Daily Times

On May 25-26, 2012, once again, India and Pakistan were engaged in a bilateral dialogue. Prior to it, umpteen times they have carried on this process but have failed to resolve even a single contentious issue out of many lying between them.

The mother of all conflicts between the two is the present status of the Kashmir Valley, which both of them want to change in their own favour. All other issues have erupted and could not be resolved because of hyper-nationalism generated by chauvinistic forces on both sides of the border on this one issue. On the Kashmir issue, the two countries have tried and tested all means, from multilateral negotiations to bilateral engagement. They even went for various forms of war like ‘total war’, ‘limited war’, ‘proxy war’, etc. However, despite all those steps, the status of the Kashmir Valley is as it was in January 1949, when a ceasefire was declared by the United Nations to stop the first Indo-Pak war of 1948. In 1954, 1963, 1972 and 2008, this issue, as claimed by negotiators and the media, was almost resolved.

Besides Kashmir, other contentious issues between them are not as complicated as the two sides are projecting them. Ayesha Siddiqa wrote in Indian Express that issues like the Sir Creek estuary and demilitarisation of Siachen glacier are the easier ones to resolve. Still various rounds of talks over the years have taken place on these issues, with no results.

Now the question arises why India and Pakistan, in spite of engaging in various rounds of talks and negotiations, have failed to resolve even a single and or even the easiest issue between them. The fault lies in both their intentions and their approach to negotiations. For both countries, negotiations are a zero-sum game and instead of resolving the issue at hand, they look for drawing relative gains from any sort of outcome or result. Against this form of negotiation, there is another one that has led to the breaking of the ice between the archrivals. In this form, the centre of attention is the ‘issue or problem’. The negotiating team focuses upon resolving it, rather than having relative gains out of the solution. In this, both parties make certain compromises and try to adjust to the grievances of the other. During their talks, particularly on Kashmir and on other issues too, the negotiators from the two countries adopt the former method instead of the latter. The Indus Water Treaty, to share the water from the Indus River System could be successfully negotiated and signed because during the eight-year long negotiations, the focus was on catchment areas and not on the two countries.

Then they are still practising a structured form of diplomacy where the talks are hierarchical in nature. It starts with a joint-secretary or a secretary level, then a ministerial level and finally, heads of the states meet to give their final authority. Many times, both countries have started the talks at a joint secretary or a secretary level; a few times, ministers have met too, but less than a few times, political heads have formally shared the dais together. This means, somewhere or the other, there is an institutional conflict and lackadaisical attitude towards the talks. In the past, either the political heads or the bureaucrats were not very supportive of this bilateral negotiation process. The Agra summit was derailed due to that; the infamous verbal fight between Foreign Ministers S M Krishna and Shah Mahmood Qureshi at Islamabad occurred in front of the global media. Both times, it was ‘insiders’ who set up a plot to foil the dialogue.

Finally, a negotiation is a process that takes time. The amount of time depends upon the nature of the political relationship the two countries share. To get some result out of the negotiations and to boost a dialogue, the negotiating countries adopt certain Confidence Building Measures (CBMs). These CBMs reduce the trust deficit and lay the foundations for further engagement. The problem between India and Pakistan is that the CBMs between the two take longer than the required time period to take off. For example, even a simple thing like the granting of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India by Pakistan is taking a long time. More often than not, these CBMs are suspended whenever they are being tested due to some untoward incidents.

To conclude, it is better for the two countries if they are serious to resolve a few of their disputes to move issue by issue, instead of going for a comprehensive dialogue on many issues in one go. Only after resolving one, they should move to another. Secondly, all issues should be treated as an independent entity, with not even an iota of linkage with another. Finally, continuity should be there in negotiations. Channels of communication must not be closed even during the worst times. The leadership must learn the art of not succumbing to chauvinistic forces.

The writer is a PhD student at the South Asian Studies School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He can be reached at amitranjan.jnu@gmail.com