Geopolitical Analysis

By K.N. Pandita – Foreign Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan in New Delhi are just concluded. What actually transpires between the parties in such high level talks is seldom made public. However, clues come in trickles and the entire gamut comes under focus sooner or later.

The process of bilateral talks on a number of outstanding issues between the two neighbours has been going on for a long time. Given the nature of their strained relations for so many decades, nothing startling is to be expected from these talks.

While the talks are on or off, Pakistani side cannot step out of Kashmir obsession. It is now habitual for them to reiterate that no progress in talks is possible unless Kashmir issue is resolved. “Resolving” Kashmir issue is Pakistan’s other way of saying that India should handover Kashmir to her.

It is amusing that the Pakistani foreign secretary said during the just concluded talks that if India sticks to a position, the talks cannot proceed. Should not this diplomatic formulation apply to Pakistan?

Indian political circles are somewhat surprised at the Pakistani foreign secretary trying to beat India with her stick in alleging Indian intelligence involvement in Baluchistan trouble. Supposing there is a grain of truth in Pakistan’s charge, the first question to arise is why does Pakistan use different yard sticks for identical situations?

For last one decade and a half Pakistan has been stating loudly and clearly at all national, regional and international fora that she is extending moral, political and diplomatic support to the Kashmir “freedom fighters/mujahids”, carefully avoiding any mention of “military and logistical” support to them. Pakistani leadership finds justification of their all but military support in projecting the struggle in Kashmir as one for “freedom from alien rule”. The other justification is sought in Kashmir’s Muslim majority complexion.

Under the provisions of the UN Charter and the procedures of some of its subsidiary structures, extending all but military support to a nation fighting for its freedom from oppression is admissible in part. It is this clause that emboldens Pakistan to emphatically state its support to Kashmir insurgents. The inference is that Pakistan has to drum up the propaganda of Kashmiris “fighting a freedom war”. And she is pursuing that propagandist agenda relentlessly.

Islamabad’s real problem is not that India is extending all and perhaps also military support to the Baluch freedom fighters, which, if true, is admissible under the provisions of the UN Charter. Its real problem is that while she has been openly and intensively trumpeting her use of this clause in the case of Kashmir, India has desisted from straying into that dangerous area.

A genesis of the rise and expansion of Baluch insurgency in Pakistan will satisfy any impartial observer that their struggle fully answers the contours of a struggle for freedom from an oppressor, from political deprivation and from economic strangulation.

As regards the allegations of violation of human rights in Kashmiris to which the Pakistani foreign secretary is reported to have obliquely referred to in his talks, it has to be noted that while Indian democratic arrangement provides Z security to its prime political opponent in Kashmir (Ali Shah Geelani) –- a very expensive and sensitive undertaking –, Pakistan had no qualms of conscience in bombarding the residence of chief Baluch leader Nawwab Akbar Bugti and assassinating him in cold blood. The difference needs to be noted. We should also bring back to memory the strafing of Baluchistan by Pakistani Air Force under the orders of the then President Ayub Khan and Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto in 1970s that caused widespread destruction to Baluchistan and her people.

The Baluch leadership has made no secret of its decision to secede from Pakistan and form an independent sovereign state. Bangladesh is their model and India would not want Islamabad to repeat the Bangladesh misadventure only to sensitize India to her sovereignty and integrity in the face of a threatening armed upsurge and conflict on her western border. India’s concerns are understandable in the light of the fact that some sophisticated weapons seized by Pakistani security forces from Baluch insurgents are said to be of Chinese made. India cannot ignore the heavy presence of Chinese “technicians” working at Gawadar port project on Makran coast of Baluchistan. (The writer is the former Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University).