Kashmir still not ripe for peace

NEW DELHI: In the 1990s, Richard Haass, a charter member of the Washington rolodex that moves between academia and government, penned a small volume of essays on various conflicts around the world —Greece-Turkey in Cyprus, India-Pakistan in Kashmir, the Middle East and so on.
What Haass, who is now President of the Council on Foreign Relations, wanted to know was: Why is it that some international conflicts can be solved while others defy solution despite the best efforts of talented negotiators?
His uncomfortable, almost tautological, answer was that conflicts are susceptible to settlement when they are ripe for it.Instead of wasting time trying to settle situations unripe for settlement, US diplomacy should work towards aiding the ripening process.
Is Kashmir ripe for settlement? The short answer is that it is still a bit raw. Musharraf’s tentative statement that he is willing to set aside the UN resolutions indicates that the ripening process is underway, as indeed are the recent moves towards peace between India and Pakistan.
To further ripen the process, three additional ingredients are needed. First, a reduction, if not elimination of violence in the
Valley.
There are indications that this process is underway, but with nearly 300 security force personnel killed last year, it is clear that we are still some distance from even a condition of near-normality.
Second, a strategic change of direction in Pakistan. In the early 1980s, the Pakistani ISI chief Lt-Gen Akhtar Abdul Rehman saw jihad as a means of fighting an asymmetrical conflict with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Later the experience was used to turn the Kashmiri struggle for azadi into a proxy war against India in Kashmir. 9-11 changed all that and the US has made it clear that jihadi terrorism is no longer an option, even for the sake of a freedom struggle.
Third, India has to realise that it cannot settle with the Valley Kashmiris on the basis of the situation that prevailed before 1990.
Thousands of people have been killed and the whole Valley has been traumatised by the dirty guerrilla war and its attendant human rights abuses.
What has happened cannot be undone, but the challenge before the India is to restore the shattered self-esteem of the Valley Kashmiris, both Muslim and Hindu.
But while movement in these areas may make the issue ripe for settlement, there is one critical element still missing. Will India be willing to forgo or even dilute its sovereignty in the Valley?
I think it will, but only in circumstances where it is certain that no third country or power is in a position to take advantage of it. Simple paper guarantees will not work because we know the power of the word fait accompli.
The guarantee lies in a more fundamental shift in the region, the growth of liberal democracy and a secularisation of the polity of the region’s states.