Ajai Shukla: Northern Ireland: lessons for Kashmir

BROADSWORD

Dublin, Ireland: Last week in Dublin, I pored over the Automobile Association map opened on the bonnet of my rented Toyota. Getting to Belfast seemed easy enough: it was a 115-mile drive, on the M-1 motorway. I was more anxious about the paperwork. Crossing into Northern Ireland, where Belfast had historically been the epicentre of a bitter separatist struggle, meant leaving Ireland for the United Kingdom. (Protestant-majority Northern Ireland remained with Great Britain when Catholic-majority Ireland wrested independence in 1922.) I wondered whether my single-entry visa would allow me back into Ireland, to catch my flight out from Dublin.

But I needn't have worried. Over the next four days, visas may as well not have existed. I observed for myself that, despite some political roadblocks, an imaginative approach to separatism has successfully ended violence in the area. Interestingly, the Northern Ireland settlement bears remarkable similarities to what's being proposed for Jammu and Kashmir (J&K): making borders irrelevant.

Throughout my four-day drive across Ireland, just once, in a delightful Northern Irish village called Belcoo, did I hear mention of an international border. I asked my bed-and-breakfast landlady where to get a good Irish dinner. "Across the border", she replied, "at Blacklion". I drove a couple of kilometres into the Republic of Ireland""there were no border controls anywhere""ate some marvellous salmon at Blacklion, paid my bill in euros, and drove back to my bed in the United Kingdom. By now I was no longer worrying about my visa.

Until just eight years ago, this would have been a pipe dream, much like nipping across from Uri for dinner in Muzaffarabad. Ireland was partitioned along religious lines; for decades, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) tied up large sections of the British Army in a virulent insurgency. The Catholic sections of Belfast were as welcoming of British Army soldiers as Srinagar is of Indian security forces. And like the Kashmir insurgency for India, Northern Ireland had come to be the UK's Achilles heel in international forums.

The Northern Ireland peace initiative that began in the early 1990s and culminated in the Good Friday agreement of April 10, 1998, took patient bargaining, skilful diplomacy and confidence building at every step. A British declaration that they had "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland" provided the initial impetus in 1993, leading to negotiations between the governments of Britain and Ireland along with a US facilitator. The main complication came from deep rifts within Northern Irish opinion itself, since Catholic and Protestant militant groups (the "paramilitaries") saw each other as the true enemy.

Moving through this minefield took real political will. In London, there was always political consensus on Northern Ireland, across party lines. In 1997, newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair became convinced that the UK's loss of prestige in international forums was far more damaging than any dilution of Britain's control over Northern Ireland. He had an ally in the new Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, who in Dublin skillfully pushed through changes in Ireland's constitution. Ireland put aside its claim that "the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas," its constitution instead acknowledging that, pending the reunification with Northern Ireland, "the laws enacted by that (Northern Ireland) Parliament shall have the like area and extent of application as the laws of Republic of Ireland".

As will be the case in Kashmir, the single-greatest factor in the settlement was the ending of violence. The paramilitaries and their political wings crucially realised that, while violence could build up leverage and influence, a final settlement required the ending of violence. Back-channel discussions with Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, led to an IRA ceasefire in 1994. To avoid being politically marginalised, the loyalist (pro-Britain) groups had to respond with a ceasefire of their own.

Like the Irish paramilitaries before the ceasefire, Kashmiri militant groups are today excluded from the peace process by their reluctance to end violence, even conditionally. India's understandable insistence on a total ceasefire means that genuine Kashmiri groups like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen will have to take the difficult step of detaching themselves from any transnational jehad. If they do not""if an armed struggle allows violence to become an end in itself""the political aim could get lost forever.

In Northern Ireland today, there are only winners. Although the assembly meant to govern the territory today stands suspended thanks to political divisions, the lack of lawmaking hasn't led to lawlessness. Since the Good Friday agreement, the peace process has weaned itself away from politics; while the political process has broken down, the peace process is alive and well. Paramilitaries continue to disarm, day-to-day governance is conducted by a joint Ireland and UK-led North-South Ministerial Council, and the border between those two countries now exists only in name.

As Sinn Fein says, "The Good Friday Agreement did not give us what we wanted but it paved the way." Perhaps someday Northern Ireland may peacefully reunite with Ireland. The settlement closes no doors.

Lessons for Kashmir here?