Are India-Pakistan destined for heartbreak or could elections bring new hope?

Are India and Pakistan destined to live in a state of perpetual hostility, or are there reasons to expect the two neighbors could make amends at some point in time? Could they ever move on from mutual animosity to some form of cooperative engagement?

The reasons to bury the hatchet are many in a fast evolving geo-economic landscape, but the ground situation does not inspire much optimism. The two countries do not even agree on what keeps them mired in seemingly unbridgeable chasms. No wonder past peace efforts could not deliver much beyond putting together some confidence-building measures. And even those, instead of building mutual confidence, at times become serious bones of contention. The mutual mistrust is deep and bilateral diplomacy appears to have been exhausted.

The latest bilateral impasse is a direct result of India’s move to abrogate the special status of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. Pakistan reacted by, inter alia, downgrading diplomatic relations and suspending bilateral trade.

With the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling of this month which declared the August 2019 constitutional amendments to the status of Kashmir were lawful, no possibility now remains for any future government in New Delhi to oblige Pakistan on the issue. This time the gridlock is ever more complicated. In any case, meaningful progress towards peace will always remain elusive unless the two sides muster the courage to acknowledge upfront that more of the same will not work.

There is no escape from moving from conflict management to conflict resolution if the objective is to establish peace and make South Asia realize its economic potential.

Abdul Basit

Analysts on both sides of the border are of the view that a window of opportunity will likely open up after the general elections are held and new governments assume power in both countries by the end of May next year. Should Nawaz Sharif be elected for a fourth term and Modi for a third term, an early breakthrough could even be possible, given that the two had met many times as prime ministers in the past and seemed to have developed some synergy. 

It is then not difficult to glean from the Indian media the pervasive desire in New Delhi to see Sharif at the helm again in Islamabad. However, it may not be easy even for Sharif to reach out to India primarily for domestic considerations if the latter refuses to budge an inch from its position on Kashmir. But the fact of the matter is this: The Jammu and Kashmir dispute cannot be settled unilaterally. No matter what India does or Pakistan does vis-à-vis Kashmir on its own, the dispute will not go away. 

No matter who forms the next government in Islamabad, Pakistan must avoid being rash and impatient. The new government will have two to three months to do its homework before the new government in India is sworn in. 

One does hope to see some kind of felicitation message from Modi to the new Prime Minister of Pakistan. The tone and tenor of this message will be indicative of what India intends to do over the next five years. 

In all likelihood, India’s preference will be to revive the framework of dialogue as contained in the Islamabad Joint Statement of December 2015. It will be a test of Pakistan’s diplomatic dexterity, which it failed to demonstrate both at Ufa in July and Islamabad in December 2015 when both the two joint statements relegated the Kashmir dispute to the periphery. Pakistan will be ill-served if it were to submit to the Indian preference especially in view of what India has since done to Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. 

The best option for Pakistan is to avoid a formal structured dialogue at this stage. Bilateral engagement should be on the back channel preferably in a neutral venue, like Dubai or Jeddah, with the informal blessings of the host country. Kashmir must be discussed upfront, there is no other way. It is the progenitor of all other issues between the two countries, including the issue of militancy. There is no escape from moving from conflict management to conflict resolution if the objective is to establish peace and make South Asia realize its economic potential through facilitating regional connectivity and creating interdependencies. 

A Japanese proverb says, “Don’t fix the blame; fix the problem.” Now, the hope is that the new elected governments of these two South Asian giants next year will be able to step up to the plate.

– Abdul Basit is DG, Islamabad Centre for Regional Studies. He was previously Pakistan ambassador to Germany and Pakistan High Commissioner for India.
Twitter: @abasitpak1