Mistrust still thwarts efforts to make peace between India and Pakistan

[doppelganger]

To start with; this (movement to Seniors section) will be the rational thing to do.

Now the core issue of the Op-Ed.... The very basic Premise that it puts forth is essentially true, and there seems to be just no way to work around the mistrust existing. Actually .... it is in the interests of some stakeholders to perpetually stoke up the mistrust. Any (and every) way can be used to trigger (and re-trigger) the mistrust. The Gurdaspur incident is an illustration of that.

The political leadership who are doing the talking are not going to get anywhere by talking. Simply because ..... on one side the leadership does not even have the ability to call the shots. Its a lot like two Wadehras or Zamindaars attempting to talk about a property dispute between them; when in fact the Chowkidaar of one of the Wadehras is the guy who takes all the decisions on the property, and not the Maalik!

But sir, methinks you have who is the chowkidar and who the maalik mixed up here.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

But sir, methinks you have who is the chowkidar and who the maalik mixed up here.

I am speaking about the de jure designations; not the de facto ones.....

 

[doppelganger]

I am speaking about the de jure designations; not the de facto ones.....

And that is the tragedy.

We as a democratic sovereign state will never talk to de facto, and keep wasting time with mango and sitaphal de jure.

Not to mention of course that we've spoken to de facto 5 times in the past.

They've just not been listening.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

And that is the tragedy.

We as a democratic sovereign state will never talk to de facto, and keep wasting time with mango and sitaphal de jure.

I don't see too much of a point to talking to the de facto guy beyond a point.
Which Chowkidaar looks forward to becoming unemployed..... even more so when he is in a position to brandish his Bandook more easily at his Maalik than at an outsider ??

And has a greater stake in keeping the disputes between the Maaliks simmering on forever....

 

[FaujHistorian]

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

It is not the mistrust, but the caste system that thwarts peace in the region.


Modern day Bharatis expect Pakistanis to be lower caste (if not down right untouchable)

While Pakistanis think we are upper caste.

Hence the failure to establish a communication.

 

[VCheng]

It is not the mistrust, but the caste system that thwarts peace in the region.


Modern day Bharatis expect Pakistanis to be lower caste (if not down right untouchable)

While Pakistanis think we are upper caste.

Hence the failure to establish a communication.

Failure to establish effective communication is only one of the things to be rectified if there is to be progress. It will also need confidence building measures and economic ties to proceed further.

 

[FaujHistorian]

Failure to establish effective communication is only one of the things to be rectified if there is to be progress. t will also need confidence building measures and economic ties to proceed further.

Well said.

Sadly it won't be possible.

Remember, it was typical before 1947, that given one Muslim owned shop and one Hindu shop in the same market, how shoppers behaved?

1. Muslim shoppers bought stuff from both Hindu and Muslim shop owners.
2. Hindu shoppers would never buy stuff from Muslim shopkeeper.

Why? Muslims are and were considered "impure" aka lower caste.

This will remain the situation with the Pak-Bharat economic ties too.

For Pakistan such economic exchange will be net loss (aka trade deficit) and no real strategic gain.

Such situation will get worse when Modi run party is in power
and tiny bit better when a more sane person is running the gov there.


The only reason is that Bharati Hindu nationalists cannot fathom the thought that 200 million Muslims in Pakistan cannot and should not be treated as lower caste.

Hope you understand.

 

[VCheng]

Well said.

Sadly it won't be possible.

Not for the foreseeable future, yes, it won't be possible, but in the longer term, there is no other way out for both sides.

 

[dray]

It is not the mistrust, but the caste system that thwarts peace in the region.


Modern day Bharatis expect Pakistanis to be lower caste (if not down right untouchable)

While Pakistanis think we are upper caste.

Hence the failure to establish a communication.

Well said.

Sadly it won't be possible.

Remember, it was typical before 1947, that given one Muslim owned shop and one Hindu shop in the same market, how shoppers behaved?

1. Muslim shopkeepers bought stuff from both Hindu and Muslim shop owners.
2. Hindu shopkeepers would never buy stuff from Muslim shopkeeper.

Why? Muslims are and were considered "impure" aka lower caste.

This will remain the situation with the Pak-Bharat economic ties too.

For Pakistan such economic exchange will be net loss (aka trade deficit) and no really strategic gain.

Such situation will get worse when Modi run party is in powr
and tiny bit better when a more sane person is running the gov there.


The only reason is that Bharati Hindu nationalists cannot fathom the thought that 200 million Muslims in Pakistan cannot and should not be treated as lower caste.

Hope you understand.

I don't participate in 'peace talk' threads anymore because all these peace processes will remain futile 'rituals' for a foreseeable future, but just wanted to say that the argument you are putting up here is funny, in a stupid way, and needless to say, baseless.

 

[FaujHistorian]

I don't participate in 'peace talk' threads anymore because all these peace processes will remain futile 'rituals' for a foreseeable future, but just wanted to say that the argument you are putting up here is funny, in a stupid way, and needless to say, baseless.

Obviously you didn't like the argument and went about using trashy words

Fine by me.

 

[nForce]

Obviously you didn't like the argument and went about using trashy words

Fine by me.

Fauji Sahib.. I don't think you will find many takers for your shop-owner argument either.
If you want to portray the hindu-Muslim divide, then probably we will need better examples.

 

[nForce]

On topic..
We have had enough issues between us to create mistrust and animosity between us.
To look at things holistically, the two nations were created out of mistrust, at least that's what the general public have been led to believe.
We took it a notch higher then.
India has been attacked multiple times by Pakistan on Kashmir. The use if terrorism as a state policy has not done any good either.
India also has it's own share-dividing Pakistan into half. Now, probably Pakistan's internal politics has got more to do with that than Indian military, but Pakistanis in general will always blame India more than than any other.
Then we have water sharing issues, border firings, plane hijackings etc. etc.

There has been multiple attempts to ensure peace, however, there is a lack of sincerity in both sides.

The problem that India faces is there are more than one centers of power in Pakistan, in fact I will say three - the civilian govt., which claims to be central authority, the army, which sees itself as the central authority and the cradle of Pakistan, and the non-state actors, who probably have support from all kinds of elements from within Pakistan.

Now with whom will India talk to, and given how the situations develop, why or how ? When Vajpayee was riding a bus to Lahore, NLI-men were already infiltrating and taking positions over peaks overlooking Srinagar-Leh highway. When India was receiving Pakistani agriculture minister, Papa-Bhutto was already planning for war with India. When the otherwise mute Manmohan tried to talk peace and exercise CBMs, we had Mumbai attacks.

Two things from my side :
1. There's a question that we need to ask here ? Is there anything that is sabotaging the peace-process ? Who is set to gain from sabotaging peace process ? That has to be identified and dealt with first before there can be any further talks.
Secondly, we need to
2. India needs a singular, strong and central authority in Pakistan, to which it can talk. That authority needs to deliver, otherwise it creates even more mistrust.

 

[MilSpec]

can some one here give some credible examples of mistrust. I am still failing to see the mistrust. imo we have found each other to be very trustworthy and predictable adversaries.

 

[nForce]

can some one here give some credible examples of mistrust. I am still failing to see the mistrust. imo we have found each other to be very trustworthy and predictable adversaries.

Predictable, does not mean trust-worthy. Examples, we all know, right ?

 

[MilSpec]

Predictable, does not mean trust-worthy. Examples, we all know, right ?

predictable doesn't mean trustworthy... I mean't predictable and trustworthy - both.
We absolutely trust the notion that Pakistani military will not give up it's asymmetric designs on India. That is a trusted narrative, actions to establish this narrative is the predictable part, sometime there are some un-predictable jolts like kargil. But more or less we can trust that we will always face a hostile force on our western border.