Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good? (Part 8)

Kashmir is not the only bone of contention between the neighbours. The Siachen glacier and Sir Creek are other territorial disputes between India and Pakistan that have defied a solution over the years. While the former was captured during military conflict, the latter is a boundary dispute due to differences of perception. Thanks to strategic and geopolitical reasons, India is not keen on vacating the Siachen glacier, the world’s highest battlefield. Its continued occupation gives India a distinct military edge although it has been at a huge cost in terms of the money spent to hold it and the lives of our soldiers that are regularly lost due to the extreme weather conditions prevalent up there.

Sir Creek is a marshland that separates the Kutch region in Gujarat from Sindh in Pakistan. Demarcating a maritime boundary in the 60-mile long estuary in the desert of Kutch has been a problem. India has always asserted that the Sir Creek boundary lies in the middle of the channel whereas Pakistan claims that it is on the east bank. These mutually incompatible positions have made it difficult to find common ground and resolve the longstanding dispute. And, such issues are constant irritants in all official discourse and dialogue between the two countries.

Other than these territorial disputes, there are certain obstacles that emanate from the Pakistani establishment itself that make peace with India difficult to attain. The political setup of Pakistan is very different from that of India. Its democracy is a sham. Its political leaders are weak and generally occupy positions of power only so long as they keep the army in good humour. Every democratically elected leader who became too powerful for the army to handle has been ousted in a military coup. External affairs and the nuclear doctrine of Pakistan are shaped and driven exclusively by the Pakistani army. The elected representatives of the people of Pakistan have absolutely no say.

The military establishment of Pakistan is totally hostile to India. It has continued to perpetuate a self-serving myth that India has not accepted partition and continues to pose a threat to the very existence of Pakistan. This makes it extremely difficult for the political class to build bridges with India. This was best demonstrated during the Nawaz Sharif regime when Vajpayee undertook that famous bus journey to Lahore from Amritsar. Despite that successful tour to Pakistan and all the bonhomie that was witnessed between the two leaders, Kargil happened. And, let us not forget Musharraf was busy planning the Kargil invasion while our prime minister was still on Pakistani soil and being feted by his own prime minister.


* To be continued...