From: Habib Yousafzai <yousafzai49@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 1:47 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] A Dialogue to Nowhere Efforts to engage notwithstanding but talks on Kashmir only skim the surface
A Dialogue to Nowhere
Efforts to engage notwithstanding but talks on Kashmir only skim the surface
POINT OF VIEW BY RIYAZ AHMAD
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer of dialogue to Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists from Jammu is in the tradition of such offers by the many former PMs in the state - albeit the contexts have altered drastically. Vajpayee's memorable offer in 2001 followed one year after Kargil war when militancy held the complete sway in the state while Singh is repeating it in the backdrop of a transition to massive public protests over the past three years.
At the same time, Singh is not talking dialogue for the first time. In fact, his fresh offer is part of a series of such overtures to Pakistan and Kashmiri political groups over the past six years. This includes the intermittent bold statements on Kashmir solution during the heightened engagement with Islamabad through 2004-07. However, the dialogue unfortunately has progressed in fits and starts and sometimes remained suspended for inordinately long periods.
Fresh effort at engaging Islamabad has begun after a long halt in bilateral contact following the Mumbai attack. The dialogue, in fact, is understood to have already resumed after the foreign secretaries meeting in Thimpu in the last month. Now, the decks are being cleared for the visit of the Pakistani foreign minister to New Delhi in the spring.
Therefore, at one level, PM's talks offer in Jammu seems needless. And if there was need for anything, it was for an offer of dialogue to the separatists. The need was also to rescue the ongoing initiative by the interlocutors from an evitable failure either by upgrading its profile by adding some senior politicians to the existing panel or by substantially enhancing the mandate of the current panel. Instead, Singh chose to offer talks to all sections of the people of the state ''under a constitutional framework''.
The offer, therefore, has come as a considerable downgrade from the past such gestures which made it a point to omit the reference to constitution. Vajpayee had smartly put the constitutional impediment out of the way by innovating a framework of "humanity" for the talks. But Singh has effectively brought the constitution back. In Kashmir, this effectively means that the separatists are unwelcome and not essential for a domestic talks initiative on the state. After all, interlocutors all this while have carried on with their activities in the state without having separatists on board. What is more, they are already in the process of formulating a report recommending a certain framework for Kashmir solution. Whether such a report would really make a difference to the prevailing conflict discourse in the state is nobody's concern.
Truth is the separatists from whom originates the current troubled state of Kashmir will need to be taken on board before a serious domestic initiative gets underway. And any talks effort outside them though essential for the overall Kashmir solution is not going to fetch the solution. In fact, talking to an assortment of social and mainstream political groups in the state is tantamount to artificially creating an institutionalized political demand where none exists. True, National Conference and PDP have their respective settlement agendas that unilaterally guarantee a solution but setting these as political goals will create a public impression of responding to these two parties rather than to the larger political problem in Kashmir.
It is in this context that the Prime Minister's Jammu offer of talks appears unhelpful. In fact, PM refused to make two important acknowledgements. One is the already acknowledged semantic need not to refer to constitution in matters of the dialogue with separatists. And second is the need to address the separatists directly rather than as one among the ''all sections of the people,'' which treats them as just one shade of the diverse political opinion in the state.
The offer, as such, is unlikely to make any redeeming difference to the ground situation in the state. Talks with separatists are likely to remain stuck for a while with sorting out conditionalities before these are actually held. Also, given the rank disinterest UPA has exhibited over the past six years for a sustained dialogue with separatists, this engagement may not go ahead at all. More so, after Geelani's own set of difficult conditions have made the moderate Hurriyat's response to any talks invitation that much more complicated.
But will Pakistan-India dialogue pull it off this time? Signs don't look that promising. For one, the intense engagement that continued through second half of the nine year tenure of Musharraf is unlikely to repeat itself. The current dispensation in Islamabad has chosen to revert to the old parameters of dialogue. United Nation's resolutions on the state are back in vogue as a reference point for any settlement.
But then real problem is not Pakistan's refusal to pick up Musharraf's pieces, which may eventually be a matter of posturing, but whether dialogue sustains. And if it does, will it be able to reach any conclusion in the half term left in power for the governments in Islamabad and New Delhi. There is a third problem also: the seeming inability of the current Pakistan dispensation already undermined by the ongoing turmoil in the country to be able to take big decisions.
This backdrop is hardly a cause for hope for the current efforts at Indo-Pak reconciliation, let alone a Kashmir settlement. The positive momentum and the dynamics that underpinned the talks process during Musharraf's era - both between India and Pakistan and between New Delhi and Srinagar - are conspicuously missing. For now, it appears that Kashmir will have to wait for the new regimes to take over in India and Pakistan and get seriously engaged in talks before hoping for any breakthrough.
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