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The present logjam is set continue between Pakistan and India, this article argues:
Banyan
Boats against the current
Mistrust still thwarts efforts to make peace between India and Pakistan
From the print edition
IN THE regional politics of South Asia, thaws are often the briefest of interludes between frost and steam. But even by local standards, the most recent rapprochement between India and Pakistan has proved remarkably short-lived. On July 11th, on the margins of a regional summit in Ufa in Russia, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and Nawaz Sharif, his Pakistani counterpart, signed a joint statement that seemed a breakthrough of sorts. Each country would free the other’s fishermen from its jails. Their national security advisers were to meet. And Mr Modi was to travel to Pakistan next year to attend a South Asian summit—which would also be the first time an Indian leader had visited since 2004. Yet by the time the two men had returned home, the mood had already soured. And with this week’s attack by terrorists on an Indian police station in Gurdaspur in the state of Punjab near the Pakistani border—in whose planning and execution Indian officials at once claimed to find the spoor of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency—it was back to the bad old days.
Eleven people died in the attack and siege that ended it, including all three gunmen. Pakistan has denied involvement and condemned the violence. But the circumstances have led many Indians to assume its guilt. The style of terrorism was one favoured by Pakistani-backed jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in Indian-administered Kashmir. India also accuses Pakistan of trying to stir up unrest in Indian Punjab, which in the 1970s and 1980s endured a bloody Sikh insurgency. And the timing of this latest attack was telling: whenever relations between Pakistan and India seem on the mend, an act of Pakistani-sponsored terrorism opens the wounds again. They have still not healed from the onslaught on Mumbai in 2008 in which 164 people were killed. Pakistan has failed to bring the alleged mastermind to trial.
The lessons of this are sobering for both prime ministers. Mr Sharif has received yet another reminder that the army, not he himself, sets his government’s policy on issues of national security. Mr Modi, in turn, is reminded of the obstacles in the way of two cherished policies. The first is to improve relations with neighbours so that India can develop its economy in a peaceful, co-operative region. The other, for a famous scourge of alleged terrorists when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, is to stand up for India’s interests and respond forcefully to provocations. Manmohan Singh, Mr Modi’s gentlemanly predecessor as prime minister, used to be lambasted by Mr Modi’s cheerleaders in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for what it portrayed as his humiliating pushover of a foreign policy. Now Mr Modi faces the same difficulties Mr Singh did in making peace, and the same dilemmas in formulating a robust response.
Even before the attack in Punjab, the breakthrough at Ufa had seemed an aberration. India reported firing by the Pakistani army across the “line of control” which divides Kashmir in the absence of a settled border. Pakistan also said it had shot down what it claimed was an Indian unmanned spy-plane. And it even claimed to have evidence of Indian involvement in one of the most horrific of the many terrorist attacks Pakistan has suffered, by the Pakistani Taliban last December on a school in Peshawar, that killed 145 people, 132 of them children.
So it is odd that the two prime ministers tried at all. Last year Mr Modi made a bold gesture by inviting Mr Sharif to his inauguration. But a row over Pakistan’s meddling in Indian Kashmir soon scuppered that initiative. Since then, Mr Modi has strutted India’s stuff on the world stage, apparently accepting that progress with Pakistan was unlikely and attempting to present the incessant wrangling as just a minor local difficulty.
For his part, Mr Sharif, who has twice in the past served as prime minister with bitter personal experience of the limits of civilian power, must have known that the joint statement at Ufa would have his generals fuming. It read like the draft India would have tabled as its ambitious first gambit in a prolonged negotiation, mentioning India’s prime concerns such as the Mumbai case and terrorism, but ignoring Pakistan’s: Kashmir, over which the two countries have three times gone to war.
Perhaps, some Indians speculate, both men knew their gestures were empty, and were playing to an international gallery. In India’s case that would have been to America, to prove that the tension with its neighbour was not of its making; and in Pakistan’s case to China, which wants India and Pakistan to co-operate to advance peace in Afghanistan and which, having just promised $46 billion in investment in Pakistan, has clout there.
International opinion, combined with a lack of hard evidence about the perpetrators, may also help explain why, even under the fire-breathing Hindu-nationalist Mr Modi, India’s reaction to this week’s atrocity has been relatively restrained. It has not yet even cancelled the proposed national-security-adviser talks.
The non-nuclear option
Another reason is the difficulty in finding what India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh, threatened this week: “a befitting reply”. Economic pressure is constrained by the two neighbours’ lack of extensive trade and investment links. Diplomatic persuasion seems doomed by the Pakistani army’s self-interest in maintaining tension. Covertly sponsoring tit-for-tat terrorism in Pakistan would be futile as well as wrong. And any form of overt military response raises the risk of uncontrollable escalation. A recent paper by Walter Ladwig of King’s College in London argues that Pakistan’s army is strong enough in conventional terms to deter Indian policymakers from thinking that “they can either achieve strategic surprise against Pakistan or carry out highly effective air strikes with little escalatory risk.” That Pakistan, like India, is a nuclear power adds further nightmarish dimensions to any military calculation. Mr Modi has promised a new approach to the old enemy but may find that his options are limited.
From the print edition: Asia
Banyan
Boats against the current
Mistrust still thwarts efforts to make peace between India and Pakistan
From the print edition
IN THE regional politics of South Asia, thaws are often the briefest of interludes between frost and steam. But even by local standards, the most recent rapprochement between India and Pakistan has proved remarkably short-lived. On July 11th, on the margins of a regional summit in Ufa in Russia, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and Nawaz Sharif, his Pakistani counterpart, signed a joint statement that seemed a breakthrough of sorts. Each country would free the other’s fishermen from its jails. Their national security advisers were to meet. And Mr Modi was to travel to Pakistan next year to attend a South Asian summit—which would also be the first time an Indian leader had visited since 2004. Yet by the time the two men had returned home, the mood had already soured. And with this week’s attack by terrorists on an Indian police station in Gurdaspur in the state of Punjab near the Pakistani border—in whose planning and execution Indian officials at once claimed to find the spoor of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency—it was back to the bad old days.
Eleven people died in the attack and siege that ended it, including all three gunmen. Pakistan has denied involvement and condemned the violence. But the circumstances have led many Indians to assume its guilt. The style of terrorism was one favoured by Pakistani-backed jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in Indian-administered Kashmir. India also accuses Pakistan of trying to stir up unrest in Indian Punjab, which in the 1970s and 1980s endured a bloody Sikh insurgency. And the timing of this latest attack was telling: whenever relations between Pakistan and India seem on the mend, an act of Pakistani-sponsored terrorism opens the wounds again. They have still not healed from the onslaught on Mumbai in 2008 in which 164 people were killed. Pakistan has failed to bring the alleged mastermind to trial.
The lessons of this are sobering for both prime ministers. Mr Sharif has received yet another reminder that the army, not he himself, sets his government’s policy on issues of national security. Mr Modi, in turn, is reminded of the obstacles in the way of two cherished policies. The first is to improve relations with neighbours so that India can develop its economy in a peaceful, co-operative region. The other, for a famous scourge of alleged terrorists when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, is to stand up for India’s interests and respond forcefully to provocations. Manmohan Singh, Mr Modi’s gentlemanly predecessor as prime minister, used to be lambasted by Mr Modi’s cheerleaders in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for what it portrayed as his humiliating pushover of a foreign policy. Now Mr Modi faces the same difficulties Mr Singh did in making peace, and the same dilemmas in formulating a robust response.
Even before the attack in Punjab, the breakthrough at Ufa had seemed an aberration. India reported firing by the Pakistani army across the “line of control” which divides Kashmir in the absence of a settled border. Pakistan also said it had shot down what it claimed was an Indian unmanned spy-plane. And it even claimed to have evidence of Indian involvement in one of the most horrific of the many terrorist attacks Pakistan has suffered, by the Pakistani Taliban last December on a school in Peshawar, that killed 145 people, 132 of them children.
So it is odd that the two prime ministers tried at all. Last year Mr Modi made a bold gesture by inviting Mr Sharif to his inauguration. But a row over Pakistan’s meddling in Indian Kashmir soon scuppered that initiative. Since then, Mr Modi has strutted India’s stuff on the world stage, apparently accepting that progress with Pakistan was unlikely and attempting to present the incessant wrangling as just a minor local difficulty.
For his part, Mr Sharif, who has twice in the past served as prime minister with bitter personal experience of the limits of civilian power, must have known that the joint statement at Ufa would have his generals fuming. It read like the draft India would have tabled as its ambitious first gambit in a prolonged negotiation, mentioning India’s prime concerns such as the Mumbai case and terrorism, but ignoring Pakistan’s: Kashmir, over which the two countries have three times gone to war.
Perhaps, some Indians speculate, both men knew their gestures were empty, and were playing to an international gallery. In India’s case that would have been to America, to prove that the tension with its neighbour was not of its making; and in Pakistan’s case to China, which wants India and Pakistan to co-operate to advance peace in Afghanistan and which, having just promised $46 billion in investment in Pakistan, has clout there.
International opinion, combined with a lack of hard evidence about the perpetrators, may also help explain why, even under the fire-breathing Hindu-nationalist Mr Modi, India’s reaction to this week’s atrocity has been relatively restrained. It has not yet even cancelled the proposed national-security-adviser talks.
The non-nuclear option
Another reason is the difficulty in finding what India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh, threatened this week: “a befitting reply”. Economic pressure is constrained by the two neighbours’ lack of extensive trade and investment links. Diplomatic persuasion seems doomed by the Pakistani army’s self-interest in maintaining tension. Covertly sponsoring tit-for-tat terrorism in Pakistan would be futile as well as wrong. And any form of overt military response raises the risk of uncontrollable escalation. A recent paper by Walter Ladwig of King’s College in London argues that Pakistan’s army is strong enough in conventional terms to deter Indian policymakers from thinking that “they can either achieve strategic surprise against Pakistan or carry out highly effective air strikes with little escalatory risk.” That Pakistan, like India, is a nuclear power adds further nightmarish dimensions to any military calculation. Mr Modi has promised a new approach to the old enemy but may find that his options are limited.
From the print edition: Asia
