It, again, is a case of one step forward two steps back between Pakistan and India. If last week's foreign ministers' talks had raised hopes for the resumption of the composite dialogue process, the event's end on an acrimonious note is cause for despair.
Yet, according to Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, the two sides had made 'headway', and the invitation to his Pakistan counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi for another round later this year, stands. Qureshi says he is not interested if the talks are not to be meaningful. Still, signs suggest before long he would be thinking of the next step forward.
A few days before he came to Islamabad for the meeting, Krishna had told a group of visiting Pakistan journalists that time has come to focus on economic and commercial exchanges and people-to-people contacts. He also stressed the need for "persisting" with "constructive dialogue", saying it will take time; but that talks will help bridge differences and expand areas of agreement.
He had also mentioned the trust deficit, though the context being the Mumbai attacks, which shook India for their sheer scale and audacity. India's unsubsiding anger and indignation over what happened in Mumbai is understandable. Its concerns need to be addressed as far as possible, which is what Islamabad is, and should be, trying to do. But to focus only on one subject to the exclusion of all else is a zero-sum game that could please only the perpetrators. Whatever happened to the stated resolve to persist with constructive dialogue?
The problem seems to a mindset that is peculiar to a section of the Indian establishment. Let's ignore for a moment the urge among the country's extremist groups to get even with history. India's spectacular economic rise has given it not only a legitimate sense of pride, but also arrogance. It is yet to arrive, but many in the country have already put on the airs of a big power. Many get carried away also by people like the right wing American writer Tom Friedman, who has his own reasons to paint Pakistan as a jealous little neighbour, which needs to be shown its place.
In his 2006 book, "The World is Flat" (he claims to have received inspiration for it during a visit to a leading Bangalore-based IT service provider, Infosys) Friedman purportedly quotes an Indian Muslim as making the following comparison between Indians and Pakistanis: When a Muslim grows up in India, and he sees a man living in a big mansion on a hill, he says, "father, one day I will be that man." And when a Muslim grows up in Pakistan, goes the narration, and sees a man living in a big mansion on a hill, he says, "father, one day I will kill that man." This characterisation of Pakistanis fits in nicely into the picture Washington warriors have been painting of Muslims as potential terrorists, who are out to destroy the world because they are jealous, as George W Bush used to say, of "our way of life."
Freidman, of course, had his own reasons to want to denigrate hundred and seventeen million Pakistanis who, according to him, are thinking only of destroying India because it has achieved progress and prosperity. Unfortunately, this blatantly biased and dishonest depiction of Pakistanis holds a certain kind of appeal for many bigoted, blinkered Indians, too.
Saner elements realise that India's self-interest demands resumption of the peace process. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a clear-minded vision of friendly relations with Pakistan, which he laid out three years ago at an FCCI meeting in Delhi. "I dream of a day," he said, "when while retaining our respective national identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul." That, apparently, was the reason why, despite Mumbai, the famous joint statement released after his meeting with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani at Sharm-el-Sheikh, delinked resumption of the composite dialogue from progress in Mumbai investigations. It is another matter though that he had to backtrack upon return to Delhi because of the opposition's reaction. Yet in his meeting with Gilani on the sidelines of Saarc summit in Thimpu last April, he agreed to return to the negotiating table without setting any conditions.
The talks in Islamabad may have ended on a sour note, but they will be resumed. Krishna has made that point several times since he returned home. Interestingly, before and after the latest meeting with his Indian counterpart, Qureshi has been displaying less than usual enthusiasm about the next round of talks. That could be because he knows something ordinary Pakistanis don't; and it is related to Dr Singh's dream.
One of the important tasks US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accomplished during her latest trip to Pakistan was to have the Afghan and Pakistan commerce ministers turn the MoU the two sides inked over a year ago in Washington, under her supervision, for opening up Wahgah-Torkham trade route. Islamabad had insisted then that the MoU had nothing to do with India, although Wahgah is where Pakistan's territory ends and India's begins. Like before, it has been making conflicting statements, claiming the agreement only provides facility to Afghan traders to export goods via Wahgah to India, and then denying Afghanistan-Pakistan transit trade agreement has yet been signed. It is plain that the decision has been made. The government is trying to find a palatable explanation in the absence of a discernable quid pro quo.
We are told Afghan trucks will carry only fruit and vegetables to Wahgah. But at the MoU signing ceremony in Washington, Clinton had described it as an 'historic' moment. Asked during her last year's visit to Lahore what was historic about it, she talked of the access it could provide Pakistan to Central Asian markets. The fact of the matter is that access to those markets was never in question. The historic thing is the opening of Wahgah to great economic opportunities for India in Afghanistan, and beyond.
The Americans recently announced the discovery of mineral deposits worth $1 trillion in Afghanistan. Aside from iron ore, copper and gold, these include niobium, a metal used in superconducting steel production, and lithium, a raw material used for making batteries for cell phones, laptops and also for new technologies being developed for electric/hybrid cars. Reports say the lithium reserves are so big in Afghanistan that the country can become the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium'. All this mineral wealth is located not far from Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. India has been eying the country's mining potential for a while, bidding in one instance for copper mining. But the access route posed difficulties. It looked at the Iranian route, but that was circuitous and expensive. Which lends special significance to the transit trade agreement.
When Dr Singh described his dream he was probably thinking of the markets and energy resources of Central Asian states. The dream has now become even more luring with mouth-watering opportunities having become available in Afghanistan itself. They are all enticing enough for India to want take more than two steps forward to make up for the ones it took backwards.
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