India - Pakistan: Talks, yes, but to what end and at what cost?

Successive Indian prime ministers have had their heart in the right place when they said

talks with Pakistan should be welcome, and Manmohan Singh is no exception. He told

Parliament after the Sharm-el-Sheikh talks that "dialogue and engagement is the best

way forward". His predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has said, "We cannot change our

neighbours, we have to live with them". But the experiences of India - Pakistan

engagement, at least in the first decade of the new millennium, begs the question: Talks,

yes, but to what end and at what cost?

The recently concluded foreign ministers' talks at Islamabad has called into question

Prime minister Manmohan Singh's vision of peace with Pakistan, and exposed his

government and party alike to domestic criticism. There is consternation within the

foreign service, too, which has to implement policies set out by the political leadership

while remaining mindful of steering clear of the bureaucratic minefield at home and

diplomatic interests abroad.

There have been a flurry of 'post-mortem' reports in the media about whether Home

secretary GK Pillai's remarks about the ISI's links with 26/11 co-conspirator David

Coleman Headley, made on the eve of the talks, precipitated a crisis of sorts for the two

negotiating teams led respectively by external affairs minister SM Krishna and his

Pakistan counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi. The reports also posed whether an

intervention by the Pakistan army derailed the talks. But are we asking the right

questions here?

Perhaps, the question to be asked is not whether Pillai timed his remarks well or whether

he was on a solo flight; the question to be asked is whether the talks themselves were

ill-timed and whether the prime minister was flying solo with his vision of peace? Not

whether Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani ambushed the talks but whether he

could have behaved any differently? How should India engage the Pakistan army and

not whether the civilian government in Pakistan is capable of taking the talks forward?

And then there is the larger question that given the fluid situation in Afghanistan and

Pakistan, how do we recalibrate our relations with Iran, the central Asian states or even

old friend Russia?

Conversations with a cross-section of Pakistan watchers and strategic analysts throws

up interesting insights into the issues at hand. There is a broad consensus that the

timing of the recent talks with Pakistan might not have been propitious, and there are

various reasons. Afghanistan is in a state of flux, Pakistan is jockeying for influence in

Afghanistan in anticipation of a withdrawal of US troops and India risks being edged out

of the matrix altogether if it does not craft a suitable policy in the near term. The Marjah

offensive by the US and NATO-led Forces is a failure, and the Kandahar operations have

been delayed. Domestically, the situation in Pakistan is not any better. And, therefore,

the assertion is that India should wait it out.

Hostility with India is raison d'etre for the Pakistan army and the ISI, which manifested

itself in the Mumbai attacks. Even Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint

chiefs of staff and the highest-ranking officer in the US armed forces, articulated his

concerns about it as recently as Saturday when he referred to Pakistan as "an

extraordinarily complex country" of which the military and ISI were a big part. "I believe

the strategic approach of the ISI needs to fundamentally change," Mullen added for good

measure. His remarks acquire a salience of their own, coming as they do after the

interrogation of Headley pointed to the complicity of Pakistan's official agencies in the

Mumbai attacks. However, there is a view that New Delhi should not shy away from

engaging the Pakistan army. It is argued that India did not reach out to the army in the

past in the mistaken belief that it should be seen on the side of democracy but the reality

is there is no democracy in Pakistan, only a civilian facade. An indication of the relative

power equation can be had from the fact that the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan

had succeeded in stitching together a draft agreement but it was vetoed by the army as

the talks between Mr Krishna and Mr Qureshi neared an end.

The events as they unfolded in Islamabad have led some of the sceptics to tentatively

conclude that prime minister Manmohan Singh runs the risk of losing whatever goodwill

there was for his Pakistan gambit if he persists with the talks without getting satisfaction

from Pakistan on the issues of bringing the 26/11 perpetrators to justice, unravelling the

full conspiracy behind it, and dismantling the terror infrastructure operating on Pakistani

soil. However, New Delhi has defended itself against the criticism by pointing out that

the Pakistan government's acknowledgment, that progress had been made in dialogues

held between 2004 and 2008 and that both sides needed to build on it, is an

improvement over previous rounds of talks.

New Delhi concedes that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has forced it to revisit

its ties with other countries in the region and beyond. The UPA 1.0's preoccupation with

the nuclear deal had come at the expense of the traditional ties with Iran but the Persian

Gulf nation has reappeared in the Indian consciousness after New Delhi did not find

itself on the same page with Washington on Afghanistan. The Americans are

concentrating on a narrow strategy in Afghanistan -- to exit with their honour intact -- and

in the process they are exposing themselves to compromises. New Delhi has since

sought to engage Tehran, and both sides now are discussing issues such as trade and

connectivity. Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao is expected to travel to Moscow in a few

weeks for consultations with the Russian foreign ministry on regional issues such as

Afghanistan and Iran.

China is another foreign policy challenge for New Delhi. How to deal with China, is a

question oft-heard in official circles but South Block would not respond beyond saying

that India should grow fast. National security adviser Shivshankar Menon is understood

to have conveyed to the Chinese leadership in his recent visit to Beijing that time has

come for a new construct or paradigm in Sino-Indian relationship, one that will inspire a

broad-based relationship and incorporate more intense dialogues on issues of mutual

interest or concern.