By Zahid U Kramet

LAHORE – The penny appears to have finally dropped. Diplomatic niceties aside, the media in the United States, at least, have concluded that the positions India and Pakistan have adopted on their differences are much too hardened to be resolved bilaterally.

Two of the most influential journals in America, the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, independently ran editorials on February 26 highlighting this fact while openly calling for US intervention.

The New York Times editorial, titled “India and Pakistan (Barely) talk”, argued for “nudging the two sides harder”. Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor in “Obama and India-Pakistan talks: US can be a better go-between” argued that the US could “certainly do more to push the two back to the negotiation table”.
The exploratory talks held between India and Pakistan’s foreign secretaries on February 25 in Delhi were in any case not expected to amount to much. Held at the urging of American officials they were meant to serve as an ice-breaker. The ice was broken.

The softer positions adopted by India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Pakistan’s Salman Bashir were initially indicative of a thaw developing. Rao observed that the talks were “a first step towards rebuilding trust” with the promise to “stay in touch”.

At the conclusion of the three-hour meeting, however, the Indian foreign secretary reaffirmed India’s “terror first” mantra, referencing the November 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistani-based militants. Her Pakistani counterpart parried, “We have suffered many hundreds of Mumbais.”

The barely veiled allegations were obvious. If India saw a sinister Pakistani hand in the Mumbai attacks that killed 166, Pakistan believes India to be complicit in fanning the flames of militancy in its restive Balochistan province from several consulates along the Afghan border.

The talks were painstakingly crafted by the US to have Pakistan focus on the Taliban resistance against Western forces in Afghanistan. The US sees the headquarters of this resistance as being in Pakistan’s inhospitable tribal territories, particularly in North Waziristan.

The unswerving anti-West Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani Taliban group are said to have their fallback position there. In light of its differences with India, Pakistan does not see Haqqani’s network as an enemy, more as a group that bolsters its strategic depth.

But for all their close associations with Pakistan, the Haqqanis come under the command of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who is committed to the al-Qaeda cause of removing all vestiges of the West from Muslim lands. Pakistan has never shared this view.

As a consequence, Pakistan has suffered a torrential rain of terrorist attacks from Mullah Omar’s appendages, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistan Taliban), and believes that a number of these militants are in the pay of the Indian intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing. India sees most of the terrorist structures, particularly Ilyas Kashmiri’s 313 Brigade, as a Pakistan proxy, rather than an operational arm of al-Qaeda .

The 313 Brigade is committed to the liberation of Kashmir. In a message to Asia Times Online shortly after the German Bakery attack which killed nine in Pune, western India, Kashmiri tellingly reminded of India’s abuses in Kashmir and its right to self-determination. (See Al-Qaeda chief delivers a warning February 13, 2010.)

Pakistan is committed to Kashmir’s right to self-determination. India stands aloof from this. It took repeated visits to the sub-continent by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and special AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke to push the two antagonists towards talks.

This was preceded by Pakistan’s final acceptance of the Taliban as a single body posing a danger to the state. There followed the arrest in Pakistan’s port metropolis, Karachi, of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar is Mullah Omar’s deputy heading the Quetta shura, a Taliban wing.

The New York Times discounted the action as no more than an attempt by Pakistan “to be included in any attempts to mediate with the Taliban”. Reports marked Baradar as an influential “conciliator” already prepped to bring Taliban segments to the negotiation table.

But after the additional arrests in Pakistan of two northern Afghanistan Taliban “shadow” governors, Mullah Abdul Salam of Kunduz and Mullah Mir Mohammad, the Pentagon rejected the conspiracy theories circulating in regard to Pakistan.

Indeed, US spokesman for the Department of Defense Geoff Morell pronounced, “We are enormously heartened by the fact that the Pakistani government … increasingly recognize the threat within their midst and are doing something about it.”

These were glad tidings and the India-Pakistan talks proceeded on schedule. But there was not much give on either side. For public consumption, India kept its focus on terror, while Pakistan stood firm on Kashmir and its linked water crisis.

Most see the Kashmir problem as a long-term dispute. Pakistan’s water crisis, however, spells immediate danger. Pakistan is drying up with India building dams on the Chenab and Jehlum rivers. Pakistan says this contravenes the Indus Water Treaty.

Pakistan’s economy is primarily agricultural. Its rural population and Pakistan’s media see the construction of the new dams as bad intent. If India does not bring this into reckoning, the trust deficit between the two countries will widen.

The next opportunity for dialogue will present itself at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meeting in Bhutan over April 28-29, when the prime ministers of India and Pakistan are expected to meet and take the talks further.

That allows al-Qaeda a month of mischief. Accelerated action has already begun with the Taliban strike in Kabul that killed 16 and wounded about 38 on February 26. More than half of those reportedly killed were Indians. Attacks inside Pakistan could well follow.

So too might a blame-game, with the Indian Foreign Office statement on the Kabul attack stating that the attack was “the handiwork of those who are desperate to undermine the friendship between India and Afghanistan”. The next step could be to implicate Pakistan.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently said that South Asia is one of “the most significant areas for America’s long term security”. It may be. But bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve this issue is not likely to deliver.

American intervention is what the US media have called for to take the India-Pakistan talks to the next level. However, intervention by the US in a singular capacity will not do the trick. Including the Shanghai Corporation Organization, which is also geared to combat the terrorist threat, is imperative for the dialogue to yield results.

Zahid U Kramet, a Lahore-based political analyst specializing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, is the founder of the research and analysis website the Asia Despatch.