India-Pakistan: Ties Finally Looking Up?         http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/12/09/india-pakistan-ties-finally-looking-up/                                                                       The joint statement of the National Security Advisers (NSA) of India and Pakistan at the end of their secret meeting in Bangkok on 6 December has buoyed expectations. Not only does it closely precede the visit of India’s foreign minister to Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan this week, but it also heralds the visit of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Islamabad for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit.

The initiative was result of the short informal meeting between the two prime ministers at the climate change summit in Paris. It retrieves the ground lost since the last minute cancellation of the NSA meeting in August over a disagreement on whether the agenda should include Kashmir or be restricted to terrorism. Pakistan wanted to undo what had been agreed at the meeting in Ufa, Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) between the two prime ministers reflected in the joint statement of the two foreign secretaries that left out mention of Kashmir. That both terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) were discussed at Bangkok shows the two are beyond this particular hurdle.

The canceled meeting of August was in wake of two terror attacks that were taken in India as the Pakistani army’s manner of registering its disapproval of its government’s agreement to an agenda without Kashmir. Pakistan soon thereafter replaced its national security adviser with a former military man. This switch incentivized India in that it could now consider dealing with a credible interlocutor.

The secret meeting also shows a shift in India’s strategy. The early promise of the Modi government of better India-Pakistan ties, evidenced by Modi’s invite to Nawaz Sharif to attend his swearing in in May 2014, was dissipated in the cancellation of foreign secretary talks soon thereafter in August of the same year.

India kept up the pressure with partial activation of the Line of Control by fire assaults by India, seemingly in response to spurt in infiltration bids from across. These duels spread to the international border sector also. This year has seen India exercise elements of all three of its geographic field armies facing Pakistan, including two strike corps. There were also insinuations in Pakistani media of covert Indian assistance to dissident militant groups in Pakistan.

This phase of strategy can now be seen to be shoring up of its fences by the new Indian government before it ventured to mend these. The idea appears to have been to go in for talks from a position of strength. For its part, Pakistan has gained confidence in setting back, through military and ranger operations in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and in Karachi,  elements it alleges have had Indian intelligence backing and gains the Taliban, allegedly with its backing, have made in Afghanistan.

The very fact that the talks have taken place in secret and outside the region suggests that even a conservative-realist government in Delhi needs to tread pragmatically. While the talks have been a step ahead, it is only the first. The vision of the two prime ministers for a ‘peaceful, stable, and prosperous South Asia’ requires many more steps to follow.

What should these steps be?

The first steps would necessarily be on atmospherics. The visits by the foreign minister and prime minister in quick succession can revise the tone of the relationship. Since the Pakistan army appears to be on board this time, India has the assurance that there would not be another Kargil-on-the-make as was the case last time when the last BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee went to Lahore to fix the relationship in 1999.

A resumption of cricketing ties, awaiting a green light from India’s foreign ministry, can now be expected. The two teams have been poised lately to play a short one-day series, but in Sri Lanka.However, on atmospherics, the more important front is to manage the internal perceptions of the ‘Other’ state.

In Pakistan, the extremist leader Hafeez Sayeed has already chipped in with his criticism. In India, the Congress opposition, while overall supportive of improved ties, has registered its reservation on the unpredictability in the government’s Pakistan policy.

More significant in India are the voices in the government’s own camp that require managing. Lately, there have been several statements by right wing politicians dragging Pakistan into their point-scoring against India’s largest minority, its Muslims. This has prompted the ongoing ‘intolerance’ debate in India.

From the ‘intolerance’ debate, the prospects of this do not appear bright since Modi has chosen not to rein in the cultural nationalists, his support base. It is possible he might choose to keep silent, since it would also enable him an alibi against moving further than he might like on repairing fences with Pakistan.

Among the final steps figures a return to the start point made available by the back channel in the first tenure of the predecessor government of Manmohan Singh. The memoirs of Pakistan’s foreign minister in the period, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, reveal the possibilities. However, ‘resolution’ along those lines, may not be the destination either Modi or his National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, have in mind. As hardliners, they may believe that India does not need to make any concessions to buy peace, preferring Pakistan fall in line overawed by India’s rise.

In the interim, both governments would likely consolidate the beginning made. At a minimum, India would be looking to keep a mega-terror attack from diverting its economic trajectory into a conflict with nuclear portents. Pakistan for its part would like  India to ease up on intelligence, diplomatic, and military pressure. That the two foreign secretaries were also present at Bangkok suggests a broader agenda than merely security.

Therefore, it is clear that Modi’s next, if yet-to-be-announced, foreign stop Islamabad would likely be his most important. It remains to be seen if, as has been his wont in using his numerous foreign visits for positioning India favorably, he is able to finesse Pakistan.

India-Pakistan: With NSA Talks Aborted, What Next?

http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/india-pakistan-with-nsa-talks-aborted-what-next/

Referring to a “whole history of unproductive dialogues with Pakistan,” Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary, reflects negatively on whether a “more resolute government as that of Modi (should) get into the rut of sterile dialogues with Pakistan.” Sibal need not worry. Talks between the two countries’ respective national security advisers were aborted just a day prior to their scheduled start.

The talks were first mooted in the joint press statement of the two foreign secretaries at the Ufa meeting of the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers. The two NSAs were to meet in Delhi, potentially clearing the way for the Indian prime minister to travel to Pakistan for the SAARC summit next year.

Skeptical reports in the run-up had hinted that the Pakistan army was bearing down on Nawaz Sharif, pressuring him to halt the meeting. This gave a window for Indian skeptics to snipe at the idea. This positioning prior to the talks had more or less ensured that they would have been, at best, as the Pakistani NSA Sartaj Aziz put it, “ice-breaking.”

That the naysayers on both sides managed to scuttle the talks underscores their hold over their respective security establishments. This mirroring is unlikely to go away any time soon.

This answers the question “Why were the talks called off?” The more important question remains: “What next?” It is here that Kanwal Sibal’s policy recommendation comes to fore.

Sibal, miffed by the two attacks by Pakistani proxies – one in Indian Punjab bordering Jammu and Kashmir and the other within Jammu and Kashmir itself – in the run-up to the talks, argues that India should first develop “levers to modulate Pakistan’s conduct” and “then agree to a dialogue should Pakistan seek it.”

With the talks called off, this is the only option India is left with. For that reason, it bears scrutiny.

The problem with Kanwal’s thesis – and he speaks for India’s Pakistan skeptics – is that it is without an end date or exit strategy.

Even had the exploratory talks at NSA level gone on to reopen the dialogue, India would have developed the levers to modulate Pakistan’s conduct. This would have been done both as a measure to keep up the pressure on Pakistan to stick to the table, as well as an insurance should the talks have failed to moderate Pakistan.

These levers are military, intelligence and diplomatic.

Militarily, India has been at it, ramping up its defense budget. A statistic from Modi’s first year in office was that India fast tracked 40 defense projects worth over Rs. 1 trillion ($15.1 billion), intended in part to increase the gap in conventional armaments with Pakistan’s army.

Over the past year, it has given the army liberty to give a “befitting reply” to provocations along the Line of Control and International Border. Pakistan has over the last month made two references to the firing along what it considers the “working border” to the UNMOGIP, the UN mission overseeing the ceasefire since 1949. Both countries have used embassy channels to record their displeasure at the other side’s aggressive firing.

On the intelligence front, India’s defense minister has hinted at proactive intelligence operations in Pakistan. Understandably, the NSA subsequently watered down the defense minister’s remarks and India has denied any proxy action. However, a rare complaint at the Pakistani corps commanders’ conference suggests otherwise – although proof is obviously hard to come by. In preparing for the NSA talks, Pakistan had compiled a dossier with its complaints of Indian “interference.”

Diplomatically, the visits of Obama and Jiang Zemin to New Delhi, though intended by India to suitably isolate Pakistan over the latter’s support for terrorism, can only have limited effect. Pakistan’s strategic location buttresses its indispensability to the eventual outcome in Afghanistan. Pakistan is looking to play the Russian card if necessary.

The call in India will be more of the same and for longer. But this is not without underside.

Militarily, the “two front” problem has already kicked in, with reports of India diluting its Mountain Strike Corps due to lack of finances.

Doctrinally, there is dissonance. While at the conventional level India intends to be on the offensive, its nuclear doctrine has not been able to come to terms with the problem posed by Pakistani nuclear first use in the form of tactical nuclear weapons. The devastating response that the current nuclear doctrine posits can hardly be risked in the face of Pakistan’s vertical proliferation of nuclear warhead numbers into the three digits.

On the subconventional front, Jammu and Kashmir, which has been relatively stable for more than a decade, could slide back into turmoil, offering a fertile ground for penetration of more radical ideologies, such as those of the ISIS. Indian responses and Pakistani reactions would then flirt with the nuclear threshold. Under the circumstances, it would not do to up the military ante.

The intelligence game of using proxies has an unremarked downside, in its impact on the domestic politics of both countries. Using Pakistani extremists against their own state – as Pakistan accuses India of doing – can only strengthen their hand.

The more significant effect is in India’s domestic politics. India’s Muslim minority will come under pressure as a potential conduit through which Pakistan could be expected to strike back. India’s majoritarian extremists, arguably already rampant, will use the canard of a Muslim fifth column to further raise their profile.

Diplomatically, it would be difficult for India to sell a zero-tolerance for terrorism strategy with India letting off “saffron terrorists,” even as it takes Pakistan to the UN sanctions committee. India’s inability to isolate Pakistan will make it more reliant on its military and intelligence cards, accentuating the risks.

Finally, eventually, as Sibal says, these levers will need to be exercised to bring Pakistan round. This will down the line be at an even higher level of risk and cost. Indeed, the NSAs would then have much to discuss but no forum in which to do so, the first ever NSA talks having been aborted at their very inception

AfPak: Talks as a way out

by Ali Ahmed

December 9, 2010

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/12/09/afpak-talks-as-a-way-out/

That Pakistan is ‘hedging’ is now official. It has been resisting both pressures and incentives to ‘do more’ in the war on terror. Observers with empathy realize it has little choice. The Pakistan Army cannot clean up the sanctuary the Taliban have in Pakistan without risking stability of the state. Therefore, the demand of the Pakistanis has been toned down. They are no longer required to go after the Taliban but only to ‘cut off’ support.

The logic is that without Pakistani support the Taliban would whither away to levels at which the ANSF, built into a credible force over time, would be in control. With the surge at its culmination point, the ISAF is busying itself with eliminating the tactical level Taliban leadership. The CIA is doing the same with higher leadership on the Pakistan side through drone attacks. The ISAF would hand over areas to the ANSF progressively beginning next January. By 2014 the process of handing over is expected to be complete. The whittled down Taliban would then be countered where necessary with support of US-NATO troops, staying on longer for the purpose.

The idea is apparently workable. It would enable the US and the NATO to disengage and draw down. It draws on the Iraq model. It is predicated on the Pakistanis ending support to the Taliban and the ANSF raising its standards to levels enough to take on the prospective continuance of the Taliban in a lowered intensity of insurgency. What are the prospects out to 2014?

Pakistan has had the Kerry-Lugar bill cater for long term civilian programs. The military is to separately have another $2 billion injection. This is to ensure compliance. Since the revised demands do not require the military to ‘take on’ the Taliban, the Army could prove responsive. Unable to risk a civil war along ethnic or ideological lines, by cleaning up the Taliban from its side of the border, it would instead prefer a less demanding role.

The assumption appears to be that the Taliban are a product of Pakistani state support. They have instead been autonomous players and would have catered for such turning off of support. Their sources of finances are drugs, charities from the Arab world and opponents of regimes there. Pakistani action to cut them off from such sources and limit their autonomy, such as by interdicting them on the border, can only be expected to draw violence. This would place Pakistan once again later in an impossible situation of taking them on or backing off. The demands on Pakistan that currently appear reasonable – of stopping support – can only increase when such stoppage is seen to be producing little result.

Training the ANSF for levels of operations of low-grade counter insurgency is possible. The training is underway through an extensive program including combat unit’s mentoring of Afghan units. Yet, it would appear an ambitious program.

Turning out a functioning Army fit for counter insurgency is optimistic in the tight time frame. The experience of the Rashtriya Rifles is an example from India in which it took about half-a-decade for the force to really become effective and potent against lower levels of insurgency obtaining in Kashmir. The argument for training support to the ANSF ignores the language barrier that first needs to be overcome. And the fact that counter insurgents, operating as part of organized forces, require higher levels of training than insurgent fighters, relying on their innate instincts, martial culture and local resources.

Assuming, nevertheless, that is would succeed, what does this imply for Afghanistan and the region? Firstly, the insurgency would continue. Neither would the Taliban be a push over, nor the ANSF capable. While it may permit the foreign forces to leave, being an ‘Afghan on Afghan’ strategy in the best tradition of ‘divide and rule’, it would be no solution for the Afghan people. Secondly, before long it can be expected that the regional powers would be supporting their proxies, vitiating regional security. Thirdly, more should be expected by way of ‘solution’ for the resources expended in by others and costs incurred by Afghan people.

What should the West, likely to get tired of killing prior to the Taliban tired of being killed, do? Obama’s AfPak review is due in December, the third of his tenure. Being the political prong, it is a legitimate prong of strategy, as yet untried with any level of conviction. With the US weight behind it, its desultory course so far can be changed decisively. The military prong is beyond the culminating point. He has little alternative but to progress the peace prong of strategy by appointing a special interlocutor or redrafting Richard Holbrooke’s terms of reference.

The questions that need answer are: Can the Taliban be moderated by engagement? What extent is their extremism a product of the war? How much is their image a result of information war? To what extent would they retain links to the Al Qaeda? How accommodative will they be of their opponents? Answers to these reflexively negate the notion of talks. However, talks can prove a game-changer. Taliban can reconstruct itself as a strategic actor as the talks progress. Afghans deserve that the talks option be chanced.