Af-Pak expert pessimistic about Indo-Pak relations improving

The political realities in India and Pakistan will not help improve relations between the two countries in near future, according to Michael Kugelman, an expert on Afghanistan-Pakistan affairs.
"I am very sceptical about any possibility of the India-Pakistan relation becoming a happy one anytime soon," Kugelman, who is the South Asia Associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, said today.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a discussion on US-India Relation post-2014 and Possible Trajectories for India-Pakistan Relations organised by the Global India Foundation at the Jadavpur University.
"I think the political realities of the two countries make it highly unlikely that the two will reconcile. In Pakistan, you have a situation where the military is in control of the policies on India and it is not interested in reconciliation," Kugelman said.

"In India you have a government that is not opposed to engaging with Pakistan, but it is more assertive and not willing to sit quietly when there are provocations from Pakistan. There have been provocations from Pakistan and there will be more," he stated.
According to him as long as the Pakistani defence establishment has ties with militant groups, India-Pakistan relation can never be functional.
"It's not only the governments, but there are also non-state actors... Militant groups that want to harm India and many of them have ties with Pakistani security establishment," he observed.
"So long as Pakistani security establishment does not severe ties with those groups, I don't think the Indo-Pak relation can ever be functional or be a successful one," he said.