By diplomacy, not revenge

Skirmishes at the India-Pakistan Line of Control (LoC) in the Mendhar sector in Jammu have spilled blood and precipitated a crisis that could snowball into a destructive conflict unless it’s resolved through skilful diplomacy. Both India and Pakistan will pay an exorbitant price if they don’t decisively reject calls for avenging what’s regarded as one side’s humiliation by the other and quickly end the shooting war.

This is a moment for sobriety, leadership and statesmanship, not frenzied responses and beating of war drums. Defusing tensions should not be left to the military, but must be driven by the civilian leadership.

The border clashes couldn’t have come at a worse time. India and Pakistan have recently made significant progress in engaging each other on issues such as the Siachen glacier and Sir Creek, improving trade and economic relations, developing energy-sector cooperation, and greatly liberalising visa regimes, including a five-city visa-on-arrival for senior citizens at Wagah.

Civil society has breathed energy into the dialogue process. Sports and cultural exchanges – including joint India-Pakistan music performances – and media interactions have created confidence in the potential for peaceful, mutually enriching co-existence. Pakistan’s civilian government is about to complete its full term, for the first time ever. Until last fortnight, the reconciliation prospect looked hopeful.

These positive changes came about because of a shift of stance towards India in Pakistan’s ‘deep state’, or the army, as shown by its approval of the most-favoured nation trade status to India. This couldn’t have been easy. Similarly, Pakistan has moved away from its insistence on resolving the ‘central’ issue of Kashmir first, to a gradualist approach of settling other disputes.

No less important is Army Chief Parvez Ashfaq Kayani’s recent acknowledgment that the greatest threat to Pakistan’s security comes not from India, but internally. jihadi militancy has emboldened the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to mount audacious attacks on the Pakistani military, feed an insurgency in Balochistan led by anti-Shia Sunni extremists, spread unrest elsewhere, and foment organised crime, accelerating Pakistan’s economic downturn.

A certain reordering of Pakistan’s civilian-military balance seems under way: the presence of a strong judiciary and media discourages direct military intervention despite rampant misgovernance and corruption. Tension escalation at the LoC will disrupt healthy democratisation and further improvement in relations with India.

As regards the LoC clashes, it’s necessary to sift facts and credible reports from rhetoric, itself inflamed by understandable public outrage in India at the reported beheading of an Indian soldier. Trouble started brewing around Charonda village near Uri on September 11, when a 70-year-old grandmother crossed over to Azad Kashmir, setting off alarm bells at the 11 infantry brigade headquarters.

To counter this ‘vulnerability’, reports The Hindu (Jan 10), an Indian army unit started building observation bunkers along the LoC. The India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement of 2003 bars such construction, but Indian commanders argued that the bunkers face out towards Charonda and pose no threat to Pakistan, and refused to stop the work.

As construction continued, Pakistani troops started shelling across the LoC, killing no soldiers, but three villagers. Indian troops fired in retaliation. Such tit-for-tat exchanges persisted for weeks, with no remedial action by the Indian or Pakistan Army’s top brass or the defence and foreign ministries.

On January 6, an Indian officer launched aggressive action against Pakistani positions, apparently without top-level permission, in which a Pakistani soldier was killed. It’s not clear if Indian troops crossed the LoC, as Pakistan alleges. The point is such hostile exchanges are fairly (and unfortunately) ‘routine’. This one spun out of control.

Two days later, Pakistani troops killed two Indian soldiers and reportedly beheaded one and mutilated the body of the other. In retaliation, Indian troops killed another Pakistani soldier. India’s electronic media went into overdrive demanding a ‘fitting reply’ to Pakistan.

Indian and Pakistani military leaders made belligerent statements. Indian Air Force chief NAK Browne threatened “to look for some other options” to secure Pakistan’s compliance with the ceasefire. Army Chief Bikram Singh asserted India’s right to retaliate aggressively. Defence Minister AK Antony described Pakistan’s conduct as a ‘turning point’. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has since cautioned against ‘revenge’. There was a flag meeting between local commanders too.

However, there has been no focused India-Pakistan diplomatic engagement. An early diplomatic initiative could have tried to convince Pakistan that an observation bunker near Charonda wasn’t offensive; Pakistan could also build one on its side facing internally; yet, India wouldn’t act unilaterally.

Had this failed, Indian and Pakistani diplomats could have worked out a non-military way of reducing ‘vulnerability’ while preventing escalation and maintaining the ceasefire’s sanctity. Indian civilian leaders should have reasserted their authority over the military, and told it clearly that the ceasefire is an essential precondition of India’s security.

Regrettably, India’s civilian leadership has increasingly ceded policy-making ground and allowed military commanders to speak out of turn on issues like Siachen and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. This trend must be reversed. The defence ministry must not function autonomously, but be brought under the control of the cabinet and the prime minister’s office, along with security/intelligence agencies.

It’s in India’s own interest that peace and tranquillity are maintained at the LoC. The decade-old ceasefire agreement has helped India avert external mediation and concentrate on improving bilateral relations with Pakistan.

India and Pakistan haven’t displayed maturity in dealing with ceasefire violations. Scores of these occur routinely. India claims there were 117 last year and 61 in 2011. The system of weekly ‘hot-line’ calls between the two directors general of military operations hasn’t worked. Perhaps we need higher-level engagement between our diplomatic, security and intelligence establishments. A ceasefire enforcement review is urgently called for. As are steps to prevent conflict escalation following even minor skirmishes.

Even more unacceptable is routine tit-for-tat shelling which treats soldiers as if their life had no value. And absolutely impermissible and illegal under the Geneva Conventions are torture, mutilation and beheading of soldiers’ bodies, which reportedly happened not just in 1999, but also last year.

However just the cause of a war, it must be conducted in a just manner, whatever the provocation. Cruel, inhuman and degrading methods are unacceptable in just war.

Indian and Pakistani militaries must be compelled to behave in a responsible, restrained and civilised fashion across what’s admittedly a difficult, inhospitable, rough terrain border with a huge troop concentration. There’s no place here for vengeance-driven responses which seek to inflict maximal pain upon adversaries. The guns must fall silent. Or else, small clashes could escalate into major conflicts, as happened at Kargil, when both adversaries recklessly brandished their nuclear swords.

Achieving such restraint isn’t impossible. The US and the USSR were mortal Cold War enemies, armed to the teeth. Yet, despite systemic hostility and countless provocations, they never exchanged a single shot, leave alone beat up and expel each other’s diplomats or torture soldiers. Put simply, India and Pakistan have to quit the habit of regarding their ‘hot-cold war’ as normal and inevitable, and move towards completely demilitarising their borders.

Transition from a climate of suspicion and hostility to a culture of peaceful conflict resolution is a great challenge not just for our militaries, but our diplomats, policy-shapers and ordinary citizens as well. On that depends our survival.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in