Spy talk makes sense

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Talking out of the box, AS Dulat, a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, suggested last week that the government should invite Pakistan Army chief Qamar Jawad Bajwa for talks.

Dulat’s suggestion may not fit into the protocol regime but it makes sense as the army has a decisive role in shaping Pakistan’s relations with India even when there is a civilian government.

Dulat headed RAW during 1999-2000 when Bharatiya Janata Party leader AB Vajapayee was the Prime Minister. When he retired, Vajpayee appointed him as his Advisor on Kashmir. He participated in Track II talks with Pakistan while in service as also later.

Vajpayee had made a bold bid to find a solution to outstanding problems with Pakistan, including Kashmir, through talks with President Pervez Mushaarraf and leaders of the Hurriyat movement. After his exit, Manmohan Singh tried to carry forward the process he had initiated. At a meeting on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Summit at Havana, he and Musharraf decided to set up a joint anti-terrorism institutional mechanism. It never took off because ground conditions were not favourable.

Three years ago, in a book titled “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years”, co-authored with Aditya Sinha, a journalist, Dulat talked of missed peace opportunities. 

In an India-Pakistan Track II meeting in Berlin in 2011, he and former ISI chief Lt-Gen Asad Durrani jointly presented a paper on the need for intelligence cooperation between the two countries. In it they said, “When countries are faced with common external or internal threats, exchange of mutually beneficial information might not only be thinkable but also desirable, even prudent.” 

They also mentioned a few occasions when the two sides had exchanged information to avoid any moves by the other side based on misreading of events.

Dulat made his suggestion for talks with Pakistan’s Army chief in the presence of a distinguished New Delhi gathering which included Manmohan Singh, former Vice-President Hamid Ansari and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. No one associated with the Narendra Modi government was present.

The occasion was the release of a book, “Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace”, based on a series of recorded conversations between Dulat and Durrani in the presence of Aditya Sinha. The three had met at different locations outside India and Pakistan. 

According to the publishers, another volume with more extracts from the conversations will follow.

Durrani could not attend the book release as India did not give him a visa. After media circulated reports based on its contents, the Pakistan Army summoned him to its headquarters “to explain his position on views attributed to him in the book”.

In a panel discussion that followed the book release several speakers criticised the Modi government’s Pakistan policy.

Farooq Abdullah said India and Pakistan were still carrying the baggage of partition. Former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon saw double-standards in India holding talks with China after its border transgressions and not having talks with Pakistan after the Pathankot and Uri terror attacks.

Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, who recently quit the BJP after criticising Modi on a range of issues, said, “Muscular policies are brainless policies because muscles don’t have brains.”

Apart from making some gestures, like inviting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in and making a visit to Lahore to greet him on his birthday, Modi has not taken any meaningful step to improve bilateral relations. His muscular responses have led to escalation of violence.

According to an official press release, Pakistani cease-fire violations along the Line of Control in Kashmir rose from 152 in 2015 to 228 in 2016 and 860 in 2017. In these incidents 83 persons were killed, 41 of them civilians. This year, in January alone, there were 192 cease-fire violations, resulting in the death of 16 persons, including eight civilians. 

Each side routinely attributes all truce violations to the other and describes its own actions as fitting responses. The cycle of violations and reprisals continue partly because it suits the interests of certain sections on both sides.

Apparently spies are able to talk sense because, unlike politicians, they don’t have to fight elections. 

There is a precedent of 1955 which can help overcome the protocol issue involved in inviting Gen Bajwa for political talks. In that year India had invited Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev to visit the country along with Prime Minister Nicholai Bulganin in recognition of his place in the Soviet hierarchy. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 29, 2018

Looking beyond wars

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The European countries which fought one another off and on for close to 1,000 years have been at peace with themselves for two generations and the political and economic union they forged two decades ago is rewriting the continent’s history. The threat of a catastrophic third World War, which was widely talked about after the second one, has receded, hopefully never to return. But the possibility of war is still a topic of discussion in India and its neighbourhood.

Half a century after India and China fought a short war — the only one in their history of 5,000 years — so-called think tanks and defence analysts in the two countries periodically speculate on a possible new military confrontation as the border dispute which precipitated the 1961 conflict remains unresolved even after many rounds of discussions.

Pundits presume China’s growing assertiveness in the wake of its emergence as a global power and its perceived rivalry with India, which is on the same developmental track, are factors that may lead to fresh conflicts, if only on a limited basis. The Chinese leadership’s assertion that there is room for both the countries to develop has not made an impression on their minds attuned to conventional wisdom.

India and Pakistan fought three wars in 25 years as independent nations but there has been no resort to arms in the 40 years since then, barring a brief confrontation on the icy heights of Siachen in 1999. Last week, writing in a Pakistani daily, a former army brigadier spoke of a likely Indian attack on Pakistan, coinciding with an Israeli attack on Iran. He also envisaged India seeking US support to “de-nuke, balkanise and de-Islamise Pakistan” before its planned pullout from Afghanistan.

Reports from the US indicate that forebodings about India-Pakistan relations prevail in official and academic circles in that country. James Miller, who is seeking confirmation as Undersecretary for Defence, told a Congressional committee last week that Pakistani military and intelligence services’ support to militants targeting India “has the potential to result in military confrontation that could rapidly escalate into a nuclear exchange.”

Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, writing at the CFR website said another Mumbai-type terrorist attack could lead India and Pakistan to the brink of war and require the US president to play an important mediating role.

Frank Panter, a high-ranking Pentagon official, was quoted as saying the US might have to develop an alternative route with India’s help if Pakistan refused to reopen the Nato supply routes to Afghanistan which it had closed four months ago in protest against bombing raids on targets in its territory.

Since Afghanistan emerged as a trouble spot following the Soviet invasion of 1979 India and Pakistan have been invariably on opposite sides. India now works closely with the US to ensure that country’s post-war stability but it will be a folly to ignore the vital differences in their strategic interests in the region.

With the Kashmir dispute in the limbo and Pakistan-based terrorist groups remaining a source of worry to India, there is indeed plenty of room for wild speculation. However, those looking beyond short-term possibilities can see signs of a change for the better in India-Pakistan relations with economic factors moderating political sentiments.

Of particular significance in this regard are India’s offer to provide Pakistan 5,000 megawatts of power and to supply petrol across the border and the Pakistan government’s determination to go forward with its proposal to grant India most favoured nation status. Pakistan’s business community, which views grant of MFN status with disfavour, has welcomed the offer to provide power as a harbinger of better relations between the two countries.

In the early years of Independence, India was Pakistan’s largest trading partner, accounting for half of its exports and nearly one-third of its imports. Adverse political and economic conditions kept pushing bilateral trade down over the years.

Official and academic studies in Pakistan have shown that gains from increased trade with India will far outweigh the losses. Indian official and commercial interests have recognised that, as South Asia’s second largest market, Pakistan has to be accorded its due place in the economy of the region. However, given the ground realities, the development of healthy economic relations must necessarily be a slow process.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 3, 2012.