Cancellation of talks and after

|
  • 0

Cancellation of talks and after

Saturday, 29 September 2018 | Hiranmay Karlekar

Cancellation of talks and after

To counter Islamabad’s skullduggery, particularly Kashmir violence and terror strikes, war is not an option. New Delhi must make financially-wobbly Pakistan behave by pressurising it economically

India’s cancellation of the meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, to have been held at the margins of the United Nations General Assembly meeting earlier this month, and Pakistan’s response to it, have effectively ruled out, for the near future at least, the chance of a dialogue between the two countries to normalise their ties. The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, Raveesh Kumar, used strong language while announcing the cancellation. “It’s obvious”, he said, “that behind Pakistan’s proposal for talks to make a fresh beginning, [the] evil agenda of Pakistan stands exposed & true face of new Prime Minister of Pakistan has been revealed to world in his first few months in the office.”

Reacting, Khan termed India’s move as “arrogant” and “negative,” and tweeted, “all my life I have come across small men occupying big offices who do not have the vision to see the larger picture.” Adding his bit, Pakistan’s Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, said, “Our Government and Army are so close that if the Army did not want us to talk, our Prime Minister would not have taken the initiative to write to your Prime Minister saying let’s talk… Pakistan has been serious and open-hearted about holding talks with India from the day Imran Khan came to power, our seriousness is now before the whole world, what India has done is also before the world.”

Further, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi said shortly thereafter that “hiding away from issues won’t make them disappear”, and that New Delhi’s current stand would not improve the situation in Jammu & Kashmir. If there still remained the ghost of a possibility for a dialogue it was laid to rest by his statement that Swaraj’s language and tone was “unbecoming of a foreign minister.”

Normalisation, however, would have remained elusive even if the meeting had been held. Pakistan pays only lip service to the idea which goes against its two principal strategic objectives. The first is using Afghanistan’s territory to secure strategic depth against India which would require a Government in Kabul that is subservient to it. The present Government there is not and has excellent ties with New Delhi which would do its best to prevent it from going under. The second objective is the balkanisation of India to prevent it from playing a dominant role in Asia, which, in turn, explains its support to India’s secessionist rebels.

The insincerity behind Pakistan’s stated desire for normalising ties becomes clear on considering that, even after Imran Khan had written proposing talks, Pakistan was ordering the killing of three special police officers in Kashmir and issuing a series of 20 postage stamps glorifying a terrorist and terrorism. If it was serious, it would have withheld both moves pending, at least, the outcome of the proposed New York talks. It is not surprising — and perhaps as Pakistan had calculated — that India cited both moves for cancelling the talks after having agreed to these, with the MEA spokesperson, Raveesh Kumar saying that the “latest brutal killings of our security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the recent release of a series of 20 postage stamps by Pakistan glorifying a terrorist and terrorism confirm that Pakistan will not mend its ways.” The terrorist referred to was Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, who was killed in an encounter with Indian security personnel in July 2016.

The question arises whether even if India had not anticipated the issue of stamps and the killing of the SPOs, why did it agree to the talks despite Pakistan’s two principal strategic doctrines, refusal to act against the masterminds behind the 26/11 terror strikes, and relentless promotion of cross-border terror strikes against this country?

One needs to examine the background to the decision for a possible answer. It all started with Imran Khan expressing, both in his victory speech and his address to the nation after becoming Prime Minister, a desire for a dialogue with India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s letter of August 18, 2018, to Khan, expressing India’s commitment to pursue “meaningful” and “constructive” engagement with Pakistan to work for a terror-free South Asia, followed. Khan had then proposed the meeting between the Foreign Ministers of the two countries. Given all this, one cannot dismiss the argument that an outright rejection would have helped Pakistan to score a few brownie points by complaining about an intransigent India whose rejection of Khan’s offer showed an unwillingness to improve its ties with Islamabad.

Cancelling the meeting after agreeing to it has also provided grist to Pakistan’s propaganda mill. It, however, would have tried to score propaganda points also in the aftermath of the New York meeting. Let that be. The critical question now is how to counter Pakistan’s skullduggery, particularly the promotion of serious violence in Kashmir and terror strikes against India. War is not an option. It would inflict grievous damage on the whole of South Asia and would be ended by global intervention before the emergence of a result, particularly since, pushed to the wall, Pakistan would rattle its nuclear sabre.

One course could be to make financially-wobbly Pakistan behave by piling up economic pressure on it. That the world is taking an increasingly serious view of Pakistan not only promoting terrorism but emerging as a major source of financing it, was indicated when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body that seeks to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system, placed Pakistan on its “grey” list at its plenary session in Paris from June 27 to 29, 2018.

This by itself may not mean much as Pakistan was in the list from 2015 to 2018 but had little trouble in accessing funds from international markets, which is supposed to be the main result of being placed in the list. It may be different this time as the Trump Administration is ramping up pressure on Islamabad, and withholding aid, for its lack of action against sections of jihadi terrorists operating from its soil. Not only that, New Delhi’s effort should be to put Pakistan in the Black List which includes “Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories” (NCCTs) which are not cooperating in the global fight against money laundering and terror financing. The effort this will take has to be forthcoming.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)

Sunday Edition

CAA PASSPORT TO FREEDOM

24 March 2024 | Kumar Chellappan | Agenda

CHENNAI EXPRESS IN GURUGRAM

24 March 2024 | Pawan Soni | Agenda

The Way of Bengal

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

The Pizza Philosopher

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

Astroturf | Lord Shiva calls for all-inclusiveness

24 March 2024 | Bharat Bhushan Padmadeo | Agenda

Interconnected narrative l Forest conservation l Agriculture l Food security

24 March 2024 | BKP Sinha/ Arvind K jha | Agenda