Daily Times

Anybody with any sanity on either side of the Pak-India divide would have welcomed the news that the two sides have been engaged in back-channel talks ‘on all major issues including Jammu and Kashmir’ very warmly. It turns out, if the press is to be trusted especially since there has been no official denial of the revelation from either country, that Islamabad and Delhi have indeed been trying to talk out their differences through their respective intelligence leaderships since at least 2017. And the talks apparently suddenly shifted into high gear late last year, since when there has also been the odd confidence building measure (CBM) for public consumption like the recent ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC).

Maybe it was all the wreckage caused by the pandemic, which perhaps made the two nuclear armed neighbours – India more than Pakistan so far – realise that all the sophisticated weapons and front-foot confrontation do very little so solve the biggest problems that they share, like poverty, lack of medical care for a very vast majority of their populations, unemployment, and all the other problems that everyday people run into every day of their lives.

It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that the greatest care is taken to protect and nurture this track-2 dialogue; if it can be called that just yet. No doubt both sides have gone into it knowing full well that there will be stumbling blocks along the way which only the greatest finesse and care will overcome in the correct manner. Pakistan was the first to extend the hand of friendship and only drew it back very reluctantly when New Delhi tried to spin that genuine offer of peace as a sign of weakness for domestic political gains; which PM Modi very readily got at India’s last general election. Yet Pakistan has also been very straight forward about the most sensitive of all issues on the table, and just steps India has taken since the fall of 2019 to make matters much more contentious. India will have to end its atrocities in Occupied Kashmir and revert the valley to its autonomous status for these talks to be successful. These are the most fundamental issues and will have to be addressed to the core. The Modi administration was, without a doubt, aware of PM Imran Khan’s position before it decided to offer talks behind the scenes. So this might just be when the ice starts to melt. The signs coming from across the eastern border over the coming weeks and months will tell everything. *