Too many versions to a story

No one is officially going to tell us that secret talks with Pakistan are in fact underway

Javed Naqvi

It is highly unlikely that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is or was in any kind of trouble with his party for alleged indiscretions in the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement with his Pakistani counterpart. There are reasons though to believe that it was his guest-list for an official lunch with Hillary Clinton that caused resentment among his colleagues who were left out.

According to the grapevine it was the uninvited heavyweights of the Congress party who tried to embarrass him, to put him in his place as it were. The joint statement with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani thus became an easy ruse to settle scores in what was really an inner-party squabble. Dr Singh may not have a mass base of the kind his detractors flaunt, but he has the continued support of the Gandhi family. And that is really what matters.

So what was the brouhaha over the Egypt parleys all about? There were two points on which the prime minister had to explain his position. One was the spurious perception that by de-linking terrorism with the peace process he had yielded to Pakistanis. In other words, India would henceforth be obliged to continue to engage Pakistan in peace talks even if a Mumbai-like attack were to occur again.

The other source of apparent discomfort to the critics of the Sharm El-Sheikh joint statement was Dr Singh's inclusion in the statement Mr Gilani's concerns over implied Indian involvement in the rebellion in Balochistan. I think neither of the two charges is tenable. But there was commotion in Parliament. One explanation for that is unrelated to the running story. In fact the turbulence appeared to be rooted in a parallel narrative that was going on at the time of the Sharm El-Sheikh debate.

Anyone who watched last week's Parliamentary proceedings closely enough would have noticed that there were more walkouts by opposition parties over the running spat between two corporate siblings - Messrs Mukesh and Anil Ambani - than over the India-Pakistan joint statement. Given their clout in Indian Parliament and with powerful US lobbies, it would not be surprising too if the prime minister's controversial guest-list for rendezvous with the US Secretary of State were influenced by that equation. After all Ms Clinton spent more time in Mumbai, with the corporate world, than she did meeting officials in New Delhi.

Be that as it may, there was little or nothing even for the most ardent Indian nationalist hawks to resent in the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement. Given the fact that there already is an agreement at the highest level - in word, if not in spirit - that the peace process between India and Pakistan is irreversible, the question of terror attacks stymieing future talks should not arise. It is another matter that the original promise was not honoured, but the formulation that peace process would continue come what may was not a new element. In fact, it seemed like another way of saying that the peace process was irreversible. I haven't heard anyone disowning either of the formulas.

The protests in Parliament and outside about the inclusion of the Balochistan phrase were just as preposterous. Balochistan is a two-pronged problem. There are elements there that target Islamabad's hold on their affairs, and there are those who are a cat's paw for interests that would want to harm Tehran. In the past, India was close to the former, but whether Delhi was funding or arming them involves speculation. Current exigencies of geopolitics require India to change that approach. However, those who want Delhi to stop interfering in Balochistan are not exactly the kind who would be opposed to fomenting religious terrorism in the region aimed against Iran.

What is the evidence that India has interests in Balochistan? Consider the fact that in the last week of August 2006, Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti, was killed in an attack by the Pakistani army. It prompted an unusually strong reaction from India of all the places. The foreign office spokesman described it as "a tragic loss to the people of Balochistan and Pakistan". He went on to add that the "military attack in which reportedly two of his grandsons were also killed and the heavy casualties in the continuing military operations in Balochistan underline the need for peaceful dialogue to address the grievances and aspirations of people of Balochistan. Military force can never solve political problems". Pakistan naturally rejected the Indian statement. Its Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam, a seasoned India hand, described Delhi's statement as "against the well-established norms of interstate relations (and) also a blatant interference in the internal affairs of a neighbouring country".

Senior Congress politician, Mani Shankar Aiyer, who was a consul general in Karachi in 1978-82, said in a TV discussion last week that he was absolutely certain that India was not involved in any way in Balochistan, but he wasn't sure, he said, if the subsequent governments had stuck to that policy. Some clues into possible subsequent policy towards Pakistan came in a speech, following the Mumbai terror attacks, that Mr Arun Shourie, the hardline BJP minister in the Vajpayee government, made in Parliament.

"No war can be won with a strategy of permanent defence," he urged the Rajya Sabha. "You must make those who control and orchestrate such a war to pay. If you cannot, make them pay individually. Then, you must make the country realise the cost of doing all this to India." Advocating that India should seek "For an eye, both eyes! For a tooth, the whole jaw", he offered the following advice:

"The time when large armies could be sent across the borders, that time has gone. The time when large bodies of armies could be sent across the borders has gone. There are no training camps to bomb. But Pakistan gives us the clue what we should be doing to make them register a cause, that is, look at the violence in Kashmir in the last year-and-a-half that has gone down because Pakistan has been preoccupied in its own problems. So, keep it preoccupied in its own problems in Balochistan, in Gilgit, Baltistan, in PoK."

Did the phrase 'keep it preoccupied' suggest Mr Shourie was indicating something already happening on the ground in the regions he singled out for special treatment? Regardless of the truth of the alleged Balochistan disagreements in India, the actual point of departure in Delhi-Islamabad ties in the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement has remained largely un-discussed, in Parliament and in the media, either by design or by oversight. That particular issue pertains to the commitment by the prime ministers to exchange real time intelligence to prevent future terror attacks in both countries. I am convinced that the highly loaded clause could only be an American handiwork, an effort to bring the two irreconcilable intelligence agencies together to jointly fight terrorism.

If it works out, it would be a truly groundbreaking event. Imagine the ISI operative in Rawalpindi telling the RAW operative in Delhi to follow two men on a motorcycle in Connaught Place. It is not going to be easy at all. Part of the resistance will come from the agencies themselves who would be required to compromise their assiduously cultivated human and technical resources. However, solid indication in this direction came from Dr Singh even before he met Mr Gilani. On his way back from his talks with President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia, Dr Singh told accompanying reporters that officials of the two sides were meeting, including the ISI chief. He didn't mention the involvement of the RAW chief, but that would have to come from the Pakistani prime minister, if at all.

In the meantime, there is any number of stories about how Pakistan has failed India in the Mumbai terror probe. This is a smokescreen for what is happening behind the scenes. I can quote at least three versions of what Home Minister P Chidambaram said the other day on the question of a dossier on Jamatud Dawa chief, Hafiz Saeed. One Indian account said that enough material had now been given to Pakistan, with the latest dossier last week, to 'prosecute' Saeed. Another Indian version from the same briefing claimed there is enough material to 'pursue' Saeed and a third version asserted there was enough evidence to 'probe' the alleged terror mastermind. I don't know what Mr Chidambaram really said. But it is clear that no one, not even Mr Chidambaram, is officially going to tell us that secret talks with Pakistan are in fact underway.

Courtesy: Dawn Media Group