Kargil And Indo- PAK RELATIONS: Some Lessons
Saumitra Mohan
India might be tempted to flaunt its diplomatic success over Kargil and tom-tom the fact that it has isolated Pakistan in the international community. But Kargil, to say the least, has exposed many weaknesses in our system.

If Pakistan, often called a 'failed state', can carry out such aggression so meticulously, there must be some thing seriously flawed with our whole system which has never showed 'failed state' symptoms and even then finds itself hamstrung when it comes to protecting our national interests.

Kargil has underscored the need to do certain things urgently. Even though Pakistan has vacated Indian territory following the Clinton-Nawaz summit, India should not lower its guard. It should capitalize on the favourable international mood and try to highlight how Pakistan as a state has posed a threat to international peace and emphasise the need of the international society to deal effectively with the problem state that Islamabad has become.

These efforts have to succeed if Pakistan is to realize the costs of the brinkmanship it indulges in off and on. Also, India should do its best to make international opinion veer round to its view on Kashmir. Despite the fact that there exists a parliamentary resolution asking for re-occupation and reintegration of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK), India should get the world to tighten the screws on Islamabad to convert the Line of Control (LoC) into a permanent international border between India and Pakistan.

This is the only viable solution to the Indo-Pak problem. Even otherwise, the people inhabiting PoK are not of Kashmiri stock and are ethnically more close to people living in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani Punjab.

Besides, India should ratchet up her efforts to bring into the mainstream the people of Kashmir by devising a suitable package. Such a package may include undoctored political autonomy, more financial assistance and respect for human rights and the socio-cultural identity of the Kashmiris. This could evolve into a model of cooperative federalism which could later be replicated in other parts of the country as well as in the ongoing decentralization scheme.

While we have eventually succeeded in vacating the aggression, India should do something urgently to beef up its security and intelligence mechanism, revise and reorient its foreign policy, pro-activise its diplomacy and try to speak in one voice on issues of national interest.

Also, India should not let the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) get derailed and go ahead with its stated objectives with other countries of South Asia. Perfidy, backstabbing, breach of trust and many other such expressions have been employed to describe the Pakistani intrusions in Kargil. But the fact remains that Kargil caught us napping.

As the entire country led by A.B. Vajpayee was raising a toast to the success of the bus to Lahore and the consequent Lahore Declaration, Pakistan was engaged in dispatching its troops to the icy heights of Kargil. Though India has remonstrated against this breach of trust, the flare-up in Kargil exposed in sharp relief the umpteen chinks in our defence armour.

And, it is not the first time that we have been caught unawares. Such intrusions have taken place on numerous occasions in the past as well, like those in 1965 in the Rann of Kutch and in the Sumdorochung Valley in 1983. But, then when you fail to learn from history, history repeats itself and this time it did so in Kargil.

It is immaterial whether the Kargil misadventure by Pakistan had the consent of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or not. For us, the bottom line should be being ever prepared to deal with a hostile neighbour whose very existence is predicated on perpetual hostility with India.

It is this bad blood that provides Pakistan with its raison d'etre; so at least, it emerges from a study of Pakistan's behavioural pattern. A Pakistani youth displayed this mentality on a PTV chat-show after the signing of the Lahore Declaration. He had asked innocently "If we want friendship with India, why was Pakistan created?"
One also can not agree with those observers whose comments are tinged with "we said so" assertions. According to them, had India not gone nuclear, Kargil may not have occurred. But these gentlemen forget that just the other way round could also have been true. If India had no nukes as it has today and had meekly gone ahead with signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), there might have been more Kargils and on a larger scale.

Knowing very well that Pakistan acquired its nukes in 1987, that Pakistan had continuing military cooperation with China and that the verification mechanism under the NPT and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) could never be made foolproof enough to prevent cheating by a state, and that there was always a probability that Pakistan, aware of India’s lack of effective intelligence and surveillance system might have been tempted to resort to brinkmanship more dangerous than Kargil and, therefore, there might have been more Kargils and on a much larger scale.

Where civilian authority is still trying to find its feet and with the kind of state it has become, Pakistan can never be trusted. So, India was very right in going nuclear. Any other policy decision could only have brought more disasters.

A Pakistan which is still struggling to wean away its military from the inveterate habit of wanting to rule the country will take much more time than commonly thought to democratize itself. But, in no way can we term Pakistan's conduct irrational and irresponsible as some strategic observers are wont to. Pakistan has done its homework. At least, in so far as its own national interests are concerned.

Grabbing Kashmir by hook or crook from a country which caused its bifurcation in 1972 has for long been on top of Pakistan's agenda. Its defence and foreign policies are guided by this overriding objective. Sustaining an anti-India hysteria internally and trying to 'expose' the so-called human rights violations in Kashmir in its bid to internationalize the Kashmir issue have been the subsidiary objectives of Pakistan and it has succeeded in that to a great extent, leaving India the option of only limited reactive posturings.

For the moment, Kargil has done, at least, one good thing to this country. Divisions among the political class notwithstanding, the Kargil crisis has shown that the whole country is solidly behind the armed forces and cutting across regions and religions, people have expressed their solidarity with them. This is an affirmation of the fact that despite all the divisions and disagreements within, the Indian nation-state is shaping up well.

Whatever Pakistan did or tried to do to India through Kargil, it has, at least, indirectly shown the vigour of the evolving Indian nation. For once, all Indians forgot their narrow identities to support their country with one voice. The nationalist frenzy witnessed during the Kargil crisis has consolidated the Indian nation-state, contrary to Pakistan's designs of breaking India.

Even though Kargilisation has dealt a heavy blow to Indo-Pak relations, India should not lose hope. As India strengthens its security apparatus, it should keep engaging in confidence building measures with Pakistan. After all, there is no substitute for peace. Hopefully, the few sane elements in that country would prevail upon the leadership to usher in a strong bilateral relationship.
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(1999)