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Dialogue only way out

Kashmir Times. Dated: 9/21/2017 12:32:42 AM

Only meaningful peace process can help resolve all India-Pakistan issues including terrorism and Kashmir

As India and Pakistan continue to tear each other apart at the United Nations Human Rights Council session, it is time to be reminded that talks are the only way out of disputes, howsoever intractable and complex. While India called Pakistan a terror state, Pakistan propped up the question of India's state repression in Kashmir. The belligerence and rigidity follows expected lines. Last week, union home minister Rajnath Singh said that it is meaningless talking to Pakistan till the latter stops aiding terrorism. It would serve little purpose of both sides continue to turn their backs to each other by invoking their respective concerns. It will not help resolve the dispute but further hardening of positions which are detrimental to the interests of the peoples of the two countries. Constant belligerence has already led to the virtual collapse of the 2003 ceasefire violations and the gains that ensued. Over 200 people including soldiers have died in the cross-firing incidents on the Indian side alone since 2016. This colossal loss of human resource and precious lives is a huge cost that cannot be ignored or wished away by muscle flexing. Additionally, this stalemate is continuing to accentuate the miseries of millions of people living on the borders, the petty business men that rely on cross-border trade, the fishermen and others who inadvertently cross the borders and land up in jails as well as the divided families who have to bear the brunt of whimsical and cumbersome visa and travel procedures by both sides. Both terrorism and Kashmir are among the many disputes that India and Pakistan have been engaged in for decades. To suggest that these be resolved before India and Pakistan agree to sit at the negotiating table is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Not to have a dialogue does not resolve any of the issues, much less terrorism. Even to address that and other security concerns, a fair amount of reliance has to be placed on dialogue and it in way amounts to compromising strategic concerns.
The need for resolution of all the disputes involving India and Pakistan including Kashmr, in which all the people of Jammu and Kashmir are also stakeholders, need not be over-stated. The present pace of muscle flexing and venomous quality of jingoism on both sides has already diluted the gains that were achieved in the peace process that started in the beginning of the millennium. It is a blatant lie that the dialogue and peace process was tried and failed. The rules of engagement in a peace process require constant and consistent years of purposeful and meaningful talks and negotiations to gradually turn decades of animosity and mistrust into mutual confidence. That is the only way to move forward in the new social order. Clearly, there are no simple quick fix remedies as peace processes and dialogues are continuous processes and must be carried on without imposing conditionalities from any sides. It is thus only logical to link up the India-Pakistan tangle, Kashmir question and terrorism rather than compartmentalising any of these by imposing the condition of excluding one or the other or by solely focusing on one aspect. While international interventions, despite their limited scopes and added complications of generating suspicions, need not be treated as a pariah, a more fruitful conflict resolution vis a vis both India-Pakistan and Kashmir would be one borne out of an internal realization and an indigenous push towards amicable negotiations. This would eventually require not just out of the box thinking but also revival of the composite dialogue, imaginative thinking on confidence building measures and building up a mechanism of systematic multi-level dialogue. India and Pakistan need to begin spade work for pushing in not just official level channels into the agenda but also people to people level contact as well as dialogues for Kashmir on the two sides of the Line of Control with New Delhi and Islamabad. An intra-state dialogue with Jammu and Kashmir would also be significant not only because it would address the intra-state socio-political complicacies but also provide the necessary conducive atmosphere for a genuine peace process. This requires lot of work, sincerity and consistency. It cannot be done by wasting time over futile bellicose rhetoric.