The Hindu : Rocky road to peace

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 24, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Rocky road to peace

THE ROAD TO India-Pakistan peace is as full of hidden mines and booby-traps as any stretch of the Line of Control. Aside from killing eight Army personnel, including a brigadier, and injuring two three-star generals, a two-star general, a brigadier and eight others, Tuesday's murderous terrorist attack on what used to be regarded as a `safe' military camp in Tanda near the border town of Akhnoor in the Jammu district of Jammu & Kashmir constitutes a major provocation. Political India has shown considerable maturity in making it clear, at the level of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Defence Minister, that it will not allow the détente process to be held hostage by terrorists. But the Government now needs to engage with the difficult question of just how to keep the peace process going amid escalating violence. In important ways, the attack on the Tanda camp and the escalating violence that preceded it is a wholly predictable consequence of ongoing efforts to bring about an India-Pakistan dialogue. The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Ramzan Ceasefire of 2000-2001 provoked terrorist groups to unleash exceptionally high levels of violence — violence that eventually undermined the initiative itself. Nor was it a coincidence that terrorists carried out mass killings around the time of Mr. Vajpayee's bus journey to Lahore, in 1999. From the standpoint of the terrorist groups, such actions make perfect sense; raising the level of violence is the best hope of their voice being acknowledged in the course of a future India-Pakistan dialogue. After all, the likes of the Lashkar-e-Taiba's Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed have openly boasted that India is talking to Pakistan about Jammu and Kashmir because of the jihad waged by terrorist groups.

Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment has a complex position on this argument. On the one hand, the military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, is under intense international pressure to twist the arm of jihadi organisations so that they de-escalate armed operations against India. On the other hand, the violence serves the Pakistan establishment's interests, by giving `muscle' to its political posture on Jammu and Kashmir. Moreover, influential elements within this establishment seem to believe that Pakistan loses nothing by allowing jihadi groups to continue their operations. As Pakistan's former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Asad Durrani, has pointed out, India no longer retains the option of going to war as retaliation against major terrorist outrages. This ambiguity has found expression in recent official Pakistani conduct. No action was taken, for example, against the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin chief, Mohammad Yusuf Shah — an Indian national resident in Pakistan — after he recently threatened to escalate fidayeen attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. Notwithstanding Mr. Fernandes' certification, General Musharraf seems unwilling or unable to take on the Islamist far Right, which is influential among the officer corps of the Pakistan Army.

How, then, should India respond? Perhaps the answer lies in the realisation that defence management and dialogue are not mutually exclusive; it can even be argued that the first is a precondition for the second. First, notwithstanding Mr. Fernandes' denial of any "security lapse," the basic deficiencies in security management highlighted by the Tanda attack need to be urgently addressed. Secondly, offensive operations against terrorists, which have been in disarray for the past several months, need to be revitalised. Thirdly, some serious thought needs to be given to the strategic objectives of counter-terrorism and the means needed to realise them. Most importantly, political India needs to realise that peace making cannot be an on-again, off-again, episodic activity. The Vajpayee Government must frame a set of well-defined policy objectives based on an institutional and political consensus to ensure that this peace initiative does not go the way of its predecessors. It is profoundly in the interest of the peoples of India and Pakistan that the present peace initiative succeeds — and that blows to Army morale such as the one terrorists were able to inflict at Tanda are anticipated and averted.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Rocky road to peace

Building better airports

Remembering 1983

Rebels make a comeback