Though unofficial dialogues involving retired diplomats, former military officers, academics, journalists, and civil society have been a fixture of India-Pakistan relations since the 1990s in what are called various “Track Talks”, last week’s headlines that two such meetings took place – one at Colombo and the other at Bangkok – reflect, if at all, the poor health of India-Pakistan relations.
However, the more important question that has arisen again is: “Do such talks help?”
Predictably, the Indian government has rejected the importance some analysts have accorded to these talks. The Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri has responded to these reports by saying, “I have seen the reports. I am aware of them. Dozens of these kinds of events take place in dozens of places around the world on a whole variety of subjects. So there is nothing new, nothing special about these events.”
He was emphatic that New Delhi attaches “no cognizance” or value to these unofficial interactions, that the Government of India does not back, organize, or provide official representation to these channels, and that individuals from India attending these meetings do so on their own accord.
“Anybody from India who is participating in these events… speaks for themselves and they represent their own point of view. They do not in any way represent the view of the Government of India. We really take no notice of these events. They really don’t hold much value, as far as we are concerned”, he said.
Interestingly, the talks in Colombo and Bangkok were sponsored by international think tanks and universities. The one in Bangkok was convened and moderated by academics and facilitators from a Canada-based university that historically acts as a neutral platform for backchannel South Asian diplomacy. It has kept the names of the persons who attended the talks from India and Pakistan strictly under wraps due to what it said was “its sensitive nature”.
But it is understood that retired foreign service officers with extensive experience handling the Pakistan desk or regional affairs, retired officers from the Indian Armed Forces, and senior researchers and security analysts from premier Indian policy institutes did attend the meet.
The Colombo meeting was reportedly organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) South Asia Dialogue. Indian Participants here included former Army chief General MM Naravane, India Foundation president and former BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav, and former diplomat Ruchi Ghanashyam.
Pakistani participants were Senator and former Ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman, retired Major General Isfandiyar Ali Khan Pataudi, and Foreign Ministry Director General (South Asia and SAARC) Sajjad Haider Khan. Given that Sajjad Haider Khan is a serving official of Pakistan, analysts are terming the Combo meeting as Track-1.5.
It is worth noting that while Track-1 talks are government-to-government or official talks, Track-1.5 lies somewhere in between, with both officials and private individuals present.
For greater clarity, various levels of track talks may be summarized as follows:
Track 1 refers to diplomacy conducted by policy-makers themselves — at the political and bureaucratic levels.
Track II refers to attempts to avoid or resolve conflicts through non-governmental intermediaries, but most of them do have close links to government policymakers. After all, most of them are retired civil servants and military officials. In fact, it is said that, at least in the context of India and Pakistan, Track II dialogue is undertaken at the instance of Track I diplomats/officials to find a way out of difficult situations without a feeling of loss of face on either side, or negative consequences if the diplomacy fails, and without embarrassment if there is leakage to the media and the public.
Track III concerns conflict-avoidance or conflict-resolution efforts undertaken by prominent non-governmental personalities, with or without links to policy-makers, at their own initiative.
But as none of this had worked to ease India-Pakistan tensions, some media houses like India’s largest media house, The Times of India group, and Pakistan’s highly influential Jang media group had initiated in 2010 an Indo-Pak peace initiative called “ Aman Ki Asha” (destination peace), in the hope that “one day, words like Pakistan, India and Line of Control (LoC) would not seem impossible.
Their project talked of “starting with a series of cross-border cultural interactions, business seminars, music and literary festivals and citizens’ meets that will give the bonds of humanity a chance to survive outside the battlefields of politics, terrorism and fundamentalism…”
This was what analysts described as Track IV diplomacy, which involves creating a congenial atmosphere through people-to-people contacts to facilitate conflict avoidance or resolution. The objective here is not to find a solution, but to lessen or remove the poison and distrust in the atmosphere, in the hope that this would facilitate a search for an accord through any of the other three tracks.
However, the bitter reality is that this Track also failed to work and was therefore not sustained.
The only time a Track-talk was said to have progressed, somewhat meaningfully, was in the form of a backchannel on Kashmir between 2004 and 2007.
Satinder K. Lambah, a former High Commissioner to Pakistan, was appointed by then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Special Envoy, and he held a series of talks with Tariq Aziz, Secretary of Pakistan’s National Security Council and close aide to then President Pervez Musharraf, in hotel rooms in Bangkok, Dubai and London.
Apparently, they had prepared a “non paper” (it contained no names or signatures) in 2007 that had envisaged, among others, “agreements” on converting the LoC to a normal border (the rationale was that since borders cannot be redrawn, it can be made “irrelevant” between the two parts of Kashmir); allowing people on both sides of the LoC to move move freely and trade without tariffs and non-tariff barriers; a formula of “self-governance for the sub-regions of Kashmir”; “gradual withdrawal of troops from the Kashmir region by both sides provided that violence declined”; and a “joint body of local Kashmiri leaders, Indians and Pakistanis” that would oversee issues affecting people on both sides of the LoC.
These agreements were supposed to be signed formally at the level of the two governments, but before that could happen, in 2007, Musharraf ran into trouble domestically and was subsequently ousted from power (2008). Whatever little chances these still had disappeared with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008.
Of course, a terror attack in India with the connivance of the Pakistani establishment killing peace talks is nothing new in the troubled history of the two nations, but whether Lamba- Aziz talks can fall under s Track-II is debatable, given the fact that the two were chosen representatives of Prime Minister Singh and President Musharraf respectively.
In a way, all Track-II talks have limitations because of their very composition, which is mostly made up of retired officials, whether civilian or military. They hardly say anything different from what their respective governments say. They are said to remain highly nationalist in their presentations, and their posturing often mirrors Track I deadlock.
It is all the more so with Pakistani participants, almost all of whose names and talking points are reportedly cleared by the Pakistan Army bosses at GHQ Rawalpindi.
It is worth remembering the adage that Pakistan is essentially an “Army with a country”. It is the army that decides Pakistan’s policy towards India. There are three “lakshman rekhas” (limiting lines) that the army has drawn for the civilian prime ministers and presidents.
One, they would not interfere in any manner with the organizational and administrative work of the Armed Forces or, for that matter, do anything that adversely affects the image of the army.
Second, they would abide by the army chief’s advice on foreign and defense policy, particularly when dealing with India, China, and the United States.
Third, they would not interfere with the army-controlled nuclear weaponization and missile programs.
Against this background, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir’s frequent employment of fierce anti-India rhetoric, often using the Two-Nation theory to emphasize religious divisions, should not cause any surprise.
If anything, in “Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State”, edited by Dr Maleeha Lodhi, a leading Pakistani academician who was once her country’s ambassador to the US, it has been made pretty clear that Pakistani nationalism is India-centric.
In other words, as long as an external adversary like India is frequently used by Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex to foster internal unity among ethnically diverse provinces, it is highly unlikely that any Track-level talks can deliver peace.
Though Track-dialogues aim at the noble goals of crisis management to avoid miscalculation, testing ideas that would be politically costly at Track I, and importantly, keeping human networks alive, the sad reality is that they are not, and cannot be, a substitute for official diplomacy.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
- CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
