India-Pak impasse unlikely to alter soon

Rahul Bedi
Senior journalist

There is a tiredness — and sameness — in the litany of options mouthed by a variety of what passes for 'experts' locally on ways to deal with Pakistan, accused by New Delhi of planning the recent killing of over 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRFP) personnel in Kashmir.   

Politicians, armchair warriors in television studios, retired soldiers, diplomats and other self-appointed strategists, tediously reiterate and catalogue what is horribly wrong with affairs in Kashmir and relations with Islamabad.

They echo each other in what needs, must and ought to be undertaken to ameliorate the deteriorating security situation in Kashmir and with Pakistan, but offer no worthwhile practical, doable or enforceable response to the enduring Mexican standoff between India and Pakistan. 

India's impending General Election, the imminent US military drawdown in Afghanistan, the negotiated return of the Taliban to the wartorn country and the 'outsourcing' of Kabul to Islamabad by Washington, all restrict Prime Minister Narendra Modi's options in delivering even a token riposte to Pakistan.  

According to official sources, other than telephonically expressing sympathy for the CRPF killings in Pulwama, US National Security Advisor John Bolton 'cautioned' his Indian counterpart Ait Doval last week regarding any 'military adventurism' against Pakistan. Such a move, the acerbic Bolton is believed to have inferred would panic Islamabad, adversely impacting US military withdrawal from Afghanistan. This, in turn, would delay if not derail one of the few assorted deliverables promised by President Donald Trump during his election campaign for the American presidency.    

Additionally, there is another disturbing and worrisome reality: the questionable state of India's materiel, aggravated by wooliness in decision-making amongst the country's higher defence establishment. Collectively, these twin impediments magnify India's woes as it struggles to evolve demonstrable options with regard to 'punishing' and 'deterring' Pakistan.  Ironically, this also reinforces what French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau during World War I wisely declared: ‘War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.’ 

So what can India tangibly accomplish to dent Pakistan's predominantly egoist Punjabi establishment, which for decades has both welcomed and mocked India's gushing overtures, but more its hollow braggadocio?

For starters, Delhi can vindicate its threat of diplomatically isolating Pakistan by unilaterally halving the strength of its High Commission in Islamabad to 50, as the massive contingent of some 100 diplomats and support staff have for decades been unable to perform even a modicum of their assigned role. Undeniably, there is a mountain of historical, political, diplomatic, sectarian and territorial baggage, visceral acrimony and suspicion between the neighbours to sustain even a modicum of trust, or at best a functional relationship between the two diplomatic establishments. Like weary pugilists, both have been circling each other for most of their 72 years as independent states, waging three wars-and-a-half, periodically mobilising their armies for battle and exchanging nuclear and military threats. This has been frequently interspersed with jerky half-baked treaties, 'composite' dialogues and stillborn peace initiatives.   

So, other than expending perennially scarce financial resources, why commit competent diplomats who have achieved nothing in fostering good neighbourliness when they could be more gainfully employed elsewhere? It's also puzzling how many such worthies, who served as envoys to Islamabad, have become foreign secretary, almost as if  a  blank report card at best, deserves high reward.

To coin an adage, CD or Corps Diplomatique business is about keeping one's country flag flying in foreign, often hostile lands and furthering bilateral relations through established norms. However, this in no way applies to diplomatic activity between Delhi and Islamabad. Their respective missions, built, staffed and maintained at enormous expense, fulfil none of these CD requirements.   

Either side claims the others' embassy is staffed with spies, issue visas grudgingly and encourage little or no trade. Paradoxically, even the designated and undeclared spooks are unable to perform their clandestine tasks as they, and at times even their families, are under constant surveillance and subject to ham-handed harassment.

Beleaguered diplomats from both sides individually face the brunt of strained ties in the two capitals. If their shadowing and harassment is not challenging enough, heavies have been known to kidnap and thrash embassy staff before expelling them on charges of spying. The only good news, however, is that the score on this count, and other aggravation indicators, remains even.

In short, sincere diplomacy via the high commissions in Delhi and Islamabad is for now no more possible than dry water. But this proposition, like convenient diplomatic codicils includes a caveat: in the event of relations bettering, respective mission numbers can be mutually hiked at a later date.  

Islamabad's reality is quite uncomplicated even though most Indian 'thinkers' tend to unnecessarily confound and intellectualise it. Indisputable reasoning decrees that the Pakistan Army remains Islamabad's principal fulcrum of power and one least interested in conflict resolution. Instead, it is embarked not only on stockpiling strategic assets, including Nasr, its solid fuelled tactical battlefield nuclear missiles, and assorted other materiel from China and cosseting Islamist groups to wage low cost war against India to haemorrhage it under the nuclear threshold.

In her excellently researched book The Pakistan Army's Way of War, US scholar Christine Fair argues that that "Pakistan's revisionism persists in regard to its efforts, not only to undermine the territorial status quo in Kashmir, but also to undermine India's position in the region and beyond." She calls Pakistan a 'greedy state' willing to suffer any number of military defeats in its efforts to undermine India. But under no circumstances will it acquiesce in any way to India, as this would mean the unthinkable: defeat for the Pakistan Army.

Conversely, Fair argues retaining even the ability to challenge India is victory for the Pakistan Army. She also contends that despite its many setbacks in wars with India — in 1971 and Kargil —the Pakistan Army continues to view itself as India's peer competitor and demands that Delhi, the US and the world treat it as such.      

India, on the other hand, is highhanded in its dealings with Pakistan, invariably hostage to the politics of the day. It talks down to Islamabad, issuing it ultimatums it is unable to vindicate and ends up looking impotent.

Alternately, it makes itself hostage to the goodwill of other states, appealing whiningly to Washington to intervene with Islamabad on its behalf, but with little effect. The ensuing stalemate only serves to further worsen bilateral relations. In short, the discordant script between India and Pakistan rarely ever changes and this impasse is unlikely to alter soon.