The high-stakes drama that played out on national television, with speculation over whether Pakistan’s National Security Advisor, Sartaj Aziz, would hold talks with his counterpart Ajit Doval in New Delhi, came to an end when Pakistan’s Foreign Office issued a statement on August 22 stating that the NSA-level talks would serve no purpose if conducted on the basis of conditions laid out by India.
The meandering press release suggested that “if the only purpose of NSA level talks is to discuss terrorism, then instead of improving the prospects for peace it will only intensify the blame game and further vitiate the atmosphere.” It then went on to quite bizarrely allege that many terror incidents blamed initially by India on Pakistan “turned out to be fake” and that India could further delay dialog with Pakistan by “concocting one or two incidents and keeping the LoC hot.”
Of course, Pakistan’s allegations of Indian pre-conditions are a fig leaf. The conditions, scope and format for the NSA talks, which were agreed to by both prime ministers in Ufa and read out by their respective foreign secretaries, quite clearly focuses only on terrorism. Discussions on terrorism were thus not a last-minute pre-condition laid out by India, but the entire purpose of the meeting.
There is no doubt that Pakistan’s military, which holds a virtual monopoly on India policy in Pakistan, was displeased with the spirit and text of the Ufa agreement. Indeed, Nawaz Sharif hadn’t even returned from Russia before Sartaj Aziz was being forced to offer explanations to enraged talking heads in Pakistan as to why Kashmir wasn’t mentioned in the text of the agreement. India was then subjected to a series of provocations – Gurdaspur, Udhampur, mortar and artillery fire along the Line of Control and International Border – to coax it into calling off NSA-level talks.
When India persisted, a last-ditch effort was made to goad New Delhi into calling off the talks by inviting members of the Hurriyat Conference to meet with Sartaj Aziz in New Delhi. When India parried the move by arresting members of the Hurriyat, Pakistan, now having seemingly exhausted all feasible options, called off the talks.
The NDA, whether rightly or wrongly, drew a red line last August on engagement between representatives of the Pakistani government and the Hurriyat in India. If India had not persisted with its commitment to such a red line, it would have invariably encouraged Pakistan’s leadership to explore other areas where India might be willing to compromise.
Commentary in both India and Pakistan has now shifted to the possibility of a meeting between either the NSAs or the two prime ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. In India, debates on Pakistan continue to be unduly focused on whether to talk or not talk to Pakistan. The hoary argument goes that India and Pakistan have no choice but to engage in “uninterrupted and uninterruptable” talks. Its counter is that India must not engage with its neighbor until Pakistan abjures terrorism. However, not talking to Pakistan is no guarantee against terrorism, just as talking to Pakistan will not ensure India of a terror-free environment.
For Pakistan, the use of terrorism is not merely an ephemeral tactic, but a strategic choice towards which it has directed considerable resources of the state over decades to augment. Pakistan has used sub-conventional warfare against India since Independence, but the concept was ingrained and institutionalized in the Pakistani army during the 1989 war in Afghanistan.
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Indeed, as the scholar TV Paul notes in his book The Warrior State: Pakistan and the Contemporary World, “Zia’s policies…made the use of terror to achieve strategic objectives acceptable to the army. The soldiers were exhorted to believe that the Quranic conception of war sanctioned terrorism as an acceptable weapon in the struggle for justice against materially superior enemies…The victory in Afghanistan against a mighty Soviet empire reinforced the belief that Islam sanctioned asymmetric warfare and hence it should be part of the national military strategy.”
Thus, talking or not talking to Pakistan is irrelevant as a policy planning tool on countering terrorism directed from across the border. Pakistan can only be pressured into reassessing its reliance on terrorism to further its national security objectives if India imposes costs that Pakistan finds unacceptable. The effective execution of such a strategy presupposes the existence of adequate capacity and commensurate political will in New Delhi.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is seeking to ramp up activity in Jammu and Kashmir and raise the profile of the dispute internationally. The Institute for Conflict Management notes that the number of civilian and security force fatalities in Jammu and Kashmir has been on an upward trajectory since 2013, after it reached lows in 2012 not seen since the beginning of the insurgency. The uptick in terrorist activity has also been accompanied by an increase in the number of ceasefire violations by Pakistan. Troublingly, the number of documented ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the IB between 2014 and 2015 has doubled (38 in 2014, as against 75 thus far in 2015).
The objective to internationalize the Kashmir dispute will more than likely lead Nawaz Sharif to use the UNGA as a platform to criticize India. We are told that Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, was summoned to Islamabad in late July for consultations about “raising at [the UNGA] the issue of Indian interference in Pakistan’s affairs.” It is not in India’s interests to engage in a verbal duel with Pakistan at the UNGA. But India’s prime ministers have historically devoted precious time to repudiate Pakistan’s accusations during their UNGA addresses.
Prime Minister Modi’s break from this unproductive tradition, despite Nawaz Sharif’s provocation last year, was welcome. It should also serve as a template for this year’s and future prime ministerial addresses at the UN.
Rohan Joshi is a Fellow at the Takshashila Institution, focusing on Indian foreign policy and strategic affairs. He is a regular contributor to Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review and The Diplomat.
He writes about India's engagement with the world on his blog, Bharat Kshetra, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.
He tweets as @filter_c