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A realistic shift

Let us be honest. Kashmir is a tripartite problem. Bilateralism has failed to resolve it in the past five decades. There is no foreseeable possibility of this narrow approach succeeding in at least the next half a century. Has this historical reality dawned on the Indian government? Yes, if one were to go behind the deceptive appearances which have perhaps been the only constant feature of the festering Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

On the Pakistan side also there are definite signs of flexibility. The key element being the stress on the point that Kashmir was "not a territorial dispute" and that any solution acceptable to Kashmiris should be acceptable to Pakistan as well. This is a major departure from obstinate adherence to the solution only in accordance with the UN resolutions and the position that Pakistan is 'incomplete' without Kashmir.

The ground is being prepared, in Srinagar, New Delhi and Islamabad (this time Muzaffarabad too), to set the ball rolling, notwithstanding the lurking feeling that this drill is like skating on thin ice. That there is an invisible hand pushing the process at all the three ends, in apparently synchronous motion, is beyond any doubt. No prizes for guessing whose hand it is.

For the first time, the decade-long proxy war in Kashmir is visibly abating. The mood for peace in the valley is more palpable than ever before. Its echo is evident in the qualitatively changed phraseology of the compulsive verbal exchanges across the Line of Control. Even so, Kashmir continues to be a big minefield for any kind of peace initiative.

The deadly mix of political extremism flowing out of New Delhi's encounter with Kashmiri sub-nationalism and religious fanaticism spilling over all the way from across the Khyber pass, has sufficiently fouled the atmosphere in Kashmir, making the ground too hard for any immediate worthwhile breakthrough.

In fact, the atmosphere is so vitiated that the peacemakers seem to be mortally afraid of peace itself. Everyone of them betrays the fear whenever it comes to making an effort to get across to someone at the other end to seek a peaceful resolution. This dreadful feeling is not confined between one party (to the Kashmir dispute) and the other. It is present among all of them.

The game of one-upmanship within the Hurriyat Conference, the cat and mouse game going on between Farooq Abdullah and the NDA government over the so-called 'dialogue' issue, the Vajpayee versus Advani over New Delhi's handling of Kashmir and the cacophony in the military-ruled Pakistan vis-a-vis General Pervez Musharraf's olive branch towards India are telltale signs of the dread of peace all along the fault line.

If still these main players feel compelled to play ball, the obvious conclusion is that some hidden hand is definitely at work. However, for the people of Kashmir, ironically, who have all but forgotten their most favourite slogan of the recent past "Yeh mulk hamara hai, iska faisla hum karengay" (this is our country and we'll decide its future), even these seemingly forced moves hold a hope that there might after all be light at the end of a decade-long dark tunnel.

Perhaps sensing this mood, New Delhi impressed upon a reluctant Farooq Abdullah to fall in line. Only a few months back Farooq had thundered on the floor of the state assembly: "I will be the first to rise in revolt if they (New Delhi) talk to them (militants)." Obviously, the central government could not have forgotten so soon Farooq's unhelpful attitude in New Delhi's failed attempt last July to strike a deal directly with the Hizbul-Mujahideen. This time Farooq's neck is right in there even though his heart isn't.

The Hurriyat conglomerate, likewise, suffers from the lurking fear of losing its credibility if it sticks to its obstructionist line which it adopted to undermine the cease-fire accord between the Hizb and the Centre. Besides, the ideological-cum-personal differences in the Hurriyat camp are beginning to show up under the fallout of Abdul Gani Lone's high profile Pakistan visit for the wedding of his second son Sajjad.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who was responsible for denying the Hurriyat chairmanship to Lone in last years's organisational election, is again up in arms against the latter. Geelani is determined to make sure that the Hurriyat Conference does not legitimise Lone's 'private' venture. Already, one of the (defunct) militant organisations, Alburq, which used to be affiliated with Lone's Peoples Conference, has been let loose. The outfit recently disowned him and charged him for the betrayal of the movement.

In Delhi, there are definite signs of change of mind vis-a-vis Kashmir. Pakistan's proxy war is sought to be matched with proxy diplomacy. Just as Pakistan deceptively claims to be only giving "moral and political support" to militants pouring into Kashmir from across the LoC with arms ammunition and currency, India claims to be committed to keeping away Pakistan from its Ramzan initiative in Kashmir.

New Delhi would have us believe that it is interested in confining its current peace initiative to 'our own brethren in Kashmir' even as L K Advani travels all the way to the Wagah border to tell Pakistan that the initiative was 'addressed' to them and that they were expected to respond positively. Respond they did, and positively too, by announcing the enforcement of 'maximum restraint' on their side of the LoC. If this is not tripartite diplomacy by proxy, what else could it be?

This single major point of difference marks a subtle shift from the Indian government's earlier tactical line. Pakistan was almost declared and treated to be a non-entity till as recently as the Hizbul Mujahideen's unilateral cease-fire offer to New Delhi on July 24, 2000 which fell through for this very reason. Interestingly, there is yet another triangular dimension to it. The Tashkent Accord of 1966 and the Simla Accord of 1972 had virtually locked out Kashmiris as a party to the dispute. One of its consequences was to limit the possible options to just two -- India and Pakistan.

This time around, the third option of the Independence of Kashmir is very much in the air, more loudly in Muzaffarabad and Islamabad than in Delhi. These three-dimensional projections protruding from behind the bilateral screen mark the contours of proxy diplomacy unleashed by India to contain Pakistan's proxy war to which even the Army chief General S Padmanabhan had sought a political solution, provoking Farooq Abdullah's open annoyance. But New Delhi could not afford to ignore the hint and rightly chose to act upon it. The Centre's Ramzan peace initiative, followed by reciprocal announcements from the other side of the LoC is the outcome.

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