni-V. 

How to view these developments? How should we put these developments in proper perspective? Considering that the Indian response to most of these peace overtures from Pakistan has been lukewarm, if not disinterested, I imagine that ‘peace conservatism’ is the dominant tendency in today’s New Delhi. This ‘peace conservatism’ could be due to three inter-related reasons. One, New Delhi may reason that Islamabad’s peace initiatives are tactical in nature and they do not reflect a real change of strategic thinking in Islamabad, and certainly not in Rawalpindi. They are just buying time. Secondly, Pakistani peace initiatives are also likely to be seen by peace conservatives in New Delhi as an embattled country’s desperate moves. Given Pakistan’s continuing fall from glory in the eyes of the comity of nations, one way to convince the international community that Pakistan is serious about peace and stability is to talk peace with India. This is seasonal at best and when things get better at the international front, Pakistan will be back to its old games. Thirdly, it could also be argued that by talking peace with India, Pakistan is indulging in its age-old trick of creating a political smokescreen for strategic advantages. In other words, talking peace with India is a Pakistani ploy to lull India into complacence: remember what the Pakistani army was doing when the peace deal was being put together in Lahore in 1999? 

However, I think the opposite is true.  I tend to think that Pakistan is most likely looking for genuine strategic accommodation with India. It has realized that many of its anti-India grand strategies have terribly failed and hence it wants to resolve its outstanding conflicts with India. Also Pakistan is faced with a two-front situation and hence wants to lessen the security burden on itself. I also believe that these Pakistani peace initiatives will have long-term strategic implications. However, even if one were to think that these are tactical (hence to be reversed in the long-term) measures from the Pakistani side, which I believe is the worst-case scenario, there is no reason to think that tactical measures will have absolutely no strategic implications at all: indeed, often it so happens that the tactical measures states adopt do lead to strategic outcomes. Hence even if New Delhi wants to go by the worst-case scenario argument, it should positively respond to Pakistani peace overtures and get them to sign peace deals with it on all outstanding issues. And if Pakistan, in future, reverses its peace deals with India, it would have disastrous consequences for itself, as is witnessed by history. 

The moment is ripe for some definitive action on the India-Pakistan front and so why not start from Siachen? New Delhi should positively respond to the Siachen “offers” by Kayani, Sharrief and Khar. It should not heed to the ever-pessimistic analysis of peace conservatives in New Delhi. The fact is that both Islamabad and Rawalpindi have signaled India that they want to make peace with India. Remember, it is not often that we hear both Islamabad and Rawalpindi talking to India in one voice.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, April 22, 2012. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2012/Apr/22/respond-to-pakistan-s-peace-overtures-16.asp )

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Non-violent state and not-so-non-violent society

The fact is that tolerance to violence is thinly separated from its actual commission

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

Perhaps all societies have internal contradictions; perhaps human beings themselves have contradictory steaks in them. I do not know that for sure yet, but I do know that there are a lot of internal contradictions within our society, the Indian society. For one, we have a self-proclaimed non-violent state, which has consistently maintained a defensive posture towards the international system, and yet the state of non-violence inside the state is not very laudable. Two recent instances triggered me to reflect on this issue in a more self-critical manner: India’s vote against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which I justified in my column last week, and the controversial child custody case in Norway involving an Indian family.


The non-violent state
India is a self-proclaimed non-violent and defensive country. It has been averse to the use of aggression against other states - both now and historically. Our conventional as well as nuclear weapons are guided by defensive intentions, doctrines and postures. Modern India has never, with the honorable exception of 1971, projected force outside its territorial boundaries even when it had clear incentives, reasons and international encouragement to do so. Indeed, India even refused to use force against a particular neighboring country even when aggressively provoked by it, time and again.


The Indian state has also historically condemned all acts of aggression against small powers by big ones in the international system. India is convinced that imperialism and colonialism are bad ideas and has been consistent in its disapproval of them. We are also against any form of discrimination in the international system and we have always spoken up against human rights violations elsewhere. That said, there is a clear domestic-international divide in our discourse on non-violence.

The blinders of our mind and domestic violence
We are very upset about the violation of Tamil people’s human rights in Sri Lanka and hence voted against Colombo in UNHRC, and yet we did almost nothing when over 100 people were killed in Kashmir by our own security forces. Some people did react, but I would call that a much toned-down reaction for it was much less in intensity in comparison to how we have reacted to what happened in, say, Sudan, Egypt or Somalia. We look the other way when the Indian state wages a war against the Maoist-infested central Indian jungles even though we know that one of the major reasons why a lot of tribals there take to arms is because the state has provided them with nothing but many forms of structural violence. We are often tolerant towards custody killings, police brutality and often ask for public – extra-judicial – hangings/punishment of criminals without a trial forgetting that societies cannot wish away their responsibility in creating the social environment in which a crime gets committed.


How many of us are aware of the dehumanizing living and psychological conditions inside our prisons that often house more under-trials than convicts? Many of us believe that it is ok for ‘criminals’ to be treated like that for they are criminals after all, aren’t they? I often remind myself of what Dostoevsky once said: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”.


The fact is that tolerance to violence is thinly separated from its actual commission. The state of non-violence within us and in our society is appalling and yet we preach to the international community on the need to avoid violence. We voted against Colombo: what would be the reaction of our society – forget the state – if some country were to table a resolution in UNHRC against New Delhi on human rights violations in Kashmir?


We do have an image problem. We just don’t like anyone telling us that we are wrong. We sit in judgment of the US about the condition of prisons in Guantanamo bay (apart from its legality etc.). What if they were to tell us improve your prisons first!


The castes of our mind and the double-talk on discrimination
We talked about nuclear apartheid that the west was practicing against us for a long time. However, today the West accepts India as part of the global non-proliferation regime and so we don’t invoke the term ‘nuclear apartheid’ when the West metes out the same treatment to Iran. Isn’t the age-old caste system – widely prevalent in the Hindu society and even in the Muslim and Christian societies even though in smaller measure – the most abhorrent kind of structural violence existing in the contemporary Indian society? We know that and yet we still proudly flaunt our caste (or hide them with shame)!


There are also other castes of mind that are in operation in our societies. We still live bounded by our “dear” feudal social structures even in the most modern of our cities. We talk about the need to pump in more and more resources into our IITs and IIMs to make them more and more world-class but hardly anyone is talking about the poor Sarkari schools. Our castes of mind are stronger than we think they are!

The non-self-reflective moral outrage
When the Norwegian child protection authorities recently took away two children from their Indian parents alleging that they were not being well-looked after by their parents, the high and mightly in New Delhi got involved with the case and the Indian media and civil society seethed with anger. They cried foul and even accused the Norwegian government of racial discrimination.

I wish our politicians, officials, media, page-three celebrities and civil societies give our children at least a fraction of the focus they gave to the two “Indian” children in Norway. If only we spent some more resources to take care of our children begging in the streets, if only we gave proper education and shelter to our child labourers, if only we showed more outrage when we see the millions of uncared for children in our midst!


What is even sadder is that we even go to the extent of justifying child labour saying, “if these children work they can at least find something to eat and get a place to sleep”. How many of us have young children working in our own homes? I think it is a ridiculous and hypocritical argument to say that by letting children work we are doing them a favour. The fact is that we must force our governments to spend more resources on taking care of these children rather than sending diplomats to Oslo to take care of the ‘Indian’ children there or buying more and more weapons every year.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, April 15, 2012 URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2012/Apr/15/non-violent-state-and-not-so-non-violent-society-6.asp )