A Prime Minister In Wonderland

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's peace initiative on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has passed through the mirror between the real world and into that strange place Lewis Carroll called Wonderland.

In Wonderland, as literary critics have taught us, all participants must submit to a tyranny of meaninglessness. At once, they are overcome by a compulsive urge to decode the babble that passes for dialogue, and to search for sense in even the most trivial and insignificant text. Six months ago Vajpayee announced in Srinagar that "spring will return to the beautiful Valley soon, the flowers will bloom again and the nightingales will return, chirping." So far, the only chirping to be heard is that of the Kalashnikov - but heard from within Wonderland, it would seem, the ugly staccato rattle of gunfire contains within it the muted strains of birdsong.

Little is known about just what transpired in Wonderland - in this case, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) - on October 22, when the Union Government announced Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani would negotiate with the secessionist All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC). The CCS, sources say, discussed the peace initiative for a little over half an hour; no voices of dissent were raised. Union External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was charged with offering Pakistan the now-famous twelve-step peace proposals.

Advani's appointment as negotiator with the APHC, a source present at the meeting said, was presented as a fiat, and was not the outcome of discussion. Again, however, consultations on negotiations with the APHC began at least a fortnight before the CCS meeting. Former J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, for one, was consulted on his reactions to such a move shortly after his return from a vacation in London in early October. Soon afterwards, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed went public with his belief that the Prime Minister ought to negotiate directly with the APHC - an idea he had pressed home to Vajpayee over the past several months.

No one has yet offered a wholly plausible explanation of the volte face in Indian policy this unexpected revival of the peace process represents. On September 25, speaking before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Vajpayee had made perhaps the most blunt official assertion that no dialogue was possible unless Pakistan-backed terrorism ended. "When cross-border terrorism stops", the Indian Prime Minister had said, "or when we eradicate it, we can have a dialogue with Pakistan on the other issues between us." He seemed equally pessimistic on the prospects of a dialogue with the APHC, saying it wanted "a special invitation, which I cannot understand." The Union Government had already extended, he pointed out, "a general invitation to all."

Evidently, understanding dawned on the Prime Minister sometime in the two weeks after his New York visit, and the time Farooq Abdullah was consulted on possible dialogue with the APHC. Several explanations have been offered for this sudden turn-around. Some observers believe there was intense US pressure to give their Afghan war ally, General Pervez Musharraf, some legitimacy-inducing concession on J&K. This school of thought points to a dramatic reduction in fatalities in J&K in October, which fell to a record low compared to the same month in 2001 and 2002 - and, indeed, to a level not seen since March this year. This can be interpreted to be a partial fulfilment by Musharraf of India's 'no-terrorism' precondition.

Advocates of the US-pressure thesis point to several other pieces of evidence. On October 29, deposing before a House Sub-Committee on International Relations, US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca singled out Musharraf for effusive praise. "Despite sceptical public opinion and bitter criticism from a coalition of opposition parties," she said, "President Musharraf has maintained Pakistan's policy of supporting US operations, with practical results."

Pakistan, Rocca proceeded, was doing what it could on Jammu and Kashmir. "We look to Pakistan to do everything in its power to prevent extremist groups operating from its soil from crossing the Line of Control," she said. She then broke with past US protestations, notably by Richard Armitage just months ago, that Musharraf was not doing enough to end cross-border terror "The Government of Pakistan has taken many steps to curb infiltration [emphasis added], but we are asking it to redouble its efforts." Rocca proceeded to call for "dialogue and peaceful solutions to disagreements in the region," including with "militants in Kashmir." Rocca's use of the terms "militants" and not "terrorists" is instructive, particularly since several of these figure on the US Government's own list of foreign terrorist organisations.

The US pressure thesis, however, has little hard evidence to support it.

Neither, sadly, does the other leading contender - Prime Minister Vajpayee, this latter school of thought runs, is deeply concerned with his place in history - or, cynics contend, a Nobel Peace Prize - and genuinely wishes to push ahead with a negotiated settlement. His policy thrust became evident in the winter of 2000, just a year after India's military triumph in the Kargil war. Hoping to strengthen pro-dialogue elements within the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin (HM) led by dissident 'commander' Abdul Majid Dar, Vajpayee initiated the five-month Ramzan Ceasefire. The ceasefire eventually collapsed, but Planning Commission Chairman K.C. Pant was appointed as the Union Government's first official interlocutor to continue the dialogue process.

Pant formally invited the APHC to join the dialogue soon after his appointment in April, 2001. It never responded to the letter. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, then part of the APHC, demanded that it be allowed to visit Pakistan as a precondition to dialogue. Others, like Abdul Gani Lone, were more sympathetic to the Pant mission, but could not carry the organisation with them. Shabbir Shah, a secessionist leader outside the APHC umbrella, also received a letter, and responded by asking for several clarifications.

A desultory dialogue followed. N.N. Vohra replaced Pant this year, and issued a press release inviting all interested parties to dialogue. Maulana Abbas Ansari, soon after his appointment as Chairman of the APHC, dismissed the invitation out of hand, described Vohra as a "clerk" and demanded direct dialogue with the Prime Minister. Vohra is known to have met both Advani and Vajpayee in the days before the CCS meeting, at which he was also present. Sources say the hard-nosed bureaucrat made it clear that his mission had reached a dead-end, and that any further progress would require the Government to make larger concessions to the APHC centrists.

Despite Vohra's frustrations, however, the Government and APHC had in fact remained in contact. Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Brajesh Mishra, and Officer on Special Duty A.S. Dulat, are believed to have held a series of covert meetings with top APHC figures. Former Union Minister Ram Jethmalani, in turn, conducted a parallel dialogue process through his own Kashmir Committee, which functioned as a sounding-board for new ideas. When Vajpayee visited Srinagar this April, his renewed calls for dialogue added impetus to this quiet peace process.

The next month, Ansari revived the idea of visiting Pakistan, much to the ire of the Islamists around Geelani, who felt they would be kept out of such an initiative. Meanwhile, the APHC itself split down the middle, and the Prime Minister's Office came to believe it needed to make fresh concessions in order to strengthen the centrists. During a meeting of the Inter-States Council in August, Advani offered the APHC an "informal dialogue" that bypassed Vohra. If the APHC "desired to come to Delhi", Advani said, "the Centre would have no objection to keep the door open for talks informally." From here to the CCS offer was just a small step.

Despite the magical illusion of a 'dramatic breakthrough', however, there appears to be no clear plan for transforming dialogue with the APHC into a material reality. There is still no agreement over the text of a formal official invitation to the APHC, for one; the secessionists want some formulation that acknowledges their demand for an independent Kashmir, which New Delhi will be hard-pressed to provide. Neither is there consensus within the Government, too, on the demands by the mainstream APHC to visit Pakistan to hold a dialogue with secessionist and terrorist groups based there.

Among the secessionist themselves, there is similar disarray. Yasin Malik's faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) opposed a two-way dialogue with India just this August, while the breakaway parallel APHC formation, led by Islamist hardliner Geelani, seems hostile to any repast commencing on a table to which it has not been invited. Advani, for his part, seems keen to circumscribe the limits of the dialogue agenda. On October 24, he insisted that "the unity, integrity and sovereignty of the country cannot be compromised," an obvious reference to the APHC's demands that the secessionist agenda be brought to the table. Instead, he suggested a federal decentralisation of powers, as part of an all-India process. On May 8, Vajpayee had suggested the prospect of an "alternate arrangement" on Jammu and Kashmir, a term that some read to imply a measure of dilution in India's current structure of sovereignty.

As New Delhi steps ahead, then, it would do well to search carefully for hidden mines. First, it is not negotiating with the principals in the conflict. The APHC centrists have little to give New Delhi in return for a deal - the keepers of the jihad in J&K, after all, all reside in Pakistan. The assassination of a senior APHC centrist; a major terrorist attack; even an intemperate speech could well sweep aside any gains of Delhi's recent initiatives. The collapse of the peace process, with general elections on the horizon, will strengthen those arguing for a limited military response to any major terrorist aggression. Each step towards peace, then, could actually end up bringing India and Pakistan closer to war: we are, after all, inhabitants of Wonderland.