Neena Gopal: Talks are necessary for Kashmir peace

Kashmir's centrality to the differences between India and Pakistan cannot be glossed over. It's the issue that colours everything.

It's the uninvited guest at talks between Islamabad and New Delhi when they discuss mundane water sharing issues. It casts its shadow over the simplest of confidence-building measures such as restoring road and rail links.

As the foreign secretaries of the two nations prepare to meet later this month to review progress after a year of talks, several questions arise.

Must Kashmir be allowed to derail any and every interaction? Is that, in fact, the real point of the exercise? Isn't it the stark reality that neither country's stated objectives are the real goals? What do India and Pakistan really want?

The bus link is a case in point. It's no surprise that talks on opening the defunct road between the two Kashmiri capitals of Srinagar and Muzaffarabad ran aground over the nature of travel documents acceptable to both sides.

India wants travellers to carry an "entry permit", stamped on the border, while using a passport for identification.

Pakistan does not want either entry permits or passports, and insists only Kashmiris travel this route. The contrary lines of thinking can be linked to two points.

Semblance of normality

One, any move to allow travel on documents endorsed by governments gives the stamp of legitimacy to the current geographical status quo. India would like that, Pakistan would not.

Two, a peaceful border, people-to-people contacts will give Kashmir a semblance of normality.

The international community will no longer see the troubled state through the prism of a nuclear flash-point, thereby diminishing the importance of the India-Pakistan conflict.

Leave the bus link aside. The air of sweet reasonableness will be carried over into technical level talks this week on pre-notification of missile-testing and conventional confidence-building measures.

The Indian government will say it has tried to build bridges through the CBMs. Pakistan will use the opportunity to underline that the CBM route is a diversionary tactic, that the final frontier is peace in Kashmir.

Untangling the crossed wires seem an impossibility. Half a century of suspicion and hate shadow relations. While a bloody militancy brought the so-called freedom struggle to the forefront of international attention, the might of the Indian army has prevailed.

One of the factors for the fading militancy could be that mountain passes are snowbound, and that the army's fencing of the boundary has effectively choked off supply lines. But two other factors are also in play.

First, the people's overwhelming fatigue after 15 years of a fruitless 'jihad', and second, Pakistan's marked shift in strategy.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally of the United States in its fight against terror, has played no small role he has stopped sending militants across the border, running the risk of alienating a key constituency.

But, far more germane to the issue, Delhi believe that Musharraf still has the jihad card tucked up his sleeve, that the jihad factory, the training camps along the Kashmir border are intact, and can be resurrected at any time.

The question mark over Musharraf's motives colours Delhi's interaction with the multifarious groups that make up the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.

Pakistan would like to see the Hurriyat lead a united political agitation against Indian rule, raising issues like human rights violations to feed off the people's disaffection.

That plan is in some difficulty, with the Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani's continuing refusal to accept the leadership of the more moderate Mirwaiz, Mohammad Omar Farooq.

It demonstrates Pakistan has chosen to take the political route by fashioning the Mirwaiz, a respected religious figure in the valley into a credible opposition figure.

In the event, that Kashmir gains a measure of autonomy even under Indian rule, the Mirwaiz and his umbrella grouping of the disaffected could prove a powerful ally while negotiating Kashmir's final status sometime in the future.

India would like to completely marginalise the Hurriyat, which it sees as an extension of Islamabad.

It has conducted two elections successfully in the teeth of opposition from the militants, one to the state assembly, the second to the Indian parliament.

It can now say with some satisfaction that there is a legitimate government in place at the state level, and it has key Kashmiri representatives in parliament.

The Hurriyat, India says only represents urban pockets in Srinagar, and rural reaches of Sopore and Baramulla.

Should it reach out to the Hurriyat? India's ongoing plan to win the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris cannot remain uni-dimensional.

Short sighted

She seeks to ease the Kashmiris' economic hardships. Yet, Kashmiris are not an impoverished people.

It would be short-sighted therefore not to bring groups like the Hurriyat which represent a certain viewpoint to the domestic peace agenda as a first step towards finding a genuine home-grown political initiative.

Says Dr Amitabh Mattoo, Vice Chancellor of Jammu University: "What is important is increasing the number of stakeholders in the peace process. Bringing the major dramatis personae into the picture can contribute towards stability."

India's newly dusted off offer of autonomy may take the bite out of the seething undercurrent of hostility in the valley where a people's movement craves to be heard.

Certainly, the prospect of self-rule, after two years of the benign Mufti Mohammad Sayed government has made a huge difference to the mood among ordinary Kashmiris.

They may rail against the overpowering presence of security forces but the Mufti has shown, that reaching out to the disaffected does bring in the peace dividend.

The idea of Kashmir as a peaceful neighbourhood may be far too early.

However as long as India and Pakistan continue to look at the disputed state as an issue of real estate, talks will remain fixated on a foreign rather than a domestic audience, rather than the long-term standalone confidence building measure it must become in itelf, to build trust and confidence all around.