US should assist India-Pakistan peace

One recent and startlingly prescient position paper from this nongovernment sector was called "New Priorities in South Asia: US Policy Towards India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan." It came out late last year, the product of two years' work sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society in New York.

"Given the dangers inherent in the festering India-Pakistan rivalry, the United States should be more active in trying to help the two nuclear-armed enemies manage their differences, including the Kashmir dispute," the report suggested. "In addition, and in the light of the nuclear proliferation risks in South Asia, the executive branch should be searching for ways to integrate nuclear India and Pakistan within the global nonproliferation framework. Meanwhile, it should be working to ensure tighter controls against leakage of sensitive nuclear technology and material."

What a difference a few months can make. When the report came out, the extent to which nuclear technology and material were leaking out of Pakistan was not fully known. It is now clear that the Bush administration's worst nightmares about Iraq -- that weapons of mass destruction could fall into the wrong hands -- was actually taking place in Pakistan.

But then again, what a difference a couple of years can make. Only recently India and Pakistan seemed on the brink of a war that could easily have turned nuclear. Now the two countries are beginning talks about talks that will lead to serious discussions about all the problems that divide the subcontinental neighbors, including the disputed province of Kashmir, which has precipitated two out of their three wars.

Indian and Pakistani leaders have struggled in the past to resolve their enmity, which goes back to the British partition and the birth of the two independent states in 1947. Meetings took place at Tashkent, at Simla, at Agra and Lahore, but every time the two antagonists slipped back into the old molds of hostility. The recent meeting of Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and India's Atal Behari Vajpayee in Islamabad, however, broke new ground.

"This time it is different," Musharraf said at the World Economic Summit in Davos last month. In all the previous meetings there was one thing lacking: serious discussion of Kashmir. It is different because we have reached an agreement that Kashmir has to be addressed, that there will be a dialogue on all issues including Kashmir, and that Pakistan is a party to the dispute."

Previously, India's position has basically been that the Line of Control that separates Indian and Pakistani controlled Kashmir should be the final border, and what happens on the Indian side is nobody's business but India's. Pakistan has said that India must conform to United Nations demands for a plebiscite, by which Pakistan hoped that the predominantly Muslim population of the province would vote to join Pakistan.

In the meantime a popular uprising against India within the provinces, abetted by infiltrators coming from Pakistan, has turned the province into a battleground and a human rights disaster. Both sides are beginning to see that the confrontation is serving no one's interests.

Vajpayee wants to go down in history as the man who brought peace with Pakistan. He is ahead of his reluctant bureaucracy in recognizing Pakistan's interests. However, an increasing number of Indians feel that their country is on the verge of great power status, held back by the unending confrontation with Pakistan.

Musharraf, faced with so many difficulties, including his own security, realizes that the militants whom Pakistan sent into the Kashmir are ultimately a danger to Pakistan and that the confrontation with India is not only a drain on his country's resources but a bar to the development of his country and the region. He is willing to drop Pakistan's insistence upon a referendum, but, as he told potential investors at Davos, "I would be a most foolish fellow to say forget about Kashmir, let's move forward with economic development."

Kashmir is the key to India and Pakistan realizing their potential, and America's good relations with both give it a role in facilitating a reasonable settlement that would benefit the region and the world. But, as the "New Priorities" report says: "US policy in recent years over Kashmir has been one of crisis management. Washington leaps into action whenever the alarm bell rings to signal a possible India-Pakistan fire. . . . Notwithstanding other demands on Washington's attention . . . this approach is inadequate given the dangers inherent in India-Pakistan hostility."

Washington has never been good at handling more than one crisis at a time, but the problems of Iraq should not obscure the enormous stakes the West has in the success of the Musharraf-Vajpayee initiatives.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.