Pakistan rakes up Siachen to hide its failures
There are three reasons why Pakistan has raked up the Siachen issue at this point. First, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's efforts to play up the Kashmir issue at the UN last week failed miserably. Second, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at whom the comments were primarily directed, did not bite the bait. He merely chided Mr Sharif for bringing up a bilateral issue on a global forum and went on to enthuse world leaders with the rest of his speech. With the Kashmir issue turning out to be a damp squib, Pakistan was desperately looking for another path to get back in the game — and, hence, it picked Siachen. But more than anything else, Pakistan's Siachen cry is a knee-jerk response to the US and India committing themselves to greater cooperation in counter-terrorism, as described in the India-US joint statement, issued after Mr Modi’s successful meeting with President Barack Obama. While such cooperation is not a new development — almost all US-India joint statements, at least since 2008, have talked about taking down the terror infrastructure in Pakistan — the specific mention of Jaish-e-Mohammad and D Company is a first.
This is an important development because up until now Jaish-e-Mohammad and D Company have been considered to be ‘localised' threats. While the former is primarily portrayed as a Kashmiri mujahideen group, D Company is supposed to be just another well-organised criminal network. That these outfits are now listed alongside the more global threats, such as Al Qaeda, lashkar-e-Tayyeba, and the Haqqani network (all three pose direct threats to US assets and interests), means that the heat has been turned up on them. It also indicates that New Delhi is having greater success lobbying the US on Pakistan-related security issues. This is also evident in a slew of other developments, such as the India-US pledge to improve criminal law enforcement and military exchanges, strengthen cooperation on extradition, prevent the spread of counterfeit currency, and facilitate the investigation of criminal and terrorist activities. Add to this, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval's extended stay in the US, during which he met his US counterpart Susan Rice and the Secretaries of State and Defence John Kerry and Chuck Hagel respectively, and it becomes clear why Pakistan has suddenly had to up the ante.
On the Siachen issue, the points made by the Pakistani Foreign Office are so weak that they hardly deserve to be countered. Nonetheless, the record must be set straight. Pakistan has complained that India ignored its proposal to convert the Siachen battlefield into a peace park. The merits of such a proposal notwithstanding, the fact is that there can be no progress on the ground as long as Pakistan does not exchange maps officially delineating its troop positions. Pakistan has refused to do so because it is currently in a weaker position and does not want to acknowledge as much. India, on the other hand, holds the commanding heights. It is absurd to expect that it will make any concessions, without water-tight guarantees (not possible at the moment) from Pakistan. Moreover, Siachen is not just a bilateral border issue for India but also a larger geo-political and economic concern for Delhi vis-à-vis China. This, however, is not to say that India is opposed to talks on Siachen. like Pakistan, India too wishes to resolve this problem at the earliest — in the icy wastelands of Siachen, both countries have lost more men to inclement weather than they have to enemy bullets. However, Pakistan has to be realistic and sincere in its approach to peace.