NSA Level Talks: Culmination before Commencement of a Discursive Dialogue

Ever since Nawaz Sharif became Prime Minister of Pakistan for the third time in 2013, his statements professing his sincere desire for normalising relations with India have been quite at variance with his actions on ground. The result has been that whatever progress was made under his two predecessors – Gen Pervez Musharraf and Asif Zardari – on a host of issues ranging from terrorism to trade, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir (a phrase that Pakistanis so adamantly insist on adding on to anything to do with India) have regressed significantly. Despite his dubious track record of double-speak on India, he very graciously accepted the invitation extended to him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his swearing-in ceremony in May last. But since that time, every new initiative taken by India to re-engage Pakistan has been stymied by Nawaz Sharif’s domestic political compulsions, not the least of which is his constant fear of being toppled by the all-powerful Pakistan military. With yet another opportunity lost when Pakistan cancelled the meeting on terrorism between the National Security Advisors of both PMs, India needs to seriously ask whether any purpose will be served in engaging a disempowered, diffident, and dithering civilian dispensation in Pakistan, which is unwilling or unable to honour its own commitments.

At the time when Nawaz Sharif was invited for the swearing-in ceremony, it was conveyed to him to avoid any meeting with the Kashmiri separatist leadership in New Delhi. To his credit, Nawaz Sharif accepted this ‘advice’. The clear signal that the Modi government has sent out was that the wrong precedence, or if you will tradition, of turning a blind eye while holding the nose at the meeting between Indian separatists and an irredentist force encouraging them, was no longer acceptable. Obviously, the Pakistanis didn’t understand the signal and the Pakistan High Commissioner ‘invited’ the Hurriyet leaders for ‘consultation’ on the eve of the Foreign Secretaries meeting in August last. The new red line laid down by the Modi government should have become crystal clear to the Pakistanis after the FS meeting was cancelled. But the Pakistanis have persisted in the Hurriyet tack even though it violates basic diplomatic etiquette of respecting the do’s and dont’s set by the host state. Not surprisingly, the Pakistanis used the Hurriyet as a trump card to cancel the meeting between the two NSAs on the issue of terrorism.

The roadmap for India-Pakistan engagement which was decided by the PMs of both countries in Ufa, on the side-lines of the SCO summit, had caused a lot of heart-burn inside Pakistan. Within days of the Ufa agreement, it had become clear that the Pakistani establishment was looking for ways to jettison the Ufa roadmap, but without earning the opprobrium for doing this. The Pakistanis created conditions which they thought would put so much pressure on the Indian government that they would be forced to cancel the talks. Once this happened, Pakistan would be freed from the commitments and roadmap it agreed in Ufa and a new roadmap would be negotiated. To achieve this, the Pakistanis first resorted to constant cease-fire violation along the Line of Control and International Border in Jammu and Kashmir. The mood in India turned dark and noises were heard asking the government to cancel the talks. But the Modi government bucked the pressure and stayed the course of talks. The Pakistanis then resorted to using terrorist attacks to sabotage the talks. Gurdaspur and Udhampur attacks were the result. The pressure of public opinion and opposition on the Modi government went up many notches and there were loud demands to cancel the talks. But once again the Modi government withstood this pressure and didn’t cancel the talks.

The reason was simple: the talks were on the most burning issue between the two countries – terrorism – and having pinned Pakistan down on this issue, it didn’t make sense for India to let them off the hook. The way India saw it, terrorism was the biggest stumbling block in bilateral relations and unless there was some progress on this issue to India’s satisfaction, talks on all ‘other outstanding issues’ would remain a non-starter. India was open to discussing all other issues, but the roadmap, structure and framework of all other tracks of talks was going to be decided in the course of time. The mandate handed down by the two PMs was limited to talks on terrorism (between the NSAs) and border management (between the Rangers and BSF and the two DGMOs). But the furore in Pakistan forced Pakistan to muddy the waters, first through ceasefire violations and then through export of terrorism. When both these tacks failed, Pakistan played the Hurriyet card, knowing well that this was a red line the breach of which the Modi government would not allow. Finally, making this an issue, Pakistan called off the talks.

Many in India, sympathetic to the Pakistani position, have pleaded the political compulsions of Nawaz Sharif to excoriate the red line drawn by the Modi government. This red line has been called unsustainable. It has been projected as a small issue. And it has been used to doubt the seriousness of the government’s initiative to engage Pakistan. It has even been pointed out that the Modi government has needlessly given importance to a moribund outfit like the Hurriyet and given it unnecessary publicity. Clearly, the position taken by the critics of this red line doesn’t stand the test of logic or reason.

For one, it is the host government’s prerogative as to who a visiting delegation can or cannot meet. Meetings with separatists in the past isn’t something carved in stone that cannot be changed. It is well within the right of the government to advice a visiting delegation to not do something that violates the sensibilities of the host government. If there was a policy in the past to allow such meetings, that policy has changed and this must be respected by the visitors. It isn’t their sovereign right to come to India and do what they want. For another, if Nawaz Sharif has political compulsions and if Kashmir is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, then some thought must be spared for the political compulsions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi also as well as for the sensitivities of the people of India to a meeting between separatists and their Pakistani sponsors. Now it is entirely possible that these meetings may not violate the sensibilities of the Track-II circuit, but they do violate the sensibilities of a vast majority of Indian public, in particular the supporters of the Modi government. For a third, the sustainability or otherwise of a red line isn’t going to be decided by the expediencies that rule the seminar circuit but by the resolve of the government and the mood of the public. For a fourth, if allowing a meeting with the Hurriyet was such a trivial matter, then surely Pakistan could have just as well avoided meeting them. After all, what did Pakistan hope to achieve from the meeting except spoil the atmosphere and take vicarious pleasure by poking India in the eye? In other words, if it was such a small issue, Pakistan should not have insisted on it. Fifth, if Hurriyet is a moribund organisation, which it is, then publicity alone won’t either revive it or raise its importance. Obituaries never resurrect the dead and publicity is oxygen for living, not dead, organisations. Finally, if the Modi government wasn’t serious about engaging Pakistan, it wouldn’t have tried to pick up the pieces after the FS level talks were cancelled in August last. The only thing that the Modi government wanted, and this was unexceptionable, was that Pakistan stop the export of terrorism and respect India’s sensitivities, precisely what Pakistan has refused to do.

While the Pakistani discomfiture over the salience Ufa declaration gave to the issue of terrorism is understandable, somehow the Pakistanis came to the strange conclusion that the talks in New Delhi were the culmination instead of commencement of the process of engagement. What was even more bizarre was their accusing India of imposing pre-conditions before talks. In reality, it wasn’t India but Pakistan that was imposing pre-conditions. While India was insisting that the talks would take place on the issue that the two PMs had decided, the Pakistanis wanted to shift the goalposts by including other issues. Second, Pakistani insistence on meeting the Hurriyet was another pre-condition they imposed, which was clearly unacceptable as well as unpalatable for the government of India. The Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj very ably spelled out India’s position in her press conference in which she also gave left space for the Pakistanis which they could have used if they were serious about resuming engagement. The problem, however, seems to be that the Pakistanis neither stick to the written word, nor understand the spoken word and are totally oblivious to the signals that are sent, thus making any engagement almost a mission impossible.

In her press conference, Mrs Swaraj clearly said that the talks between the NSAs would be only on terrorism but in the context of terrorism it was natural that other issues would also be discussed. After all, if India accuses Pakistan of exporting terrorism in Kashmir, the issue of Kashmir would have come up for discussion, albeit in the context of terrorism. The Pakistani NSA could have used that opportunity to plug his line of ‘root causes’ – incidentally, when Pakistanis talk of ‘root causes of terror’ in Kashmir, perhaps they could have also used the opportunity to educate India on what the ‘root causes of terrorism’ are in Xinjiang and Kurd areas of Turkey! Be that as it may, Mrs Swaraj also stated that once the terrorism track showed some results, other outstanding issues would also come on the table subsequently. But it was apparent that the Pakistanis were not interested in a serious dialogue but in some political and diplomatic grand-standing to satisfy the atavistic urges of their politics and their military establishment. Otherwise, it just didn’t make sense for the Pakistanis to take the stand that the issue of Kashmir must be on the table whenever India and Pakistan talk. This Pakistani position is preposterous and is tantamount to saying that if India and Pakistan discuss wildlife, they must also discuss Kashmir; if they discuss gender issues, Kashmir must also be discussed; if they discuss cinema and culture, Kashmir must be on the table and so on and so forth. If there is an unsustainable position it is this Pakistani obsession to not talk without Kahsmir, and not the blocking of Pakistan meeting a moribund Hurriyet.

The interesting thing about Ufa is that it is inconceivable that a politically much weakened Nawaz Sharif could have agreed to the Ufa declaration without having received a nod from the military establishment to re-start some process of engagement with India. Engaging India wasn’t given the go-ahead because there was some sort of paradigm shift in the strategic calculus of the GHQ but more likely to keep the Indians occupied in a futile dialogue, hope they lowered their guard and carry out the business of exporting terror as usual to keep India unsettled. For the GHQ in Rawalpindi, this was a win-win situation because any negative fallout of the Ufa meeting would be on Nawaz Sharif’s shoulder anyway. As things stand, the GHQ has managed to dictate the agenda to the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan to sabotage the Ufa understanding in order to reset the terms of engagement. But India would be remiss if it lets Pakistan resile from the understanding reached jointly at Ufa. Since Pakistan broke the talks, next time they must pick up the pieces. And India must insist that talks commence from the point they broke off viz. Ufa declaration. For India to now take yet another initiative – the fifth since Mr Modi came to power – would send very negative signals to Pakistan. But if Pakistan approaches India for a meeting, whether on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly or elsewhere, India should reciprocate positively, but insist that the two sides stick to the Ufa roadmap.

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Published Date: 29^th August 2015, Image Source: http://indianexpress.com [3]
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Vivekananda International Foundation)