The Kartarpur agreement is billed as a historic and a rare positive news in an adversarial equation besetting India and Pakistan relations. Is it the beginning of a new era in bilateral relations of India and Pakistan? And can the thinking template of Kartarpur be applied to other issues including the resolution of IOK?The agreement operationalising the corridor comes as a major departure given the level of tension in the wake of India’s annexation of IOK, almost daily violations on LoC and diplomatic surge of Pakistan to highlight the dangers of Delhi’s provocations.What animated India’s decision to agree to Kartarpur corridor in the first place, can best be explained by flagging major dynamics characterising this aberration vis-a-vis Pakistan policy, e.g, to concede on the corridor.First, after the annexation of IOK by India, Pakistan’s aggressive diplomacy has somehow succeeded to internationalise the Kashmir issue as a lingering dispute between Islamabad and Delhi.Second, the grotesque human rights situation have found international traction at the levels of policy making circles, power seats, human rights bodies, think tanks and media in the western world.Third, the IOK issue has also put a brake on India’s quest to be accepted as rising power carving for itself a larger role at the world stage. In other words, India is relegated back to its hyphenated status (bracketing with Pakistan). Fourth, even worse, two factors will ensure Delhi is treated as such in the future as well: a) India’s scorched-earth Kashmir policy, i.e, creating a permanent reservoir of resentment and festering wound, remaining in the imagination of the international community and, b) its obsession with projection of coercive, and diplomatic muscle against Pakistan—practically, Islamabad without doing much (in exception to its diplomatic noises) will be succeeding to pin India down in the Himalayas' foothills despite Delhi’s positive trajectory in foreign, development and strategic terms.Fifth, in order to neutralise Pakistani narrative that bilateral track is dead and that the world should intervene, Delhi wants to send a message to the contrary, through Kartarpur agreement, saying no need for any third power as go-between.Sixth, international observers of South Asia will be buying Indian narrative and relieved to see that despite all tension in bilateral relations and eyeball to eyeball situation on IOK, still Delhi and Pakistan can engage and achieve a small but positive step against a negative trajectory of events—a takeaway what India desperately wants the world to note. Seventh, a subset to the above factors was to assuage the feelings of Sikh community that they are not second class citizens and India is doing all it can to take care of their religious and spiritual welfare even if that means temporarily making up with an enemy for them to have a one off deal.As proved its intention through Kartarpur corridor, Pakistan would be eager to engage if Delhi plays ball: Kartarpur was Pakistan’s initiative, putting in place all components—political will, principle and policy engagement, their implementation from start to finish, overcoming all challenges of project execution (financial close, completion of the corridor along with auxiliary infrastructure), all achieved in a short span of time, a year—not a small feat indeed.But the Kartarpur template cannot be applied to other issues including IOK, because: It needs a leadership, vision and a political will: the Hindutva-Modi govt beholden to RSS ideology have none of the preceding virtues.Delhi’s characteristic of piecemeal approach to diplomacy will never pass for a creative mechanism to resolution of more complex issues as its foreign policy establishment and deep state has historically thrived to keep issues alive hence generating a political economy out of bilateral frictions; for example, this is the case not only with Pakistan but also with all other smaller neighbours of India, besides, China. India’s thinking of its rising clout in development, foreign and strategic arenas, makes it convinced that it can live with Pakistan forever without resolving thorny issues. Its intransigence in using coercion as the only means to manage issues with Pakistan, precludes any possibility of using Kartarpur template.Going forward, after the Kartarpur agreement, relations between India and Pakistan will not come on some kind of even keel as Delhi is not ready to ameliorate Pakistan’s concern on occupation of IOK, coercive behaviour along LoC and renewed propaganda info and proxy warfare. Thus no one is holding breath if after Kartarpur agreement bilateral track will start functioning. Even the relationship may get worse, mainly due to the lack of willingness in Delhi to talk through these frictions created particularly by unilateral measures on Kashmir and bellicose rhetoric against Pakistan. However, in a small way, Kartarpur agreement also reminds Delhi, it has to show some humility towards a neighbour it can neither wish away, nor pull up its capitulation or surrender despite its approach of sustaining strategic confrontation over decades, hence has to set and work out things.While for Pakistan Kartarpur brings home the message that it has to co-exist with India accepting competition as situation to be managed rather than a problem to be resolved—thus it has to try to capitalise, incrementally moving ahead and creating a goodwill along the way so the world recognises who is impeding ways towards normalisation. When the 1000-pound panda in the room (i.e, the probable backlash of Kashmir once restrictions are removed) will torpedo that small goodwill created after Kartarpur agreement is anybody’s guess, though.Jan Achakzai is a geopolitical analyst, a politician from Balochistan, and ex-adviser to the Balochistan government on media and strategic communication. He remained associated with BBC World Service. He is also Chairman of Centre for Geo-Politics & Balochistan.
from The News International - National https://ift.tt/2MQelyQ
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