India is reportedly preparing for more Summit diplomacy. It rushed to the Lahore Summit in 1999, disregarding Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. The Kargil conflict followed. India ignored the attack on Red Fort by the Lashkar-e-taiba in January 2001, and invited General Musharraf to Agra for an ill-prepared Summit. The attack on Parliament followed. Prime Minister Vajpayee agreed to the resumption of the Composite Dialogue with Pakistan in January 2004, only after he received a categorical public assurance from President Musharraf that Pakistani soil would not be used for terrorism against us.

Quite obviously, we neither sought nor got such a categorical assurance during the recent talks in Islamabad. The former Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, who had made his realistic, no-nonsense approach to Pakistan very clear, selected a group of television and print media journalists to accompany him during his recent visit to Pakistan.

The Pakistanis denied a visa to Nikunj Garg, a journalist of the Times Now television network. Chidambaram’s response was swift. He made it clear to his counterpart, Rehman Malik, that he would not visit Islamabad unless the journalist, who was a member of his press party, was granted a visa. The Pakistanis complied immediately.

Sentiments over 26/11

Adding to this affront was the timidity with which the Indian delegation responded to provocative statements by Pakistani Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, who disdainfully rejected Indian references to the depth of public sentiment in India about the events of 26/11.

She brazenly demanded that India should forget the past and move on. Shocking were the contents of the joint statement in which the two Foreign Ministers “expressed satisfaction” on meetings on issues of “counter terrorism”, “including progress on (the) Mumbai trial”. How can one express “satisfaction” at the “trial” of those accused in Pakistan, or the refusal to bring Hafeez Saeed to book? Why are we virtually equating the Samjhauta Express bombing with the carnage of 26/11? Have we learnt no lessons from the diplomatic fiasco in Sharm-el-Sheikh?

Grim economic situation

One has to be realistic in analysing Pakistan’s national life today. Pakistan is going through a crisis which makes it economically the “sick man of South Asia”. In the next few months, the present PPP-led Government will be replaced by an interim government, which will conduct elections scheduled in April 2013. Economic growth has plummeted to 2.4 per cent.

With a savings rate of 10 per cent, tax-to-GDP ratio of 9.4 per cent, a population growth of 2.7 per cent, a precarious balance of payments situation and virtually no foreign direct investment, Pakistan is set to remain a dysfunctional, global economic basket case in the foreseeable future.

Neither its “all weather friend” China, nor its long-term patron, Saudi Arabia, is ready to generously open the purse strings. Much as the Pakistan army would like to demonise the Americans and the West, the country has no option but to bite the bullet and go with a begging bowl to Western capitals for economic survival.

Given its dire economic straits, Pakistan’s resources available for Defence are limited. Moreover, the army has been compelled to deploy 150,000 troops on its borders with Afghanistan, as attacks across the Durand Line continue.

The Americans have no illusions about the Pakistan army giving up its “strategic assets” like the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-taiba.

American academic, Christine Faire, one of her country’s best informed experts on the Pakistan army recently noted: “Pakistan has squandered the last decade. Rather than shutting down the various Islamist terrorist groups operating from Pakistan’s soil, it has pushed Jihadi leaders, as well as the Lashkar-e-Taiba to the forefront of the recent political gathering of rogues, the Difah-e-Pakistan Council (Defence of Pakistan Council)”.

Building goodwill

India’s strategy has been to see if Pakistan can be drawn into a web of greater economic people-to-people contacts, so that the incentive to promote terrorist attacks against India is curbed.

The new visa agreement to liberalise travel is a welcome development to promote understanding and goodwill. More security and Kashmir-related confidence-building measures (CBMs) and expanded trade and investment ties will be welcome. But, it would be a folly to give an impression that the dialogue process with Pakistan is “irreversible’ and that, with time, we will forget and forgive the carnage of 26/11.

Undermining the seriousness of our concerns on Pakistani-sponsored terrorism would inevitably have dangerous consequences.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan. >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW