Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir must be complimented for their positive depiction of the Thimphu talks and sporting a big smile before the press, despite being aware of the implausibility of progress at this juncture, largely due to internal distractions on both sides.
These days the term ‘trust-deficit’ has become a convenient jargon for the diplomats, leaders and scholars to disguise the unconducive nature of political circumstances prevailing on both sides, for which there are no immediate and easy answers.
Nonetheless, one is then tempted to ask when was not “trust deficit” a factor in Indo-Pak bilateral talks. Frankly, it has loomed since 1947, but whenever there has been a strong political will (read ripeness of issues) prevailing in New Delhi and Islamabad negotiators have managed to work around complex issues and resolved disputes overcoming the “trust deficit”.
As far as the Thimpu talks go, watchers of Indo-Pakistan affairs would be little bemused by the positive tenor of template post-talk press release: “The Foreign Secretaries had a useful and frank discussion on the steps required. They agreed on the need for a constructive dialogue to take forward the dialogue process”.
Stating the obvious, such naggingly boring diplomatic parlance puts analysts and scholars to sleep, seriously. Of course, the talks must be useful and frank and further constructive dialogue would be required to take the process forward, but importantly, such repetitive semantics of the official press release indicate the boring and predictable nature of Indo-Pak talks, which some may fail to notice.
As a matter of fact, the Indo-Pak relations have always been of unpredictable nature in which anything ranging from a small skirmish to a total war was possible, but the predictable aspect of the relations has been confined to bilateral talks wherein the lack of progress has come to be regarded as a normal and acceptable outcome. Indo-Pak dyad still oscillates between the unpredictable-predictable syndromes and would not change for some time to come.
But the predictable nature of talks should not diminish the complexity of the affairs and the difficulty that diplomats face in resolving the pending disputes. To be fair to them it can be argued that all problems are political first and anything else later, and unless the politics of bilateral engagement has been sorted out by the respective leadership, diplomats would continue to meet as a part of the established mechanism to talk and go their ways after issuing template post-talks press releases.
Let us lend a few moments at this point to determine the key drivers of deadlocks in the peace process and it should not come as a surprise to know that the cause lay far from the core of the disputes.
The political situation in both capitals exudes little confidence among diplomats and policy makers alike. Pakistan is getting deeper and deeper into a political quagmire and the more it struggles to bail out, the more it gets enmeshed in it. The situation on the Afghan front continues to rest on a knife’s edge and the operations in the tribal areas are reaching nowhere. Add to the mix the seamless extremist attacks around the country, bloody sectarian disturbances in Sindh, turbulent political bickering in Punjab and Balochistan and virulent Islamist groups which have brought a popularly elected government on its knees over the blasphemy laws through sheer intimidation and elimination of its critics with brazen impunity.
President Asif Ali Zardari and the ruling PPP are running out of options to maintain order and stabilise a country heading towards an uncertain future. Differences with the US, its prime economic and security guarantor, have continued to plummet over drone attacks.
And the Raymond Davis controversy could not have come at a more sensitive time for Pakistan. The US has suspended bilateral contacts with Pakistan until Davis is freed on grounds of diplomatic immunity. The PPP regime is caught between a rock and a hard place and releasing Davis, which it may have to sooner or later, will enflame anti-Americanism, further compounding Zardari and Gilani’s difficulties.
In addition, with a depleted coffer, rising inflation, fuel and food prices, and ever growing expenses from natural disasters and ongoing operations against militants, the government has little time to devote to the peace process. Peace with India at this time is a luxury and can be achieved once the government and country survives the present storm in its backyard in the first place.
On the other hand, situation in India is less grim but by no mean any less complicated and to a great extent looms large over the working of the government and its functionaries. Manmohan Singh government is not as self-assured as it was during the UPA-I period and the present Congress-led coalition is being hard-pressed from all quarters, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
If the Kashmir crisis has challenged the political imagination of the apex leadership and policy innovation of the bureaucracy, the mushrooming financial scams pertaining to the Commonwealth Games, Adrash society and 2G Spectrum, to list a few, have undermined the moral integrity of the government.
Manmohan Singh is regarded as an honest prime minister of a highly corrupt government and the vociferous attacks led by the Bharatiya Janata Party have clearly put the government into a defensive and fire-fighting mode. Every week a new scam surfaces making the image revivification exercise all the more daunting for the Manmohan Singh government.
It would not be unfair, therefore, that be it Yusuf Reza Gilani government or Manmohan Singh, both are looking inwards to wither the raging political storm and ensure political stability for their governments. They have little time to worry about the peace process and the pending disputes. As a result any diplomatic exercise under the rubric of the peace process is going to prove futile because tough decisions will be taken only when the governments are sure of their own political longevity.
Consequentially, the diplomats are faced with the tough task of coming to the table and putting a big smile while shaking hands, and are very much hostage to the prevailing political circumstances on which they have little or no control.
Therefore, the best they hope for is to see the talks through without any personal diplomatic damage, make statements such as: “allow the process to mature”, “broad meeting of minds”, “no-time line”, “speedy trials of Mumbai attacks” and “conviction of Samjhauta express blast accused”, and “lack of courage to unearth the culpability of Hindu extremists”.
These are the products of the testing political circumstances and have become a routine tactic to pressurise the other side in a defensive stance and as long as the domestic political situation remains unconducive, progress will be unlikely.
There is undoubtedly willingness on both sides to talk but that is not synonymous with the willingness to settle which requires strong political will, stable government, and self-assured leadership, among other factors.
Under the prevailing political circumstances in India and Pakistan there are slender chances of any meaningful progress being made in talks!
On the Pakistani front, it will take much longer for the situation to stabilise than on the Indian front and unfortunately, unless both sides enjoy considerable political tranquillity and stability, peace process will struggle to move forward.
But this should not lead to inertia on either side, because what is essential to bear in mind is that while bilateral relations struggle to improve, they must not at least be allowed to deteriorate further and, therefore, regular talks, as the one held in Thimpu are good opportunities to have a “frank” and “useful” stock-taking of the challenges at hand.
Expecting anything more than this at this point would be naïve.
– Dr. Ashutosh Misra
(The writer is a Research Fellow and Associate Investigator at the Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University, Australia. He is the author of ‘India-Pakistan: Coming to Terms’ Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
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