This Silence Is A Scream

Ever since the collapse of the Agra summit, India and Pakistan have been engaged in a complex dance of courtship with each other. Every three or four months, Pakistani leaders—sometimes the foreign minister, sometimes Pervez Musharraf—have proposed that talks be resumed. India has responded with the stock answer—there was no point in doing so if Pakistan did not first end cross-border terrorism. The recent overture has come from the newly-elected PM of Pakistan, Zafarullah Jamali. In his 90-minute address to the nation, his first ever, Jamali once again offered a resumption of talks over Kashmir and other outstanding issues. The brevity of his reference suggests that he might have done so more by rote than out of conviction.

New Delhi would still do well not to shut the door without exploring what the new PM may have in mind. The reason for doing so resides in the profound changes that have taken place during the past six months in Kashmir, in the rest of India, in Pakistan, and in the West Asia region.

Kashmiris saw the first free and fair elections in almost 20 years last October. They saw an Indian PM give them his word that the election would be free, and keep it. The government that came to power is a genuinely Kashmiri government, but it is not a National Conference regime.

It is hardly surprising that despite the fact that Mufti Sayeed has faced enormous difficulties in persuading New Delhi to let him keep his pre-election promise to apply a healing touch to the people of the state, he has been able to retain their confidence in him. As a result, Kashmir is more calm than it has been in more than a decade. Militant violence is at an all-time low. There is also complete absence of the fidayeen (suicide) attacks.

With the Himachal elections behind it, the bjp is no longer under pressure to take a hard line against Pakistan or against applying a healing touch to the Kashmiris. This is all the more so because the drubbing it got at the hands of the Congress in that state showed how limited is the appeal of Muslim-bashing and anti-Pakistan tub-thumping to the average Hindu voter.

The fact that the screening committee that is to decide which jailed Kashmiris to release held one of its first meetings on March 5, and that Mufti Sayeed has been able to announce the disbanding of the controversy-tainted Special Operations Group of the Kashmir police barely a week later, is a welcome portent of change in New Delhi's attitude.

Pakistan too has its first elected government since that of Nawaz Sharif, one that despite its composition has shown no hawkishness towards India. But by far the most important change is the impact on Pakistani thinking of the US' determination to impose a 'regime change' on Iraq by going to war against it.

Pakistan has been quick to grasp the implications of the shift in the US military strategy—from deterrence to pre-emption. It has realised that the US will no longer tolerate the existence of what it calls 'rogue states' because of the ever-present danger that one of these will hand over the technology for the production of weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda or a successor group of terrorists.

Islamabad is thus being pulled brutally in two directions. As a nuclear power that has sedulously fostered terrorism, sheltered Al Qaeda, and propped up the Taliban, it is acutely aware that it could easily be designated a rogue state in the future. Its safety from a future American attack depends upon hewing as closely as possible to the US line in foreign policy, and giving it all the support it can provide in its war against terrorism.

Islamabad knows, however, that if it supports the invasion of Iraq, it will alienate the Pakistani people, give an enormous boost to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy in Pakistan and become a target of the terror that it has itself fostered.The fact that it's a part of the Security Council and is being pressed by the US to support a second resolution authorising war on Iraq has denied it the luxury of ambivalence.

Islamabad has sought to resolve its dilemma by offering up a number of Al Qaeda leaders and rank and file to the US, thus reminding Washington of its indispensability in the fight against terrorism, and announcing well in advance of the introduction of a second resolution in the Security Council that it will abstain from voting upon it. But it knows that this compromise will not mollify either the US or the Pakistani people. The coming months will therefore see its alienation from the religious right-wing of the Pakistani society, and an even greater pressure upon it from the US to display and keep displaying its 'moderate' credentials by cracking down upon the jehadi organisations in the country.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that these are not the conditions in which Pakistan can foster a renewed burst of state-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir after the snow melts. On the contrary, it has everything to gain from discouraging cross-border incursions.

A dialogue with India may not lead to an immediate resolution of outstanding issues. But it will give an added incentive to Islamabad to keep the jehadis on a tight leash.