Given its commitment on the Afghanistan front, Pakistan would want an end to ceasefire violations along the line of Control. This explains the Pakistani DGMO's desire to maintain peace. The posturing, however, will at best be transient
At his recent media interaction to mark the Army Day on January 15, the Chief of Army Staff, General Bikram Singh, expressed satisfaction at the talks between the Indian and the Pakistani Director Generals of Military Operations, held at Wagah border on December 24, 2013. According to him, the meeting will help maintain the ceasefire agreement. The Indian side had taken up with Pakistan all issues pertaining to the peace and tranquillity at the line of Control.
The Army Chief has mixed up strategic and tactical issues. The ceasefire on the loC is a decision taken at the highest levels in India and Pakistan, and the DGMOs have little role in maintaining it. On the other hand, the field commanders on both sides are better placed to discuss local issues pertaining to peace and tranquillity on the loC than the two DGMOs who travelled from Delhi and Rawalpindi to meet one another. The reality is that the long awaited meeting between the two DGMOs, agreed to by Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif, was a non-event. It could have been different if only India had heeded the Pakistani suggestion.
Pakistan, backed by the United States, had suggested that civilian diplomats be part of the military meeting. India’s Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh, however, turned down the proposal saying that diplomats did not have a role in an essentially military matter. This was incorrect and reduced a potentially strategic meeting into a tactical interaction.
Kashmir is a bilateral problem between India and Pakistan and the loC is the manifestation of this issue. When the Pakistani Army increased ceasefire violations on the loC, especially between August and October 2013, India decided to put bilateral ties on hold. Because India does not make a distinction between Rawalpindi and Islamabad, it sees a direct connect between activities on the loC and relations between the two countries. For this reason, once the loC ceasefire was agreed upon on November 26, 2003, the two sides agreed on two crossing points on the loC for people’s movement at Uri and Tithwal, and bilateral trade between Uri-Muzaffarabad and Chakan da Bagh-Rawalakot. To recall, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s formula for Kashmir resolution centred on making the loC irrelevant.
So why did India’s top diplomat de-link diplomacy, which is the mechanism for improving bilateral relations, from military activities on the loCIJ The reason is obvious. Indian diplomats do not want to be part of the negotiating team where they play second fiddle to military officers. What will, however, get sacrificed in this pompousness of the Indian Foreign Service (the National Security Adviser is also a former foreign service officer) is the opportunity to interact directly with both Pakistani military and civilian leaderships over Kashmir. Doing so had the possibility of moving the bilateral dispute from more confidence building measures to its possible resolution as both Pakistani stakeholders would have been on board.
But this is not the first time that Indian diplomats have turned down a peripheral role when the issue at stake is a military matter. Writing in his recent book, Eating Grass: The making of the Pakistani Bomb, Brigadier Feroz Hassan Khan, the Pakistani Army insider from its nuclear establishment says that during the first meeting in October 1998 on nuclear and conventional force issues after the nuclear tests by both countries, the “Indian delegation had no military officer at the meeting, and the diplomats barely anticipated an elaborate proposal (from the Pakistani side). It became clear that India was prepared only to have generalised discussions on these issues.”
Take the case of Siachen, which is a purely military issue. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, without checking with his military, announced in 2005 that Siachen be made a ‘zone of peace’, to only retract his pronouncement when brasstacks were made known to him. The truth is that Indian diplomats have made border policies for both China and Pakistan without taking the military which is the executioner of the policies on board. This is the fundamental reason why the 1993 and 1996 agreements with China and the conversion of the Ceasefire line into the line of Control after the 1971 war with Pakistan are tilted in favour of the adversaries.
From Pakistan’s perspective, having their diplomats and military leaders together on loC ceasefire talks with India would have moved civil-military relations to an even keel. The Pakistani proposal for composition of the negotiating team was a clear indication that its General Raheel Sharif had agreed to share the table on Pakistan’s security policy vis-a-vis India with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Who knows this may have led to the larger betterment with Pakistan’s civilian leadership getting a foothold in its country’s nuclear weapons’ domain which at present is GHQ, Rawalpindi’s preserve. Improved civil-military relations within Pakistan would have helped India as well as its basic demand that it will only interact with the Government in place would have been met. Given India’s position, this larger objective of bilateral talks has been given a go-bye.
On the tactical issue of reduced ceasefire violations on the loC, ironically, today it is more Pakistani Army’s than Indian Army’s requirement. After the attacks on Indian soldiers and increased ceasefire violations especially between August and October 2013, the Indian Army had taken two decisive steps at the tactical level to give it back to the Pakistani Army. It moved additional 12,000 Rashtriya Rifles troops forward as add-on to strengthen the loC. And, devastating firepower, many weapons from outside Jammu & Kashmir, were brought into the theatre to repay Pakistanis with devastating and accurate lethality. With a nod from the Army Headquarters, the Indian field commanders pulverised select Pakistani positions with firepower. This is what led to casualties on the Pakistani side that General Bikram Singh referred to during his Press conference.
But the singularly important point seems to have been missed by the Indian Army chief. Given General Sharif’s commitment on the Afghanistan front, he would want an end to ceasefire violations, and hence his DGMO’s desire to maintain peace on the loC. This posturing, however, will at best be transient.
(The writer is a former Indian Army officer and now Editor, FORCE, a newsmagazine on national security)