G Parthasarathy
a former High commissioner of India to Pakistan
New Delhi
20 August 2010
reluctant?
Pakistan's [behaviour] is neither surprising nor new. In the 1970s, Pakistan was short of
wheat and short of money to import it. Moreover its ports were blocked. When India
offered to supply the wheat across the Wagah border because its own granaries were
flowing with surplus wheat at that time, the offer was peremptorily rejected. While no
official grounds were given, I recall one Pakistani commenting at that point of time that
he would prefer to die than survive with food supplied by India or by Indian charity. This
is the reality of the mental state and attitudes prevailing in Pakistan, especially in the
Punjab province. In the case of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK),
after some delay they accepted the Indian aid because when the aid was not reaching its
people just living across the Line of Control (LoC), they could see how efficiently the
Indian Army had helped and worked with civilian authorities to aid the sufferers of the
earthquake. There was genuine fear that it would create a backlash in PoK and in Gilgit
and Baltistan where there is already substantial sense of deprivation. If the roads in PoK
break down, access is only from our side.
Do you suspect American pressure influenced Pakistan's decision?
I have no doubt that they have accepted this aid or spoken about existence of this aid
after American pressure. As I said Pakistan is a basket case. If the Americans ask them
to bend they will crawl. And I would not be surprised if after accepting this aid they keep
it in a godown and don't utilise it.
Should India proactively engage in disaster diplomacy?
I absolutely believe that given our capabilities we should be willing to stretch out a hand
of friendship and assistance whenever a national calamity befalls any neighbour. We
earned substantial goodwill in Sri Lanka during the tsunami and the speed which we
reacted won us international acclaim. So yes it does win us goodwill. We have to be
seen to be helping. But we should remember that there is a certain sense of paranoia
which prevails in Pakistan which we'll have to learn to live with.
The Indian foreign secretary has said that New Delhi will continue to deal with the
civilian democratic government in Pakistan in spite of recent developments. Do you
subscribe to that view?
Countries and neighbours engage with each other even in moments of conflict. I recall
during the Kargil conflict I had meetings with [the then Pakistan prime minister] Nawaz
Sharif. Keeping channels of communication open is [one thing] but it is also important to
see how those channels of communication conduct themselves. I do not think we should
give the impression that a neighbouring country can come and ravage Mumbai, can
come and attack the Red Fort, can come and [cause] terrorist attacks on trains in India,
and then get away with the impression that it will conduct business as usual with India.
Engagement is necessary as long as it is conducted in a manner by which countries
realise that India may exercise options available to it if they do not behave in a good-
neighbourly manner.
What do you make of the media reports about the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-
Services Intelligence (ISI), saying that Islamist militants have overtaken India as the
greatest threat to its national security?
The ISI has a great capacity to put out disinformation. If terror is its greatest enemy, then
how come the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Taliban leaders
such as Sirajuddin Haqqani and Mullah Omar still function merrily from Pakistani soil?
So I think the ISI policy is that terror against the Pakistani state, which is what the
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan is now indulging in, to its territory is greatest challenge, but
that does not mean that in any way they have suddenly developed some sort of bonds of
affection or friendship for India. A few months ago, [Pakistan army chief] Gen Kayani had
said that the primary enemy is India and nothing has changed since then. So this is
tactical, to tell the Americans we are good boys but in practice I would believe it when I
see Hafiz Saeed and Maulana Masood Azhar in jail; I would like to see Pakistan army
act against Haqqani and Omar on its borders with Afghanistan, otherwise this is just a
charade to get more money.
What do you think needs to be done to restore peace in the Kashmir Valley?
We often shoot ourselves in the foot in Kashmir. Many people acknowledge that the
troubles spiralled out of control in the late 1980s primarily as a result of our rigging the
elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 1987, which created a set of disgruntled, deeply
disillusioned youth, many of whom would have joined the democratic process if the
election was fair. Similarly, I think people in Pakistan and J&K have realised that the
policy of militancy and violence-led unrest has run its course and therefore that has to
play a secondary role. So the gun is there but it is meant to intimidate people such as
sections of the separatists who may wish to enter into dialogue by saying that if you do,
you'll get shot. Don't forget that two of the major separatist leaders Mirwaiz Mohammad
Farooq and Abdul Ghani Lone were killed by the Pakistan-backed Hizbul Mujahideen
primarily because they fell out of line with what the ISI wanted. So there is a certain fear
psychosis amongst the political class in J&K. Now I think the present unrest really flows
from youth who have seen nothing but militancy in the last 20 years. I think this is an
issue we have to address more imaginatively domestically. I think the CRPF has been
misused; one day it is used against the Maoists, second day it's used for running
elections in states, third day it is used for counter-insurgency in J&K. No force can have
all these attributes and my own view is that there are equipment and advanced
techniques available to deal with this on the law and order side. But at the same time it
is really for the J&K Government and the political parties there to reach out to these
youngsters and explain to them that militancy got them nowhere and this too is going to
get them nowhere because in the end throwing stones is not going to force India out of
J&K. So I think [there needs to be] much better deployment of police; central paramilitary
forces [must] play only a secondary role to what should be done by the J&K police; and
the security forces should be trained and equipped to use rubber bullets which avoid
fatalities.
Looking back, do you think we could have built on the progress made in the talks with
Pakistan between 2004 and 2007?
I think we missed a golden opportunity between 2004 and 2007 when backchannel talks
between our special envoy SK Lambah and [the then] President Musharraf's designated
envoy Tariq Aziz quite obviously reached broad agreement on what would be the way
forward, which basically involved firstly an end to all forms of terrorist activities,
secondly no change in existing frontiers, thirdly extensive autonomy on both sides of
the LoC, and fourthly involving the governments of India and Pakistan -- the governments
of PoK and J&K and the state legislatures -- to develop institutions which could promote
across-the-LoC cooperation in areas such as environment, travel, tourism, education,
health so that as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the border became irrelevant and
you had a situation where borders were transcended. Incidentally that is how the
Northern Ireland situation has been handled. There is not a change in British
sovereignty but today if you live in Northern Ireland it is as easy for a businessman to
do business in Belfast as it is for a Britisher. So a situation say where it can be as easy
to study in an institution in Gilgit as it would be in Srinagar. That sort of situation in my
view is an imaginative situation [but] my only regret is that neither in India nor in
Pakistan were the people and the Opposition taken into confidence about what was being
talked about. Any such solution can come about only with public acceptance and I would
say while the diplomacy was imaginative and full credit to Prime Minister Singh for that,
the major shortcoming was the secrecy and an unwillingness to take public opinion into
confidence. I would be very happy to go back to negotiate J&K with Pakistan taking off
from where we left off in 2007. But if Pakistan wants to go back to square one and UN
resolution and so on, we'll have to wait another 60 years [for resolution.]
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